#Birthright Part II

[thedarkcornerwithdjevildave]

Brand and Dave review Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6, Episode 17, Birthright Part II.

[thecraggus]

Craggus' Trek Trek Phase II Vol 18

[anotherocean]

THE SEED IN YOUR SOUL:

This reading is about a dream your soul has for you. This is my second PAC reading and it's like a compass for your soul-- something you deeply desire, something that is already occurring on some level, and something that has seeds within you already. Please feel free to pick more than one pile, or pick them all, or just pick one. This is meant to be a glance at something essential inside you that popped out at me, and some advice moving forward toward a more complete realization of it. Please let me know if you found this helpful or if it resonated! :)

PILE I. You are so beautiful to me Pile 1, and your life is abundant with riches. There is SO MUCH peace here. You can finally rest. The energy I see is you on a tropical island swinging in a hammock without a care in the world. You are allowed to take life as slowly as you want. You really appreciate the sensuality of things. Really truly. That’s what makes you rich. The abundance spills forth from there, and you have the money to cover all the basics (and more) without worry. You even have enough money to take care of your loved ones it seems, which is something that matters to you. You want to share so much of what you have, and that's part of what makes you feel rich too. You’ve carved out a gorgeous life for yourself, and that life is just for you. It doesn’t look like a life that anyone has ever seen before. It’s fully YOURS... you invented it! If the word “mine” isn’t your guiding word, it should be. You are learning about all the things that are yours, and it makes you truly rich. You can live your life in secret if you want. Or you can live it very loud and big. There is a duality to you. Somehow your legacy in life is both very small and very huge. You live both a very secret life, and a very public one. You acquaint yourself with the riches of the world and live in true luxury, as personally defined by you.

Advice: You’re coming off of a really hard time it looks like. Recognize the difficulties you’ve been through. Honor them. Address concerns you have about security and how that may be holding you back. Security is your birthright, but it is a state you can feel without obsessively pursuing it and valuing it above all else. RELEASE your regrets for how you wish things could have been. People and situations are flawed. We are flawed. Life doesn’t always take the twists and turns we like, and it’s your time to move on. It’s time to step away from those things and embrace your confidence, your fire, your passion. Aim to complete what you’ve started and begin afresh. It’s the end of a cycle and the beginning of a glorious new one. You are headed for exciting new opportunities and the feeling of inspiration is just around the corner.

PILE II.

My graceful and gorgeous pile 2. Letting your body be completely free makes you really happy, and this is something you feel allowed to do privately.  You are utterly unique and solitude just allows you to stretch out into that.  You loooooooove to be alone, and it is a truly gorgeous thing.  I think a lot of the time solitude gets a bad rap, but this pile is all about the gorgeousness that comes from really getting to enjoy your own company, and the world around you.  You are EXTREMELY sensual and I mean sensual with a capital SSSSSS.  Your greatest joy is pure quiet, and the sounds of nature.  From this place of solitude, and a deep knowing, you find absolute and utter, tranquility.  Maybe this is a pile that has experienced pain or trauma or power struggles but that is all over.  It’s like all the nature you’ve surrounded yourself with has just sucked it out of you completely.  Your body is going to take over.  I keep getting that this is maybe a scary thing, but it shouldn’t be.  You are 100% aligned with something holy.  Deep down I think you know this.  Anyway, the divine will wash over you.  Just say thanks, or say nothing at all, and melt.  You are here for this kind of bliss. You are absolutely absorbed into a spirituality that many people would die to experience just a fraction of.  You are existing on other wavelengths entirely, and what a stunning thing that is.

Advice: You’re undergoing a massive transformation.  Embrace the upheaval you are going through.  Move away from rigid thinking (“this is the way it should be”).  Rules and adherence to rules are not your friend right now.  You will still want to use your mind to think clearly, but be playful and inquisitive as you do it.  Ask a lot of questions and be curious.  Understand too, that emotional pain may be part of the process toward what you most want right now, and that is okay, it will only make your heart stronger and you more beautiful.  Let joy, friends, community and camaraderie lift you up and be part of your healing process.

PILE III

Right away I get the glory of good food!  Of nourishment!  This is just the surface.  You have absolutely incredible, deep-in-your-body physical confidence.  You are an athlete, a chef, someone whose whole world depends on their body.  Still, you are going to the gym, making the smoothies, swimming, dancing, your world is revolving around your physical self.  You get massages.  In a sense you are free to worship yourself.  You are free to worship your world.  Judgements from other people (and there are some) only thrill you, and you might even enjoy the fiery friction.  Sexuality is a part of your life, and it’s tied to your creativity.  You are of the body, by the body and for the body.  You get the pleasure of standing up for what you believe in.  You are some kind of star.  Something old-fashioned even.  Or there is something about the way you live that is old fashioned.  Or your notoriety (fame?) is old fashioned somehow… You are my most musical pile.

Advice:  You are setting out on a brand new adventure right now—how thrilling.  I can feel the potential and excitement.  You are a bit concerned about the long term stability of your plan and it’s holding you back a bit.  There is some hesitation, and it might be hindering your progress.  Don’t be so conservative right now, but also don’t be reckless.  There is a bit of a push-pull between a conservative approach, and a devil may care attitude.  Balance your enthusiasm with steady and thoughtful planning.  Above all else, embrace collaboration and teamwork.  Recognize the importance of collective efforts.  I promise that even if this does not relate directly to your goals, that peripheral collaborations will still help you.  Learn from people around you.  My other word of advice is take time to rest and recollect.  Be diligent, responsible and practical and be in it for the long haul.  There is stability in that alone, which should give you some comfort.  Practicality without conservatism will do you a world of good right now as you set out on your exciting new path.

PILE IV

You are a traveler down to the deepest parts of yourself.  You see the world and different people in the world, and make connections everywhere you go.  You rush hurriedly from one flight to another, and then you find yourself somewhere exotic and your world gets bigger and your whole mind expands.  It’s like the drapes were drawn in your living room for your whole life and now you’ve finally opened them letting light stream in, and even the windows are open and fresh air is finally getting inside.  You see so many things.  Greatest mountains, other oceans, animals and flora and fauna of other worlds.  In a sense you are like an alien walking on earth and just want to see as much of it as possible before you have to leave.  You are so free.  You step so lightly in this world, and with so much joy.  You go to cafes you’ve never been to, shops you’ve never been to, temples and fragrant forests where the caterpillars are huge and orange and you reach out and touch one out of curiosity.  You are a true citizen of the world, and deeply connected to humanity.  Your travels do not alienate you, they deepen your roots to Earth and connect you with your global family.  

Advice: You are on a new path, perhaps related to the material world or financial comforts.  There are real tangible beginnings now.  What’s holding you back are indecision and possibly procrastination.  Let go of indecision and avoiding the task at hand.  Make a decision and move forward with it… at some point in the future it might be appropriate to make adjustments, but not right now.  Right now you must embrace your vision and your confidence.  Be bold!!!!!!!!!  You might encounter worry, fear, anxiety but face it head on.  Don’t try to deny or hide away.  See the fear for what it is and have a direct confrontation with it (sometimes this is the war in our mind).  Persevere and value your resilience.  Say thank you to yourself for it.

=====

I hope you enjoyed this reading! I may eventually do paid services if people want additional info or clarifying questions. Very grateful to help and hope some of this information resonated with you. I had fun doing it and the hours slipped away. Put in my inbox or in comments if you want to see me focus on a specific reading.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 15, 2025 (Thursday)

Heather Cox Richardson

May 16, 2025

Perhaps in frustration, this season’s writers of the saga of American history are making their symbolism increasingly obvious.

Today the story broke that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document. More than 700 years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law.

King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed to the terms of the document on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow a little less than an hour from London near the River Thames. After the king had raised taxes, barons rebelled, insisting that he was violating established custom. There were rumors of a plot to murder the king, and the barons armed themselves.

Those two armed camps met at Runnymede, where negotiators for the king and the barons hammered out a document with 63 clauses, mostly relating to feudal customs and the way the justice system would operate. But the document also began to articulate the principles central to modern democracies. The Magna Carta established the writ of habeas corpus—a prohibition on unlawful imprisonment—and the concept of the right to trial by jury.

