#Count to ten {Philip Paris}

[anironsidh]

I posted 594 times in 2022

32 posts created (5%)

562 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fanficmemes

@sir-libearian

@ringsandbutterflies

@deadandphilgames

@strange-aeons

I tagged 390 of my posts in 2022

Only 34% of my posts had no tags

#dan and phil - 50 posts

#daniel howell - 44 posts

#phan - 30 posts

#ospbb 2022 - 26 posts

#danisnotonfire - 24 posts

#phandom - 24 posts

#old school phandom big bang - 22 posts

#anastasia - 21 posts

#anastasia 1997 - 20 posts

#dracula daily - 18 posts

Longest Tag: 127 characters

#update everyone tagging this with their/their friends fav ocs is so cute i love you people im scrolling thru my notifs in tears

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Day three of maylorweek 2022, still going strong, a mood board for a single parent Roger x teacher Brian au I'm working on 😁

@beatlegirl1968 #maylorweek2022

24 notes - Posted July 23, 2022

#4

For the @phandomgiftexchange , my gift for @upintwenty ! I based this off of the prompt, slice of life and fluff, and the idea of the fic that I thought of (between ospbb and work it didn't happen lol) but I was glad to be able to practice my art skills 😁

I used magic poser and Sketchbook for this piece, then InCollage to add the watermark and edit slightly. Tumblr messed with the quality, but I hope y'all like it 😄

26 notes - Posted July 9, 2022

#3

For day four of Maylor week 2022, an old married couple type aesthetic 😁

@beatlegirl1968 loving this prompt for today!

30 notes - Posted July 24, 2022

#2

Presenting my @carryonthroughtheages art piece!

Continuing on from my Anastasia obsession (literally just did an Anastasia au for the ospbb), that's the theme for this art! Ft Simon as Princess Anastasia and Baz as Dmitri!

Using MagicPoser and Sketchbook, one version without the background.

40 notes - Posted September 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Knew I'd Find You Again || OSPBB fic 2022

Announcing my fic for this year's @oldschoolpbb event, an Anastasia au combining the movie and musical, from the end of the Russian empire to the wonder of Paris. Featuring Phil as the missing Grand Duke Philip Lestov of Russia and Dan as Daniel Howlov, a conman working alongside Cornelia in a scheme to find an imposter and gain a reward while finding the real thing on the way. They must stay one step ahead of Deputy Commissioner Kolya Petrov, set on finishing his father's mission, and Rasputin, determined to end the Lestov line for good.

In the twilight of the Russian Empire, the younger son of Czar Nigel Lestov finds an unlikely friend in a kitchen boy with a very different past. Philip Lestov has no idea what is to come, this future with his new friend stretching out as far as he can see, and Daniel Howlov gets a glimpse at a world so far from his own. Ten years later, the czar and his wife are dead and their older son is left to live with his grandmother in Paris; far from the new regime that wants the Lestovs dead. The young tsarevich Philip has gone missing while rumors fly of his survival. The dowager Empress has offered a reward, ten million rubles for her beloved grandsons return, a reward that does not go unnoticed by now conman Daniel Howlov and his close friend, former Duchess Cornelia. When they come across a man with no memories and a resemblance to the prince, the two hatch a plan. Followed closely by Kolya Petrov, an officer set on completing his fathers mission, and the mystic Rasputin, who wants nothing more than the death of the last Lestovs, they must journey to Paris with their fake prince. Instead of a reward, they find something much more unexpected waiting for them. Dan counted on a way out, not falling in love. (og in notes)

Featuring @spoiledmuffin and @husbants as my wonderful beta readers, and the amazing art of @paradisobound ! Header by me with photos from pinterest, edits of dnp were done by me as well.

Read the fic below, and enjoy!

111 notes - Posted June 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

(This feels accurate, love that dnp took over lmao)

[currentlycaptainparis]

Why are you estranged from your son?

My muse has to tell nothing but the truth for 10 asks.

Ask them funny questions, get personal, query about the people around them or pester them for their deepest darkest secrets - go wild! Include ✘ with the asks! (3/10)

“He said that it was because he disagreed with an investigation that I was helping with after the war. I found out a few years later that he had gotten married and had a daughter. He was worried I wouldn’t approve of his relationship with his spouses. But honestly, as long as they’re happy and healthy, I couldn’t care less about his marriage. If anything, I don’t approve of his hair.”

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Monthly Follower Recs

Monthly follower recommendations for the month of June, 2022

Amity (ao3) - thattumblrchick

Summary: For as long as he could remember, Dan Howell has had a personality more fragile than the flowers he pressed. After meeting Phil Lester- an explosion of a human being living in an explosion of a house- he learns that life should make you feel more than just complacency.  

21 thoughts I had today (ao3) - jestbee

Summary: Dan doesn't have a voice in his head.

It's just a malfunction, a lack of one thing or another in a complex series of firing synapses and chemicals, but it always sounds like words.

Believe in Me (ao3) - Elleberquist6

Summary: Dan Howell is living at home while he’s saving money for college, which isn’t easy since his parents don’t understand him. Unlike them, he loves dogs, is a vegetarian, has no interest in the family business, and he despises the supernatural. He struggles to accept things that are illogical, even though he is a kitsune. Kitsune are foxes whose powers involve the ability to cast illusions, but Dan just wants to be normal. Phil Lester has just moved to London, where he works as a dog walker. When his path crosses with Dan, Phil is eager to get to know him. Unfortunately, Phil soon finds that being friends with Dan is far more complicated than he could have imagined.

