#(when she was a consort for only three years while england has had like six actual queen regnants including her own fucking daughter)

[navree]

there has GOT to be a way to explain anne boleyn's proto-feminism and importance to history without absolutely shitting on katherine of aragon and acting as if she was basically set dressing for her entire marriage rather than a person in her own right and an important one at that, but i think a lot of stanne's are just virulently misogynistic so they're physically incapable of doing so

[blackdiamondwrites127]

The Royal House of Trastámara (Redux)

So since the Trastámara family has become even more complete with the addition of Juan, I figured I'd make redo of this post! So here are the daughters and son of the Royal House of Trastámara.

Link to original post

Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal

The eldest child of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille, Isabella was named after her mother and became the heir presumptive to the Crown of Castille after her mother took the throne from her uncle Henry IV of Castille. She was betrothed and married to Prince Afonso, heir and only son of John II of Portugal. Her marriage with the prince was a happy one but unfortunately, Afonso died due to a riding accident and Isabella vowed never to marry again. Until six years later, after the death of John II of Portugal, his brother, Manuel I of Portugal, usurped the throne and asked for Isabella's hand in marriage. Her parents offered Maria's hand instead out of respect to Isabella's wishes to never marry again but Manuel refused. Eventually, she married him and became queen consort of Portugal. She later gave birth to her only son, Miguel de Paz, Prince of Portugal, and due to her poor health and constant travelling during the later stages of her pregnancy, she died within an hour of her son's birth.

In her second life, Isabella owns and works in her own music shop located just below her flat. She sometimes fills in for Maria on the drums whenever she's sick and just generally enjoys the simple things in her second life. She's grown to be very passive due in this life and can be quite sarcastic at times which may come off as rude but she means well. However, bad mouth her younger sister she'll go after you.

Isabella Trastámara belongs to @lexartsstuff.

John, Prince of Asturias

was the only son of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon who survived to adulthood. John was born in Seville in 1478 to the sovereigns of Castile, Isabella I and Ferdinand II. John's birth helped consolidate Isabella's position as sovereign as she had given birth to a legitimate male heir. At the time of his birth, he had one elder sister Isabella; his younger sisters were Joanna, Maria, and Catherine. During his early years, Isabella and Ferdinand came to plan a double alliance with Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, for the marriage of his children, Archduke Philip the Handsome and Archduchess Margaret of Austria. On 20 January 1495 in Antwerp, a preliminary alliance, which included a wedding of Prince John with Maximilian's daughter was agreed. Similarly, Maximilian's son Philip and John's sister Joanna were to be married. Joanna left Spain to marry Philip the Handsome in late 1496. Philip's sister, Margaret of Austria, aged 18, married John on April 3 the following year in Burgos Cathedral. It was a good marriage and John was devoted to Margaret. On 4 October 1497, a messenger came to John's parents and informed them that their son lay dangerously ill in Salamanca. He and his wife Margaret had arrived a week earlier, on the way to the wedding of his older sister in Portugal. Ferdinand was with his son as John died in the arms of his former tutor Fray Diego Deza. Two months later, on December 8, the Princess of Asturias gave birth to their only child, a stillborn girl.

When he was reincarnated, he found that he was blind in one eye but that didn’t stop him from having the time of his life. He’s very fun loving, happy, energetic and a bit oblivious at times. He’s married to Margaret of Austria, who he calls Maggie. He works as a costume designer for SIX the musical, mainly so he can see his baby sister more. He now goes by Juan rather than John as a ay to stay in touch with his spanish roots.

Juan Trastámara belongs to @weirdbutdecentart100.

Joanna of Castille, Queen of Castille and Aragon

The second eldest daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. Known historically as 'Joanna the Mad' or 'Juana la Loca' in spanish, she was Queen of Castille and Queen of Aragon. Modern Spain evolved from the union of these two kingdoms. Joanna was married by arrangement to Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria of the House of Habsburg. Following the deaths of her brother, John, Prince of Asturia, her elder sister Isabella, and her nephew Miguel, Joanna became the heir presumtive to the crowns of Castile and Aragon. When her mother died, Joanna became Queen of Castile. Her father proclaimed himself Governor and Administrator of Castile. Despite being the ruling Queen of Castile, Joanna had little effect on national policy during her reign as she was declared insane and imprisoned in the Royal Convent of Santa Clars in Tordesillas under the orders of her father, who ruled as regent until his death, when she inherited his kingdom as well. When her son Charles I ruled as king, she was nominally co-monarch but remained imprisoned until her death.

In her second life, Joanna or Juana as she preferred to be called, came back a troubled teen. In her misfortune, she was taken in by a very religious and abusive family. The father, named Fernando, would often lock her up in a dark room whenever she had mental breakdowns which are usually bouts of painful laughter. She finally escaped the house and was homeless for years until she found her youngest sister, Catalina. Catalina helped her by housing her until she got back on her feet and got the help she needed for her mental wellbeing.

Juana 'la loca' Trastámara belongs to @ellielovesdrawing.

Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal

The third eldest daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. After the untimely death of her older sister, she married her husband Manuel I of Portugal and replaced her as queen of Portugal. As a queen, she wasn't that involved in politics at all and her focus consists mainly of religious teachings, sewing and child rearing. Although, she is sometimes credited for convincing her husband into acts of 'mercy' whenever he flew into a fit of rage. During her marriage and reign as queen, she gave birth to ten children. Eight of whom reached to adulthood. She was constantly pregnant most of her adult life. Only having a few months in between pregnancies and giving birth to her tenth child caused her untimely demise.

Reincarnated into the modern world, Maria woke as a young woman in her early twenties. She's a laid back woman and loves the experience of a good party or a night at a club. She's not as religious as she was in her past life. Not atheistic per se. She'll go to church if she feels like it and even wears a rosary bracelet as some sort of connection to her religion was raised and taught in. She has a friend with benefits that she has fun with weekly. She is 100% childfree in her second life because ten pregnancies in her past life was way more than enough for her. Despite being childfree, she still adores children so she had applied for uni and took up an education course. Graduating after four years and landing her first teaching job at a private academy where Hal and his siblings and cousins go to. That was where she reunited with Catalina during a PTA meeting and the two sisters have never been happier to meet again in their second lives. They then set up a meeting where she reunites with their older sisters, Isabella and Juana.

Maria Trastámara belongs to yours truly.

Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England

The youngest daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. Catherine was three years old when she was betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the English throne. They married but Arthur died five months later. She was the first known female ambassador in European history. Catherine subsequently married Arthur's younger brother, Henry VIII. For six months, she served as regent of England while Henry VIII was in France. In 1525, Henry VIII was infatuated with Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to her had produced no surviving sons, leaving their daughter, the future Mary I of England, as heir presumptive at a time when there was no established precedent for a woman on the throne. He sought to have their marriage annulled, setting in motion a chain of events that led to England's schism with the Catholic Church. When Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage, Henry defied him by assuming supremacy over religious matters. Their marriage was consequently declared invalid and Henry married Anne on the judgement of clergy in England, without reference to the pope. Catherine refused to accept Henry as supreme head of the Church in England and considered herself the king's rightful wife and queen, attracting much popular sympathy. Despite this, she was acknowledged only as dowager princess of Wales by Henry. After being banished from court by Henry, she lived out the remainder of her life at Kimbolton Castle, and died of cancer.

In her second life, Catherine or Catalina as she prefers to be called to avoid confusion with the other C/Katherines, found herself in a house with her ex husband's five other wives. Tensions were high on the first few months, especially between her and Anne Boleyn but the six soon got things settled and managed to create a family dynamic within their shared home. They created a musical about their stories and garnered quite the success. She mostly acts as the head matriarch of the house. Making sure that everyone was alright and knew not to cause any trouble that might get them hurt. The addition of their children being reincarnated made her even more attentive, caring and loving to her new found family.

[minervacasterly]

🌹 A Proud and Grand Matriarch 🌹

King Henry VIII’s joint coronation with his equally praised consort, was not just a triumph for the Tudor Dynasty; it was a personal triumph for his grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, Margaret Beaufort. Throughout her life, Margaret had sacrificed everything, done the impossible, to keep her only son safe. Her confessor, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, said that twice in her life, she had cried tears. First for her son and secondly for her grandson. For the former, her tears were both of fear and joy while for Henry, her tears represented the relief and gratitude she felt for having seen her son’s dynasty last this long, as well as being witness to the first peaceful transition of power in a long time.

In her biographical work on the Tudors (“Tudor. Passion. Manipulation. Murder: The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family”), notes the following: “A fortnight after the wedding Henry and Katherine were crowned together as king and queen. The ceremony lasted four days and began on 21 June with Henry VIII taking formal possession of the Tower. There, the following night, he created his Knights of the Bath. This ceremony, which only took place on the eve of a coronation, involved the new knights bathing in a symbol of purification, before a vigil spent in prayer until dawn. The next day the knights led the newly-weds on the eve of coronation procession to Westminster through streets hung with tapestries. Henry was mounted on a princely horse in a jewelled costume, while Katherine, dressed in white, was carried in a litter pulled by white horses. Her long auburn hair ‘beautiful and goodly to behold’ hung loose under a golden circlet of six crosses and six fleurs-de-lys, studded with precious stones and ‘new made’ for her. When a summer rainstorm broke Katherine was forced to take refuge under the awning of a draper’s stall. But it passed as quickly as it had arrived and the happy procession continued in front of the cheering crowds. The next day Henry and Katherine were crowned at Westminster Abbey and Margaret Beaufort wept as many tears as she had at her son’s coronation. She remained fearful, John Fisher recalled, ‘that some adversity would follow’. A few days later, while staying at the abbot’s house at Westminster, Margaret became ill. The cygnet she had eaten had upset her stomach. It was only two months since her son had died and Margaret did not have either the emotional or physical strength to recover. Fisher was present at her death, a mere five days after her grandson and his wife were anointed king and queen. Margaret Beaufort was buried in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey where her son had so recently been interred. She had decreed in her will that her Book of Hours, in which she had marked such key events as her son’s victory at Bosworth and Henry VIII’s birth, should be kept on display there. Her black marble tomb was to be surmounted with a bronze effigy created by the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano. The face he cast expresses her forceful personality. Margaret had survived the dangers of her son’s birth. She had helped protect him during the years that followed, and risked her own life to conspire on his behalf against Richard III. In promoting her son as king, she had sacrificed her own superior claim to the throne. But although she accepted male authority she had wielded considerable influence. Margaret had used her experience of English court ceremony to place the Tudors firmly within royal tradition, drawing up the orders for future royal christenings and funerals. Her best servants became the king’s, and he had continued to trust her judgement to the end. No wonder she came to sign herself in the regal style, Margaret R. The obituary sermon Fisher gave her noted that Margaret would be greatly missed. Her female friends and relations, ‘whom she had loved so tenderly’, her priests and servants, ‘to whom she was full dear’, indeed, ‘all England for her death had cause for weeping’. Margaret had been an important patroness to the universities, especially Cambridge; she had also been generous to the poor, while her passion for chivalric virtues had, Fisher said, made her an ‘example of honour’ to the nobility. It was her spirituality that he admired most, later commenting that although ‘she chose me as her director … I gladly confess that I learnt more from her great virtue than I ever taught her.’ If Henry VII had had a good death, reconciled to God, Fisher believed Margaret had led a good life. In later generations, however, Margaret’s reputation would fall victim to religious and sexual prejudice. In the post-Reformation England of the seventeenth century Margaret’s spirituality came to be judged mere superstition and her intelligence and toughness of character were regarded with equal suspicion. The antiquarian Sir George Buck condemned Margaret Beaufort as a ‘politic and subtle lady’ who had killed the princes in the Tower with sorcery and poison to clear the way for her son. That Margaret was responsible for the princes’ deaths is a theory becoming fashionable again and remains linked to cultural prejudices. Margaret’s support for her son had been construed as those of an obsessively ambitious mother, yet for her generation she was fulfilling a duty. She was honour bound to help him regain his rightful inheritance, and later to help him restore the House of Lancaster, into which she had been born. Her strict religious devotions are, to modern sensibilities, strange, even fanatical, but amongst royal and noble women of her time they were commonplace: an effort to look beyond the vicious and ruthless political culture into which they were born, to understand humility, and the nobility of Christ’s example. The absence of portraits of Margaret Beaufort as an attractive young woman to counterbalance the images of her in old age have helped give credit to the sinister reputation she has gained. But the face that stands out from her story is not that of the widow with the hooded eyes, praying amidst the riches of a royal chapel and seen in her portraits, but a young girl, riding in the biting wet of a Welsh winter, to Pembroke Castle where she must deliver her child. Now it was for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren to continue the Tudor story.”

Indeed. Margaret, willed herself to live this long enough to see the crown being passed to the next generation without any bloodshed. England had enough of those. Henry’s accession and powerful display of imagery represented a return to England’s glory days. She was aware of this, and it is why she cried once again in seeing another Tudor wearing the crown of St. Edward the Confessor.

Margaret had lived in a tumultous time. She had endured many personal tragedies, outlived most of her family, including her son, but lived long enough to see this shining moment in Tudor history. Days after her grandson’s coronation, she retired to the Deanery in Westminster Abbey. She died on the 29th of June, five days after Henry VIII’s coronation and a day after his eighteenth birthday.

The celebrated Humanist philosopher Erasmus wrote a Latin inscription for her tomb which in English reads: “Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, grandmother of Henry VIII, who donated funds for three monks of this abbey, a grammar school in Wimborne, a preacher in the whole of England, two lecturers in Scripture, one at Oxford, the other at Cambridge, where she also founded two colleges, one dedicated to Christ, and the other to St John, the Evangelist.”

John Fisher’s funeral sermon echo what most of contemporaries thought of her: “She was a bounteous and liberal to every person of her knowledge or acquaintance. Avarice … she most hated, and sorrowed it full much in all persons, but especially in only that belonged unto her … Unkind she would be not unto any creature, nor forgetful of any kindness or service done to her before … She was not vengeful nor cruel, but ready to forget and forgive any injuries done unto her … Merciful and also pious she was unto anyone who was grieved or wrongfully troubled, and to those that were in poverty … or any other misery.”

While the new King and Queen were remarked on their scholarship, Margaret was also well remembered for it. In 1483, she commissioned a book pritned by Caxton. During her son’s reign, Margaret continued to give patronage to the printing press, including Caxton’s successor Wynkyn de Worde. Like her great-granddaughters, the first Queen Regnants of England, Mary I and Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Margare Beaufort translated many notable religious and philosophical works to English. Schools and colleges were established during her lifetime, and some were finished posthumously. She also financed the restoration of some churches and parishes.

Margaret Beaufort was buried at the lady chapel in Westminster Abbey where her son and daughter-in-life, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and other descendants also rest.

[forgotten-forbridden-forgiven]

What would be happen in six the musical genderbend?(Just my speculation,sorry for my long article)

Catullus of Aragon (Catalin de Aragon)

Andrew Boleyn 

James Seymour

Andreas of Cleves (Andreas von Kleves)

Katullus Howard

Catullus Parr

Queen Henrietta the viii

This musical would talk about six prince consorts of queen Henrietta diss their queen wife,the story would be quite weird...

First,prince Catullus of Aragon came from Spain to marry princess Athena when they were 15 years old but 5 months later,Athena died.He was imprisoned for 7 years until he married princess Henrietta who was 17-18 years old.Yep,his dead wife’s younger sister.

During 24 years of marriage,Aragon was winning the war in Scotland while Henrietta,was pregnant, was fighting a war in France in 1513.Prince Mark was born in 1516.However,she wanted healthy,well born daughter instead of son.She ran around with handsome young things (e.g. Mark Boleyn)... and secretly born someone who didn’t earn a wedding ring‘s(Elijah Blount) a daughter (Henrietta Fitzroy)...WAIT A SECOND,WOULD SHE LIE TO ARAGON THE OTHER CHILDREN AS MISCARRIAGES BUT SECRETLY TAKE CARE OF THEM?IF THEY STAY AT THE COURT, MARK WOULD HAS "SIBLINGS’?

In the other hand,smart,witty Andrew Boleyn,who grew up and studied in french court,backed to England from France in 1522.He had almost married his fiancees Jane Butler and Henrietta Percy (the All British chics like epic fail” is historically wrong.) before he met queen Henrietta.The queen kept sent him love letters.But he didn’t have sex with her until he was her husband.

She wanted to marry her dream man,so she annulled Aragon marriage,he said no and was like “Excuse me?!I married you for 24 years,you blamed me because i’m your your elder sister’s husband and I can’t give you daughter.I can’t kept silence anymore and you still flirting with boys!”

Queen Henrietta asked pope for divorce but he said nope.She made her own religion and was supreme head of Church of England.England was excommunicated from Vatican,Henrietta and Boleyn were married successfully.

Prince Elijah was born in 1533.However,she didn’t feel happy at all and continued sleeping around and she had a serious jousting accident,it caused her brain damage which made her cruel and ruthless and leg injury which she couldn’t do exercise any more.Meanwhile,Boleyn might flirt a girl or three (A false rumor maybe).The queen found out and felt furious.He was beheaded in 19th May,1536 after he had been imprisoned in the tower,his younger sister Georgia Boleyn and 4 women were executed too.