Famously, it put into writing that: “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.” It also provided that “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

The Magna Carta placed limits on the king’s ability to tax his subjects and established the law as an authority apart from the king. Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter. If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends.

The original charter did not last. King John convinced the pope to declare the document illegal because it circumscribed the power of the monarch, and in reaction, barons fought for the rights outlined in the Magna Carta. After the death of King John in 1216, the Magna Carta was confirmed and reissued, becoming an accepted part of the understanding of British rights. In 1297, and then again in 1300, King Edward I reissued the Magna Carta and confirmed that it was part of England’s law.

The copy in Harvard’s possession is from 1300. Harvard bought the document after World War II for $27.50, about $500 today. It is one of seven original copies of the 1300 Magna Carta, and in the United States of America in 2025, it is priceless.

In the early 1600s, King James I and King Charles I both reasserted the power of the king. Jurist Sir Edward Coke used the Magna Carta to insist that longstanding English customs guaranteed liberties to British subjects and required the king to comply with the law. There were limits to a king’s power to tax his subjects and his power to punish them.

This legal struggle was unfolding just as British subjects were colonizing the North American continent, and the charters of the new colonies echoed Coke’s arguments. The 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, for example, established that colonists and, crucially, the children they might have in the colony, “shall have and enjoy all liberties and Immunities of free and naturall Subiects.”

As constitutional scholar Mary S. Bilder notes, lawyers and political figures put into the documents of the early British settlement of North America the belief that liberties were the birthright of English subjects. That belief informed colonists’ opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, which imposed a new tax to which they had not given their consent and called for those who violated the law to be tried not by a jury of their peers but rather in admiralty courts. The Massachusetts Assembly declared the Stamp Act to be “against the Magna Carta and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void.” British politician William Pitt told Parliament: “The Americans are the sons not the bastards of England.”

In September 1774, as tensions between the king and the colonists intensified, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and wrote a declaration of rights and grievances, claiming the liberties guaranteed by “the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts.” Showing the unity of the colonies, the Congress published an image of 12 arms holding a column crowned by a liberty cap and resting on the words “Magna Carta.”

In 1776 the colonists threw off the monarchy to establish a government based on the idea that all people must answer to the law. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” In 1776 the new states were writing their own constitutions that defended their liberties, including their protection from loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law.

That concept went directly into the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment provided that no “person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment applied that principle to the states as well as the federal government, saying: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Harvard document is not the only Magna Carta in the U.S. In 2007, philanthropist David Rubenstein bought a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta from former presidential candidate Ross Perot. It was the only copy in the U.S., and Perot had permitted the National Archives to display it. Rubenstein bought the document for $21.3 million, hoping to keep it in the U.S. “to ensure that Americans could continue to see it, and to thereby be continuously reminded of its importance to our country.” He promptly lent it to the National Archives for public display, “as modest repayment of my debt to this country for my good fortune in being an American.”

And yet the fundamental principles on which the government of the United States is based are under attack. In an interview that aired on Sunday, May 4, President Donald J. Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he “didn’t know” if persons in the United States had a right to due process. When Welker reminded him that the right to due process is written into the Fifth Amendment, he said: “I don’t know. It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.”

Musician Bruce Springsteen has no doubts about those rights, embedded as they are in the country’s DNA. At a concert in Manchester, England, yesterday, he warned: “In America, the richest men… [are]... abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.” He criticized lawmakers who have “no…idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

And yet, Springsteen told the crowd: “The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people, so will survive this moment.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[winterscaptain]

A Joyful Future Masterlist - Part I

Aaron Hotchner x Female Reader  Aaron Hotchner x Gender Neutral Reader

updated: november 15th, 2021 total finished works: 166 works in progress: 23 planned works: 107

summary: canon-divergent, big family!au

currently working on absence part ii and the mean-it era

beta’d by @ssaic-jareau​, without whom none of this would be possible

resources and links: 

inspo blog + media folder

faq + cheat sheets 

headcanon masterlist 

to-write list 

find upcoming fics here | join my tag list! | submit an idea! 

please read faq and key before asking a question! 

▶ episodes i’m planning to adapt for ajf ✸ smut - explicit sexual content (18+ only, minors dni) ✦ suggestive content - non-explicit suggestions of intimacy, drinking, etc. ☰ fem!reader (all other fics are gender neutral) ◎ graphic/edit ✂ director’s commentary ☎ podfic 

Part I: Cicatrize

Ao3 Link

2007

Advocate Cicatrize ✂ | 3x01 "Doubt" - 3x11 "Birthright" Ambition Aaron Hotchner's Letter of Recommendation ◎

2008

▶ Working Title: Reflections | 3x05 "Seven Seconds" ▶ Working Title: Worser Instincts | 3x16 "Elephant's Memory" ▶ Working Title: Developments | 3x17 "In Heat" Dreaming ✦ Intellectual Guesswork | 3x19 "Tabula Rasa" Familiarity | Crossover: NCIS 5x19 "Judgement Day, Part II" Focused | 3x20 "Lo-Fi" - 4x01 "Mayhem" Constellations | 4x02 "The Angel Maker" Buffer Through and Through | 4x03 "Minimal Loss" ▶ Working Title: Milestone | 4x05 "Catching Out" Players Bedtime ▶ Working Title: Grounded | 4x07 "Memoriam" Pride | 4x08 "Masterpiece" Dead Man's Hand ☰ | 4x09 "52 Pickup" Unfair Midnight ✦

2009

At Risk Part I | 4x10 "Brothers at Arms" - 4x11 "Normal" At Risk Part II | 4x12 "Soul Mates" - 4x13 "Bloodline" A Kindness | 4x16 "Pleasure is My Business"

Part II: Fear Itself

Ao3 Link

2009

No Deal | 4x18 "Omnivore" ▶  Working Title: TBD | 4x21 "A Shade of Grey" Collision | 4x23 "Roadkill" ▶  Working Title: TBD | 4x24 "Amplification" Outnumbered Fear Itself | 5x01 "Faceless, Nameless" Enough ✂ Infirmity | 5x02 "Haunted" Push | 5x04 "Cradle to Grave" 5x05 "The Eyes Have It" Nightmare Realized | 5x09 "100" Hands | 5x09 "100" Nightmare Recalled | 5x09 "100" Stay Arrangements An Unrivaled Force of Nature | 5x10 "The Slave of Duty"

2010

Exceeding Expectations | 5x11 "Retaliation" Three's Company Sunburnt ▶  Working Title: TBD | 5x18 "The Fight" A Horrible First | 5x16 "Right of Passage" Unbecoming | 5x21 "Exit Wounds" ▶  Working Title: Blackout | 5x23-6x01 "Darkest Hour/Longest Night" An Opinion

Part III: Berry Hill

Ao3 Link

2010

A Real Hero | 6x09 "Devil's Night" Short Notice Berry Hill ▶ Working Title: Berry Hill (Aaron's Version) Two Inches Stowaway ✸

2011

No Help A Chance of Snow Waldosia | 6x18 "Lauren" - 6x24 "The Big Sea" Absence | 6x24 "The Big Sea" - 7x01 "It Takes a Village" Mean It ✸ ☰ | 7x01 "It Takes a Village" Mean It (SFW + Gender Neutral) ✦ | 7x01 "It Takes a Village" Firsts ✦ Impression Gossip: A Prelude ✦ ☰ Surreal About Time Second Best Obligated | 7x10 "There's No Place Like Home" Conspiracy The Pleasures of the Elder ✦ ☎ Not Complaining ✸ Mistletoe ✦ ✂ Bring It ✸

2012

Gifts & Notices Symptoms Hide

Masterlist Part II

Masterlist Part III

[novaursa]

The Flames We Loved (dark baptism)

This is one of my darker works. If it's not your cup of tea, skip it. All warnings are up for this additional part of the story.

Happy Halloween! 🔥🩸

- Summary: You are called to Aerys' chambers. A ritual that is familiar to you, one which always happens in wake of his burnings. But this time is more unholy than ever before.