Bury Your Flame - botanistlester

Summary: (tw) After receiving a dragon egg when his grandfather passed away, Phil is forced to ask for help from the local dragon tamer. As he soon finds out, Dan Howell is nothing he’s been expecting. Infuriating, ludicrous, and completely lacking respect, Dan is everything Phil hates. But Phil will do anything to make his grandfather proud, even if that means getting help from the local cluck.

different eyes to see the same old things (ao3) - chickenfree

Summary: “Other side of the seesaw?” he says, when Phil’s still quiet. It doesn’t seem like a talking night, as much as Dan wants it to be.

Knew I'd Find You Again || ospbb 2022 anastasia au (ao3) - AnironSidh

Summary: In the twilight of the Russian Empire, the younger son of Czar Nigel Lestov finds an unlikely friend in a kitchen boy with a very different past. Philip Lestov has no idea what is to come, this future with his new friend stretching out as far as he can see, and Daniel Howlov gets a glimpse at a world so far from his own. Ten years later, the czar and his wife are dead and their older son is left to live with his grandmother in Paris; far from the new regime that wants the Lestovs dead. The young tsarevich Philip has gone missing while rumors fly of his survival. The dowager Empress has offered a reward, ten million rubles for her beloved grandsons return, a reward that does not go unnoticed by now conman Daniel Howlov and his close friend, former Duchess Cornelia. When they come across a man with no memories and a resemblance to the prince, the two hatch a plan. Followed closely by Kolya Petrov, an officer set on completing his fathers mission, and the mystic Rasputin, who wants nothing more than the death of the last Lestovs, they must journey to Paris with their fake prince. Instead of a reward, they find something much more unexpected waiting for them. Dan counted on a way out, not falling in love.

I Want It, I Got It (ao3) - Yiffandquiff (paradisobound)

Summary: Phil Lester was a worker for the BBC in London. Working in the advertising department, he was content being alongside his friend and fellow coworker PJ during every shift. However, the BBC is temporarily being used as a film set for a new movie starring Hollywood ‘It’ star, Daniel Howell. Being stuck as an extra on the set, Phil finds it’s hard to ignore the famous star. And maybe, just maybe, Dan finds it hard to ignore Phil as well.

one of those days (ao3) - nivi_chip

Summary: Phil has a dizzy spell and Dan takes care of him.

Or, Dan is the man with the plan (rip the stereo shows imy)

strike a deal, kiss my lips (ao3) - natigail

Summary: Witches were the only magical beings capable of binding and controlling demons. It required a complicated ritual and crazy amounts of magic.

It happening on accident was practically unheard of until Phil came along and got tangled up with a snarky and dangerous demon named Dan. Suddenly bound together, Phil must grapple with control over a chaotic demon that wants to strip the skin from his bones.

And maybe strip the clothes off of his body as well.

we could never (ao3) - danielshands

Summary: Dan navigates the world while also contemplating coming out.

[dwellordream]

“...In one way, the marriage of Eleanor and Louis was unusual, for he was also a teenager (born c.1120–23) and little older than his bride. In numerous aristocratic marriages, the bride was much younger than her spouse; it was not uncommon for teenaged noble maidens to be married to men in their thirties or older. The couple’s similar ages likely gave Eleanor higher expectations that their marriage had more likelihood of turning into a true love match than other aristocratic marriages with great age disparities. No doubt, their similar ages also led Eleanor to assume that their marriage would be a true partnership; and she would feel more free to express her opinions to her young husband and to persuade him to accept her ideas than if he had been a mature, experienced man. 

In several ways, however, the bride and groom were mismatched. Louis the Younger, apparently a good-looking youth with shoulder-length hair, was quiet, serious, and exceedingly devout. The second son of Louis VI and Adelaide of Maurienne, his upbringing had aimed at preparing him for an ecclesiastical career with studies at the school attached to Notre-Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité in Paris not far from the royal palace. Louis’s elder brother Philip, heir to the throne, was killed when he was thrown to the ground and crushed by his falling horse after it “stumbled over a diabolical pig” in the road. This unexpectedly elevated Louis to the position of heir to the French throne. 

The boy left Notre-Dame’s cloisters at about age ten to be crowned king in accordance with the custom established by the second Capetian king of installing the current monarch’s heir in his own lifetime to ensure a smooth succession. Twelve days after his brother’s death, Louis’s consecration as king took place at Reims Cathedral in October 1131 in the presence of a great council of prelates presided over by the pope. Louis VII apparently returned to his religious studies after his coronation, and his clerical education would make a powerful impression on him throughout his life, imprinting on him simple tastes in dress and manners and an earnest piety. 

His Capetian predecessors had sought to present themselves as models of Christian kingship, stressing their close relations with the Church as compensation for their modest military power. Louis’s reputation for piety and spirituality surpassed that of earlier French monarchs, however. As one contemporary wrote, “He was so pious, so just, so catholic and benign, that if you were to see his simplicity of behaviour and dress, you would think . . . that he was not a king, but a man of religion.”

Young Louis thought of kingship as a religious vocation, and he felt called to govern according to Christian principles. In his first years as king, his confidence that he was God’s agent as French monarch gave him an unrealistic notion of his power, and he tended to over-reach, pursuing excessively ambitious political goals. In his youthful enthusiasm, he often displayed an inclination toward rash decisions taken in anger and without reflection. Yet he sometimes seemed sluggish and unenthusiastic for his task of governing, partly due to a distaste for political intrigue, and partly due to a lack of perseverance, his ardor rapidly cooling and giving way to periods of indecision and inactivity. 