Next day, Henrietta married James Seymour.In 1537,princess Edith had been born after the brutal childbirth...WELL,IF JANE SEYMOUR DIED 12 DAYS LATER,IN THIS VERSION,HENRIETTA WOULD DIE!SH-!She was recovered and Seymour died suddenly perhaps?She said that he had been the only one who truly loved.

After that,big,fat,smelly,moody Henrietta fond of Andreas of Cleves’s portrait by Hannah Holbein which her adviser,Theresa Cromwell,shown her as new husband options.However,when Cleves, who couldn’t speak in English,came to England,the queen felt disappointed and said he looked like a horse.He luckily lived in palace in Richmond with nickname “Queen’s beloved brother” after 6 months of marriage.

Before young Katullus Howard married queen Henrietta,he was sexually abused by a music teacher and a secretary.After that,he had an affair with one of courtiers,Theresa Culpeper. The queen found out.And Howard was beheaded on 13th February,1542 when he was only 19 years old. Culpeper was beheaded and Frances Dereham was hanged, drawn and quartered on 10th February.

Henrietta married Catullus Parr who was widower of two baroness.Parr was originally in love with Theresa Seymour(James Seymour’s elder sister) but he had to say goodbye to his love for surviving.More than husband,he was a nurse to her and baby sitter of her three children.He was almost executed.Finally, the queen died on 28th January,1547 and Parr could married Theresa Seymour.He was a writer,fought for equal education and found female painter to paint his picture.And he died after his son Mark Parr had been born.

Jesus,it takes hours to write this such an essay and finish it at midnight in HK!

[sciencespies]

When Catherine of Aragon Led England's Armies to Victory Over Scotland

https://sciencespies.com/history/when-catherine-of-aragon-led-englands-armies-to-victory-over-scotland/

When Catherine of Aragon Led England's Armies to Victory Over Scotland

She was, in the words of historian John Edwards, Henry VIII’s “greatest queen.” But though Catherine of Aragon’s marriage to the Tudor king lasted 24 years—collectively, his five other marriages spanned just 14 years—she has long been overshadowed by her successors.

The daughter of Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Catherine came to England as the bride of Henry’s older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales. But Arthur died shortly after the pair’s wedding, leaving his 16-year-old widow in a precarious position. Though Spain and England initially sought to maintain their alliance by marrying Catherine to another member of the Tudor family (both Henry and his father, Henry VII, were suggested as potential suitors), negotiations soured as diplomatic relations shifted. Ultimately, Catherine spent seven years mired in uncertainty over her future.

The princess’ fortunes shifted when Henry VII died in 1509, leaving the throne to his sole surviving son, who promptly married his alluring young sister-in-law. The couple’s loving relationship, however, eventually deteriorated due to a lack of a male heir and the king’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn.

Catherine is often portrayed as a dowdy, overly pious, stubborn old woman who refused to yield her position for the good of the kingdom. The truth, however, is more nuanced—a fact increasingly reflected in cultural depictions of the queen, including Starz’s “The Spanish Princess” and West End hit Six: The Musical, which features a fictionalized version of Catherine chiding her husband for forgetting that “I’ve never lost control / No matter how many times I knew you lied.”

Far from being the troublesome, unappealing wife of popular imagination, Catherine was actually a charismatic, intelligent and much-loved queen. Three years into the royal couple’s marriage, Henry was still so besotted with his consort that he invited a Spanish visitor to look at her “just to see how bella and beautiful she was.”

In 1513, the queen, then 27 years old, was entrusted with command of the kingdom while her 22-year-old husband waged war against France’s Francis I. Henry left behind a small group of advisors, but as newly discovered documents demonstrate, Catherine didn’t simply defer to these elderly men’s counsel. Instead, she assumed an active role in the governing—and protection—of England.

“When she is left as regent, she is in her element,” says Julia Fox, author of Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile. “… She has the power to summon troops, to appoint sheriffs, to sign warrants and to get money from the treasurer of the chamber.”

As Henry and his troops besieged the French town of Thérouanne, Catherine and her council readied for a clash closer to home. Just over a month into the queen’s regency, France’s ally, Scotland’s James IV, had declared war on England, bringing a period of peace between the neighboring nations to an end.

The fact that James was married to Henry’s older sister, Margaret, did little to dissuade either him or Catherine from entering the fray. According to 17th-century chronicler William Drummond, the pregnant Scottish queen pleaded with her husband to desist, noting that he was poised to fight “a mighty people, now turned insolent by their riches at home and power abroad.” But James, buoyed by the possibility of conquest (and of dealing a blow to his egotistical brother-in-law), refused.

Catherine, for her part, appeared to “relish the opportunity” to exercise her full authority, says Giles Tremlett, author of Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen. In an August 13 letter, the queen wrote, “My heart is very good to it.” Wryly referencing women’s traditional role in warfare, the queen added, “I am horribly busy with making standards, banners and badges.”

Michael Sittow portrait of Catherine, c. 1502 (left), and portrait of Henry VIII around the time of his first wedding

(Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Though Catherine did, in fact, order the royal wardrobe to furnish two banners bearing the arms of England and Spain, as well as “standards of the lion crowned imperial,” such tasks made up just a small portion of her preparations. Working with councilors, she mobilized forces across England, communicating with local authorities to determine how many men and horses their parishes could provide. When the mayor and sheriffs of Gloucester failed to respond in a timely fashion, she gave them a deadline of 15 days and emphasized that “writing and news from the Borders show that the King of Scots means war.”

In addition to recruiting soldiers, the queen dispatched money (£10,000, to be exact), artillery, gunners, a fleet of eight ships and supplies ranging from grain to pipes of beer and armor. She had Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey—a combat-hardened, 70-year-old veteran of the 1485 Battle of Bosworth—and his army of around 26,000 mount a first line of defense near the border with Scotland and asked Sir Thomas Lovell to lead a secondary force in England’s Midlands.

What Catherine did next was unprecedented, particularly for a kingdom where warfare was considered an exclusively male domain. As records recently found at the United Kingdom’s National Archives testify, this daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella—two famously bellicose rulers who’d spent Catherine’s childhood driving the Muslim Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula—left the safety of London and headed north toward the English-Scottish border with 1,500 sets of armor, as well as a golden “headpiece with crown” that Tremlett likens to “an armored sun hat,” in tow.

“The new details involve the queen more deeply as a director of events rather than a passive figurehead managed by those of Henry’s counselors left in England,” Sean Cunningham, the archivist who discovered the papers, told the Times’ Mark Bridges in May. “… [They] let us know that Catherine was heading for Warwick [Castle] and the Tower [of London] had pretty much been emptied of armor.”

Catherine and her troops were ready to face the Scots if James IV managed to defeat both Surrey’s and Lovell’s forces. One contemporary, Peter Martyr, reported that the queen, “in imitation of her mother Isabella,” regaled her reserve army with a speech compelling them to “defend their territory” and “remember that English courage excelled that of all other nations.”

This incident is widely referenced—including in an upcoming episode of “The Spanish Princess,” which will feature a highly exaggerated version of Catherine, clad in armor fashioned to accommodate her visible pregnancy, riding directly into battle—but many historians now consider Martyr’s account apocryphal. (Ambassadors’ correspondence indicates that the queen delivered a premature son who died shortly after birth in October 1513, but the pregnancy’s veracity remains a point of contention; in Sister Queens, Fox argues, “[I]it seems unlikely that she would have risked a much-wanted child by accompanying the army from London.”)

Tremlett deems the speech “almost certainly invented” but points out that this “doesn’t mean it [didn’t] reflect the spirit of the moment.” Fox, meanwhile, says Catherine probably made “a speech, … but whether it was quite as rousing or as wonderful, I don’t know.”

Memorial to the dead at the site of the Battle of Flodden

(The Land via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0)

As it turned out, neither Lovell nor the queen ended up seeing action. On September 9, Surrey’s troops and James’ army of more than 30,000 engaged in battle. The English wielded the bill, a simple hooked weapon derived from an agricultural tool, while the Scots opted for the longer, steel-tipped pike. An afternoon of “great slaughter, sweating and travail” ensued, and by its end, some 10,000 Scots—including 12 earls, 14 lords, an archbishop, a bishop, 2 abbots and James himself—lay dead. Comparatively, the smaller English army only lost around 1,500 men.

The Scottish king’s brutal fate was, in a way, evocative of the broader blow inflicted on his country in the wake of the defeat: As historian Leanda de Lisle explains, “James’ left hand was almost severed, his throat gashed, and an arrow was shot through his lower jaw.” (Additional ignominies, including one at Catherine’s own hand, awaited the king’s corpse.) With the Stuart monarch’s passing, his infant son, James V, became the leader of a grieving, much-reduced nation.

According to Fox, the Battle of Flodden (which draws its name from nearby Flodden Edge) left Scotland “in a powerless situation.” She adds, “Not only have you just defeated them in a spectacular way, but [the kingdom is] in disarray. Scotland is practically at [England’s] mercy.”

Prior to Cunningham’s find, historians had only known that Catherine was in Buckingham, around 60 miles north of London, when she received word of Surrey’s victory. But the new evidence suggests that the queen intended to travel further north, if not directly into battle like Joan of Arc, then at least into the vicinity of combat.

“Many a queen would have quite simply hotfooted it to the Tower of London, pulled up the drawbridge and sat there fairly safely,” says Fox. “… But she doesn’t do that. She’s no milk sop. She’s not taking refuge. She really is out on the road.”

Three days after the battle, Catherine penned a letter to her husband, who had successfully captured Thérouanne and was now besieging Tournai. She began by emphasizing Flodden’s significance, writing, “[T]o my thinking this battle hath been to your grace, and all your realm, the greatest honour that could be, and more than should you win all the crown of France.” As one might expect of such a deeply religious individual, the queen proceeded to thank God for the victory—and subtly remind Henry to do the same.

Catherine’s missive then took a rather unexpected turn. She’d sent her husband a piece of the Scottish king’s bloodied surcoat (“for your banners”) but lamented that she’d originally hoped to send a much more macabre trophy: the embalmed body of James himself. Unfortunately, the queen reported, she soon realized that “our Englishmen’s hearts would not suffer it.”

This “gleeful and somewhat bloodthirsty” sentiment may seem out of character for a woman renowned for her piety, but as Tremlett points out, “Plenty of pious people were also violent, [and] plenty of people were violently pious.” Few exemplify this seemingly contradictory mindset as well as Catherine’s own parents, who waged a relentless, violent campaign against all non-Christians in their kingdom.

Catherine and Henry later in life

(Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Ferdinand and Isabella’s reconquest of Spain culminated in the January 2, 1492, fall of Granada, which marked the end of 780 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. Then an impressionable 6-year-old, Catherine witnessed the Moors’ surrender, as well as her mother’s leading role in the military crusade.

“This [stays] with her,” says Fox. “This idea of a woman involved in battles is there. And when she actually comes to the divorce question, she sees it as a battle. She sees fighting for her own marriage as just as important as fighting for the Catholic faith.”

Though Catherine was careful to praise her husband’s success in France, she and other contemporary observers knew that Henry’s triumphs paled in comparison to Flodden.

As Antonia Fraser writes in The Wives of Henry VIII, “[T]he Scottish threat was removed for a generation by the slaughter of its leaders. … Compared to this, the Battle of the Spurs won over the French, although part of an expensive campaign, was a purely temporary check, forgotten the next year when the King turned his foreign policy on its head.”

Catherine wasn’t the first English queen to assume the reins of power in the absence of a male monarch. Sixty years prior, another foreign-born princess, Margaret of Anjou, took charge of the kingdom amid the Wars of the Roses, fighting for her son’s inheritance and making major decisions on behalf of her disastrously incompetent husband, Henry VI. More recently, Henry VIII’s grandmother Margaret Beaufort—an “uncrowned queen,” in the words of historian Nicola Tallis—had acted as regent in the brief period before the young king came of age. (Years after Catherine’s death, her beloved daughter, Mary I, followed in her mother’s footsteps by rallying troops to her cause and seizing the throne from those who had sought to thwart her.)

Combined with the example set by Isabella and other relatives, says Tremlett, “Catherine had some very strong role models for women who could rule, for women who could fight.”

Whereas Margaret of Anjou’s seizure of power made her deeply unpopular, Catherine’s regency cemented her already sterling reputation. In the mid-1520s, when Henry first raised the question of divorcing his wife, he found that public opinion was firmly on the queen’s side. She viewed the survival of her marriage as inextricable from the survival of the Catholic Church, according to Fox, and refused to back down despite immense pressure.

Catherine’s legacy, adds the historian, “is that of a wronged woman … who did not accept defeat, who fought for what she believed to be right until the breath left her body.”

Henry, for his part, never forgot the tenacity his wife had demonstrated in the days leading up to Flodden. As he later reflected with no small amount of trepidation, she was perfectly capable of carrying “on a war … as fiercely as Queen Isabella, her mother, had done in Spain.

#History

[geethedentist]

The Sassenach Warrior

Read Chapter 3 here!

Chapter 4: Fear of Flames

Much of the next three days involved cold rain, Rupert following me everywhere I went, and a great deal of sleeping. I hadn’t spoken to Colum or Dougal but I knew beyond doubt that they were both aware of my activities at any given moment. I felt like a caged animal and it was only getting worse, especially because there was nothing I could do for myself at present in order to facilitate my release (or escape). A mundane atmosphere had settled over Castle Leoch after the commotion of my first day, but it would not last for long. Rupert and Angus found me in the grand hall on the fourth morning, eating porridge. They approached me purposefully; they wanted something. 

“Good mornin’ to ye Claire,” said Angus cheerfully. I raised an eyebrow, mouth full of porridge. 

“Out with it.” 

“We canna be polite and say good mornin’?” Rupert said. 

“Oh my apologies, good morning. Now out with it.” The spoon clattered in the bowl. 

“Well,” Angus began, “the Gathering is in just a few days…” 

“Just a moment, will somebody please tell me what this Gathering is?” I had heard it mentioned many times during my short stay but I hadn’t paid much attention. However, it was beginning to sound like a big deal. It was beginning to sound like my way out. 

“Oh aye, there hasna been a Gathering since we were bairns! ’Tis when our clan come from all over the Mackenzie lands to swear loyalty to the Laird.” Angus moved his hands around as he spoke. 

Rupert cut in. “But ’tis also a great celebration of our clan. We tell stories, we dance, we eat. It’s a drunken spectacular occasion. I’ve been lookin’ forward to it for years!” 

“Drunken?” I asked with interest. 

“Colum brings out his Rhenish and there’s rarely a sober moment for the entire week!” He said. 

The alcohol was of interest to me, but not because I wanted to drink it. “So why is it you require my assistance?” 

“Word of the deer ye shot the other morning has traveled ‘round Leoch, and we’d like ye to come wi’ us to hunt some game for the feast,” Angus said, finally getting to the point. 

“Ah. I see. Why should I be inclined to help? I am a captive after all.” I wanted to seem unwilling. But truthfully, this was the perfect opportunity to investigate the lands surrounding Castle Leoch. The goal was to facilitate my escape by becoming familiar with the area, to slip well out of range before anyone knew I was gone. I had decided on the spot to use the Gathering as a diversion, and the Rhenish to get my ring back. 

“Ye’ve got the sharpest eyes and the deadliest shot, ’tis yer chance to show the men how it’s done,” Rupert was trying to flatter me. I pretended to mull it over. 

“Fine, I will help you. But whoever is accompanying us on this expedition better not be stomping around and scaring the whole damn forest.” 

__________________________________________________________________

“I am just going to the stables. You can watch me walk there and back!” I threw my hands up in the air. I needed a horse for this hunting brigade and I wanted to speak with Jamie in private. He had been spending much of the last few days tending the horses. 

“But Dougal…” Rupert began, then he seemed to give up. I think he wanted a break from me as much as I wanted one from him. “Fine, but have Jamie walk ye back aye?” 

I walked up the hill to the stable, finally alone. My apprehension increased with each step. I felt compelled to clear the air regarding my revelation three days prior. While fairly certain that he harbored no hostility or resentment at the outburst, I had shared something I had been meaning to take to my grave, however soon I might end up in it. The stable was at the crest of the hill and I stopped for a moment of peace, surveying the valley. An instant where I thought of nothing but this exact point in time, while forgetting all the others. The wind bore the fresh smell of rain. There were rolling gray clouds. The surrounding countryside was beautiful. It felt ancient, and I suppose it was. My roots did not share this quality; there was history here. It made me feel like outsider, an intruder. A soft deep voice drifted over to me on the wind. 

I quietly approached the entrance to the stable. The interior was dim and warm. Jamie was not aware of my presence, and I watched him for a moment. He stood in front of a majestic white filly, about six feet away. His back faced me; the scars criss-crossed underneath the fabric. I wished to comfort him again. His rough but gentle hands were running down the horse’s neck and mane as he spoke lowly in a completely different language, as ancient and harsh as the land. It seemed to have quite an effect on the horse, and on me as well. I found I had relaxed, the tension escaping my shoulders and jaw. With absolutely no notion of what he said, I could not help but listen nonetheless. Being drawn in by an invisible force, I took step closer and then … 

I ruined everything. 