- Pairing: daughter!reader/father!Aerys II Targaryen

- Note: You can place this scene everywhere you wish in the story's timeline.

- Rating: Explicit 18+

- The first part of the story: prelude

Ser Jonothor Darry and Ser Gerold Hightower flank you, silent and unmoving as they escort you through the darkened corridors of the Red Keep. Their faces remain impassive, revealing nothing of what lies ahead, but you feel it—the ever-thickening dread that seems to claw at your skin. Your father, the King, has summoned you, and you already know what this night holds by the strange energy in the air, like the silent fury of a storm building over Blackwater Bay.

As you approach his chambers, the heavy scent of smoke and copper clings to the air. Blood—fresh, potent—fills your senses. Ser Gerold opens the door, his white cloak barely brushing your shoulder as you step inside, and your heart seizes at the scene laid out before you.

The room is dark save for the dancing flames in the hearth. A dragon egg, dormant yet pulsing with a life long snuffed out, rests in the embers, radiating a feverish heat. But it is the blood—spattered across the floor, the walls, even the bed’s silken sheets—that halts your breath. It drips like a sacrifice offered in some forbidden rite, and you realize, horrified, that the blood is his. Your father’s.

He stands before the bath, skin pale and ghostly under the smears of red that trail from his chest, arms, and hands. Cuts line his flesh, jagged, cruel things, like he’s waged a silent war against himself in the throne room. Aerys’s eyes, wild and unchained, fall upon you with a strange, predatory glint as you step forward.

"Father," you murmur, throat tight. "What happened? Why are you bleeding?"

His expression shifts, his mouth morphing into something halfway between a smile and a sneer. He raises a hand—bloodied, trembling slightly—and gestures for you to come closer. "Y/N," he says, your name falling from his lips like an invocation. His voice is thick, weighted with something dark and unholy. "The Iron Throne does not yield easily to mere men."

Without breaking his gaze, he motions to the bath, its water shimmering faintly in the firelight, waiting. "Undress," he commands, his tone leaving no room for hesitation.

Your hands shake as they move to the fastenings of your dress. The fabric slips from your shoulders, pooling at your feet, and you feel exposed, vulnerable in a way you cannot name as his gaze sears across your bare skin. You take tentative steps forward, lowering yourself into the bath. The water is warm, almost scalding, but it does little to ease the chill sinking into your bones.

Before you can fully adjust to the heat, Aerys is there, sinking into the bath beside you, the water turning crimson as it mingles with the blood from his wounds. His hands find your face, his touch harsh yet feverish. The fierceness in his eyes flares, and he presses his lips to yours, fierce, hungry, claiming. The taste of copper stains your tongue as his kiss deepens, consuming, as though he intends to devour every part of you.

"Do you understand, daughter?" he murmurs against your lips, his words slipping into Valyrian, a language as ancient as the dragons themselves. "The blood… it is our birthright. It is the legacy we pass on, the fire within our veins."

His hands roam over your skin, leaving bloody trails in their wake, the red smeared across your pale flesh like a lover’s caress, an artist’s mark. He moves with purpose, his body pressed tightly against yours, and when he enters you, there’s no tenderness, only an unrelenting intensity that steals your breath.

A gasp escapes you, involuntary, and a twisted amusement lights his face. He strokes your cheek almost mockingly, leaning down to whisper, "Does it frighten you, my sweet? The blood? The power that thrums beneath your skin? It should. It is a gift few are worthy of."

His pace quickens, his hands gripping you tightly as he continues to move within you, his breathing ragged, punctuated by muttered words in perverted Valyrian, half-prayers, half-madness. And then, his hand reaches for something beside the bath, a flash of metal catching the firelight. You barely have a moment to understand before he draws the blade across the skin just above your breast, a quick, sharp slice that makes you cry out.

“Shh,” he murmurs, a mockery of comfort as he presses his hand to the wound, his blood-stained fingers mingling with yours, your blood running together, sinking into his skin as though binding you to him in a way words never could. "Do you feel it?" His voice is low, almost reverent. "Our blood as one, a union of fire and flesh."

His lips find your neck, trailing down to the fresh cut, where he drinks in the sight of your blood with a fevered gaze. "You are mine, Y/N. As I am yours. We are bound by blood and by fire, by destiny and by madness. There can be no other."

Each movement, each thrust, feels like a command, binding you tighter to him as his words sink into your mind like a brand. The water swirls around you both, darkened with blood, the scent of iron and smoke heavy in the air, a grotesque ritual binding you to the Mad King, your father, in a way that feels both holy and damnable.

And as he moves within you, his words grow softer, becoming a chant, a prophecy, spoken only for you. "We are the blood of the dragon, daughter. Ours is the fire that shall never die. And in the end, the world shall burn, and we shall watch it burn together."

As your bodies move in sync, your breaths merge, shallow and gasping, his hands rough yet steady as they hold you firmly in place. The intensity builds, like fire caught in a tempest, and you cling to him, fingers digging into his shoulders, holding on as if you are the only things keeping each other tethered to this world. The iron-scented water sloshes around you, crimson and murky, but you are too lost to care. His eyes blaze into yours as you both reach that blinding height, his mouth turning into a near-manic grin as he basks in your grasp, your shuddering breath against his blood-streaked skin.

Your gaze drifts, just for a moment, falling upon the dragon egg in the hearth. It sits lifelessly amid the flames, long turned to stone, a relic of a time and magic that seem long gone, yet it calls to something deep within you—a shared memory, a yearning for the impossible. You feel the weight of it in your chest, the hollow ache of something that will never truly be reborn.

Aerys notices the direction of your gaze, his hands cradling your face. He presses his forehead to yours, a rare, fleeting gentleness in his insanity. "It will awaken someday," he murmurs, his voice soothing, almost tender, as though he’s comforting a child haunted by nightmares. "Our blood, Y/N, our fire. One day, it will return, and the world will tremble as it did in days of old."

He kisses your temple, his lips ghosting over your brow, calming you with the ease of someone who has held you since infancy, as if his words hold an unspoken promise that everything, no matter how twisted, is as it should be. "But it needs sacrifice," he whispers, as if sharing a secret. "And we are both made for this, aren’t we?"

The bathwater, still tinged with the remnants of his blood, feels heavier as he pulls you to your feet. His grip is possessive as he leads you from the crimson-stained waters, not sparing a glance at the mess of diluted red that remains behind. He draws you to the bed, a glint of satisfaction in his gaze, and you follow, half-dazed, a strange warmth filling you as his fingers tighten around your hand.

As dawn approaches, he finally loosens his grip, and you drift into an uneasy sleep beside him, his arm draped over you like a claim etched into your very soul. The silence is heavy, almost oppressive, the room filled with the lingering scent of iron, smoke, and something darkly primal, bound by the memory of his feverish touch.

The servants enter the room with the first light of morning, their footsteps hesitant, almost fearful, as if they sense the aura of something forbidden before even crossing the threshold. The scene before them stills their breath—blood pools around the edges of the bath, drying into dark streaks upon the floor, the sheets tangled and streaked with red, as if an unholy rite had been performed in the dead of night. Their eyes widen as they catch sight of the stone dragon egg in the hearth, its black surface cracked and scorched, as though touched by something unearthly.

One servant dares to look upon you, lying beside the king in a deep slumber, your skin still marked with the faint streaks of his blood. He holds you possessively, his hand splayed over your shoulder, his fingers stained with dried crimson. Even in sleep, his grip upon you is fierce, binding, as if he would never allow you to leave.

Another servant averts her gaze, swallowing against the horror curling in her stomach as she approaches the bed. She shudders, her hands trembling, but Aerys’s eyes snap open before she can even reach for the sheets. His gaze is piercing, feral, and the servant stumbles back, her cheeks blanching as his lips curl into a twisted smile.

“Did you come to see the remnants of our union?” he asks, voice low and mocking, the hint of mania bleeding through. "Look upon her,” he commands, his hand moving to rest against your cheek. “Look upon the blood of dragons made flesh, the fire reborn. We are eternal, she and I."