Although he held a very high view of the monarchical office, he could be timid, and he allowed himself to fall under the influence of members of his entourage. Most prominent among those seeking to influence this impressionable youth was his young wife Eleanor, and he readily allowed her to take part in political decision-making. Such a mild husband as Louis VII was unlikely to find happiness with a wife such as Eleanor of Aquitaine. His young bride had already seen more of life than his sheltered upbringing had allowed him. A girl brought up at a sophisticated and lively court where no more than conventional piety was observed and whose own grandfather had lived openly for years with his paramour would find the Capetian royal court’s piety and repression confining. 

If Eleanor had been too young to remember life at William the Troubadour’s court, she grew up surrounded by people who had tasted its pleasures willing to tell her about it. Looking back on her earliest childhood while in Paris “through the prism of her imagination,” she could only compare the austere Capetian royal court unfavorably with an idealized image of her grandfather’s court. A widely quoted quip ascribed to Eleanor that she felt that she “had married a monk, not a king,” while hardly an authentic quotation, captures the feeling that she surely came to hold for Louis.

Although his clerical education had not prepared him for a fulfilling marital relationship, Eleanor’s beauty and charm captivated him at once and soon he fell deeply in love with her. Indeed, some observers of the couple’s marriage described the king’s love for his wife as “almost childish” and passionate beyond reason. The intensity of Louis’s love for his bride may have made him an anxious husband, easily roused to jealousy. Despite evidence of Louis’s attraction to his bride, the Church’s notoriously misogynist view of women and teachings of the early Fathers had ill-equipped him for the robust sexual relationship that Eleanor expected. Louis, brought up in a clerical environment, was prudish and repressed in a way that the queen could not understand.

…The royal bridegroom and his entourage reached Limoges on 1 July 1137, and after stopping there for prayers at the shrine of Saint Martial, Louis and his party arrived at Bordeaux on 11 July. They raised tents and camped on the banks of the Garonne river across from the city, where they waited for boats to cross the wide waters. The entry into Bordeaux of Louis the Younger, crowned king six years earlier, marked the first French monarch’s visit there in three centuries. The wedding took place on 25 July in the cathedral of Saint André, constructed around the end of the eleventh century. Today only its surprisingly plain façade survives from Eleanor’s time.

In full summer heat, a great throng of nobles of all ranks came from throughout Eleanor’s lands to witness the couple’s exchange of vows. As part of the ceremony, Louis had his bride “crowned with the diadem of the kingdom.” To commemorate the occasion, young Louis had brought along lavish gifts for his bride that a chronicler asserted would have required the mouth of a Cicero or the memory of a Seneca to expose their richness and variety. Usually aristocratic marriages were preceded by lengthy negotiations between the couple’s parents about financial arrangements. 

…In the case of young Eleanor, she was bringing to her husband a great duchy, and no other wedding gift was expected. No doubt she retained revenues from her ancestral estates in Poitou, and it seemed pointless to designate lands from the limited French royal domain as her dowerland. As the young couple set out on their journey to Paris, she offered her new husband another splendid present, however—a vase carved from rock crystal, one of her few possessions that survives today. The vase was a cherished possession, connecting her to her grandfather William IX, who had brought it back to Poitiers after an expedition to Spain.

Louis VI marked the marriage of his son and heir to Eleanor with grants of important privileges to the ecclesiastical province of Bordeaux, acting quickly to secure the support of the bishops in Aquitaine. Before Louis the Younger set out for Aquitaine, the king renounced any claim to rights of lordship over the dioceses of the province of Bordeaux, allowing them free episcopal elections. This concession ended the traditional ducal privilege of playing a part in the selection of bishops in the six dioceses of the province of Bordeaux.

…As soon as the wedding celebrations ended in the evening of 25 July, the newly-weds lost no time in beginning their journey toward Paris. Eleanor and Louis stopped to spend their first night together at Taillebourg, a formidable castle looming over the Charente river, where their host was its lord, Geoffrey de Rancon. The most powerful of lords in the Saintonge, Geoffrey held wide lands stretching from his castle of Taillebourg eastward to La Marche, to Poitou proper in the north, and southward into the Angoumois. He and his heirs would be important players in Poitevin politics throughout Eleanor’s lifetime. Whether the young couple consummated their marriage that first night at Taillebourg cannot be known, but royal retainers surely looked for evidence, since both the Church and popular opinion held no marriage to be an indissoluble union until it was consummated. 

By the beginning of August, the couple arrived at Poitiers, where a week later Suger organized a formal investiture of young Louis in the cathedral of Saint Pierre, a religious ceremony signaling the Church’s sanction for his ducal title. Young Louis, already crowned and anointed king of the French, did not adopt the titles “count of Poitou” or “duke of Gascony” on his marriage; instead, he had only the additional title “duke of Aquitaine” engraved on his seal. The title that he adopted implied that his bride’s duchy, though under Capetian administration, was not to be absorbed into the French Crown lands, but would preserve a separate identity with distinct institutions.

Barely after the ceremony had ended, a messenger arrived from Paris with the sad news that King Louis VI had died on 1 August, aged almost sixty. The intense summer heat demanded his immediate burial at the abbey of Saint Denis without waiting for the arrival of Louis the Younger and his bride from Poitou. Young Louis, already a crowned and anointed king on his father’s death, had to take on royal responsibilities at once, and the newly married Eleanor became a queen. Now King Louis VII, he had to leave his bride in the care of Bishop Geoffrey of Chartres to continue her progress toward Paris, while he led a force to subdue the rebel townspeople of Orléans, who had taken advantage of the old king’s death to proclaim their city a commune, taking rights of self-government for themselves.”