The horse was just as aware of my presence as Jamie was. I suppose merely saying  that I startled it is a massive understatement. The horse reared up on its hind legs with a wild high-pitched whinny, knocking Jamie backwards onto the ground. The grating speech that fell from his lips could only be profanity, and I didn’t have to speak that language to know it. As he tried to scramble to his feet I had come behind to help him up. He turned to see me and a look of confusion crossed his face. The tantrum not quite finished, the horse’s powerful legs shot back and kicked over the lantern that was sitting on the stool. We watched it shatter on the floor and ignite the large pile of hay next to it. It quickly began to spread. 

Flames danced before my eyes and suddenly I was back in Uncle Lamb’s house. I was struggling to breathe, desperately trying to reach him, so we could escape. I couldn’t find him … couldn’t save him. It’s my fault. I screamed for him. It was getting hotter and hotter … 

Someone was calling out for me … Uncle Lamb?

… “Sassenach! Claire!” Jamie’s hands were frantically shaking me. I had ended up curled in a ball on the ground, both hands shielding my head. They were trembling violently. 

“Ye must help me put the fire out before it burns down the entire stable!” The other horses were going mad in their stalls. He grasped my hand and pulled me to my feet. 

“No. No …” I was shaking my head as I tried to back away. Jamie grasped my hand tighter. 

“Claire. It will be okay. The fire isna that large yet, we can still stop it. I won’t let anything hurt you. I promise.” 

After he had tied up the white horse outside, we were both running back and forth to the water trough filling and refilling buckets to throw on the fire. Several minutes later we were sitting on the floor, backs against the wall and breathing heavily. A large puddle of water flooded the stable and me and Jamie were dripping wet. I gripped my knees with my hands in an effort to stop them from shaking. My head was thrown back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched so tightly it hurt. Tears stung the corners of my eyes but I would be damned if I let them fall. We sat in silence for many minutes. 

“Ye’re afraid of fire?” Jamie asked softly. 

I nodded once, eyes still closed. Somehow this felt better than to verbally admit it to him. 

“It’s okay, Claire,” he turned to face me. “Everyone has their own fears and demons, I dinna think any less of ye.” 

“I do,” I whispered. It wasn’t just the fire in itself, and I could tell he knew that. 

As always, he could also tell I didn’t wish to speak about it and pressed me no further. “Please, don’t mention this to anyone,” I pleaded. 

He smiled, and I knew then he would say nothing about my previous admission as well. “Your secret is safe with me.”

I chuckled darkly. Yes, one of them.

__________________________________________________________________

Surprisingly, the small hunting trip passed without incident. I had hoped it would  help me gain some trust. However, it was clear for the time being that Claire Beauchamp would remain a guest of Clan Mackenzie.

The men were moving the large stag and the two wild hogs I had killed into the kitchen when we returned to Leoch. I flopped down a bench in the nearby garden, Rupert’s watchful eyes on me from the doorway. I looked up to see a woman gathering herbs. She was tall and thin, with waist length red hair. She spoke to me, and I wished Jamie was there instead. Meeting new people in this situation was proving dangerous for me.

“Claire is it? The Sassenach.” Her eyes were piercing green. It didn’t sound the same as when Jamie said it. 

My guard up once more, I answered her. “And you are?” 

“Geillis Duncan, I live in the town of Crainsmuir. I use herbs and medicine to help certain … ailments.” 

I had heard her name before, whilst wandering about the castle bored to tears one day. She was married to Arthur Duncan, the town fiscal. It had come to my understanding that she was revered by some for her abilities to heal using herbs. Others however, suspected her of witchcraft. I was curious what she thought of these opinions, no doubt she was aware of them. 

“You know there are some people who find your methods suspicious,” I challenged her. 

“Oh aye, they say I’m a witch.” She wasn’t the least bit perturbed by it.

I had dwelt upon the reality of witchcraft and the supernatural many times. While I doubted the existence of things such as casting spells or bending someone to your will, I couldn’t deny the existence of something greater out there, something nobody could wrap their head around. I supposed this was saying a lot, considering everyone else in my midst would not hesitate to hang anyone whom they thought consorted with such practices. I imagined that Geillis was only safe due to the important status of her husband. 

“You arena from here, are ye Claire?” She asked suddenly 

“Clearly not,” I answered, exaggerating my accent for emphasis. 

“Ah but ye’re not from England either.” 

My eyes widened fractionally, but she caught it. I opened my mouth to rebuke her but she cut me off. “It’s all right,” she said quickly, “nobody else knows.” 

Maybe she was a witch, after all. 

“But how …?” My breathing had sped up and I began to sweat. 

“Look Claire, I like ye. I like the way ye think and how ye act upon it. Ye’re strong, wi’ progressive mind, something many lack. I think ye’ll find in days to come that will be your greatest asset. Dinna forget that.” She  squeezed my hands and rose to leave. Far too distressed to question her further, I watched in panic as she made her way out of the garden, towards town. I knew with no uncertainty, that this would not be our last meeting. 

__________________________________________________________________

The Gathering began the following day and it was everything Rupert and Angus said it would be. Still quite shaken after speaking with Geillis, I tried to push her to the very back of my mind. I needed to concentrate, and I needed to make sure Dougal was as inebriated as possible. The grand hall was filling up with people all dressed their best, all wearing the Mackenzie tartan. I could imagine how I looked in comparison. Hair piled on my head, white linen shirt tucked into slightly less ratty pants. Mrs. Fitz had found them for me after she grudgingly accepted that I would not be wearing a dress. She tied a scrap of the tartan around my head in a knot, like a bandanna. I was standing in the back of the room. Bagpipes were playing and men were lining up in front of Colum, Dougal standing proudly in front.

I heard a commotion behind me and a very angry exchange in that strange, guttural speech which I learned was called Gaelic. Angus pushed Jamie through the doorway to stand in the back of the line. He looked miserable. I saw him remove the brooch from his plaid and slip it into his sporran. His fingers tapped steadily against his thigh, and he rocked back and forth on his feet. I laid a hand on his arm. 

“Jamie, are you quite all right?” I asked him quietly. 

He exhaled strongly through his nose. “No. I am being forced into a verra difficult position ye see.” 

“Difficult? In what way? You’re the Laird’s nephew!” 

He smiled ruefully. “That’s just it aye? If I swear loyalty to Colum they shall think I am after the lairdship, which Dougal clearly wants and Colum’s young son Hamish is supposed to inherit. I should think I will be met with much ill will and hostility. On the other hand, if I do not swear loyalty, who knows what they will do to me!” 

“And you don’t want to give yourself to Colum, because of your true clan. I see.” 

We had moved too far up to continue the conversation, and Jamie was getting more and more apprehensive. When he reached Colum, he stood up straight and squared his shoulders. 

“Colum MacKenzie, I come to you as kinsman and as ally. I give ye no vow, for my oath is pledged to the name that I bear.” Chatter went through crowd, but he ignored it and went on. “But I give ye freely the things that I have; my help and my goodwill, wherever ye should find need of them. I give ye my obedience, as kinsman and as laird, and I hold myself bound by your word, so long as my feet rest on the lands of clan MacKenzie.”

Colum spoke, addressing Jamie as well as the assemby. “We are honored by your offer of friendship, we accept ye as an ally of this clan.” He held out the glass of wine, and I let out a long breath. 

__________________________________________________________________

With all of the oaths taken, the music and dancing commenced. It went on for hours. I sat there through a good deal of it, politely refusing any offers of drink and food. I wanted the Mackenzies, particularly Colum and Dougal, to see that I had been present. After a while however, I felt that I needed to leave. I felt as if I was watching from the outside in. Everyone was laughing and telling stories. It reminded me too much of something I never had, and never will have. I sat alone at one of the long tables, propping my head up with one hand and absently drawing circles in the wood with the other. I heaved a big sigh. I had been desperately trying to think of a way to get the ring back before the Gathering was over. However, Dougal had been surrounded by people all night, and now I couldn’t see him at all. Figuring nobody would miss me if I went up to bed, I got up and sadly made to leave. Jamie was trying to push his way towards me through the crowd but I kept going. I trudged wearily through the dark hallways, trying to come up with a solid plan. I had nothing to report to Colum concerning any rebellious behavior by Dougal, and Dougal still didn’t trust me one bit. Giving up, the best thing right now was a long sleep. I rounded a corner and smacked into a wall, a wall that spewed profanity and reeked of alcohol. 

“Watch where you’re going!” I said angrily, completely not in the mood to deal with drunken Scotsmen. 

“I could say the same to you, lass.” 

I gasped; it was Dougal. “Enjoying the celebration are ye?” He continued. He walked in a circle around me, staggering as he went. His eyes were unfocused. I silently thanked whatever greater being was listening because this could not have been more perfect. He would remember nothing come morning, and I would be long gone. I scanned for the ring; it was not around his neck. I presumed it was in his sporran, hidden beneath layers of plaid. Still I said nothing, but let him talk. 

“Ye ken lassies like yerself arena supposed to me wearin’ pants like these.” 

I bristled, but still said nothing. 

“However I feel inclined to let it slide given how bonny yer arse looks.” Typical vile man. When he realized that I was not going to run away, I saw his confidence increase further. I was now trapped between Dougal and the wall. He lowered his head and breathed in my scent. His hands went to my hair and it took everything I had not to knock him out. I slowly and carefully let my hands sneak into the folds of plaid in search of the sporran and I felt him smile against my neck. My fingers found the pouch and I lifted the flap. I brushed against cool metal … 

The sound of running footsteps down the hall. They were getting closer. Dougal guiltily jerked away from me; he had a wife after all. I made a wild grab but my prize was now out of reach. 

“Jamie?” Laoghaire’s high pitched voice echoed through the corridor. 

Dougal groaned, “He isna here, lass.” He turned to me with a smoldering look. “Goodnight to ye, Miss Claire.” The tone and the smirk were unmistakable: he was intending to recommence this encounter at earliest convenience. He began to stagger back towards the stairs, clutching the wall for support. 

I glared at Laoghaire. “What are you doing here?”

She stupidly twirled her hair. “I was just lookin’ for Jamie, I saw him follow ye out of the grand hall and … well … he always seems to be around ye, so …” 

“Well you thought wrong, didn’t you?” I said harshly. “Just because you found me does not imply that Jamie is anywhere nearby.” 

“Well he’s always lookin’ at ye!” She half shouted back at me. “And he always wants to be around ye! Why are ye tryin’ to steal him away from me? He doesna want me half as much as he wants you!” 

“Oh no? Why would Jamie want me? Look at me!” I spat back at her. Initially I had been angry with her for foiling my ring heist, but now all this talk about Jamie was fueling my anger even more. I didn’t know why it affected me like it did, why it created foreign feelings inside me. I wanted them to stop. Now. 

I tried with great effort to calm my voice. “Now that we have established that I am quite alone, I am going to bed. You may run along now and find Jamie and have him all to yourself. I. Don’t. Care.” Without waiting for an answer, I turned on my heel and stalked off around the corner. 

__________________________________________________________________

That night, Geillis Duncan paced her attic, where all sorts of herbs hung from the ceiling. Dozens of old book lined the shelves, and all sorts of differently shaped bottles sat on her table. Her long, flame colored hair swung gently from side to side. She had planted the seeds in Claire Fraser’s brain. She and the red fox would be key in the next Rising. She stopped in front of the mirror and fingered the small circular mark on her upper arm. 

[ofaphrvdite]

silence ! raise the royal standard, for the prince of russia and king consort of england, MAKSIM ROMANOV, has arrived. being 27 years old, he is out of line to the throne. many around the court call him the mutineer, by virtue of him being dexterous and maverick, while also being  recalcitrant and brazen.  — played by brenton thwaites.

- THE BASICS.

full name: maksim alexei romanov name meaning: maksim ‘the greatest’, alexei ‘defender’ known in history as: king in the shadows, the white wolf date of birth: june 21st, 1639/1992 age: twenty six star sign: cancer profession: freelance photographer (modern verse) / prince of russia, king consort of england (royal verse) loyalty: russia, house romanov, england and house windsor, the entente alignment: chaotic good mbti: estp spoken languages: russian, english, advanced french, intermediate german (royal verse) / english, russian, basic spanish (modern verse) mother’s name: tsarina tatyana romanovna father’s name: tsar ivan romanov siblings, if any: anastasia romanovna-du bourbon, dmitri romanov, vasiliy romanov, karina romanovna height: 6’0” hair colour: brown eye colour: dark brown

- BACKSTORY / MODERN VERSE.

it was an odd thing being born as one half of a whole. coming into the world knowing you would always have another at your side through every new experience. maksim and dmitri romanov were two sides of the same coin from the day they first wailed their first cry. growing up, maksim was determined to stick by his brother’s side for everything. for a time it had only been the three of them. just anastasia, dmitri and him. they had forged a bond early in those days, sharing absolutely everything with eachother that would translate into their adulthood. maksim was patient with his siblings, understanding and above all else, never judged them. 

growing up under the roof of the infamous media moguls, tatyana and ivan romanov, meant that maksim came with a brand that would follow him everywhere. one that only grew when the family began starring on their own reality tv show. everything he knew about himself, he discovered on the cameras. his whole personality shaped around the person he was expected to be for a show. he was less keen of the cameras than his siblings, but his appearances often provided the comic relief with his brother and he became a hit with the younger audience. the first time he’d seen something he’d said on a t-shirt had still been pretty wild though. 

because of the huge spotlight on the family, the twins were sent off to boarding school for their education where there would hopefully be less scrutiny. most of the kids there had parents far too rich to bother about another one joining their rankings, afterall. and it proved to be one of the most helpful periods of his life. boarding school offered him the chance to decide who he wanted to be because trying to work out who you were with a camera shoved in your face was near impossible. though he never consciously made the decision, he had constructed a character in his years on the show, one that would meet the expectations of viewers watching. if anastasia was going to play the part of overbearing older sister, then he would play the lovable but dimwitted jock brother. and for years that’s who he styled himself as.

in truth, maksim was all that and more. yes he liked rebelling and making trouble, but he was happiest at home with a good book or at the local art gallery. whilst he loved any and all sports, his shelves were filled with comic books and limited edition collectibles. it was away from the rest of his family that he could finally grow into himself. realise the things he truly enjoyed to do, the things that he was good at that he didn’t have to share with his other four siblings.

boarding school proved to be destiny in more ways than one. as maksim was finding himself, it led him straight to the love of his life. victoria was at the local girls boarding school, and it took just one school dance for him to fall utterly head over heels for her. they dated all throughout school, never once tiring of the other. she was a grounding force for him, encouraging him to focus on what he wanted and go for it. and in turn he brought thrill to her life that she lacked with such rigid family expectations. they were a perfect match all things considered, and so it was to no ones surprise ( and karina’s absolute horror ) that maks proposed. the couple are now planning for their wedding, which promises to be a grand summer spectacle to all those lucky enough to earn an invite.

whilst he had everything he wanted in victoria, his future still remained a murky mess. every year, maks would go to his careers interview with his school adviser. and every year, he would shrug his shoulders when asked what it was he wanted to do with his life. he knew that his mother was desperate for him to go off to university as anastasia had, and that all hopes were on him because there was no way they’d be able to wrestle dmitri into another classroom once he was off scot-free. and so, despite the fact that he had exactly zero interest in it, when the time rolled around maksim applied to study history. at least it would get the careers adviser off his back, and college might be fun - right? 

wrong. maksim managed to make it through a month of studying before he went home to go to a concert he’d planned with dima months ago. and then never went back. literally never. sayonara to all those shiny pots and pans his parents had gifted him, and the macbook that had one half finished assignment on it and not much else. and so he was back to square one.

rather than sit around at home moping for the camera, maksim took off for a year and went travelling. sure the family had been on some pretty decent holidays over the years, but he wanted to see more. he sent various postcards home from his time in thailand, indonesia and brazil. with everywhere in between. eventually he settled in australia for six months, taking up odd jobs where he could and collecting a group of like-minded friends. all people running away from adult responsibilities for that little bit longer. so while his girlfriend was earning herself a useful degree, maksim was surfing and bungee jumping his way through his inheritance. 

it was during his time in australia that he discovered his love for photography. he’d always loved art, and shown bounds of creativity growing up. whenever he grew too anxious or was failing to concentrate, it was drawing that often centered him. just doodles at first, then panels of his favourite characters from comics. but it was travelling where he really began to utilise the natural eye he had. what began as photographs to share on his instagram, turned into scrapbooks that he would send to victoria to keep her as involved as possible in his life. it was a happy accident that people began to take notice really. the odd person began asking him to take photos of this and that, offering to pay for a headshot here and a small wedding there. nothing major, but enough that maks began to consider it as a real career option. with ana’s persistent encouragement and help, he set up his first photography instagram and took the first step into adulthood.

upon his return to the states, maksim got serious ( as serious as he was capable ) about his career as a freelance photographer. he set up his own website and bookings flooded in. most were either mocking him for his family’s name, or fans, but enough that he could really begin to make a living out of it. with most of his inheritance depleted, it made the whole going out on his own thing all that more tangible and exciting. plus, the freelancing gave him the opportunity to keep up with everything else he wanted to do in life. never making him feel too tied down with responsibility. he could work his jobs around whatever holiday or event he had planned. he didn’t need to hang up his thrill-seeking for good in exchange for the not-so-promised land of being a grown up.

maks is still a photographer, and in the midst of wedding planning. he still makes frequent appearances on the romanov reality show with his other siblings, all of whom he keeps in very close contact with. he splits his time between his parents house and the home he shares with victoria and his pet, danya. finally, he has found his place in life and it’s one that is always changing. and thank god for that, maksim couldn’t bear the thought of an average life.