The servants exchange wary glances, their faces pale, eyes flitting between each other as though afraid to look directly at either of you. Aerys’s laugh fills the chamber, hollow yet ringing, a sound that seems to seep into the stone walls, leaving an imprint that will haunt the room long after dawn has faded.

"Tell them," he murmurs, voice dark and soft as he settles back beside you, eyes drifting closed once more. "Tell them the blood of the dragon is more than they could ever understand."

[brightlotusmoon]

Opinion | Don’t Believe Him

Ezra Klein, Feb. 2, 2025

Look closely at the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second term and you’ll see something very different than what he wants you to see.

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. …

All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to —

Michael Kirk: What was the word?

Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.

But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.

The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.

I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?

The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.

But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.

This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

[stardust948]

Revised Steambabies headcanons (plus Azula Redemption)

About 3 years after getting married, Zuko and Katara had their first child, Izumi. She looked just like Ursa except with blue eyes and wavy hair like Katara’s. Izumi was clearly a waterbender, which raised concern on who would take the throne. Times were slowly getting better, but the Sages and Nobles still refused to have a waterbender on the Fire Throne. Nonetheless Zuko and Katara fought hard for their daughter to keep her birthright.

About three years later, when Katara was heavily pregnant with their second child, a coup takes place and an assassin made an attempt on Izumi's life. Zuko saved her but Izumi's eye was cut badly, leaving a permanent scar. Cruelly in the same place as Zuko’s scar; something Zuko never truly forgave himself for.

After escaping, the royal couple sought help from June and her apprentice in training Mai. Commotion happens. They retake the palace just in time for Kya's arrival. She's identical to Azula with rich brown skin like her mother.

With the recent coup and new daughter, Zuko is spurred to visit his twin sister. Upon arriving at the asylum, Zuko discovered the abuse going on there. He fired the staff, got the girls actual help, and brought Azula to her old room in the palace.

Azula was not fairing well after years of abuse in the asylum. She was malnutritioned, head shaved, and mute. Nothing the royal couple did helped. Not until Kya, now a toddler, sneaked in and showed Azula her flames. The next day, Azula was gone. No amount of searching could find her.

Life goes on. The gaang find Ursa who was thrilled to meet her granddaughters.

Tensions rose as Kya's firebending grew and formed a rivalry with Izumi. Not nearly as bad as Zuko and Azula’s but it was still there, which greatly worried Zuko. Katara oftened played mediator and ensured the girls got along for the most part. The parents taught the girls both waterbending and firebending and encouraged them to learn from each other.

Years later, when Zuko and Aang are summoned back to the Sun Warriors temple to pick up the dragon egg, they find Azula alive and well. She had been accepted into the tribe and was in a much better mental state. The siblings make up, but Azula refused to return to the Fire Nation. She asked Zuko to keep her fate secret but gave letters addressed to Mai and Ty Lee. Zuko promised to deliver them.

When the girls were 10 and 8, Katara had a surprise pregnancy. The surprise furthered when the baby turned out to be twins! No one picked up on it because their heartbeats were in sync with each other.

Iris and Iroh II both greatly resembled Katara except with purple eyes, which is a rare blue-eyed mutation. Both are nonbenders. Despite being identical, the twins' personalities couldn't be more different. While Iris was extroverted and took a liking to weapons, Iroh II was more introverted and preferred reading Ursa’s plant books.

Zuko had the hardest time connecting with his son thanks to the lingering trauma from Ozai, but they eventually bond over plays and literature.

Izumi and Kya also make up in their teens. Izumi willingly stepped down as Crown Princess and trained to take over Katara’s former job as Southern Water Tribe ambassador. Kya left train with her aunt Azula and the Sun Warriors for a while before taking over the throne. Iris moved to Kysohi Island and became captain of the warriors when Suki stepped down to start a police force in Republic City. And Iroh II studied medicine in the Northern Water Tribe.

Despite being spread all across the world, the family still made time to reunite a couple of times a year.

[romulanalpine]

Very interesting! In the TNG episode Birthright II (06 x 17), the planet Khitomer was shown as part of the Romulan Star Empire. It's an official Federation star map.

[atopvisenyashill]

Do Aegon and Aemond show/have any personal interest in Rhaenyra because she exudes a nurturing presence, given that both seem to seek that type of comfort in their lives?

hmmmmmmmm.

For Aemond, in both books and show, i think the answer is no. I think Aemond is very just massively bogged down in this very black and white view of the world and unwilling to see shades of gray. Things that are part of the natural order and tradition are right and you must do anything and everything to keep things right; any wrong you do is forgiven because you are attempting to get back to The Correct Order. Any deviance from that order should be swiftly punished. And of course, he sees himself as the sole arbitrator of what is good and what is bad. This is why he's so fixated on Daemon; I think he sees Daemon's ability to be confident, to rise high, to remain influential despite being second born as incredibly impressive and wants to emulate it, but in The Good Way because Daemon Is Bad.

Aemond is play-acting at a story where he's the hero and Daemon is his shadow self and has tunnel vision; I genuinely don't think he thinks about Rhaenyra much at all beyond thinking of her as the Whore to his mother (and helaena's) Madonna. He doesn't think her of a mother any more than he thinks of her as a woman, really. She's simply The Enemy, simply Rhaenyra the Whore, the Cunny Queen.

For Aegon that's a bit more complicated. In the books, I think there's an implication there that Aegon has a bit of a latent fascination there. Most of his ire is directed at her sons and not Rhaenyra himself - he takes issue with Jacaerys dancing with Helaena, he fights with the boys during practice, etc - and the few bits of dialogue we get are often Aegon speaking about Rhaenyra:

Moreover, the prince at first refused to be a part of his mother’s plans. “My sister is the heir, not me,” he says in Eustace’s account. “What sort of brother steals his sister’s birthright?” Only when Ser Criston convinced him that the princess must surely execute him and his brothers should she don the crown did Aegon waver. “Whilst any trueborn Targaryen yet lives, no Strong can ever hope to sit the Iron Throne,” Cole said. “Rhaenyra has no choice but to take your heads if she wishes her bastards to rule after her.” It was this, and only this, that persuaded Aegon to accept the crown that the small council was offering him, insists our gentle septon.

Aegon II was two-and-twenty, quick to anger and slow to forgive. Rhaenyra’s refusal to accept his rule enraged him. “I offered her an honorable peace, and the whore spat in my face,” he declared. “What happens next is on her own head.”

“Sister,” he called down from a balcony. Unable to walk, or even stand, he had been carried there in a chair. The hip shattered at Rook’s Rest had left Aegon bent and twisted, his once-handsome features had grown puffy from milk of the poppy, and burn scars covered half his body. Yet Rhaenyra knew him at once, and said, “Dear brother. I had hoped that you were dead.” “After you,” Aegon answered. “You are the elder.” “I am pleased to know that you remember that,” Rhaenyra answered.

There's something here I think. An even more twisted version of Daemon's issues with Viserys, a sort of mirror to Viserys III and Dany. A fascination with her, at what might have been between them if they were a bit closer in age, if Viserys had been less stubborn and short sighted. There's a hatred here that I think is rooted in the fact that they could have married, that she could have been his. I suppose it's more of an implication than anything, but I do think that yes, Aegon is fascinated with Rhaenyra, drawn to her a bit, and some of his hostility towards her sons is this sort of "if she had married me they'd be trueborn and we wouldn't have this problem" idea, as a bit of a mirror to Daemon and Viserys being very aware that if Daemon was a girl they could have married.

The show is where, imo, you get into Aegon being attracted to her because Rhaenyra very much identifies herself as a Loving Mother to the outside world; she even specifically points to the rumors about her sons when she's talking to Mysaria as one of the points against her. The whole show is very focused on motherhood, especially (imo) on mothers and their sons; and again while Aemond's story is more preoccupied with his own mother, there's this implication between Rhaenyra and Aegon here. He feels like he can never measure up to Rhaenyra, who is perfect in every way - Viserys loved her more and of course he did because Rhaenyra is a kind mother to all her children, has a loyal husband willing to go batshit insane for her at a moment's notice, has this sort of easiness about her that he is incapable of emulating. During the dinner scene in season 1, there's several points where you can see Aegon clearly staring at her and Daemon. In the carriage scene with Alicent, he is very fixated on the fact that Viserys never liked him. Then, in season 2, a lot of his crumbling comes when he is unable to measure up to that Kingly Ideal (while Rhaenyra is in the middle of rising to it). There's that conversation with Larys where Aegon calls himself the realm's delight, which was what Rhaenyra is called.