- Ralph V. Turner, “Bride to a King, Queen of the French, 1137–1145.” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England

[greekroyalfamily]

Today is 115 years since the birth of HRH Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark Duchess of Kent 13–12–1906

Princess Marina was born on 13 December 1906 in Athens, Greece, during the reign of her paternal grandfather, George I of Greece.She was the third and youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark, and his wife Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia.

In my opinion she was the most beautiful and stile full member of the Greek Royal dynasty ever

Her father was the third son of George I of Greece and Queen Olga, while her mother was the only daughter of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia. Her father was a grandson of Christian IX of Denmark, while her mother was a granddaughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.

Princess Marina had two elder sisters, Princess Olga and Princess Elizabeth. Princess Olga married Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in 1923. After the assassination of his cousin, Alexander I of Yugoslavia, Paul served as Prince Regent of Yugoslavia from 1934 to 1941. Princess Elizabeth married Carl Theodor, Count of Toeerring-Jettenbach in 1934.One of their paternal uncles was Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, the father of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (making Marina and her sisters Philip's first cousins)

Marina spent her early years in Greece, and lived with her parents and paternal grandparents at Tatoi Palace. Along with her sisters, she was raised to be devout and religious, which was encouraged by her grandmother, Queen Olga of Greece.Marina's family travelled outside of Greece often, especially during the summer months. Her first recorded visit to Britain was in 1910 after the death of her godfather, Edward VII. She officially met her other godmother and future mother-in-law, Queen Mary, who treated Marina and her sisters like her own children.

The Greek royal family was forced into exile when Marina was 11, following the overthrow of the Greek monarchy.They later moved to Paris, while the Princess stayed with her extended family throughout Europe.

In 1932, Princess Marina and Prince George (later the Duke of Kent), a second cousin through Christian IX of Denmark, met in London.Their betrothal was announced in August 1934.Prince George was created Duke of Kent on 9 October 1934.On 29 November 1934, they married at Westminster Abbey, London.The wedding was a grand affair, as it had been more than ten years since the last royal wedding with Prince Albert, Duke of York, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. The wedding of Prince George and Princess Marina was the first royal wedding ceremony to be broadcast by wireless, and with the use of other technology, such as microphones.

The wedding was followed by a Greek ceremony in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, which was converted into an Orthodox chapel for the ceremony.The wedding was the most recent occasion on which a foreign-born princess married into the British Royal Family

The couple had three children:

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (9 October 1935): he married Katharine Worsley on 8 June 1961. They have three children.

Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (25 December 1936): she married the Hon. Angus Ogilvy, son of David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie and Lady Alexandra Coke, on 24 April 1963. They had two children.

Prince Michael of Kent (4 July 1942): he married Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz and got two children.

HRH dyed from a brain tumour at Kensington Palace at 11.40 am on 27 August 1968, aged 61.Funeral service for the Princess was held at the St. George's Chapel on 30 August.

She was buried in the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore.Her funeral was the final royal ceremony attended by her brother-in-law, the former Edward VIII.

Σήμερα συμπληρώνονται 115 χρόνια από τη γέννηση Της ΑΒΥ Πριγκίπισσας Μαρίνας της Ελλάδας και Δανιας Δούκισσας του Κεντ στις 13–12–1906

Η πριγκίπισσα Μαρίνα γεννήθηκε στις 13 Δεκεμβρίου 1906 στην Αθήνα, Ελλάδα, κατά τη διάρκεια της βασιλείας του παππού της, Γεωργίου Α΄ της Ελλάδας. Ήταν η τρίτη και νεότερη κόρη του πρίγκιπα Νικολάου της Ελλάδας και της Δανίας, και της συζύγου του της Μεγάλης Δούκισσας Έλενας Βλαντιμίροβνα της Ρωσίας. .

Κατά τη γνώμη μου ήταν το πιο όμορφο και στιλάτο πλήρες μέλος της Ελληνικής Βασιλικής δυναστείας .

Ο πατέρας της ήταν ο τρίτος γιος του Γεωργίου Α' της Ελλάδας και της βασίλισσας Όλγας, ενώ η μητέρα της ήταν η μοναχοκόρη του Μεγάλου Δούκα Βλαντιμίρ Αλεξάντροβιτς και της Μεγάλης Δούκισσας Μαρ��ας Παβλόβνα πρεσβύτερης της Ρωσίας. Ο πατέρας της ήταν εγγονός του Χριστιανού Θ' της Δανίας, ενώ η μητέρα της ήταν εγγονή του αυτοκράτορα Αλέξανδρου Β' της Ρωσίας.

Η πριγκίπισσα Μαρίνα είχε δύο μεγαλύτερες αδερφές, την πριγκίπισσα Όλγα και την πριγκίπισσα Ελισάβετ. Η Πριγκίπισσα Όλγα παντρεύτηκε τον Πρίγκιπα Παύλο της Γιουγκοσλαβίας το 1923. Μετά τη δολοφονία του ξαδέλφου του, Αλέξανδρου Α' της Γιουγκοσλαβίας, ο Παύλος υπηρέτησε ως Πρίγκιπας Αντιβασιλέας της Γιουγκοσλαβίας από το 1934 έως το 1941. Η Πριγκίπισσα Ελισάβετ παντρεύτηκε τον Καρολο Θεόδωρο , κόμη του Toeerring-Jettenbach. θείοι από τον πατέρα τους ήταν ο πρίγκιπας Ανδρέας της Ελλάδας και της Δανίας, πατέρας του πρίγκιπα Φιλίππου, δούκα του Εδιμβούργου (κάνοντας τη Μαρίνα και τις αδερφές της τα πρώτα ξαδέλφια του Φίλιππου)