- BACKSTORY / ROYAL VERSE.

no romanov was born lonely. this could be said twice true of maksim, who came into this world minutes after his twin and thus claiming his destiny as the spare heir between two tiny red fists. one so intrinsically linked to a life of forgotten mediocrity the child would likely never escape. and yet he never felt that left out growing up. yes it was odd that he didn’t have the famed bright romanov eyes of frozen blue and green ( his did not shine, just two hazel pools ) but he had his father’s look about him. that unkempt charm that had warmed the russian people to him in the first place. still, the children at court teased him when the tsarina was not around, jesting that he was no true born romanov like his siblings, but tatyana set them straight with an icy glare. assuring her son that it was not a look he need possess; he was a romanov because of the blood in his veins, the love his family bore him and the loyalty they gave him.

still. the dreaded sword of the middle child hung over him the elder he grew. all around him, his siblings seemed destined for greatness. dmitri, the future tsar of russia, who would remain at home in russia as they all craved. anastasia, who would one day be queen consort to one of the greatest nations and alliances their mother could possibly bring about. vasiliy, a third son, was near ten times smarter than he would ever be and would prove an asset to any crown he advised, he was sure of it. and karina, the baby of the family and yet already so sure of her own mind, and so doted on as the youngest. maksim adored each and every one of them, and was proud to be brother to their eminence. he was a good man at heart, and cared for his family deeply as was the romanov way, taking up the mediator hand in hand with vasiliy to quell the chaos of their family. for though he was gifted with a boisterous disposition, he was far more level-headed than the elder two and often brought logic to otherwise ridiculous fights. but he lacked a purpose of his own. though he was quite the charmer, always flirting with ladies at court and wreaking innocent havoc with his elder siblings, there was no talent of his own to focus on. maksim was intelligent in his quiet way, a strategic mind just waiting to be sharpened if only someone offered him the chance. if someone would just look to him, just once. 

the tsarina and tsar grew anxious for their lost boy. their other children all seemed so certain of their path, of their skills and talents, and maksim stood in the middle of it all with nothing of his own to claim. it was his mother ( she had always lavished affection on her third, never wanting him to feel lesser with two elder siblings already lining up for a crown ) that had guided him to a purpose. urging ivan romanov to encourage battle strategy and warfare in maksim, to forge him into a warrior and hero. at fourteen, his lessons began and maksim took to them like a duck to water. wielding sword and shield as if he had been born for knighthood, not life as a prince. though he still has moments of doubt about how useful he is to his family, at least now he had a skill to prove himself.

and he needn’t have waited long for a chance. war had raged throughout europe for long enough, and he had remained unaffected for far too long. when armies were called, both he and dmitri at just eighteen were sent with the imperial army into war as generals. and maksim would be given his first taste of war and combat outside of a tournament or training. and it was glorious. until it wasn’t.

the rush of the fight didn’t linger long, and months away from home soon sapped all that naive boyhood from his features. the brothers saw eachother through their first kill, steadying their twin soul until they could stand again at their side. maksim proved able of compartmentalising the worst of it all to deal with at a time where the horrors could rip him apart in the safety of his own home. for so long he had lived without responsibility, always the spare and never the heir, and yet it was war that forced him to step up. to care for his brother in the way he had always looked after him. years of loyalty, repaid at the worst time. still, the brothers managed to find glimpses of light, including rescuing two stray puppies that they hoped might keep the darkness at bay at night. they named the terriers danya and nadya, and vowed to keep them safe until they could return home.

the terrors of war left scars unseen on the young prince, despite returning home relatively unscathed. it was the brutal separation from his twin brother that had left the greatest trauma behind. they had been together all their lives, and together when they’d been parted - both with the matching scars as painful reminder. maksim had been knocked unconscious and awoke to the sharp realisation that his brother had been taken. when he eventually found his way back to camp, all the men turned to stare as if they’d seen a ghost, not a bloodied prince returning from battle. the romanov twins had been missing and presumed dead for days, and yet it had been the most useless one that straggled back. it didn’t take long for the tsarina to call maksim home, grieving the loss of her eldest and too fearful to lose another. maks returned to the winter palace with the two bundles of danya and nadya, the sole link he had to dima, and a promise to keep them safe in his absence. he was hailed a hero upon his homecoming for the strength he had shown in war, the sacrifices he’d made. but the medal pinned to his jacket had brought more nausea than it did pride. what good was dressed up metal when his brother hadn’t returned with him?

the months following passed in a blur. dealing with stately visits as the new elder in the family, with anastasia long since whisked away to france, in between the moments of solitude he sought where he would paint to ease the terrible things he’d seen or play with karina who so often clung to him in those first few days. even sneaking into vasiliy’s imposed quarantine when he could to keep his brother’s spirits high proved a much welcome distraction. it was only as the war came to a head, and foreign rulers from all over began to take note of the damage they had sustained, that things began to change.

a summit had been called at bern, and all foreign rulers were invited to attend in the name of peace. not only was this an opportunity for the tsarina to aid in ending the war and to reunite the family with their long lost russian princess, but to further her already fruitful alliances. karina was still unwed, as was vasiliy, and so both came with maksim to the summit in hopes of securing other strongholds in europe. maks, of course had long since been taken. from a young age, a betrothal with the princess of england, victoria, had been arranged for the young prince. they had met once upon a time as children, but had not taken to eachother as their parents had hoped. but the young couple were reunited at bern, their countries now on opposing sides of a war that their marriage could be useful in ending. maksim had been determined to dislike her, and so of course he had fallen for the fair victoria the moment he had laid his eyes on her.

it didn’t take long for love to grow between the two royals. maksim especially grew taken with her strong will, sharp mind and seemingly unreachable beauty. it was shaping up to be quite the fairytale, until the succession of england’s throne had been thrown into chaos with the queen’s deepest secret now uncovered. the future king charles, was of no royal blood at all, but a bastard born from an affair of the queen’s who swiftly lost her head for it. it was victoria who was now the heir, and that left maksim once again out of use, left out in the cold. england sought a better alliance now that victoria was now crown princess. though eventually things were settled, maksim proving he could be a worthy consort, this period of time left him feeling more insecure than ever of his true worth.

with the matters of succession sorted, maksim grew unsure about his future responsibilities. he had never really wanted a crown, only dreaming of the russian throne if it meant he could remain with his family forever. he doesn’t believe himself worthy of it in any way, certainly not good enough to stand at victoria’s side as her consort. he was a warrior at his core, an honourable one, but that made it no less true that his mind was not made for negotiating at high tables. maks doesn’t want to be any kind of king, but he wants to be with victoria. it is that undying need to make her happy and keep her safe, to do anything she asks of him, that has kept him by her side. even if it means making himself a reluctant ruler. this was only solidified by the attempt on her life during the pirates invasion of bern, an assassination attempt on the newly named heir to the throne. almost losing her was all the confirmation he needed that he would never leave her side. and a good thing too, for the time between their marriage and coronation was shorter than they could ever have prepared for. during the final days of the summit, the now infamous explosions struck bern, leaving multiple casualties in its wake. one of which had been the king of england, making victoria the overnight queen. 

life was turned upside down once again with his arrival to versailles as the newly crowned consort of england. dmitri had resurfaced after years of them living with the belief that he was long dead. the romanov’s had come to terms with their loss, just barely piecing back together a heart that would always be missing a jagged piece. now maksim must struggle with the old and new parts of himself to reconcile with a man who wears his dima’s face but is not the brother he once knew. all whilst struggling with responsibilities he never asked for, and a wife who has lost more than she could ever deserve.

[sockknitterporg]

I Was Adopted By Aliens: Interlude 1

Chapter Directory

"So what you're telling us, Mr. Connelly, is that a short, fat disabled girl from outside County Mayo is now our species' ambassador to the first credible reports of intelligent alien contact ever. These aliens sent a spy into a small town in rural England, destroyed it, and abducted your citizen – for no reason at all?”

The Irish ambassador's green eyes flickered close momentarily, and he chewed his lip in consternation. A single bead of sweat dripped off his broad, bald forehead. For six years he'd enjoyed a life of quiet bureaucratic drudgery with the promise of a civil servant's pension and an array of lucrative private sector kickbacks once he retired. Now, at the cusp of his corrupt career, he faced something horrifying – an actual crisis that might require him to show leadership, integrity, or – worst of all – competence.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Cohen. That's all the details my government has provided me. Ms. Carney lived alone in a council flat, quietly knitting her way towards a respectable disabled spinsterhood. MI5 recovered a laptop computer that had an impressive collection of pirated music and occult PDFs – and not much else.”

There was a chorus of self-important disbelief around the stately mahogany table as each member state's representative voiced his displeasure.

One of the witnesses decided to interject, regardless of propriety. “I bet I know why it was her, your honours,” the young man began. He was dressed up and shined up for his serious appointment, a far cry from the way he and his buddies had appeared outside Morgan's flat.

Talking out of turn was hardly appropriate at a meeting like this, but if the young man had information, the head of the UN Security Council was hardly going to stop him. “Yes? Mr...” He glanced down at his notes.  “Harty? You witnessed the incident firsthand, yes?”

“Yeah, er, yes, your honour,” he said, not sure what the proper title for the intimidating man was. “The thing touched down in the woods outside town, and me and my mates had been having a drink by the bridge. I'd almost think it was the alcohol, except you can see it turned out real. We went to investigate, and the thing came out of its shuttle thing, and the thing took off again soon as it got out. It didn't seem like it were expecting us, we gave it a good spook. It took off towards town, we chased it into the marketplace. Morgan's up all hours, her door was probably the first one it saw with a light on.”

“So a small, disabled girl opened her door to an alien? And what, let it in?”

“She was always a weird one, sir. Talking about faeries and shit... Er. Your pardon, sir.”

“Usually that's presented to this committee as 'merde', boy, but go on.” The French ambassador gave an indulgent smile to the rough-cut youth. It was obvious they weren't going to get anything useful – what the American would call 'actionable intelligence' – out of the young man unless he were made very, very comfortable. Already the boy showed signs of chafing in the ill-fitting suit and technicolour tie. “What else do you know about Ms. Carney?”

“Well, we think she was a witch. Always kept a short broom outside the door. She called it a 'besom' and said it was for sweeping bad spirits like us away.”

“Besom.”

“Yes, sir. She chased me and the lads out her garden once, when we was just picking tomatoes.”

“And you think this has something to do with the aliens?”

“Well, the tomatoes were very good. My uncle said he hadn't got anything to grew that year at all, even with extra Round-Up, Miracle Gro, and all sorts. He said he put a goddamn ton of nitrogen on each bloody acre, and still couldn't get naught to grow.”

“But Ms. Carney could.”

“Yes. The way my uncle figures it, it was to get the secret of her tomatoes that ol' Witch Morgan was kidnapped.”

“Mr. Harty.”

“Good enough to win an award, he said.”

“Mr Harty.”

“She talks to them, too.”

“You saw her talk to the alien?”

“No, the tomatoes! Calls them by name, tells them to grow, promises to teach each leaf and bud a faerie song when it blooms.”

“Mr. Harty!”

“Why, once I even heard her sing in that awful tongue-chewing language of hers. Did you know she didn't speak proper English? She taught those tomatoes to speak Gaeilge.”

“MR. HARTY!”

The boy blinked, coughed, then stared sheepishly at the battery of stone-faced middle-aged men before him. “I'm sorry, sir. It's just that witches shouldn't be consorting with aliens, not in this day and age, should they?”

Fourteen hands found seven foreheads in percussive unison as the young man was wordlessly escorted from the stuffy chamber.

“This is bad,” the American ambassador summarized.

“This is very bad,” his British and German counterparts agreed. The German's voice had a harsher tone, though.

“I disagree, your excellencies,” a thin, reedy voice dissented. The Chinese representative on the U.N. Security Council was a slender-faced and youthful man. It was rumored he'd risen through the diplomatic ranks faster than any of his generation, and now he looked almost out of place amidst the rest of the council. “Yes, there is definite matter for concern, but my country sees this as an opportunity. Yes, the aliens should make reparations for destroying the buildings, and compensate the young woman for her time, but this is a chance to learn from a species that has mastered technology that remains far beyond our collective scientists.”

“How do we know she wasn't working with them? Everyone in her town agrees that she's not like us, and no one knows why she chose to move to the UK in the first place. For all we know, she's been an alien spy for the past ten years,” the British representative said.

“We do have her parents here,” the Russian representative pointed out. “When was the last time they spoke to her?”

Morgan's parents were ushered in, and the question was repeated. “I haven't heard from her since she moved,” her father answered.

“I have, she used to call quite regularly, but she never wants to talk to you,” her mother added, giving the man a displeased look.  “But over time, the calls petered out, sometimes she'd call twice a year, then once, then she stopped about three years ago,” she explained.

“And you have no idea why this is?”

“Well...” The woman trailed off, while her husband folded his arms in obvious anger.

“She's just a bad daughter,” the man said, with enough anger dripping off of his voice to lay plain that there was more to that story.

“Oh, be quiet, Peter,” the woman exclaimed. “She doesn't call because you treated her so badly that she doesn't want to talk to you!”

“Oh, and you were so much better!” he shouted, his raised voice causing the woman to flinch reflexively. “Weren't you the one who told her she was only faking being disabled because she was jealous of you?”

“You didn't believe her either! Besides, you're the one that decided to try beating it out of her!”

Once again the council was beyond belief at the disaster taking place inside its walls, and the arguing pair were led back out again, bickering as they went.

“This meeting is turning into a circus,” the French ambassador sighed, once again dropping his head into his hands.

“Agreed,” the chairman said. “Right now, we need to work as fast as we can to decipher what those plans will make. What kind of machine could possibly require that much rare earths?”

“Until we can determine what kind of machine it is, obviously the safest course of action is to agree that no one is to attempt building it,” the Russian representative suggested.

“Agreed,” the Chinese representative said. The more countries were discouraged from building the thing, the more likely China would be to complete theirs first.  Unfortunately, as each representative agreed in turn, that was the primary thought for each of them.

“Is there any chance of any private citizen being able to follow the plans?” the German representative asked, peering at the American representative intently.

“Elon Musk could feasibly do it, but the CIA has already reached out to him to advise him against it,” the American representative answered. “This would be so much easier if we could just cover up the entire thing.”

“With their broadcasts coming through on every television frequency around the world, we can't possibly keep this information from the public. I'm sure you're not surprised to learn that the aliens are transmitting both digital and analog signals. I read a story in Der Spiegel this morning that an American couple in Wyoming found the alien programming on every channel of their television, plus AM and FM frequencies, even UHF.”

The American ambassador nodded silently. The time for a coverup had long passed.

A bell chimed from not far outside the stale chamber: it was time for tea. Thus prompted, the UK representative attempted to move the meeting forward. “Excellencies,” his flat, neutral tone began, “let us assume for the sake of argument that we can – however briefly – take the aliens at their word. Let us say that the instructions they have provided will enable us to communicate with their ship, that this alien wireless won't blow us up, fry our flesh, or sabotage our electronics. It's possible the aliens blew up the council flat by accident, and that they merely wished to protect the life of one of their species. It may very well be that Ms. Carney was involved by complete accident.

“Now, I know how preposterous this all sounds – we know that the only reason an alien race would attempt to land and spy on us is to prepare for conquest – but hear me out! The technological advances necessary for interstellar travel necessitate certain discoveries such as gunpowder and explosives, not to mention jet fuel. For all the nuisance of this mess, they've scarcely done a million pounds damage to an entirely forgettable Northumbrian village. I submit that they could have done much more. I would have expected a second scouting party by now, one armed with what I once heard termed 'BFGs',” he said, referencing the colloquialism for ‘big fucking guns’.

“Instead, there has been a flood of data, gentlemen. Just a constant stream of instructions to build something, something they promise us will allow us to communicate with them. If we take the hypothetical that this really is what it claims to be, then that leaves just one question, or two really, but the second follows on from the first. We still don't know why the aliens want to speak to Ireland,” he said, just a hint of the ancient rivalry between the two islands creeping into his voice. “And then, that leads us to ask, should we let them?”

The Irish ambassador was still sweating, it really had been too much to hope for that that line of inquiry had been put to rest. He certainly wasn't going to stick his neck out by arguing in favour of talking to the aliens, but despite staying silent, all eyes were once again on him. “Your excellencies,” he began falteringly. “Do you think it's possible that she's just...asking to 'call home'?”

The door opened and a member of the CIA stepped inside. “Your excellencies, there has been an urgent development.”

The room went dead silent, and the US ambassador motioned for him to speak.

“A weather balloon was launched from southern Idaho almost two hours ago.  It reached its peak with a camera streaming to Facebook, registering four ships in orbit.  It was brought aboard one of the ships, terminating the feed when the hangar closed.”