I think not dissimilar to Daemon, Aegon has an incredibly hard time sorting through his feelings and drawing lines between different sorts of emotions. Married to one sister and deeply aware that he almost married the other. Constantly reaching out emotionally to a mother that is incapable of connecting to him despite her clear connection to Helaena (the sister he didn't want to marry) and her fondness for Rhaenyra (the sister he almost married). I think he looks at the way Rhaenyra's children and stepchildren all seemingly get along and support each other and feels like That Should Have Been Him. His longing is not for power but emotional intimacy, yet he is incapable of connecting to and understanding the vulnerabilities of the people he wants to be emotionally intimate with; he doesn't understand why his mother hates him for raping Dyana, he doesn't understand why Aemond hates him for all the teasing, he can't bring himself to connect to Helaena because he resents their marriage, he can barely bring himself to connect to his own kids! I think this deep longing for love really manifests itself as hatred towards Rhaenyra; the line between passion and hate is very thin after all!

[agentrouka-blog]

Do you think Sansa would mind that Robb disinherited her? I haven’t read all the books, but I recently saw a Sansa’ quote that she never thought to have a claim

Well, he didn't disinherit her. He placed Jon ahead of her in the line of succession in order to foil the Lannister plan of claiming Winterfell through her.

Ultimately, I think this move would hurt Sansa far less than the knowledge that he could have traded for her but chose not to. Though I doubt GRRM will take the time to explore that. Sansa connects no personal ambition to her claim, though she grows to connect it to her sense of home and belonging and return.

Sansa always had a place in the line of succession. The quote you refer to highlights how unlikely she considered it to become relevant:

But she had not forgotten his words, either. The heir to Winterfell, she would think as she lay abed at night. It's your claim they mean to wed. Sansa had grown up with three brothers. She never thought to have a claim, but with Bran and Rickon dead . . . It doesn't matter, there's still Robb, he's a man grown now, and soon he'll wed and have a son. Anyway, Willas Tyrell will have Highgarden, what would he want with Winterfell? (ASOS, Sansa II)

Later, she is well aware of what this claim means for her. It makes her a target of other people's ambitions.

Tyrell or Lannister, it makes no matter, it's not me they want, only my claim. (ASOS, Sansa III)

At least I am safe here. Joffrey is dead, he cannot hurt me anymore, and I am only a bastard girl now. Alayne Stone has no husband and no claim. And her aunt would soon be here as well. The long nightmare of King's Landing was behind her, and her mockery of a marriage as well. She could make herself a new home here, just as Petyr said. [...] The thought made Sansa weary. All she knew of Robert Arryn was that he was a little boy, and sickly. It is not me she wants her son to marry, it is my claim. No one will ever marry me for love. But lying came easy to her now.  (ASOS, Sansa VI)

GRRM begins the next chapter by having Sansa rebuild the entire castle from memory using snow. Which is pretty heavy-handed symbolism that depicts - without spelling it out - a growing sense of identification with her claim, with the role of bearing the legacy of House Stark and Winterfell. It is not ambition so much a responsibility and personal attachment that guides her.

The next books culminates with a re-emergance of her claim's importance:

 Jon Arryn's bannermen will never love me, nor our silly, shaking Robert, but they will love their Young Falcon . . . and when they come together for his wedding, and you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden's cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back . . . why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright. So those are your gifts from me, my sweet Sansa . . . Harry, the Eyrie, and Winterfell. That's worth another kiss now, don't you think?" (AFFC, Alayne II)

Regardless of the actual sincerity of this plan on Littlefinger's part, we are painted a credible image of what Sansa's claim means politically, and she accepts this function of her claim.

To find out that this claim is removed from her would always be ambiguous and depend on context. If she is displaced by Bran and Rickon, it means her beloved brothers are alive. She would be jubilant. If she is displaced by Jon Snow, she may feel more conflicted in knowing her brother Robb disposed of her relevance in this way and how her mother would have felt about it. This might also play into initial concerns on her part how Jon will deal with the competiton that her claim presents in a world where bastardy carries social stigma. It may well put her in danger from other people's politics again.

That is IF Robb's will even becomes public knowledge. GRRM may well keep its impact focused on what it means to Jon in tandem with the reveal of his parentage - giving him two optional identities to privately choose from that cancel out each other.

[talonabraxas]

Eheieh Asher Eheieh – “I become who I am.” אהיה Eheieh is a Tetragrammaton or four lettered word that represents Kether, the Father of all lights, the infinite. Through the Tetragrammaton the light “Asher” becomes the Tetragrammaton.

Harness The Power “Worlds of IF”, Sept. 1967 Gray Morrow The Formula of Tetragrammaton in the Gnostic Mass

Tetragrammaton is a Greek word meaning “Word of Four Letters,” and refers to the Hebraic Name of God, hwhy, which is commonly known in the West as Jehovah. This name has always been held in supreme regard by kabbalists as a Name of great power and symbolic meaning. The letters of this Name have been attributed to the four elements, the four suits of the Tarot, the four worlds of kabbalism, and all other conceivable quaternaries. On the Tree of Life, they are typically attributed to the Sephiroth of Chokhmah, Binah, Tiphereth, and Malkuth. Aleister Crowley describes the Magical Formula of Creation represented by this Word in Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 3; and in The Book of Thoth, Part One, Section II and Part Two, Section 0. The reader is referred to these writings for a fuller explanation of some of the basic concepts used in this essay.

Hadit (Kether) is each of the infinite number of infinitesimal points which make up the universe. Nuit (Ain Soph) is the continuous space occupied by the discontinuous Hadit, the Whole of which is divided for Love's sake by separation of the single point Hadit. The Hebrew letter Yod, y, is by shape a point. The name of the corresponding letter in Greek is iota, which means a “jot” or “bit.” Yod is attributed to the Sephirah Chokhmah, but the uppermost tip of the letter is attributed to that of Kether. The Hebrew letter h is Heh, which means “window,” referring to an open space. Heh is attributed, among the Supernals, to the Sephirah Binah. The polarity between Yod and Heh, Chokhmah and Binah, can therefore be seen as that of Hadit and Nuit, as reflected down into the Father (Chaos) and the Mother (Babalon).

The Hebrew Letter w, Vav, attributed to the Sephirah Tiphereth, means “nail,” referring to a fastener, or that which joins two things together. Vav, therefore, reflects the union of the Father and the Mother at point of intersection. By shape, it is an extended Yod: the Father extended downward. The final letter Heh, h, attributed to the Sephirah Malkuth, represents the manifested result of this union.

Yod is the King, wedded to Heh, the Queen. Their Union brings forth Vav, the Prince, the Heir; and Heh-Final, the Virgin Princess. The mission of the Prince is to make the Princess his bride, to set her upon the Throne of the Mother; and as the Princess becomes the Queen, the Prince is enabled to claim his birthright and thus becomes the King. We read in the Fourth Aethyr of The Vision and the Voice: “And this is that which is written: Malkuth shall be uplifted and set upon the throne of Binah. And this is the stone of the philosophers that is set as a seal upon the tomb of Tetragrammaton, and the elixir of life that is distilled from the blood of the saints, and the red powder that is the grinding-up of the bones of Choronzon.”