Η Μαρίνα πέρασε τα πρώτα της χρόνια στην Ελλάδα και έζησε με τους γονείς και τον παππού και τη γιαγιά της στο Παλάτι του Τατοΐου . Μαζί με τις αδερφές της, ανατράφηκε να είναι ευσεβής και θρησκευόμενη, κάτι που ενθάρρυνε η γιαγιά της, η βασίλισσα Όλγα της Ελλάδας. Η οικογένεια της Μαρίνας ταξίδευε συχνά εκτός Ελλάδας, ειδικά τους καλοκαιρινούς μήνες. Η πρώτη της καταγεγραμμένη επίσκεψη στη Βρετανία ήταν το 1910 μετά τον θάνατο του νονού της, Εδουάρδου Ζ'. Γνώρισε επίσημα την άλλη νονά και μέλλουσα πεθερά της, τη Βασίλισσα Μαίρη, η οποία αντιμετώπιζε τη Μαρίνα και τις αδερφές της σαν δικά της παιδιά.

Η ελληνική βασιλική οικογένεια αναγκάστηκε να εξοριστεί όταν η Μαρίνα ήταν 11 ετών, μετά την ανατροπή της ελληνικής μοναρχίας. Αργότερα μετακόμισαν στο Παρίσι, ενώ η πριγκίπισσα έμεινε με την ευρύτερη οικογένειά της σε όλη την Ευρώπη.

Το 1932, η πριγκίπισσα Μαρίνα και ο πρίγκιπας Γεώργιος (αργότερα ο δούκας του Κεντ), δεύτερος ξάδερφος του Χριστιανού Θ' της Δανίας, συναντήθηκαν στο Λονδίνο. Ο αρραβώνας τους ανακοινώθηκε τον Αύγουστο του 1934. Ο Πρίγκιπας Γεωργιος έγινε Δούκας του Κεντ στις 9 Οκτωβρίου 1934. Στις Στις 29 Νοεμβρίου 1934, παντρεύτηκαν στο Αβαείο του Γουέστμινστερ του Λονδίνου. Ο γάμος ήταν μια μεγαλειώδης υπόθεση, καθώς είχαν περάσει περισσότερα από δέκα χρόνια από τον τελευταίο βασιλικό γάμο με τον πρίγκιπα Άλμπερτ, δούκα της Υόρκης, και τη λαίδη Ελίζαμπεθ Μπόουες-Λυών. Ο γάμος του πρίγκιπα Γεωργίου και της πριγκίπισσας Μαρίνας ήταν η πρώτη βασιλική γαμήλια τελετή που μεταδόθηκε ασύρματα και με τη χρήση άλλης τεχνολογίας, όπως τα μικρόφωνα.

Μετά τον γάμο ακολούθησε η ελληνική ορθόδοξος τελετή στο ιδιωτικό παρεκκλήσι στα Ανάκτορα του Μπάκιγχαμ, το οποίο μετατράπηκε σε ορθόδοξο παρεκκλήσι για την τελετή. Ο γάμος ήταν η πιο πρόσφατη περίσταση κατά την οποία μια ξένη πριγκίπισσα παντρεύτηκε τη βρετανική βασιλική οικογένεια

Το ζευγάρι είχε τρία παιδιά:

Πρίγκιπας Εδουάρδος, Δούκας του Κεντ (9 Οκτωβρίου 1935): παντρεύτηκε την Katharine Worsley στις 8 Ιουνίου 1961. Έχουν τρία παιδιά.

Πριγκίπισσα Αλεξάνδρα , The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (25 Δεκεμβρίου 1936): παντρεύτηκε τον Hon. Angus Ogilvy, γιος του David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie και της Lady Alexandra Coke, στις 24 Απριλίου 1963. Απέκτησαν δύο παιδιά.

Πρίγκιπας Μιχαήλ του Κεντ (4 Ιουλίου 1942): παντρεύτηκε τη βαρόνη Marie Christine von Reibnitz και απέκτησε δύο παιδιά.

Ο θάνατός Της ΑΒΥ προήλθε από όγκο στον εγκέφαλο στο Παλάτι του Κένσινγκτον στις 11.40 π.μ. στις 27 Αυγούστου 1968, σε ηλικία 61 ετών. Η κηδεία για την Πριγκίπισσα πραγματοποιήθηκε στο παρεκκλήσι του Αγίου Γεωργίου στις 30 Αυγούστου.Τάφηκε στο Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore. Η κηδεία της ήταν η τελευταία βασιλική τελετή στην οποία παρευρέθηκε κουνιάδος της ο πρώην ΕδουάρδοςΗ’

[lukeskywaker4ever]

King João and Queen Philippa  2nd Child: Pedro, Duke of Coimbra

Infante D. Pedro, Duke of Coimbra  (9 December 1392 – 20 May 1449) was a Portuguese infante (prince) of the House of Aviz, son of King João I of Portugal and his wife Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt. In Portugal, he is better known as Infante D. Pedro das Sete Partidas [do Mundo], "of the Seven Parts [of the World]" because of his travels. Possibly the best-travelled prince of his time, he was regent between 1439 and 1448. He was also 1st Lord of Montemor-o-Velho, Aveiro, Tentúgal, Cernache, Pereira, Condeixa and Lousã.

Early life

From the time he was born, Pedro was one of João I's favourite sons. Along with his siblings, he received an exceptional education rarely seen in those times for the children of royalty. Close to his brothers Duarte the future king of Portugal, and João, Lord of Reguengos de Monsaraz, Pedro grew up in a calm environment free of intrigues.