[didanawisgi]

Black Pirates By Cindy Vallar

By Cindy Vallar. Content source: http://www.cindyvallar.com/blackpirates.html

“Some estimate that nearly 5,000 pirates hunted prey between 1715 and 1726. Of that number, about twenty-five to thirty percent came from the cimarrons, black slaves who ran from their Spanish masters. Other blacks joined after pirates attacked slave ships. For example, when Sam Bellamy and his fellow pirates seized a "Guinea ship," twenty-five blacks went on the account. Stede Bonnet's crew also included former slaves and freeman, and of the eighty sea rovers who followed John Lewis were numbered at least forty blacks from English colonies. Francis Sprigg's cook was black and entrusted with dividing the spoils equally for the crew. Not all black pirates were known by name. For example, thirty men escaped enslavement on Saint Thomas and went on the account in August 1699. A mulatto amongst Stede Bonnet's crew had a confrontation with a white sailor who refused to sign the articles of agreement. After cursing the man, the black pirate wondered "why I did not go to the pump and work among the rest, and told me that was my Business and that I should be used as a Negroe." (Kinkor, 199) Captain Bonnet overheard the exchange and concurred with the pirate -- a man was either a sea rover or a slave, regardless of his color or status. In his article "Black Men under the Black Flag," maritime historian Ken Kinkor includes a chart listing various pirate captains and how many blacks were members of their crews.

Samuel Bellamy (1717) – more than 27 out of 180 men

Edward England (1718) – less than 50 out of 180 men

Edward Lowther (1724) – 9 out of 23 men

Blackbeard (1717) – 60 out of 100; (1718) – 5 out 14

Oliver La Bouche (1719) – 32 out of 64 men

These five pirate crews are but a small sampling of those listed, and they indicate these men were active members of the crew. Sometimes, they were the most fearsome and most trusted of the pirates, the men who boarded prizes first. They did not, however, always receive the same punishment as other pirates when captured. Whereas their comrades often went to the gallows, black pirates were often returned to the men who owned them, or they were sold into slavery. This was the fate of John Julian, a Miskito Indian, after he survived the wrecking of The Whydah Galley. Rather than try him for piracy, he became the property of John Quincy of Braintree.

The most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy, Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, included eighty-eight blacks amongst his crew of 368 in 1721. A year later, there were seventy blacks among 267 pirates. These men didn’t do menial work, either. They received shares in any treasure taken and voted with the rest of the crew whenever a decision had to be made. A mulatto, who had served aboard the Royal Rover, was hanged for piracy with six others in 1720. One of his mates requested a bottle of wine and drank after declaring, “Damnation to the governor and confusion to the Colony.” The others concurred then all were executed and hung in chains as a lesson to others. Two years later, however, the seventy black pirates captured after Bartholomew Roberts’ demise in 1722 were given to the Royal African Company, who promptly enslaved them. The black pirate most written about is Black Caesar. Legend identifies him as a tall African chief with great strength and keen intelligence. A conniving captain lured him and his warriors aboard a slaver with greater treasures than the gold watch that fascinated Caesar. Once on board, the captain and his men plied the Africans with food while enticing them with musical instruments, jewels, silk scarves, and furs. With his focus on these unusual treasures, Caesar failed to notice that the slaver put to sea. Upon learning the truth, he and his men fought the ship's crew, but the slavers eventually subdued the Africans. During his confinement, Caesar refused to eat or drink. One sailor showed Caesar kindness, and the two eventually became friends. When the slaver wrecked on the reefs off Florida, the sailor freed Caesar, and the two escaped in a long boat loaded with supplies and ammunition. They left the others to die. Caesar and his friend decided to attack passing ships. Whenever one was spotted, they rowed the long boat near the vessel and pretended to be shipwrecked sailors. Once aboard their victim, they seized control and took their treasure ashore. Eventually, they buried a large cache of booty somewhere on Elliott Key, or so legend says.   One day Caesar’s friend brought a beautiful woman to their island. The two men argued, and Caesar slew his friend and took the woman for himself. Alone, he continued his piratical raids until he acquired a number of ships and men. They attacked passing ships, then escaped into the coves and inlets where their prey could not pursue them.   Sometime in the early 1700s, Caesar joined forces with Blackbeard. In November 1718, Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy and his men attacked Blackbeard near Ocracoke Island. Under his captain’s orders, Caesar stood in the powder room with a lit match. If the navy succeeded in subduing the pirates, he was to blow up the ship. He was about to do just that when two prisoners, whom Blackbeard had stowed below during the fight, stopped Caesar. He was taken to Virginia and danced the hempen jig in Williamsburg. Caesar was the only one of the five black pirates – James Black, Thomas Gates, Richard Stiles, and James White being the others – arrested who refused to give evidence against his comrades. Blacks became pirates for the same reasons as other men did, but they also sought the freedom often denied them elsewhere. W. Jeffrey Bolster wrote in Black Jacks, "No accurate numbers of black buccaneers exist, although the impression is that they were more numerous than the proportion of black sailors in commercial or naval service at the time." (Bolster, 13) It isn't known how many of the estimated 400 pirates hanged for their crimes between 1716 and 1726 were black, for the historical record fails to show this. Like their brethren who weren't given the chance to stand trial, but were sold into slavery, these pirates remain lost to history.

Meet Other Black Pirates In 1731 Juan Andres (Andresote) was the leader of some runaway slaves and Indians. These villains plundered and murdered along the coast of Venezuela. Authorities assumed he had died when two years later the attacks ceased. In reality, he merely moved to the safety of Curacao before resuming his bloody assaults. One hundred years after Black Caesar died, another man of mixed parentage adopted his name. Black Caesar (II) attacked ships off Florida’s east coast, but in 1828, President Andrew Jackson ordered the area be swept of pirates. Black Caesar (II) escaped to the west coast. One story says he was captured and burned to death, but there is no definitive record as to his fate. Peter Cloise, a slave, became a pirate after Edward Davis took him from his owner in 1679. They became close companions and went on pirating expeditions in the Caribbean and along South America’s Pacific coast. After Davis’ ship put into Philadelphia in May 1688, Cloise was arrested. His fate remains unknown. In late September 1720, Captain Nicholas de Concepcion and 140 pirates (Spaniards “and others of diverse Nations”) cruised the waters of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay aboard a well-armed Spanish brigantine from Saint Augustine. Their first capture was a Philadelphia sloop named Mary, commanded by Captain Jacobs. She carried a cargo of bread and flour. Concepcion decided she would make an excellent consort to the pirate brigantine. Captain Sipkin was master of the pirates’ second capture. A prize crew was put aboard and the ship set sail for Saint Augustine. The pirates seized a pink, bound to Virginia from Barbados, in the Chesapeake Bay on 23 September. Her captain was a man named Spicer. Once again Concepcion sent a prize crew aboard the pink to sail her to Florida. Sometime later, Concepcion and his men took a Liverpool merchantman named Planter that was eventually retaken. During a search of her papers, her rescuers discovered a forged letter of marque from the Governor of Saint Augustine. It was dated after the war between England and Spain ended. Attempts were made to capture the pirates, but they escaped. Little is known of Domingo Eucalla’s pirating career, but he and ten others were hanged in Kingston, Jamaica on 7 February 1823. Before he died, he gave a passionate speech and a prayer. He showed the most courage of the pirates awaiting death that day. Diego Grillo, also known as “El Mulato,” was of mixed ancestry – African and Spanish. After escaping from Havana, Cuba, he went on the account. When Henry Morgan sacked Panama in January 1671, Grillo captained a ship mounting ten guns. He refused to accept the king’s pardon, preferring instead to remain a pirate. He and his men attacked Spanish ships from a fifteen-gun ship and sold the booty in Tortuga. Three ships were sent to capture him, but he defeated them all and slaughtered every sailor aboard who had been born in Spain. He eventually was captured in 1673 and hanged. Francisco Farnondo captured 250,000 pieces of eight in a single incident. Afterward, he retired. Although his true name has been lost, Old South, a mulatto, led the men who sailed aboard Good Fortune.   Hendrick Quintor, a mulatto born in Amsterdam, sailed aboard the Whydah. Before he went on the account, Quintor was a crewman on a Spanish brig. He was hanged in Boston. Diego de los Reyes, a mulatto from Cuba, earned the nickname “Diego Lucifer.” He hunted during the 1630s and 1640s. Abraham Samuel, the son of a Martinique planter and a black slave, went on the account under Captain John Hoar. After cruising the Caribbean, the John and Rebecca sailed for richer prey in the Indian Ocean. At some point Samuel’s fellow pirates elected him their quartermaster. After capturing a prize near Surrat, the sea rovers put in at St. Mary’s in February 1697. Unbeknownst to them, the Malagasy had rebelled against Adam Baldridge, the retired pirate who became the go-between for the pirates and New York merchants who bought their booty. Captain Hoar and a number of pirates died in the uprising, but Samuel and others escaped. They set sail for New York, but the ship sank after hitting a reef near Fort Dauphin, an abandoned French settlement. After the death of her husband, the chief’s wife ruled the Malagasy. One day she saw the shipwrecked men bathing in the ocean and noticed strange markings on Samuel’s body. They were the same markings her own child had had, but she hadn’t seen her son in many years. His father, a Frenchman, had taken the child with him when he fled Madagascar in 1674. The woman declared Samuel her long-lost son and made him chief of the Malagasy. With the assistance of his fellow shipwrecked pirates, some of whom became his bodyguards, and the Malagasy, Samuel traded with slavers and pirates alike. Fort Dauphin became popular it rivaled St. Mary's as a trading center. In November 1699, Samuel assessed an American slaver £100 for a trading license. The following year, Captain Littleton, a member of the English Royal Navy, invited Samuel and two of his wives to dine with him aboard his ship. Littleton reported Samuel was much loved by the Malagasy. In September 1699, a pirate named Evan Jones raided an American slave ship in the port. He gave the ship to Samuel, who sold it to four other pirates for 1,100 pieces of eight. He signed the document detailing the purchase and added "King of Fort Dauphin, Tollannare, Farrawe, Ganquest, and Founzahíra." News of the attack and sale, and Samuel's participation in it, spread and ships ceased to visit the port. When a Dutch slaver anchored there in December 1706, Abraham Samuel was gone and the new chief declined to discuss his fate. Stewart, a mulatto, and three whites seized the Amity off the coast of Virginia in 1785. They swore to “Perform on a Cruce [cruise] In Defense of Our Selves and Against all Other Nation and Nations.” If any one of them broke these articles, they agreed the guilty party would “Be Put to Death or any Punishment that the Rest shal think they Justley Deserv.” (Bolster, 16)

For more information, I suggest these resources:

Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard, 1998. Burl, Audrey. Black Barty. Thrupp, England: Sutton, 2006. Cohn, Michael, and Michael K. H. Platzer. Black Men of the Sea. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978. Gosse, Philip. The Pirates’ Who’s Who. Glorieta, New Mexico: Rio Grande Press, 1924. Kinkor, Kenneth J. “Black Men Under the Black Flag” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader. New York: New York University, 2001. (pages 195-210). Konstam, Angus. Blackbeard. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Marley, David F. Pirates and Privateers of the Americas. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 1994. McCarthy, Kevin M. Twenty Florida Pirates. Sarasota, Florida: Pineapple Press, 1994. Pirates: Terror on the High Seas – from the Caribbean to the South China Sea. Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1996. Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. Rogozinski, Jan. Honor Among Thieves. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole, 2000. Rogozinski, Jan. Pirates! New York: Facts on File, 1995. Selinger, Gail. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pirates. New York: Alpha Books, 2006. Shomette, Donald G. Pirates on the Chesapeake. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater, 1985.

Source: http://www.cindyvallar.com/blackpirates.html

[countrymadefoods]

11 Presidents related to the Roosevelts (above)

10 Things You May Not Know About the Roosevelts

“It seems like every day there is a new report tracing the genealogical roots of the American presidents: Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush were seventh cousins (four times removed), and Jimmy Carter and George Washington were ninth cousins (six times removed). No president, however, can boast as many commander-in-chief connections as Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, by blood or marriage, was related to 11 other former presidents: John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft and, of course, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR’s fifth cousin.”

“Roosevelt’s famous family tree doesn’t end at the White House. He was also reportedly related to several other historic figures, including Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur and two famed Confederate leaders: Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.”

(via 10 Things You May Not Know About the Roosevelts | History Channel)

U.S. Presidents Who Were Related to Each Other

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the 32nd president) was a fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th president). Genealogists have determined that FDR was distantly related to a total of 11 U.S. presidents, 5 by blood and 6 by marriage: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Ulysses Grant, William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison, James Madison, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Zachary Taylor, Martin Van Buren, and George Washington.”

(via U.S. Presidents Who Were Related to Each Other | Fact Monster)

General Robert E. Lee's Buried Treasure — Washington's Silver

“Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, Martha Washington's great-grand­daughter and wife of General Robert E. Lee, buried her family heirlooms and avoided the destruction of valuable Washington objects during the Civil War.”

(via General Robert E. Lee's Buried Treasure — Washington's Silver | Mount V ernon Ladies Association)

The Favorite Foods of the Presidents, from Squirrel Soup to Cottage Cheese

“There's something about the President of the United States. It's often hard to see candidates and office-holders as everyday people when they hold one of the most powerful titles in the world. However, if there's one thing that brings people together, it's food. Everyone's gotta eat.So, to make some of our favorite historical icons seem more, well, relatable, we've scoured the internet for every President's favorite food. A large part of research is due with gratitude to Food Timeline, a group that continually scours food writing to compile historical and academic databases...

45. DONALD TRUMP: PEANUTS

44. BARACK OBAMA: BLACK FOREST BERRY HONEST TEA

43. GEORGE W. BUSH: HUEVOS RANCHEROS

42. BILL CLINTON: CHICKEN ENCHILADAS

41. GEORGE H.W. BUSH: CORN PUDDING

40. RONALD REAGAN: HONEY-BAKED APPLES

39. JIMMY CARTER: BAKED GRITS WITH CHEESE

(via The List of Every President's Favorite Food, from Trump to Washington)

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton revealed to be distant cousins as family trees show they share same set of royal ancestors

“Clinton is related to John of Gaunt and his mistress-turned-wife Katherine Swynford through her father’s side while Trump is related to the royal through his mother Mary Anne MacLeod...In 2008 it was revealed that she was a distant cousin to Celine Dion, Madonna and Alanis Morissette.”

Hillary Clinton has a couple famous cousins! Madonna & Angelina Jolie!

“Hillary recently discovered she is cousins with both Madonna and Angelina Jolie...Madonna and Clinton are 10th cousins...Jolie and Clinton related...the two are 9th cousins twice removed...she also had blood line ties and distant relation to both Celine Dion and Alanis Morisette.”

(via Hillary Clinton has a couple famous cousins! Madonna & Angelina Jolie! | kiis 91.7)

How Queen Elizabeth is related to Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler)

“Vlad was from a Romanian noble family known as the House of Draculesti and was Voivode (Duke) of Wallachia...The British Royal Family is not directly descended from Vlad the Impaler but they are however descended from his brother, Vlad the Monk.”

(via How Queen Elizabeth is related to Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) | Useful Charts)

Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde

“Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde was the Hungarian wife of Duke Alexander of Württemberg. Her son, Francis, Duke of Teck, was the father of Mary of Teck, queen consort to George V of the United Kingdom.”

“The Countess was born in her family's castle in Erdőszentgyörgy, Transylvania (then part of the Austrian Empire, today...Romania) to Count László Rhédey de Kis-Rhéde...the Hungarian prince of Transylvania between 1657 and 1658. At birth, she was styled as Countess Klaudina (Claudine) Rhédey de Kis-Rhéde.”

“Prince Francis of Teck...married Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a granddaughter of George III and became a member of the British Royal Family. His only daughter, Mary of Teck, married Prince George, Duke of York in July 1893, becoming queen consort on her husband's accession to the throne in May 1910. The current British monarch, Elizabeth II, is Mary's granddaughter.”

Her Majesty’s Transylvanian great-great grandmother 

“In 1830 Claudine met Duke Alexander of Württemberg, nephew of King Frederick I of Württemberg. At [the] time...the duke could not speak Hungarian. For that reason, Alexander learnt the Hungarian language and five years later he could marry Claudine.

Due to the German laws relating to the line of succession, she was viewed as being of non-Royal rank and the marriage was declared morganatic. She was denied the title of Duchess. However, she was later created Countess von Hohenstein and her entire family were granted German titles and styled as Dukes and Princesses of Teck.”

“Claudine and Alexander had three children: two daughters, Claudine and Amelie, and one son, Francis. Francis married Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a granddaughter of King George III. Their eldest daughter, Mary of Teck, was to marry the future King George V.

Regretfully, Claudine...died in 1841 in either a horse or a carriage accident, while visiting her husband at a military training camp in Austria, at the young age of 29.”

(via Her Majesty’s Transylvanian great-great grandmother | Transyvania Now)

Could Anyone Have Saved the Romanovs?

“Nicholas' five children were shot, bludgeoned, stabbed and then shot again. Could the Romanovs' many royal relatives across Europe have helped prevent the slaughter?”