[ofaugury]

( vanessa kirby  / cisfemale / she/her ) — DR. SELENE CALDER has been living in Port Leiry for TWO YEARS. They currently work as a PRINCIPAL BALLET DANCER, and are THIRTY-TWO years old. No one is sure if they’re actually a WITCH or if they’re connected to CIRCLE OF AUGARY. They tend to be quite INDEPENDENT and APATHETIC, but can also be DRIVEN and CUNNING.— '

tw: mention of parental death

tl;dr: divination witch who processes her time magic through movement, specifically ballet and is now slowly slowly learning martial arts. can see five seconds into the future, sees the possibilities mapped out in front of her, and is growing that power. lone wolf, grew up in london as part of the circle of augury coven. dealt with ballet and physics hand in hand growing up. mom was a professor of theoretical physics, selene got cocky in her readings of the future and played her mother's death. came to port leiry two years ago to study under tetsuya as his protege and is continuing to stitch together how time and movement come together in her magic. has just learned about the voiceless. has ambitions that are slowly unfolding. currently is a principal ballerina. in the dark of the night she dreams about being a witch who hunts hunters.

about under the cut I penned by rey

ORIGINS

name: dr. selene calder

age: thirty-two

sexuality: bisexual

creative touchpoints: chronos (hades ii, ambitious time witch). moira mactaggert (x-men). natasha romanoff (marvel, fighter ballerina trope). dominika egorova (yes that character from that meh movie ‘red sparrow’, but it’s the fighter ballerina trope’ here as well). caine wise (from jupiter ascending? i’ve never seen jupiter ascending, but i hear that this character has a similar ability - to see a few seconds into the future. guess i gotta watch jupiter ascending). the apathetic time traveller trope. exhausted genius trope. protege who just won’t give up trope. more machine than man trope. 

alignment: true neutral, scooting towards neutral evil

species: witch (divination, time, can see five seconds into the future, always)

hometown: london, england

affiliation: circle of augury

occupation: principal ballerina, protege to tetsuya miyazaki (and that shit is a full time job on its own)

family members of note: n/a

BACKSTORY

GERMINATE — Richmond & Battersea | Ages 0-8

You begin in Richmond, raised beneath Georgian cornices, cricket-field hush, and the quiet vigilance of the Circle of Augury, your family’s diviner-coven. Your mother’s parlor is an orphanage for clocks; every tick pronounces your inheritance: absence. You listen to antique clocks until their ticking becomes the first language of your magic.

At three, they ferry you across the river to Battersea’s Royal Academy of Dance—tiny studio, high windows, the smell of rosin and rain. Every plié prints your birthright on polished wood. You discover that a plié is just a second folding, and a relevé is a second released.

SPROUT — Edgeware, Clerkenwell & Richmond Park | Ages 9-13

Mornings: the red-brick halls of North London Collegiate School in Edgeware—Latin roots, calculus seeds, prized uniforms. You memorize proofs in the margins of poetry, turning academics into choreography for the mind.

Afternoons: District Line south to the Central School of Ballet in Clerkenwell—ceilings fan-high, pianos forever mid-chord. You trade sweat for certainty, carving grace into muscle the way cartographers carve coasts.

Weekends: uniform traded for leotard at White Lodge, Richmond Park, where the Royal Ballet School Junior Associates drill port de bras beneath deer-watched oaks. Here your intuition first flares: a stumble foretold, a reprimand fore-felt. You learn the deer in Richmond Park move a heartbeat before the wind, and you copy them.

STEM — White Lodge Dormitories | Ages 14-17

Full-time residency inside that 18th-century manor—dorm beds under cracked plaster frescos. GCSEs by lantern light, Oxford-trained tutors visiting from Magdalen to cram differential equations into your sleepless skull. Foresight sharpens: one second, two. 

Seventeen: the mis-plotted salvation in a Richmond kitchen—broken glass, arterial bloom—your mother dying because you trusted mathematics over mystery. Grief roots deep; certainty curdles. You miscalculate one shard of glass and inherit the echo of your mother’s last breath.

BRANCH — Covent Garden & Camden | Ages 17-24

Daylight onstage at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden—you, an apprentice carved in spotlight.

Nightfall lectures at Birkbeck, University of London in Bloomsbury—physics chalk dust, streetlamp gold. You balance particle physics on the edge of midnight lectures and let your future-sight bloom between equations.

Home: a cramped Camden Town flat above a jazz bar, walls pulsing with strangers’ trumpets. You fall asleep to trumpet solos, certain syncopation can teach time new tricks.

At twenty, you transfer to Imperial College London in South Kensington; your lab badge reads Centre for Fundamental Physics. Between Piccadilly stops you annotate futures, stretching vision to five seconds. You split atoms of causality in sterile labs, coaxing four whole seconds of tomorrow into your palms.

BLOOM — South Kensington & Covent Garden | Ages 25-29

Doctoral work in Imperial’s Blackett Laboratory—cryogenic hum, lasers threading midnight air. You watch lasers tremble and wonder if the universe shivers when it notices you watching back.

Evenings you crown the stage as Principal Ballerina back in Covent Garden, pointe shoes bleeding through satin. You swirl through Swan Lake and hear the audience gasp on cue—because you cued them.

Twenty-nine: dissertation defended—Temporal Embodiment and the Limits of Human Perception in Accelerated Systems—inside an oak-paneled room off Queen’s Gate; applause rings like distant thunder. You answer each question three beats early, letting professors believe they interrupted you by accident.

TRANSPLANT — Port Leiry | Age 30-Present

You trade London’s tube map for Port Leiry’s salt-slick streets. Goju Martial Arts smells of cedar and sea-spray. Dawn drills of wind-stepped kata teach you how air denies prediction. Dusk finds you experimenting in alleyway cafés, nudging strangers’ fortunes like threads through a loom. You chase the wind until it turns and chases you, testing whether prophecy can break a gale.

Then rumor: the Voiceless stalk your mentor. Memory of a Richmond kitchen ignites. You chart defenses along cobblestones, weaving five-second halos into traps of perfect causality. This time the pattern will hold.

THE FOLD — How Your Magic Works

Time is not a river to you; it is origami—white paper that blossoms into infinite creases the instant you look. Probabilities hover like translucent petals, each edge a glowing contour. A choice flickers, and dozens of silhouettes overlap: the step she might take, the word he might say, the bullet bending left instead of right. You taste futures the way sommeliers taste oak—notes of sorrow, sparks of triumph, metallic after-scents of danger. You pluck the filament you prefer and tug; moments rearrange themselves, obedient as silk on a loom. Every tug, though, leaves a static sting—reminder of glass once misjudged, the blood price of imprecision. So you fold and refold until the paper threatens to tear, listening for destiny’s heartbeat under your palm.

FRUITION — Everywhere Time Bends | Now

You stand poised between heartbeat and horizon. From Kensington lecture halls to Port Leiry docks, the map is stitched inside you—pivot point where ballet meets physics, prophecy meets will. A young god’s first lesson is to break what she loves; her final vow is never to mismeasure the heart again. You thread the world on invisible wire, tug once, and watch destinies rearrange like beads on a string.

Step. Turn.London, Port Leiry, the yet-unwritten world—all sway as you pull the strings.

WANTED CONNECTIONS  —

AUGURY - Coven connects from here or abroad

TRAIN - Give me someone for her to train with, now that she’s learned about the Voiceless, your girl wants to fuck them up for evening thinking about coming after Tetsuya 

PUPPET - Give this girl someone to practice her magic on, she wants to try mapping out probabilities 

TROUBLE - Give her trouble. Open to interpretation

and really, everything else in between! people with benefits, people who like her ballet, hunters to be enemies with.

[anyplaceisparadise]

The Use of Colour in Gladiator II: Honourable Mentions

Alright, this is it for real this time. Here are my honourable mentions/things I noticed while working on this that didn't really warrant their own posts.

One final time: I referred quite a bit to some of my favourite books, The World According to Colour: A Cultural History by James Fox, The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair, and Emperor of Rome and SPQR by Mary Beard while working on this. I highly recommend all of them! These are definitely not mind blowing ideas here, just stuff that came to me because this movie has given me a severe case of brain rot. If you disagree, that’s cool. If you’ve mentioned any of this before, I love that we’re on the same wavelength. If you think this is ridiculous and I’ve gone off the deep end, you are correct.

Here are the previous posts: White Yellow Purple Brown Black Pt. 1 Black Pt. 2 Red Blue Green

Here's a little bit on gold, silver, and ginger.