On 14 August 1415, he accompanied his father and brothers Duarte and Henrique for the Battle of Ceuta in Morocco. His mother had died the previous month, giving each of her sons on her deathbed an arming sword she had ordered forged for them. Pedro refused to be knighted before showing valor in battle, and he was knighted along with his brothers the following day; he was also created Duke of Coimbra. His younger brother Henrique was made Duke of Viseu. These were the first dukedoms created in Portugal.

On finishing a translation of Seneca's De Beneficiis in 1418, he initiated extensive travels throughout Europe, which would keep him away from Portugal for the next ten years. After meeting with Juan II of Castile in Valladolid, he continued to Hungary, where he met with the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, and entered his service. He fought with the Imperial armies against the Turks and in the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and was awarded the march of Treviso in Northern Italy in 1422. In 1424 he left the Holy Roman Empire, meeting first with Murad II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, on the island of Patmos, and then continuing to Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire; the hopeless position of the city against the Ottoman onslaught did not fail to impress him. From Constantinople he traveled to the Holy Land via Alexandria and Cairo.

European travels

In 1425, Peter travelled to France and England and visited the universities of Paris and Oxford before arriving in Flanders in 1426, where he spent the next two years at the Burgundian court. After the death of the second wife of Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1425, Pedro recommended his sister Isabel to him as a wife. Philip sent a delegation to Portugal in 1428–29 that included Jan van Eyck, who painted two portraits of the Infanta. Philip and Isabel eventually married on 7 January 1430, and one of their sons became Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy.

In 1427, Pedro wrote a famous letter to his older brother, later King Duarte, on "the proper administration of the kingdoms", from Bruges. Later that year, King Henry VI of England (his first cousin once removed) made him a Knight of the Garter (as were already his father and older brother Duarte).

In 1428, Pedro visited his marquisate of Treviso and the nearby Republic of Venice, where he was presented with a copy of the book of Marco Polo by the doge. He later gave that book, as well as maps of the Venetian trade routes in the Orient, to his younger brother Prince Henrique the Navigator. One of the maps was created by the famous Venetian cartographer Albertinus de Virga in 1411 and possibly shows North America before it was officially discovered. This map was found in the Alcobaça Monastery which was the main library of the Portuguese Royal family. From Venice he traveled to Rome, where he was received by Pope Martin V, and from there he continued to Barcelona, where he negotiated the marriage of his brother Duarte with Leonot of Aragon as well as his own future marriage with Isabella of Urgell, before finally returning to Portugal.

In 1433, he completed his famous six-volume work, the Tratado da Virtuosa Benfeitoria.

Regent

When Pedro’s brother King Duarte of Portugal died in 1438, Pedro's nephew Afonso V ascended the throne as an infant. At first, the choice for regent was the Queen mother Leonor of Aragon. This choice was not popular among many Portuguese, because Leonor was Aragonese. In a meeting of the Portuguese Cortes summoned by Peter's brother João, Lord of Reguengos de Monsaraz, Pedro was appointed regent of the kingdom during the minority of his nephew Afonso V, a choice that pleased both the people and the fast-growing bourgeoisie.

Inside the Portuguese aristocracy, however, especially among nobles around Pedro's half-brother Afonso, Count of Barcelos, Leonor of Aragon was preferred, and there were doubts about Pedro's political ability. A "war of influences" started, and a few years later, Afonso of Barcelos managed to become young King Afonso V's favourite uncle.

In 1443, in a gesture of reconciliation, Pedro created his half-brother Afonso Duke of Braganza, and relations between the two seemed to return to normality. But, in 1445, the new duke of Braganza took offence because Isabel of Coimbra, Pedro's daughter was the choice for Afonso V's wife, and not one of his granddaughters. Indifferent to the intrigues, Pedro continued his regency and the country prospered under his influence. It is during this period that the first subsidies for the exploration of the Atlantic Ocean were implemented under the auspices of Pedro's brother Henrique the Navigator.

Alleged Rebellion

On 9 June 1448, Afonso V came of age and Pedro returned control of the country to the king. Influenced by Afonso, the Duke of Braganza, Afonso V nullified all of Pedro's edicts, including the ones that concentrated power in the figure of the king.

The following year, under accusations that years later would prove false, Afonso V declared Pedro a rebel. The situation became unsustainable and a civil war began. It did not last long, because Pedro died on 20 May 1449 during the Battle of Alfarrobeira, near Alverca. The exact conditions of his death are debatable: some say it was in combat, while others say he was assassinated by one of his own men.

With the death of Pedro, Portugal fell under control of Afonso, Duke of Braganza, with a growing influence over the destiny of the country. However, Pedro's regency would never be forgotten, and Pedro was cited many times by his grandson King João II of Portugal as his main influence. The cruel persecution of the Braganzas by João II was perhaps the response to the conspiracies that caused the fall of one of the major princes of the Ínclita Geração.

Marriage and issue

In 1429 Pedro married Isabella of Urgell, daughter of James II, Count of Urgell, and candidate to the throne of the Crown of Aragon at the Compromise of Caspe. The couple had the following children:

Infante Pedro (1429–1466), Constable of Portugal, Count of Barcelona and disputed King of Aragon;

Infante João (1431–1457), married Charlotte of Lusignan, heiress of Cyprus, in 1456. He was created titular Prince of Antioch, and was possibly poisoned by his mother-in-law;

Infanta Isabel (1432–1455), Queen of Portugal by marriage to Afonso V of Portugal. Mother of João II of Portugal; 

Infante Jaime (1433–1459), Cardinal and Archbishop of Lisbon, lived in Italy; his beautiful tomb is in the convent church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence;

Infanta Beatriz (1435–1462), married Adolph of Cleves, Lord of Ravenstein; 

Infanta Filipa (1437–1493), a nun in the Convent of Odivelas. 