“Nicholas and his family were related to many other royal families, thanks to Queen Victoria’s habit of arranging marriages for her offspring across Europe. In the 15 months from his abdication to his death, royal relations still in power debated if and how they should grant the family asylum, with many of the Romanov descendants believing King George V of England, the tsar’s cousin and grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, could have saved them...The web of royal marriages across the continent was so interconnected that King George V of England was first cousins to both Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra.”

“[T]he new Provisional Government in Russia...faced its own looming threat: what if pro-monarchist groups try to restore Nicholas to the throne? Because of this, they wanted to Romanovs out of Russia—and fast. They asked other Governments to grant the Romanovs asylum. The British agreed. Britain regretted the offer almost immediately. The government was nervous having the Romanovs on British shores, while George V...feared an uprising against the monarchy. The king soon urged the government to rescind the offer, leaving him open to claims that he abandoned his family for politics...Members of the British royal family had hoped to at least save the children. In 1919, the British sent a ship to Crimea to evacuate the remaining Romanovs. Descendants of Nicholas II’s two sisters, Olga and Alexandra, survive, as do descendants of previous tsars.”

(via Could Anyone Have Saved the Romanovs? | History Channel)

Prince William to Genghis Khan

“Thocomerius "Toq-Timur", Prince of Wallachia ~1290-~1310. Toq-Timur was born the son of Mongke-Timur who was the 5th Khan of the Golden Horde. Mongke-Timur ruled the Golden Horde from 1266 to 1282 when he died.In Wallachia arose a Prince Basarab I who ruled from about 1310 to 1352 when he died. His father is called "Thocomerius". The speculation is that Thocomerius and Toc-Timur are the same person.“

(via Prince William to Genghis Khan | County Historian)

One of the world's largest tombs is a keyhole-shaped forest

“When viewed from above, however, the massive forest becomes a green keyhole surrounded by three moats in the shape of a doorway.This is Japan's Daisen Kofun, an ancient burial mound shrouded in mystery, massive in scale, and surprisingly little-known to the rest of the world...Between the early 3rd century and the early 7th century A.D., during Japan's Kofun period, an estimated 200,000 keyhole-shaped tombs were constructed throughout the Japanese archipelago.”

(via One of the world's largest tombs is a keyhole-shaped forest | Mother Nature Network)

Yamato period

“Most scholars believe that there were massive transmissions of technology and culture from China via Korea to Japan which is evidenced by material artifacts in tombs of both states in the Proto–Three Kingdoms of Korea and Kofun period, as well as the later wave of Baekje refugees to Yamato.

Several kinds of goods were imported. Books from China were one of the most important trade goods. Chinese philosophy that had been introduced in this era, had a big influence on the history of Japan. Decorated bronze mirrors (Shinju-kyo) were imported from China. Japan imported iron from Korean peninsula until the latter half of the 6th century...In this period, Baekje received military support from Japan. According to the Samguk Sagi, King Asin of Baekje sent his son Jeonji to Japan in 397 and King Silseong of Silla sent his son Misaheun to Japan in 402 in order to solicit military aid.”

“Yamato Imperial Court officially edited the Shinsen Shōjiroku in 815 as a directory of aristocrats which lists 1182 names of clans which were in Kinai area, it lists a number of clans from the Han China, Silla, Baekje and Goguryeo.  According to the directory, 174 clans have roots in China, 120 clans have roots in Baekje, 48 clans have roots in Goguryeo, 17 clans have roots in Silla, then 9 clans have roots in Gaya of the Korean peninsula.

There is suspicion that Emperor Keitai (c. 500 AD) may have been an unrelated outsider, though the sources state that he was a male-line descendant of Emperor Ōjin. However, his descendants, including his successors, were according to records descended from at least one and probably several imperial princesses of the older lineage.”

“Since the 1947 constitutional reforms, the imperial family has been supported by an official civil list sanctioned by the Japanese government. The largest imperial divestments were the former imperial Kiso and Amagi forest lands in Gifu and Shizuoka prefectures, grazing lands for livestock in Hokkaido and a stock farm in the Chiba region, all of which were transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.”

Kinai

“Kinai is a Japanese term denoting an ancient division of the country. Kinai is a name for the ancient provinces around the capital Nara and Heian-kyō. The five provinces were called go-kinai after 1760...The region was established as one of the Gokishichidō ("Five provinces and seven roads") during the Asuka period (538-710).”

Kinki region

“The Kansai region or the Kinki region lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū...While the use of the terms "Kansai" and "Kinki" have changed over history, in most modern contexts the use of the two terms is interchangeable. The urban region of Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto (Keihanshin region) is the second-most populated in Japan after the Greater Tokyo Area.  

The terms Kansai, Kinki, and Kinai have a very deep history, dating back almost as far as the nation of Japan itself...the Gokishichidō system established the provinces of Yamato, Yamashiro, Kawachi, Settsu and Izumi. Kinai and Kinki, both roughly meaning "the neighbourhood of the capital", referred to these provinces. In common usage, Kinai now refers to the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto (Keihanshin) area.

Noh and Kabuki, Japan's traditional dramatic forms both saw their birth and evolution in Kyoto, while Bunraku, Japanese puppet theater, is native to Osaka... Kansai's unique position in Japanese history...resulted in Kansai region having more UNESCO World Heritage Listings than any other region of Japan...Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto...and Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.”

Emperor Keitai

“Emperor Keitai also known as Keitai-okimi, was the 26th emperor of Japan... Sumeramikoto or Amenoshita Shiroshimesu Ōkimi (治天下大王), meaning "the great king who rules all under heaven." Alternatively, Keitai might have been referred to as the "Great King of Yamato.”

If Emperor Keitai began a new dynasty as some historians believe, then Emperor Buretsu would have been the last monarch of the first recorded dynasty of Japan... Keitai was not the son of the immediate previous monarch. According to the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720), Buretsu died without a successor, at which time a fifth generation grandson of Emperor Ōjin, Keitai, came and ascended the throne.”

“[M]any scholars acknowledge the blood relationship with the Okinaga clan, a powerful local ruling family or the collateral line of the Imperial family-governed Ōmi region (a part of present-day Shiga Prefecture). This family produced many empresses and consorts throughout history. According to the Nihon Shoki, Ohohoto no Kimi, the great-grandfather of Emperor Keitai, married into the Okinaga clan...Regardless of speculation about Keitai's genealogy...Among his sons, Emperor Ankan, Emperor Senka and Emperor Kinmei ascended to the throne." 

Giru of Baekje

“Giru of Baekje (기루왕) was the third king of Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea...[Giru’s uncle] Tokusa-Ō - his name in Baekje would have been Buyeo Deokjwa, recorded in...the Shinsen Shōjiroku as ancestor of several clans making him one of the earliest people from Baekje to settle in Japan.”

Emperor Kanmu

“Emperor Kanmu was the 50th emperor of Japan...reigned from 781 to 806...According to the Shoku Nihongi (続日本紀), Yamabe's mother, Yamato no Niigasa (later called Takano no Niigasa), was a 10th generation descendant of Muryeong of Baekje.”

Emperor Kanmu's Imperial family included 36 children.

Nyōgo: Ki no Otoio (紀乙魚; d.840), Ki no Kotsuo's daughter 

Court lady: Ki no Wakako (紀若子), Ki no Funamori's daughter

Seventh Son: Imperial Prince Asuka (明日香親王, d.834)

Court lady: Fujiwara no Kawako (藤原河子, d.838), Fujiwara no Ōtsugu's daughter 

Thirteenth Son: Imperial Prince Nakano (仲野親王; 792–867)

Thirteenth Princess: Imperial Princess Ate (安勅内親王; d.855)

Imperial Princess Ōi (大井内親王; d.865)

Imperial Princess Ki (紀内親王; 799–886)

Imperial Princess Yoshihara (善原内親王; d.863)

”In 2001, Japan's emperor Akihito told reporters "I, on my part, feel a certain kinship with Korea, given the fact that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the mother of Emperor Kanmu was of the line of King Muryong of Baekje." It was the first time that a Japanese emperor publicly acknowledged Korean blood in the imperial line. According to the Shoku Nihongi, Emperor Kanmu's mother, Takano no Niigasa, is a descendant of Prince Junda, son of Muryeong, who died in Japan in 513 (Nihon Shoki, Chapter 17).“

Yenisei Kyrgyz

“The Yenisei Kyrgyz, also known as the Ancient Kyrgyz or the Khyagas (Khakas), were an ancient Turkic people...By the fall of the Gokturk Empire in the eighth century CE, the Yenisei Kirghiz had established their own thriving state based on the Gokturk model...The Kyrgyz Khagans of the Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate claimed descent from the Chinese general Li Ling, grandson of the famous Han Dynasty general Li Guang...the Tang royal Li family also claimed descent from Li Guang, the Kirghiz Khagan was therefore recognized as a member of the Tang Imperial family.”

“In 758, the Uyghurs killed the Kirghiz Khan, and the Kirghiz came under the rule of the Uyghur Khaganate...However, the Yenisei Kyrghyz spent much of their time in a state of rebellion. In 840 they succeeded in sacking the Uyghur capital, Ordu-Baliq in Mongolia...driving the Uyghurs out of Mongolia entirely...When Genghis Khan came to power in the early 13th century, the Yenisei Kirghiz submitted peacefully to him and were absorbed into his Mongol Empire, putting an end to their independent state. During the time of the Mongol Empire, the territory of the Yenisei Kirghiz in northern Mongolia was turned into an agricultural colony.”

Marriage of Nicholas II and Alexandria

Royal Intermarriage

Qin Dynasty (China’s 1st imperial dynasty) coins

China

“Marriage policy in imperial China differed from dynasty to dynasty. Several dynasties practiced Heqin, which involved marrying off princesses to other royal families.The Xiongnu practiced marriage alliances with Han dynasty officers and officials who defected to their side. The older sister of the Chanyu (the Xiongnu ruler) was married to the Xiongnu General Zhao Xin, the Marquis of Xi who was serving the Han dynasty. The daughter of the Chanyu was married to the Han Chinese General Li Ling after he surrendered and defected. The Yenisei Kirghiz Khagans claimed descent from Li Ling. Another Han Chinese General who defected to the Xiongnu was Li Guangli who also married a daughter of the Chanyu.”

“During the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), emperors chose their consorts primarily from one of the eight Banner families, administrative divisions that divide all native Manchu families. To maintain the ethnic purity of the ruling dynasty, after the Kangxi Period (1662–1722), emperors and princes were forbidden to marry non-Manchu wives. Imperial daughters however were not covered by this ban, and as with their preceding dynasties, were often married to Mongol princes to gain political or military support, especially in the early years of the Qing dynasty.”

Korea

“The Silla Kingdom had a practice that limited the succession to the throne to members of the seonggol, or "sacred bone", rank. To maintain their "sacred bone" rank, members of this caste often intermarried with one another in the same fashion that European royals intermarried to maintain a "pure" royal pedigree...Joseon Korea was forced to give several of their royal princesses as concubines to the Qing Manchu regent Prince Dorgon... married the Korean Princess Uisun.”

Japan

“The Japanese may not have seen intermarriage between them and the royal dynasties of the Korean Empire damaging to their prestige either...In 1920, Crown Prince Yi Un of Korea married Princess Masako of Nashimoto.”

“[I]n May 1931, Yi Geon, grandson of Gojong of Korea, was married to Matsudaira Yosiko, a cousin of Princess Masako. The Japanese saw these marriages as a way to secure their colonial rule of Korea and introduce Japanese blood in to the Korean royal House of Yi.” 

Korean Princess Dukhye and Prince Takeyuki

Pujie

“ Pujie was a Qing imperial prince of Manchu descent. He was born in the Aisin Gioro clan, the imperial clan of the Qing dynasty. Pujie was the younger brother of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Pujie went to Japan, where he was educated and married to Saga Hiro, a Japanese noblewoman.

After graduating from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, Pujie agreed to an arranged marriage with a Japanese noblewoman. He selected Saga Hiro, who was a relative of the Japanese imperial family, from a photograph from a number of possible candidates vetted by the Kwantung Army. As Puyi did not have an heir, the wedding had strong political implications, and was aimed at both fortifying relations between the two countries and introducing Japanese blood into the Manchu imperial family.”

“As Puyi had no children, Pujie was regarded as first in line to succeed his brother as the emperor of Manchukuo; the Japanese officially proclaimed him the heir apparent. However, Pujie was not appointed by his brother as the heir to the throne of the Qing dynasty, as imperial tradition stated that a childless emperor should choose his heir from a subsequent generation instead of from his own generation.

Pujie was arrested by the Soviet Red Army...along with his brother and other relatives. He spent about five years in the Soviet prison camps until 1950, when the Sino-Soviet rapprochment allowed him and his fellow captives to be extradited to the newly founded People's Republic of China. On his return to China, Pujie was incarcerated in the War Criminals Management Centre...A model prisoner, he was eventually pardoned and released from prison by the Chinese government. He joined the Communist Party and served in a number of positions...Pujie was also a technical adviser for the 1987 film The Last Emperor directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.”

Is ruling in the genes? All presidents bar one are directly descended from a medieval English king

“What do Barack Obama, Thomas Jefferson, George W. Bush and the other past U.S. presidents have in common? Besides holding the coveted title of commander-in-chief, it appears that all of them but one are cousins.  The remarkable discovery was made by...BridgeAnne d’Avignon, of Salinas, California, who created a ground-breaking family tree that connected 42 of 43 U.S. presidents to one common, and rather unexpected, ancestor: King John of England...The only former commander-in-chief not linked to King John is the eighth president, Martin Van Buren, who had Dutch roots.”

(via Is ruling in the genes? All presidents bar one are directly descended from a medieval English king | Daily Mail UK)

Ancestry of Alexander Hamilton

“Hamilton is considered one of the great patriots and Founding Fathers of the United States...His portrait currently adorns the U.S. $10 bill...Unfortunately Hamilton's life came to a tragic and early end at the age of 49...in a duel at dawn...Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded from a shot by then Vice President Aaron Burr.

His ancestors includes Scottish nobility such as Sir Reginald de Crawford and Margaret de Loudoun...and Sir William Wallace. Sir William who was a Scottish knight and one of the main leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence. Sir William Wallace's story was brought to the big screen in the Academy Award winning film Braveheart in 1995.”

(via Ancestry of Alexander Hamilton | Famous Kin)

[battybat-boss]

Aboriginal Residential School Survivor Says The Queen of England Abducted Children In Canada

The abduction and abuse of children for unthinkable things from sex slavery to military mind-controlled warfare is something that's gaining more attention. Revelations seem to be occurring every single day. We are just hearing about Pope Francis being implicated in a sexual abuse cover-up at the Vatican, all as his right-hand man is also on trial right now for sexual abuse. The fact is, the Vatican has already dished out billions of dollars to settle child sexual abuse claims. So while it should now be clear that pedophilia runs rampant within the Vatican, they continue to be praised and worshiped by the masses, while world leaders usually greet them with open arms and a smile.

The same disturbing truths are also coming out in other areas which the global elite seem to dominate: in politics, within the military-industrial complex, and even in Hollywood. The truth is being exposed, and if we continue considering these people as our moral and political 'leaders,' they will continue to show by their actions that they don't really have the best interests of humanity in mind, but rather seek only to fulfill their selfish motives.

It's time for us to face the obvious: if we keep looking to 'them' for change, change will never come. Ultimately, we have to look squarely at what has gone on, and instigate changes ourselves.

Canada's Residential Schools

For those of you who don't know, Christopher Columbus did some very disturbing things upon his arrival to the New Land, from taking slaves to murder, rape and much more. It's a dark history, one that still has yet to be fully uncovered. The 'aristocratic' and Royal Family bloodlines that sponsored Columbus seem to have a 'dark' history, yet have been painted in a benevolent light.

The residential school system in Canada was made up of government-sponsored religious schools that were made to assimilate aboriginal children into a Euro-Canadian culture, a culture that was made by the ruling elite for everyone else to “fit” into. This system originated in France, not long after the arrival of Europeans into the Americas, and was originally conceived by Christian churches and the Canadian government to education (brainwash) and convert aboriginal youth and to integrate them into Canadian society.

In the 1930s, the headmasters of the residential schools were made legal guardians of all native children, ripping the away from their parents under the oversight of the Department of Mines and Resources. All parents were forced to surrender legal custody of their children to a principal or a church employee, or face imprisonment. A few years later, “Indian Affairs” was taken over the Federal Government. (source)(source)(source)

Children here were abused, killed, tortured and raped.  They were also subjected to government and corporate experiments by pharmaceutical companies, used as medical test subjects whose bodies have vanished without a trace.

Pyramid of Control

The abduction and abuse of children, historically well hidden from us, is coming into view. It seems to be connected at the top with the 'Bloodline Royal Families and through the Church, and it funnels down the pyramid into all levels of control. Could this be true? We know that the Royal Family has a 'dark' history when it comes to their activities with children and some very strange modern-day connections. I went into more detail when millions were tuned into the Royal Family wedding.

Millions Tune Into The Royal Family Wedding When We Should Be Investigating Royal Family Pedophilia

We are talking about something that's been happening for generations. Babies are even born into this type of thing. It's all they know, to them it's normal and the implications they face when this all becomes transparent makes it understandable why some may want to come forward, but ultimately they don't.