I thought I would use this honourable mentions post for the colours that were used so rarely that it would be super a super short post and not worth it. Turns out, I had a lot to say about pretty much every colour used in this film... except for the one used the most.

Gold.

Just about every single character wears gold at some point or another in this film. And since we're dealing with the upper echelon of Roman society here, it's not surprising. So I thought it was a bit silly to have a post that just said, 'yep, gold represents wealth. Gold represents privilege.' Because we don't really have any other examples of characters using it to signify anything else in any other context other than these are the folks at the top of the pyramid. It was just so in your face that it seemed pointless.

But then I thought... no, there is one thing I can say about gold being used to show the status of a character. And that comes from the one character that wore gold the least.

Lucius gets a little bit of gold in his outfit before the fight at Thraex's party. He even gets some sweet gold bangles to wear too.

The gold here contrasts with what he is expected to do. It also contrasts with who he is as a character. He's been taken from his home twice now, forced into gladiatorial games, forced to kill, forced to survive, but in truth, his birthright is to rule Rome. It should be him on the couch being entertained rather than the twins. The gold hints at that here.

On to silver.

As far as I can recall, the only character to wear silver is Geta.

He also only wears silver in combination with black (in the second one he's also wearing gold). Considering this, and considering that it is Geta that wears silver, I'm going to take a little dig at him and say that the silver represents his high status, but puts him in second place. Second place in terms of what, Allie? Well, I guess if we take in the context of each scene here, the common denominator is that he gets humiliated in both. So I guess he's coming in second place in life. Second place with Caracalla, perhaps, second place in comparison to the Marcus Aurelius blood line. Sorry, Geta.

I mentioned in the post on black (part 1), that the use of metallic colours in combination with black was reserved for the emperors.

That's not entirely true and I recognized that recently. Because Acacius also wears black and gold:

I wasn't really sure if I wanted to include this considering it's armour, but I've talked about armour before so here we go. Acacius is a high ranking general, so obviously he gets some gold in his armour. We don't know his connection to Lucilla at this point in the film, so we could argue that the gold hints at his link to the leaders of Rome.

On to ginger. I'm including this because when I was re-reading The Secret Lives of Colour while making this series, I came across her thoughts on the colour ginger and my brain rot went immediately to the twins.

"Those with red hair are stereotyped as fiery and intense- just like the ginger root" (The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St. Clair, pg. 104). And we definitely see that in the film with how the twins are portrayed.

"Dio Cassius described Boudicca, the ruler who for a short time terrorized the Roman invaders, as having a flowing mass of red hair. (Although, as he was writing nearly a hundred years after her death, he may have been saying this purely to make her sound even more fearsome and exotic to his dark-haired Greek and Roman readers.) (The Secret Lives of Colour, pg. 104).

So we've got the link to ancient Rome there, but hold on, here comes the brain rot:

She goes on to write about a mass of bones found in Spain. It was discovered that the bones were actually very, very old, and belonged to a Neanderthal family. "Enough evidence remained to show that two of the individuals had bright red hair. They were the victims, rather than the aggressors." (pg. 106).

And can we not agree that while the twins are indeed aggressive, angry, hurtful little dudes, they are also victims too?

Speaking of hair. One thing I noticed that I thought was kind of cool was Lucilla's hair.

Lucilla often wears laurels (or at the very least its a gold, sparkly headband) as well. She doesn't wear them all the time, not when she's in more casual or secretive circumstances, but she does wear them. Except when things start crashing down around her, her hair starts being styled a bit differently:

No longer does she get laurels. She gets a braid to simulate laurels, and a little gold clip thrown in. Her birthright is being taken away from her, and it's shown in her hairstyles.

Finally, I just wanted to add that doing this series made me absolutely adore Macrinus' outfits. I already liked him as a character, but looking at the combination of colour and prints and when he wears them was so interesting and fun. Best dressed character for sure! This one is probably my favourite:

And I think that's it. I think I've exhausted this, finally. I'm so thankful for everyone that read it! I was also asked for my take on the colour blue in the first Gladiator and I definitely plan on doing that, but I'm really not sure if I'll do a whole colour series for that. In any case, thank you again for reading!

[ackerfics]

family line — a house of the dragon fanfiction | aegon ii targaryen x oc — masterlist

AESIRA TARGARYEN is not her father’s daughter.

He may have played a part in how she wailed in her first duet but she doesn’t crave bloodlust the way he did when he slayed the masked monsters that terrorised minds and cut off men’s cocks for their crimes. She’s sure that when the gods flipped her father’s coin, it never landed, still flying in the air — he was both a slayer of men and a natural doer of sins and debauchery; a figure so loved and so stigmatised by those who weren’t likened to the deities of the Old and the New. She doesn’t have the urge to swipe the throne from underneath the court’s eyes, doesn’t have the urge to soil and taint the innocence of her younger nephews — straying them from their birthright. Though named after a fairy tale warrior children revered so much, she steers clear of anything that her father ever touched. The way of the sword and warfare circulates her twin brother’s blood. Being the best dragonrider is her little brother’s dream, never hers. 

She is not her father’s daughter.

While the second prince who had nothing to inherit (but the cries of the people) wore their House with pride, she thought it was a burden to carry. She knows the gods knew on which side her coin landed but she tries hard enough to erase it. (Can she truly change her fate, though? When the whispers in between the red bricks haunt her so about how deep her parentage is?) Instead of wearing the blood red and the coal black of their colours, she chooses everything easy on the eyes; pastel demeanour and soft disposition — I am light and he is dark; I am separate from the blood running in my veins; I overcome him through thick and thin, as the novels and the sayings go — Light conquers Darkness whichever way you see it. 

She is not her father’s daughter.

Why would she be if he abandoned her and her siblings as he married the next innocent thing? Why would she consider him as her father when her twin brother cried about him never loving their mother one night when they were five name days old? Why should she be his daughter when he couldn’t even look her in the eye when the day required the family to be together?

She will never be her father’s daughter.

But she is in every way her mother’s. The lies flowing from her mind are all inherited from how her beautiful, lovely, caring mother crafted them as the woman stroked her slender fingers through the waves of her hair, “He will come back to us, darling sweetling; He loves you both so much and this little one I’m carrying as well.” Because of her mother, she can lie to save millions.

However, the anger she holds for her father makes her burst all of the edges of her being. She wants to stab him with her brother’s sword, make him hurt like the way she has been hurt when he gave them his back. Scream at him until he becomes deaf with how loud her thoughts are. The more she thinks about what could have been, the more she can see the coin the gods flipped at her birth. The madness of loneliness is truly the most pitiful thing. She’s surrounded by people who claim to love her but she longs for the family in her distant nightmares — the one that lights up a hearth in the cold of the longest winters in the lands, sharing blankets on the carpeted floor; one that rings laughter and padding feet on stone floors and expansive windows; one that has a father and a mother to cherish. She wants to burn down everything with her dragon’s flames so that everyone can feel the heavy, suffocating grips preventing her heart from breathing. She wants to claw her eyes out after hearing the remark that she has that lilac shade everyone keeps saying a certain prince holds, just as she carries the last name he is so proud of.

We are not the same. We are not the same. We are not the same. We are not the same—

And as she stares into the looking glass, all she can see is her father’s face.

There’s nowhere to hide from the truth.

AESIRA TARGARYEN is truly her father’s daughter — a piece of greatness and madness meshed into one.

AEGON TARGARYEN, the second of his name, is not the prince that was promised.

The weight of being the unnamed heir is too much for even the Skybearer to handle. He doesn’t want the moulded circlet of heavy stones simply because he knows he is the living embodiment of a disappointment — to his father who wistfully stares at the only piece his first wife left behind, to his mother who he stole a girlhood from, to his grandfather who had dreams bred out of greed and thirst for power, to everyone who dares glance at the king’s firstborn son with irises lined with disbelief. He doesn’t have to hear their words to know what they were thinking. This poor boy with wine for his blood and daring exhibitions for a daily schedule … is the most awaited son of The Peaceful King? The blasphemy is horrendous.