Pedro and his wife Isabella of Urgell both rest  side by side inside the Founders Chapel in Batalha Monastery along side Pedro’s mother and father and his bothers and nephews.

[yetanotherramblingfangirl]

2, 3 (feel free to do top more-than-5 if you want!), 11, 20

2. Did you reread anything? What?

Yes. I reread A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan for my book club.

3. What were your top five ten books of the year?

Listed in reading order because I can't rank them:

Dear Miss Kopp by Amy Stewart - An epistolary novel set during WWI? Count me in.

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden - This is just a beautiful graphic novel. Found family, space travel, queer characters at the center of everything? Yes please. Highly recommend it.

March Violets by Philip Kerr - This is the first book in the Berlin Noir trilogy so it will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it most definitely was mine. I highly recommend it.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King - I consider this to be a perfect novella.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan - I went in without knowing what to expect and ended up completely engrossed.

The Pale Criminal by Philip Kerr - This is the second book in the Berlin Noir trilogy. It stood up to the first one and was enjoyable in its own right.

Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart - The character development was everything.

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde - The second book in the Thursday Next series. In my opinion it was better than the first one. I think I liked this one so much because of the time travel aspect.

Redshirts by John Scalzi - This was tailor-made to my interests. If you enjoy Star Trek [in any of its iterations], this is a good time.

Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor - Another epistolary novel set during WWI? Yes please.

11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

March Violets by Philip Kerr.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

Dear Miss Kopp and Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart definitely topped the list. Both of them exceeded my expectations. Considering that these were the sixth and seventh installments in a series and I enjoyed them just as much as I enjoyed the first one [which is one of my favorite books of all time] is saying something.

Send me a number 1-25 to learn more about my reading year.

[kumail-fan]

Vittorio, Count Alfieri

Vittorio, Count Alfieri Italian author

In his tragedieshe expected to offer Italy with dramas comparable to those of other European countries. Through his lyrics and dramas he helped to revive the national spirit of Italy and thus earned the name of precursor of the Risorgimento.

A distaste for army life directed him to receive leave to journey through the majority of Europe. In England he discovered that the political liberty which became his perfect, and in France that the literature which affected him profoundly. He analyzed Voltaire, J.-J. Rousseau, and, most importantly, Montesquieu.

Alfieri settled in Turin at 1772 and resigned his commission another year. To divert himself,'' he also composed Cleopatra, that a catastrophe performed with fantastic success in 1775. Thereupon Alfieri chose to dedicate himself to literature. He started a systematic study of the classics as well as the Italian poets, and because he expressed himself largely in French, the language of the ruling classes in Turinhe moved to Tuscany to convince himself with Italian.

From 1782 he'd composed 14 tragedies in addition to several poems (containing four odes from the show L'America libera, on American liberty, to which a fifth ode was inserted in 1783) and a political treatise on tyranny, in prose, Della tirannide (1777). He also hailed the fall of the Bastille having an ode,"Parigi sbastigliata" (1789). Ten of those tragedies were published at Siena at 1783.

Meanwhile, in Florence at 1777, Alfieri had fulfilled the Countess of Albany, spouse of the Stuart pretender to the English throne, Charles Edward. He remained deeply attached to her for the remainder of his life.

Alfieri's genius was basically dramatic. His tough, forthright, and succinct fashion has been selected intentionally, so that he can convince the oppressed and the stepped down to accept his own political thoughts and inspire them into heroic deeds. Almost always, Alfieri's tragedies present the battle between a champion of freedom and a tyrant.

Of those 19 tragedies He accepted for publication in the Paris variant of 1787--89, the finest are Filippo, where Philip II of Spain is introduced as the tyrant; Antigone; Oreste; and, Most Importantly, Mirra and Saul. Saul, his masterpiece, is frequently thought to be the most effective play from the Italian theater.

In addition, he composed sonnets, comedies, satires, and epigrams. 

Read more about  Vittorio, Count Alfieri

[lindsay36ho]

Cyprien Katsaris – Beethoven in a New Light

Beethoven – a Chronological Odyssey is a set of six surprising CDs that must count as one of the most original new releases in the Beethoven year. Cyprien Katsaris has gained renown as a Beethoven interpreter not least because he is one of the few pianists to have recorded Liszt’s transcriptions of the symphonies – and also because he has a solo piano version of the Emperor Concerto in his repertoire. But to this French master of Greek Cypriot origin, adding a further complete recording of the piano sonatas to the seventy that are already on the market did not seem to be a good idea. Instead, with his Beethoven Odyssey, Cyprien Katsaris takes us on a fascinating foray through the composer’s output – which we may know rather less thoroughly than we had imagined.

While musical life is suffering profound disruption as the coronavirus crisis causes havoc, Katsaris works at home in Paris with his piano. He is in good spirits and can even see the positive sides of this enforced house arrest: less pollution, less CO2, good air quality. ‘It seems that nature has taken on the task of restoring balance.’ Fortunately pianists – with their many hours of practice per day – are used to social isolation in the company of their pianos, and this applies to Katsaris too, who does not partake of holidays or weekend trips even in normal circumstances. ‘I’m always practising, except the day of a concert, because I want to be fresh and natural. You might compare it to a rendezvous, a dinner with a much admired, beautiful lady; you wouldn’t meet up with another woman earlier the same day.’ Our interview is highly stimulating – and, with the exception of a conversation I had long ago with the (now deceased) Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers, the only one out of many hundreds in which I myself had to answer questions. We frequently deviated from the topic of Beethoven, touching on the coronavirus, mutual acquaintances such as Eliane Reyes and the Liszt specialist Koos Groen, and also Frits Philips, who passed away at the age of 100 on the very day that Katsaris gave a concert with the Brabant Orchestra in his Philips’ birth town, Eindhoven.