Queen Elizabeth And The Disappearance Of Children

A residential school survivor by the name of William Coombes has spoken out about his experiences. Apart from witnessing and being the victim of multiple forms of abuse, he also remembers Queen Elizabeth paying a visit to his school in 1964. Here is the experience described in Coombes' own words, posted up by the International Tribunal into Crimes by Church and State.

I am an Interior Salish spirit dancer and am 58 years old. I live in Vancouver, Canada. I am a survivor of the Kamloops and Mission Indian residential schools, both run by the Roman Catholic church. I suffered terrible tortures there at the hands especially of Brother Murphy, who killed at least two children. I witnessed him throw a child off a three story balcony to her death. He put me on a rack and broke some of my bones, in the Kamloop school basement, after I tried running away.

I also saw him and another priest burying a child in the school orchard one night.

In October, 1964 when I was 12 years old, I was an inmate at the Kamloops school and we were visited by the Queen of England and Prince Phillip. I remember it was strange because they came by themselves, no big fanfare or nothing. But I recognized them and the school principal told us it was the Queen and we all got given new clothes and good food for the first time in months the day before she arrived.

The day the Queen got to the school, I was part of a group of kids that went on a picnic with her and her husband and some of the priests, down to a meadow near Dead Man's Creek. I remember it was weird because we all had to bend down and kiss her foot, a white laced boot.

After awhile, I saw the Queen leave the picnic with ten children from the school, and those kids never returned. We never heard anything more about them and never met them again even when we were older. They were all from around there but they all vanished.

The group that disappeared was seven boys and three girls, in age from six to fourteen years old. They were all from the smart group in class. Two of the boys were brothers and they were Metis from Quesnel. Their last name was Arnuse or Arnold. I don't remember the others, just an occasional first name like Cecilia and there was an Edward.

What happened was also witnessed by my friend George Adolph, who was 11 years old at the time and a student there too. But he's dead now.

Coombes Assassinated

Coombes, was to have served as a sworn witness at the September 2011 session of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State as to crimes of torture, genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Elizabeth of Windsor (Queen Elizabeth II) and her consort Prince Philip in Canada in October 1964 at Kamloops, British Columbia.

Below is a video of Coombs. The only one I could find. Taken from this full video. In that full video you can also find testimony from a survivor claiming that Indian Affairs (mentioned earlier) was in on it as well.

The Queen came and visited or about three days…And a lot of children went missing there.

Below is another interesting video.

Change Is Coming

The point is, things don't have to continue this way. We do have a say in our world, its systems, and how we operate here and what happens to people. Every human being has the right to life, instead of being subjected to these things. We do not desire to have our current 'leaders' be our leaders, and that is more clear than ever. Change has never come from that way, solutions to the world's problems exist but our society is built in a certain manner which prevents these solutions to see their birth. But things are changing, and they are changing fast.

With transparency and information comes to change, which is why the “Deep State” is doing everything they can to silence and censor information, but it seems too late, it seems that they cannot stop what is happening, and that's the revelations of truth's about our world that do not and would not resonate with the vast majority of people on the planet who are, for starters, at least willing to accept them.

[blackdiamondwrites127]

The Royal House of Trastámara

So since the Trastámara sisters are complete with the addition of Maria, I figured I'd make another one of these. So here are the daughters of the Royal House of Trastámara.

Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal

The eldest child of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille, Isabella was named after her mother and became the heir presumptive to the Crown of Castille after her mother took the throne from her uncle Henry IV of Castille. She was betrothed and married to Prince Afonso, heir and only son of John II of Portugal. Her marriage with the prince was a happy one but unfortunately, Afonso died due to a riding accident and Isabella vowed never to marry again. Until six years later, after the death of John II of Portugal, his brother, Manuel I of Portugal, usurped the throne and asked for Isabella's hand in marriage. Her parents offered Maria's hand instead out of respect to Isabella's wishes to never marry again but Manuel refused. Eventually, she married him and became queen consort of Portugal. She later gave birth to her only son, Miguel de Paz, Prince of Portugal, and due to her poor health and constant travelling during the later stages of her pregnancy, she died within an hour of her son's birth.

In her second life, Isabella owns and works in her own music shop located just below her flat. She sometimes fills in for Maria on the drums whenever she's sic and just generally enjoys the simple things in her second life. She's grown to be very passive due in this life and can be quite sarcastic at times which may come off as rude but she means well. However, bad mouth her younger sister she'll go after you.

Isabella Trastámara belongs to @lexartsstuff

Joanna of Castille, Queen of Castille and Aragon

The second eldest daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. Known historically as 'Joanna the Mad' or 'Juana la Loca' in spanish, she was Queen of Castille and Queen of Aragon. Modern Spain evolved from the union of these two kingdoms. Joanna was married by arrangement to Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria of the House of Habsburg. Following the deaths of her brother, John, Prince of Asturia, her elder sister Isabella, and her nephew Miguel, Joanna became the heir presumtive to the crowns of Castile and Aragon. When her mother died, Joanna became Queen of Castile. Her father proclaimed himself Governor and Administrator of Castile. Despite being the ruling Queen of Castile, Joanna had little effect on national policy during her reign as she was declared insane and imprisoned in the Royal Convent of Santa Clars in Tordesillas under the orders of her father, who ruled as regent until his death, when she inherited his kingdom as well. When her son Charles I ruled as king, she was nominally co-monarch but remained imprisoned until her death.

In her second life, Joanna or Juana as she preferred to be called, came back a troubled teen. In her misfortune, she was taken in by a very religious and abusive family. The father, named Fernando, would often lock her up in a dark room whenever she had mental breakdowns which are usually bouts of painful laughter. She finally escaped the house and was homeless for years until she found her youngest sister, Catalina. Catalina helped her by housing her until she got back on her feet and got the help she needed for her mental wellbeing.

Juana de Castille belongs to @ellielovesdrawing

Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal

The third eldest daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. After the untimely death of her older sister, she married her husband Manuel I of Portugal and replaced her as queen of Portugal. As a queen, she wasn't that involved in politics at all and her focus consists mainly of religious teachings, sewing and child rearing. Although, she is sometimes credited for convincing her husband into acts of 'mercy' whenever he flew into a fit of rage. During her marriage and reign as queen, she gave birth to ten children. Eight of whom reached to adulthood. She was constantly pregnant most of her adult life. Only having a few months in between pregnancies and giving birth to her tenth child caused her untimely demise.

Reincarnated into the modern world, Maria woke as a young woman in her early twenties. She's a laid back woman and loves the experience of a good party or a night at a club. She's not as religious as she was in her past life. Not atheistic per se. She'll go to church if she feels like it and even wears a rosary bracelet as some sort of connection to her religion was raised and taught in. She has a friend with benefits that she has fun with weekly. She is 100% childfree in her second life because ten pregnancies in her past life was way more than enough for her. Despite being childfree, she still adores children so she had applied for uni and took up an education course. Graduating after four years and landing her first teaching job at a private academy where Hal and his siblings and cousins go to. That was where she reunited with Catalina during a PTA meeting and the two sisters have never been happier to meet again in their second lives. They then set up a meeting where she reunites with their older sisters, Isabella and Juana.

Maria Trastámara belongs to yours truly.

Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England

The youngest daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. Catherine was three years old when she was betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the English throne. They married but Arthur died five months later. She was the first known female ambassador in European history. Catherine subsequently married Arthur's younger brother, Henry VIII. For six months, she served as regent of England while Henry VIII was in France. In 1525, Henry VIII was infatuated with Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to her had produced no surviving sons, leaving their daughter, the future Mary I of England, as heir presumptive at a time when there was no established precedent for a woman on the throne. He sought to have their marriage annulled, setting in motion a chain of events that led to England's schism with the Catholic Church. When Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage, Henry defied him by assuming supremacy over religious matters. Their marriage was consequently declared invalid and Henry married Anne on the judgement of clergy in England, without reference to the pope. Catherine refused to accept Henry as supreme head of the Church in England and considered herself the king's rightful wife and queen, attracting much popular sympathy. Despite this, she was acknowledged only as dowager princess of Wales by Henry. After being banished from court by Henry, she lived out the remainder of her life at Kimbolton Castle, and died of cancer.

In her second life, Catherine or Catalina as she prefers to be called to avoid confusion with the other C/Katherines, found herself in a house with her ex husband's five other wives. Tensions were high on the first few months, especially between her and Anne Boleyn but the six soon got things settled and managed to create a family dynamic within their shared home. They created a musical about their stories and garnered quite the success. She mostly acts as the head matriarch of the house. Making sure that everyone was alright and knew not to cause any trouble that might get them hurt. The addition of their children being reincarnated made her even more attentive, caring and loving to her new found family.

[lucids]

Prince Harry And Meghan Markle Royal Wedding

Three articles

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Prince Harry And Meghan Markle's New Royal Titles Have Ties To This Anti-Slavery Supporter

Wow, they're in great company.

Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle are officially married. People have wondered what their royal titles would be in the United Kingdom. Well, the wait is over, as now we all know.

Prince Harry will be known as His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel. Meghan will be known forever as Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex, according to the royal collection.

She's the first person to hold the title, CNN reports. But she's in great company.

Behind every royal title, there's a story and meaning attached to it. The only other person to have the title of Duke of Sussex was Prince Augustus Frederick, son of King George III and Queen Charlotte.

Frederick was a passionate anti-slavery campaigner and an advocate for Catholics and Jews. This title was bestowed upon him in 1801.

As the son of what many consider England's first black royal, Queen Charlotte, Frederick's title being passed along to Prince Harry holds extreme historic significance.

The Queen chose their titles prior to Saturday's royal wedding. She chose from the customary titles of duke, marquess, earl, viscount or baron and women titles of duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess, and baroness. To be a named a duke is the highest honor. Typically, family members hold the title of duke or duchess.

Source: https://blavity.com/prince-harry-and-meghan-markles-new-royal-titles-have-ties-to-this-anti-slavery-supporter

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Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, KG, KT, GCB, GCH, PRS, FRSA (27 January 1773 – 21 April 1843) was the sixth son and ninth child of King George III and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. He was the only surviving son of George III who did not pursue an army or navy career. He was known for his liberal views, which included reform of Parliament, abolition of the slave trade, Catholic emancipation, and the removal of existing civil restrictions on Jews and dissenters

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Six Very Black Moments From The Royal Wedding That Had Us All Shook

We had no idea it would be this black.

For months now, we have impatiently waited for the royal wedding to unfold before us. Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle's highly anticipated union was expected to be historic in many ways.

But once the big day was upon us we were all shook from the bountiful display of blackness. Beautiful black people showed up and showed out as the world watched. Here are six of the blackest moments from Saturday’s royal wedding.  

Bishop Michael Curry brought down the house.

The Chicago-born bishop electrified hundreds of attendees at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. Curry turned the historically white church on its head by preaching with soul and about the power of love.

“We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will be able to make of this old world a new world. Love is the only way, “ he said in his sermon.

He stood in front of the royal family with pride and grace, reminding them of the horrors of slavery while also telling the world that survivors used their love for God to withstand hell.

“I’m talking about some power. Real power,” he continued. “Power to change the world. If you don’t believe me, well, there were some old slaves in America’s antebellum South who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform.”

A black choir sang like angels

An award-winning choir of beautiful black Brits led by director Karen Gibson filled the chapel with the sounds of a black church on Easter Sunday.

This 19-year-old cellist was the epitome of black excellence

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason was personally invited by Markle to perform at the wedding. And, man, he did not disappoint.

A black princess was on hand to show love

Hailing from the South African nation of Lesotho, Prince Seeiso and Princess Mabereng were at the royal wedding rooting for the happy couple.

Meghan's mom showed up looking as unapologetically black as possible

Doria Markle did not hide the things that made her black. She wore locs and a nose ring with absolute pride.

Black celebs showed up and showed out in their finest threads

Actor Idris Elba and his partner Nayiana Garth and tennis superstar Serena Williams showed up in stunning royal attire.

Also, Oprah Winfrey was in attendance, too, because... duh!

Source; https://blavity.com/6-very-black-moments-from-the-royal-wedding-that-had-us-all-shook

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Bishop Michael Curry Discusses Slavery And MLK In Royal Wedding Sermon, Gets Priceless Reactions From Royal Family

His sermon about love was a message for the world to hear.

Bishop Michael Curry was without a doubt one of the standout moments of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's grandiose royal wedding.

Curry's bold sermon Saturday set social media ablaze for its passionate words and unapologetic blackness, which likely left the royal family a little shook, too.  

Invoking the words of civil rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Curry preached in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle about the importance of love in all things that we do.

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it," he said to the royal wedding attendees. “We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will be able to make of this old world a new world. Love is the only way.”

The Chicago native, who rose up the ranks as a preacher to become the leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States, took the royals, Hollywood celebrities, and politicians off guard when he went on to mention slavery in his sermon as well.

“I’m talking about some power. Real power,” he continued. “Power to change the world. If you don’t believe me, well, there were some old slaves in America’s antebellum South who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform. They explained it this way: They sang a spiritual, even in the midst of their captivity. It’s one that says there is a balm in Gilead, a healing balm — something that can make things right. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.”

There was definitely no avoiding the looks on the royal wedding guests' faces upon this unexpected portion of Curry's speech.

The English played an instrumental role in the slave trade. The wealth that the British royal family enjoys today likely comes from the revenue made by enslaved West Africans toiling away in the New World for free. Curry's sermon reminded the chapel that those slaves' faith — their love for God — kept them alive.

Twitter took notice of how important Curry's words were at this moment, too.

Source: https://blavity.com/bishop-michael-curry-discusses-slavery-and-mlk-in-royal-wedding-sermon-gets-priceless-reactions-from-royal-family

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Comments:

"Bishop Curry is looking at Harry like "Act right" & now Stand By Me? Meghan just told the world who her people are no matter what. This is gorgeous #RoyalWedding"

"A black reverend preaching to British royalty about the resilience of faith during slavery is 10000000% not what I thought I was waking up for, the royal wedding is good."

"In 1619, the first captive Africans arrived in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. 399 years later, a descendant of African-American slaves and sharecroppers from North Carolina and Alabama delivered the sermon at a British #RoyalWedding."

After his words rang throughout the chapel, the Kingdom Choir full of black Brits sang a rendition of Ben E. King's 'Stand By Me.'"

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Marriages born out of Chilvary and Defiance: The Parallels Between KOA & Henry VIII and EW & Edward IV

Amy Licence points out that Henry and Catherine’s union echoed the chivalry traditions that the young King idolized, where the knight in shining armor delivered the maiden from her plight.

“At first, it seemed that the succession of Henry VIII marked an end to Catherine’s hopes. Since hearing the news Ferdinand had been attempting to secure the marriage, even finally raising the remaining 100,000 scudos from Spanish bankers. Fuensalida did not believe that it would take place, advising the princess to resign herself to the loss, and had even begun shipping her possessions to Bruges in anticipation of leaving England. The new king could have the choice of any young princess in Christendom. Perhaps the ambassador also feared that her reputation had been damaged by the Fray Diego scandal. Three weeks of doubt followed for Catherine. Then, on 3 May, Fuensalida was summoned to a meeting with Henry’s secretary, Thomas Ruthal, and his Lord Privy Seal, Richard Fox. He was astonished by what they told him.

Tradition dictated that Henry was lodged in the Tower during this time, but his council had met without him at Richmond. There they had debated the merits of the Spanish alliance and the need for the new king to father heirs. Apparently Henry had agreed with them, having been urged by his dying father to make Catherine his wife, yet the evidence suggests it was also by his own inclination.”

But there was another dimension to this, that also echoed his grandfather’s decision to marry Elizabeth Woodville -much to the surprise (and dismay) of his allies. Loades, in his respecitve biography on the six wives, says:

“Perhaps, like Edward IV, he was determined to demonstrate his independence, or perhaps he was taking his advice in a quarter which has never been detected. Whatever the truth, Fuensalida had no prior warning … The councilors seemed to have been as astonished as the ambassador by what they found themselves saying.”

Immediately, one of his councilors voiced opposition. Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Catholic Church in England, reminded him that the dispensation issued by Julius II wasn’t clear on the issue of the consummation. The document stated that there *may* have been a consummation, but Henry’s mind was made up.

This action sent a powerful message to his councilors: That he was subject to no one’s will (or criteria) but his own, and it would be a testament that many would come to know him by in the years to come.

Catherine for her own part, was overjoyed and saw this as God’s will, and the culmination of her parents (and her) ambitions. This was what she had been raised to. Her motto when she had been married to Arthur had been “Not for my crown.” Now she took one that spoke of her devotion to her new husband, as well as her acceptance as his Consort: “Humble and Loyal.” But, as Julia Fox wrote in her dual biography of Catherine and her older sister Juana, “appearances can be deceiving.”