He is not the prince that was promised.

Because of how his father doted on his older sister even when the woman gave birth to two bastards and is pregnant with probably another one, he’s not the heir — Seven Hells, he’s not even the spare. A large part of him is whispering that it’s better this way. More time to inebriate and find himself in the places that he felt most comfortable with, where adventures welcome his insatiable need to discover. The thing about never being the apple of his father’s eye is that he can be free or as free as Mother and Grandfather allow him to be. It means he can marry for love (prays to the gods that he does; he can only think of one person anyway), and have spontaneous trips to the streets of King’s Landing with his closest friend — it means breathing through the littlest areas of his life. Yet a smaller (most likely better) part of himself dyes the roots of his static silver hair into the most melancholic shade of blue at the fact that it’s easy for Father to be this neglectful of his other children that don’t bear the name of his greatest delight. Everything he did, it was for Father. All of it to feel the sliver of pride he reserved in a waterfall for the loved child. 

He is not the prince that was promised.

It’s seen in the way Mother looks at him. He’s convinced she doesn’t love him. Mothers are supposed to love their children, people say; but not when you’re the reason why she has to accept the heaviness of reality. Her anger manifested the more he grew up. A single misstep is all it took for her to shout his name. All of the things he did (he tried learning a different language in the dead of the night, read the books recommended to him by the Septa, practised the sword until he perfected the right grip, tasted dirt in his mouth with how much he stumbled) but it will never be enough like his entire existence isn’t enough for her. And despite wishing she could love him more, he strayed even further to not feel the harsh sting of her rings, which resulted in Mother taking back the smallest amount of love she has for him.

He will never be the prince that was promised.

The first sip of alcohol, when he was a babe, cemented his dependency on his eleventh name day. The numbness, carefreeness, and the occurrence of fading into black that it brings is absolutely freeing. He’s the god of intoxication and the patron of exhilaration. Nobody can touch him.

Except for one.

His personal Maiden, the girl who sauntered in the Red Keep clutching her baby brother close to her chest, the beauty every beholder says is the image of salvation, the hands that he doesn’t mind cupping his face — the remembered princess of the realm. She is in every gasp of air he intakes; in the corners of the halls; in the whispers at the back of his head, urging him to look at her from the corner of his eyes as if she’s the secret the castle never tells; in the thoughts plaguing him; and in the dreams that paint different kinds of smiles on his lips. She always smells like the lemon candies her brother munches on, the pastels she wears are ingrained in his core memory; the books her hands have touched are extraordinary; the scrunch on her face, when she finds something borderline revolting in her walks across the castle, is beyond adorable; and the way her face lights up as she picks the next ugly insect that she will give to his own sister stuns him in place. Fuck him to the Sevel Hells and back, he’s consumed with her. It’s amazing how because of her, he is willing to change. Why consume all the cups in all the lands, when a single glance at her, he’s already under the influence of her existence? It’s a fact he only realised upon reaching a certain age.

One look at her and he sees himself being a better man and a better competitor for the throne.

She is a constant in his life.

AEGON TARGARYEN, the second of his name, is not the prince that was promised, oh, no.

But with his AESIRA by his side, it will be through his bloodline that this promised prince will breathe their first breath. 

And with all this chaos, there is you.

contents:

act zero: the prince and the siren

act one, chapter one: aesira and aether, aether and aesira

act one, chapter two: the red-bricked road

act one, chapter three: little boy gone

act one, chapter four: first, a dead wife; second, a dead mother

act one, chapter five: the birth of the golden

act one, chapter six: the queen of love and beauty

act one, chapter seven: ravens caw, dropping strings on smooth palms

act one, chapter eight: matters of the heart

act two, chapter one: the story has yet to be written ...

an aegon x oc story bc my love for what could have beens overpowered my need to enjoy my vacation <33

reply or send an ask if you want to be added to the taglist !! mwa

[misfitwashere]

May 15, 2025 (Thursday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 16

READ IN APP

Perhaps in frustration, this season’s writers of the saga of American history are making their symbolism increasingly obvious.

Today the story broke that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document. More than 700 years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law.

King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed to the terms of the document on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow a little less than an hour from London near the River Thames. After the king had raised taxes, barons rebelled, insisting that he was violating established custom. There were rumors of a plot to murder the king, and the barons armed themselves.

Those two armed camps met at Runnymede, where negotiators for the king and the barons hammered out a document with 63 clauses, mostly relating to feudal customs and the way the justice system would operate. But the document also began to articulate the principles central to modern democracies. The Magna Carta established the writ of habeas corpus—a prohibition on unlawful imprisonment—and the concept of the right to trial by jury.

Famously, it put into writing that: “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.” It also provided that “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

The Magna Carta placed limits on the king’s ability to tax his subjects and established the law as an authority apart from the king. Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter. If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends.

The original charter did not last. King John convinced the pope to declare the document illegal because it circumscribed the power of the monarch, and in reaction, barons fought for the rights outlined in the Magna Carta. After the death of King John in 1216, the Magna Carta was confirmed and reissued, becoming an accepted part of the understanding of British rights. In 1297, and then again in 1300, King Edward I reissued the Magna Carta and confirmed that it was part of England’s law.

The copy in Harvard’s possession is from 1300. Harvard bought the document after World War II for $27.50, about $500 today. It is one of seven original copies of the 1300 Magna Carta, and in the United States of America in 2025, it is priceless.

In the early 1600s, King James I and King Charles I both reasserted the power of the king. Jurist Sir Edward Coke used the Magna Carta to insist that longstanding English customs guaranteed liberties to British subjects and required the king to comply with the law. There were limits to a king’s power to tax his subjects and his power to punish them.

This legal struggle was unfolding just as British subjects were colonizing the North American continent, and the charters of the new colonies echoed Coke’s arguments. The 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, for example, established that colonists and, crucially, the children they might have in the colony, “shall have and enjoy all liberties and Immunities of free and naturall Subiects.”

As constitutional scholar Mary S. Bilder notes, lawyers and political figures put into the documents of the early British settlement of North America the belief that liberties were the birthright of English subjects. That belief informed colonists’ opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, which imposed a new tax to which they had not given their consent and called for those who violated the law to be tried not by a jury of their peers but rather in admiralty courts. The Massachusetts Assembly declared the Stamp Act to be “against the Magna Carta and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void.” British politician William Pitt told Parliament: “The Americans are the sons not the bastards of England.”

In September 1774, as tensions between the king and the colonists intensified, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and wrote a declaration of rights and grievances, claiming the liberties guaranteed by “the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts.” Showing the unity of the colonies, the Congress published an image of 12 arms holding a column crowned by a liberty cap and resting on the words “Magna Carta.”

In 1776 the colonists threw off the monarchy to establish a government based on the idea that all people must answer to the law. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there oughtto be no other.” In 1776 the new states were writing their own constitutions that defended their liberties, including their protection from loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law.

That concept went directly into the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment provided that no “person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment applied that principle to the states as well as the federal government, saying: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Harvard document is not the only Magna Carta in the U.S. In 2007, philanthropist David Rubenstein bought a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta from former presidential candidate Ross Perot. It was the only copy in the U.S., and Perot had permitted the National Archives to display it. Rubenstein bought the document for $21.3 million, hoping to keep it in the U.S. “to ensure that Americans could continue to see it, and to thereby be continuously reminded of its importance to our country.” He promptly lent it to the National Archives for public display, “as modest repayment of my debt to this country for my good fortune in being an American.”

And yet the fundamental principles on which the government of the United States is based are under attack. In an interview that aired on Sunday, May 4, President Donald J. Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he “didn’t know” if persons in the United States had a right to due process. When Welker reminded him that the right to due process is written into the Fifth Amendment, he said: “I don’t know. It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.”

Musician Bruce Springsteen has no doubts about those rights, embedded as they are in the country’s DNA. At a concert in Manchester, England, yesterday, he warned: “In America, the richest men… [are]... abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.” He criticized lawmakers who have “no…idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

And yet, Springsteen told the crowd: “The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people, so will survive this moment.”

—