Catherine was still an attractive woman. “She was more than a match for him” Licence notes. “Young, beautiful, royal and rich, they were the most glamorous couple in Europe.” And she his intellectual equal as well. Catherine had been taught subjects that were normally reserved for princes, and while she was still taught the domestic arts, she became an active participant in Henry’s reign during the first years of their marriage. She was the first one of his wives to be named Regent and after the English troops had defeated the Scots at Flodden, she sent James IV’s bloodstained coat to Henry (who was still fighting in France) with a note attributing her victory to him. Everything she did was carefully calculated so it showed the people that she was as she claimed, a humble and loyal wife. She was a politician as much as her parents, but she also believed that she was doing God’s work. When Henry sought to annul their marriage, Catherine despaired. Not only would she lose her position as Queen, but her daughter’s position was also at stake. She believed that she could be Queen, and rule as her mother had ruled in Castile, but England’s history with female rule wasn’t pretty. Two regents had plunged the country into chaos, and before them, Matilda (the closest thing England had gotten to having a female king in the middle ages) bid for the claim ended in civil war.

Catherine died in January of 1536. She signed her last letter as Catherine the Queen, maintaining that in spite of what Henry had done to her and her daughter, she still loved him and she would always be the Queen.

Sources:

Sister Queens by Julia Fox

Six Wives of Henry VIII by David Loades

Six Wives and the Many Mistress of Henry VIII by Amy Licence

The Woodvilles by Susan Higginbotham

Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones

[christinaepilzauthor-blog]

Lady Spy

by Linda Fetterly Root

When the new Spanish ambassador Don Pedro de Zuniga arrived in London in the early autumn of 1605, he was given the names of seven individuals who were 'pensioners' of the King of Spain, presumably aristocrats who had rendered service to the Hapsburgs. The names were not made public nor were they presumed to have been revealed to King James.

THE LIST OF SEVEN 

Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton 

Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire 

Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset 

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, the king's First Minister. 

Catherine Howard, Countess of Suffolk, Chief Lady-in-Waiting to the queen; wife of a principal peer.

Sir William Monson, Diplomat

Jean Drummond, first lady of the Queen's Bedchamber

This was a time in English history when aligning with the Spanish was a precarious course of action. The years between the appearance of the Armada off the Lizard in 1588 and the peace overtures of 1604 were not nearly enough to erase the terrors of the Armada years from the collective English memory. And if that were not concern enough, two months after the list came into the ambassador's hands,  the Spanish threat emerged again in the wake of the Gunpowder Treason. Anti-Spanish sentiment was again stoked and the new ambassador was forced into self-imposed house arrest at Spanish Place, guarded by a cordon of English soldiers. It would not have served the fragile peace had it become know that seven strategically-placed personalities at the Stuart court were  in the pocket of the Spanish.

Of the seven on the list, two were women. Six were either participants or, as was the case with the Duchess of Suffolk, closely associated with principals in the negotiations of the Treaty of London of 1603, an instrument that ended hundreds of years of hostilities and decades of actual war between the English and the Spanish. If the seven names were to be made public, the first six could stand behind an argument that King Philip III was merely thanking them for the successful conclusion of an enterprise as beneficial to England as it was to Spain.

Seated at the English side of the negotiating table at Somerset House where the Treaty of London was signed were Thomas Sackville, Charles Blount, Henry Howard and none other than Sir Robert Cecil, who was considered one of England's vociferous critics of the Spanish. The only male of the seven missing from the table was Sir William Monson, who had gone to Flanders as escort to the retiring leader of the Spanish-Hapsburg delegation, Don Juan de Velasco, Duke of Frias, who while in the portrait, was too ill to participate in the negotiations. Monson had strong personal ties to the Hapsburgs and his status as a pensioner should come as no surprise. Nor is Catherine Howard's inclusion a puzzle. Long before the autumn of 1605, she was a well known conniver with a propensity to assert herself into most matters of consequence, a Howard, and the wife of one of England's highest ranking peers. Sir Thomas had the title but his Countess had the brains. BUT, WHO WAS JANE DRUMMOND?

To the casual historian, there is no plausible explanation for the inclusion of the last name on the list unless she was a spy. Jane (Jean) Drummond, the only Scot on King Philip's secret list was an unmarried woman and the third child of a well regarded but remote Scottish Earl. What prestige she may have acquired as sister-in-law of Alexander Seton, the powerful Scottish Chancellor, faded when Seton set aside Lilias Drummond for the same reason Henry Tudor discarded Queen Catherine for Anne Boleyn. Yet, while Lady Jane seemed the least likely to be of value to the Hapsburgs, hers was among the largest grants. The grants were given at a time when Philip III was nearly bankrupt, which begs the question: what services did Lady Drummond perform to warrant extravagant gifts and an annual stipend of 2000 Felipes?

Unfortunately, one of the most comprehensive sources of information regarding the influence of Queen Anne's ladies, The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe, (an anthology edited by Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben) is priced out of the budget of most researchers. Also, as pointed out by Linda Porter in her journal article, The Politics of Female Households, (History Today, Vol. 64, Issue 6, June 2014), the anthology has the weaknesses of having been written by graduate students of varying talents and being poorly edited. However, the portion dealing with the household of Anne of Denmark has much to offer about Lady Jane which is not found elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it includes little of her history before Lady Jane Drummond accompanied Anne to England in 1603. For that, one must delve into the Scottish history of the years from the time of the King's marriage to Anne of Denmark and his ascension to the English crown when Elizabeth Tudor died in 1603. By then, Anne had already shown a preference for staffing her household with Catholics. Some modern historians argue that she did so with the king's knowledge and half-hearted consent. The popular opinion is he advised her to be discreet about it and agreed to look through his fingers if she kept her Catholic leanings in the closet. The king's ambivalence toward his wife's Catholicism raises the question of just whose agent Lady Drummond may have been. Recent research suggests if not an agent, she was at least a conduit for exchanges between the Stuart monarchy and the Catholic kings of early modern Europe which James wished to seduce to the peace table. Those who follow the politics of James Stuart's last few years as Scotland's resident king will recall he often lived apart from his Danish bride, Anne, whose sons were expected to live in separate households, a tradition which the queen found abhorrent and which caused an estrangement between the royals. When she was separated from her firstborn, Prince Henry Frederick, she launched an aborted attempt to kidnap him while James was occupied elsewhere. As was his nature, the king forgave her, but their relationship was never quite the same. As a part of her dowry, she had an entitlement to lands at Dunfermline and established a residence in the Abbey Palace where her second son, Charles I, was born. He was a sickly child, and thus there was no pressure from the Scottish lords to separate him from his mother. There was no political advantage and considerable risk in obtaining guardianship of a child who would likely die.

At the time of Charles Stuart's birth, the king's Scottish counselor and confidante, Alexander Seton, was still married to his first wife Lilias Drummond. They, too, had established a palatial residence at Dunfermline. It was likely during her confinement before the birth of her second son that the Queen met Lilias's sister Jane. At any rate, a few months after James Stuart's arrival in England to ascend the English throne in the spring of 1603, His Majesty ordered his consort to gather up their remarkable son Prince Henry Frederick and travel south, leaving unappealing, crippled Charles behind with his Chancellor and his second wife, Grizel Leslie. Queen Anne selected Jane Drummond to accompany her to Stirling to collect Prince Henry Frederick, heir-apparent to three kingdoms and a well-known crowd-pleaser.

By then she and Lady Jane were fast friends and co-conspirators. In the autumn of 1603 when the Queen arrived in London, one of Jane's first assigned duties was to staff the queen's household with priests disguised as servants, with the queen's confessor posing as her Majesty's falconer.   According to research contained in the book edited by Nadine Akkerman, Lady Jane Drummond's activities on behalf of the Hapsburgs and the Vatican were likely instigated by the queen and possibly sanctioned by the king, who possibly used them as a conduit to the Catholic kings with whom he wished to reconcile. This viewpoint is consistent with recent research indicating James I aspired to a legacy as the monarch who brought peace to the modern states of Europe by minimizing the religious differences between Protestant rulers and the Catholic kings. (see King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, W. B. Patterson, Cambridge Studies in Earl Modern British History, Cambridge University Press, 1997). Jane's relationship with the Spanish and likely, the Pope, were not the least bit casual. She had even been assigned the code name Amadis, from a character in a medieval romance novel. She was a single woman and could not have gained her pension as a means of exerting pressure on a well-placed husband, for she did not marry reformed Scottish reiver-cum-courtier, Lord Robert Kerr (later Earl of Roxburgh) until 1614, after his first wife died. Her stock in trade was her actual or perceived influence over the queen. Before he was replaced by Don Pedro Zuniga in 1605, the Spanish ambassador Don Juan de Taxis, Count of Villa Medina, personally requested Philip III to grant a stipend to Lady Drummond, citing the numerous times she had passed on valuable secret information. While the extent of her disclosures are not known, it is likely she was also used to pass messages to the Spanish from James I when he himself could not.

Anne of Denmark

After the discovery of the Gunpowder Treason in November 1604, the queen found it politically astute to cut back on her Catholic leanings, which made Jane's position critical insofar as it provided an avenue for the queen to maintain a clandestine contact with the Catholic European monarchies and the Vatican. However, the Queen and Jane had a a falling out in 1617 when Jane's husband, who was by then the Earl of Roxburghe, attempted to obtain the guardianship of Charles without first consulting either the king or the queen. The popular Henry Frederick had died in 1612, apparently of typhus, and control of adolescent Charles was indeed a power play characteristic of Lord Roxburghe. When Jane was expelled from the royal bedchamber, the Spanish discontinued the stipend, a rather clear statement of why it had been awarded in the first place. Logically, this should be the end of the story, but it is not. Jane Drummond did not disappear from the world of power politics when her relationship with Anne ended. By then, she had already gained the favor of the heir-apparent Charles. When he married the Catholic French princess Henrietta Maria, Jane's stars were in ascendance. She remained an important figure in the Court of Charles I until her death. The circumstances of her last mission were not fully known until last year when its details were reported in The Guardian.

THE DRESS:

The year 1642 found Jane Drummond, Countess of Roxburghe, in the household of yet another Stuart consort, Henrietta Maria, wife of ill-fated Charles I. She had known Charles since he was an infant in the Scottish household of Alexander Seton. Between the Setons and his mother, he had spent most of his early life in the care of Catholics, until he was placed in the care of Sir Robert Carey and his wife, Dame Robert. At some point after his marriage, Charles I wished to make the Countess of Roxburghe governess of his heir, the future Charles II, but the anti-Catholic faction at the English court balked. Nevertheless, Jane Drummond was appointed governess of his other children. Charles and Henrietta Maria's marriage is said to have become a love match, and the royal household, however stressed, was a happy one. Unfortunately, domestic harmony did not save Charles I from his shortcomings or his inability to adapt to change.

King Charles, his consort and his children

Charles I and his allies (PD Art)

A scant few months before the outbreak of what became the English Civil War, the king's consort and a few of her most trusted ladies sailed from Dover to the Netherlands, ostensibly to deliver the princess Mary, who was five, to the protection of her betrothed, William of Orange. But that was not the true reason for the trip. Henrietta Marie was traveling to Europe to pawn the Crown Jewels, in order to finance a Royalist army. It was a highly dangerous mission, both practically and politically. Many of Charles's failings had been attributed to his Catholic consort. While the details of the mission are unclear, the fleet of twelve ships in the Consort's convoy was shipwrecked off the Dutch Island of Texel. The royal party either survived or was not at sea when the storm hit. Reports of the shipwreck are vague. With England soon to be at war, the event was overshadowed. However, in 2014, Dutch divers found the wreckage of one of the ships and among the items salvaged was an elegant dress, heavily embroidered in gold and silver threads and wonderfully preserved.

Courtesy of the Texil Museum

The discovery was not widely publicized until the origin of the items could be researched, but thanks to circumstantial evidence, a newly discovered letter from Charles I's sister Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, and the research of Nadine Akkerman and her colleague Helmer Helmers, the dress is accepted by most historians as a gown belonging to Jane Drummond, Countess of Roxburghe. The claim is largely based upon its dated style and large size.  At the time of the shipwreck, the Countess was 46 years old, stout, and no longer a fashion trend-setter.  Her inclusion on the mission is a testimony to the degree of trust and high esteem in which she was held by the Queen Consort and by King Charles, who sought to entrust her with his children.  If the mission to  pawn the Crown Jewels had been exposed, more than just gowns and trinkets would have been sacrificed. Jane Drummond, Countess of Roxburghe, died the following year.  King Charles was beheaded at Westminster on January 31, 1649.

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Linda Fetterly Root is the author of seven novels set in Marie Stuart's Scotland and early modern Britain. She lives in the Southern California high desert and is a retired major crimes prosecutor. She is a member of the Marie Stuart Society, the California Bar and the Bar of the Supreme Court.

Hat Tip To: English Historical Fiction Authors

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Queen Elizabeth I of England & Ireland: Proof that anything is possible

One of the reasons I am fascinated with Queen Elizabeth I's reign is that it demonstrates that everything is possible. Sometimes the unlikeliest of events can come to pass and to quote from one of the most enigmatic characters in my favorite fantasy show (thus far -which might change now that Amazon has anounced that they will do a prequel series to lord of the rings which is rumored to be the Silmarillion) 'a small man can cast a very large shadow'. In this case this 'small man' was a woman and in spite of being the daughter of an alleged adulterer and traitor, she was crowned queen of England, Ireland and France and became the longest reigning monarch of her dynasty. Until Queen Victoria, she was also the longest ruling female King of England and to this day, she remains one of the most famous rulers in history.

This is also the reason why I love history, because unlike how they are often depicted in popular media, figures like Elizabeth show us that the path to greatness is anything but easy. Elizabeth wasn’t destined for greatness, circumstances out of her control brought her to that path. As she got older, she learned to play the game but unlike her rivals, she preferred to take a silent approach, a ‘wait and see approach’ that made her dangerous. Unfortunately, this silent approach didn’t always work.

When Mary I found out that Elizabeth had withheld important information regarding Wyatt’s rebellion and other Protestant uprisings against her, she ordered her to be arrested and taken to the tower. Since she was a king’s daughter and a queen’s sister, she was placed in luxurious rooms. And I use this word loosely since although the rooms were far better than those others of lower status were given, for Elizabeth they felt like the complete opposite. This was the same chamber that her mother had occupied during her time in the tower, first when she had been awaiting her coronation (while she was pregnant with Elizabeth) and secondly, when like Elizabeth, she had been arrested and sent to the tower to await her fate.

We can infer from Elizabeth’s tongue lashing at Count de Feria years later while she waited for her sister’s death so she could become queen, that this was an experience she never forgot and she must have thought of her mother, what she went through, what her expectations were at the time of her pregnancy, the joy she must have felt knowing that she would be the first (and likely the only) queen in English history to be crowned with the crown of St. Edward, a crown meant for Kings, and three years later, to reminisce on her past glory and her impending doom.

But while Elizabeth never recovered her sister’s favor, she managed to stay on the line of succession. Mary would not do what their half-brother did. Six days after her sister died, Elizabeth was given her royal ring. Like her Woodville namesake, the first royal consort of the House of York, it is rumored that Elizabeth received the glorious news while standing under an oak tree. She quoted one of the psalms, attributing her new fortunes to God, adding that it was something ‘marvelous’.

Like her grandfather and father, Henry VII and Henry VIII, Elizabeth aimed to become a symbol, something that would make men tremble and respect her. And she did. To this day, it is her legend that continues to dominate the historical narrative.

Elizabeth’s favorite motto was “Semper Eadem”: “Always the Same”. A constant Queen, a woman of her word, and someone whom the world could trust. Her actions however say otherwise but it is Elizabeth’s presentation and her words which acted as her sword and shield respectively, that managed to persuade people of this.

In the end, it was her truth which remained. Not only because of England’s growing nationalist sentiments, but because of her people’s discontent with her successors. People looked back to her reign with feelings of nostalgia, wishing to go back to the “good old days” when everything was golden, and Glorianna reigned over their beloved isle. But the ones who put her on a higher pedestal was the Victorians. This was a time when nationalist sentiments were higher than they had ever been and Elizabeth did not just become a beloved icon, she became semi-divine -something which Elizabeth had always aimed for since the beginning of her reign when she was compared to biblical heroines and goddesses like Deborah, Esther, Artemis and later on Hera and Athena's chosen one.

There have been many biographies of Elizabeth and like every source, you have to be careful because some tend to perpetuate some of the myths and legends regarding her reign, while others take the opposite turn and demonize her to make her rivals look better in comparison.So far, the best biography on the longest ruling Tudor monarch is by David Starkey, "Elizabeth: the struggle for the throne." Unlike many other biographies, David Starkey does not pull any punches showing his audience (once again) why he is among the best historians of our generation. I also recommend Leanda de Lisle's "Tudor", Linda Porter's "Tudors vs Stewarts", Alison Weir's "Life of Elizabeth I", Ian Mortimer's "Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England", Liza Picard's "Elizabeth's London", John Guy's "'Elizabeth: the Forgotten Years", Lisa Hilton's "Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince", and Sarah Gristwood's "Game of Queens."

The last three go into great detail about Elizabeth's relationships with other foreign queens. For example, the Sultan's mother and for a time his regent as well, Safiye Sultan, Catherine de Medici, Jeanne III of Navarre, among others. With Safiye Sultan, she exchanged many letters and judging by these alone, you can tell that the two women deeply admired and respected each other. Elizabeth I would often tell her ambassador to go directly to her rather than the Sultan since Safiye was the one who was really pulling the strings there.