Czerny

For a long time Katsaris had no idea what contribution he could make to the Beethoven year. Finally now he presents a very personal selection from Beethoven’s complete works, arranged chronologically from his first attempts up to the very last notes he committed to paper. Here sonatas, bagatelles and variations alternate with a total of fifteen transcriptions, mainly of chamber music – either by Beethoven himself or by contemporaries or later colleagues such as Liszt, Wagner and Mussorgsky. Over the years Katsaris has collected so many scores that he himself lost track of what was piling up at home. ‘It started twenty years ago. Michael Ladenburger from the Beethovenhaus in Bonn gave me a photocopy of Czerny’s solo piano transcription of the second movement of the Kreutzer Sonata. it sounded good!’ Concerning the piano sonatas, specifically the Appassionata, Katsaris remarks that many virtuosos are tempted into making errors. ‘They play the third movement much too fast. Beethoven writes Allegro ma non troppo; only the coda is Presto!’

Horowitz

The most interesting Beethoven transcriptions are still Liszt’s arrangements of the nine symphonies. ‘Young pianists might not regard it as helpful, but whether they believe it or not: you understand Beethoven much better if you start with the symphonies rather than the sonatas. In an interview from 1988, Horowitz called the symphonies the “greatest piano works ever written”. Of course they are very difficult; I myself worked for ten years on my Teldec recordings from the 1980s.’ The new CDs also include Wagner’s arrangement of the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony. ‘Liszt’s arrangement is in every way superior, but I wanted to include Wagner if only because nobody would have expected to find him here. Beethoven was Wagner’s idol even when he was a child. Wagner claimed Beethoven and Shakespeare appeared to him in a dream when he was a teenager. He copied the scores of the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies and his piano arrangement of the Ninth retains the singers and choir in the finale, as does the one by Friedrich Kalkbrenner, which was recorded by Etsuko Hirose, one of the finest pianists of her generation. Nobody knows these transcriptions, but there is so much repertoire out there! A Berlin musicologist once told me that we modern pianists play only two per cent of the music that was composed in the nineteenth century!’

Busoni

Should a transcription make you forget the original? ‘No, an arrangement is something totally different. It’s like comparing a black-and-white photo with a colour one. I myself can better understand an orchestral work by playing it on the piano. Arrangements are as old as the hills; the fables of Lafontaine are often nothing more than adaptations in beautiful French language of fables by Æsop, the poet from ancient Greece.’ Busoni once said that every composition is actually a transcription – of the original idea that was in the composer’s mind when he conceived the work. ‘For me there’s hardly any difference between my approach to an original piano composition and the way I tackle an arrangement. Perhaps I feel a little freer if the composer himself was a great improviser. It’s all about the spontaneous creation in the moment. Chopin never played repeated passages in exactly the same way. It’s a question of remaining true to the composition whilst at the same time contributing something personal to it. If I, as a jury member in a competition find someone’s playing convincing, then I agree with him inwardly, even if I myself wouldn’t play it the same way.’

Cziffra

The fire, the enthusiasm and the grandeur with which Katsaris plays Beethoven are reminiscent of his old mentor György Cziffra. ‘I never heard him play the symphonies, but he played Beethoven’s and Mozart’s sonatas very beautifully and elegantly. I once presented his very refined recordings of Scarlatti sonatas on French radio without saying in advance who was playing, and everyone was surprised, because they know him only as a virtuoso. Nowadays his genius is finding greater recognition. We appear together in some TV show from 1975 – you can find it on YouTube if you search for “Cziffra Katsaris”. He gave me his original arrangement of the Flight of the Bumble Bee. It’s even harder than the official version. Cziffra was the greatest pianist I have ever heard.’

Bechstein

The new edition was recorded on two Bechstein grand pianos. Is there a connection with Artur Schnabel’s historic recordings in the combination of Beethoven and Bechstein? ‘I don’t know; in any case before World War II Bechstein was out in front – Rachmaninov, for example, composed his first two concertos at a Bechstein. What I find very good with Bechstein is that they never sound hard, even if you play very loudly. In any case, though, I have never confined myself to a single type of piano. I want to maintain the absolute freedom to be able to play on all good pianos, and I’m keen to help all the major manufacturers – Steingraeber, Steinway, Yamaha or Bechstein. The first grand piano I had at home, when I was a teenager, was a Steingraeber. For 35 years now I’ve owned a Steinway D. I also enjoy playing on a Yamaha CFX, especially when I’m in Japan. In general the piano technicians are better there too. I don’t agree with those who say that in principle you need to use a different instrument for Debussy than for Haydn. You have to be able to make music on every piano. A lot of what we believe is largely in our minds, in our heads. A blind test often produces surprising results.’

Rachmaninov

In the course of his career Katsaris has worked with a large number or famous conductors: Leonard Bernstein, Mstislav Rostropovich, Neville Marriner, Simon Rattle, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Antal Doráti, Iván Fischer, Kent Nagano, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Charles Mackerras, to name but a few. Exceptional even in this illustrious company was his collaboration with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom Katsaris played Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, which of course they recorded with the composer himself. They had first become acquainted a year earlier at the first CD recording of Liszt’s Concerto in the Hungarian Style, a work that was completed by Tchaikovsky. ‘I’ll never forget that. A day before the recording, Ormandy invited me to his apartment, for a single rehearsal on his piano. When I told him that I was intimidated he answered he had the same feeling when, as a young man, he had to conduct Rachmaninoff with the Paganini Rhapsody and during the concert Rachmaninoff had a memory problem. Ormandy thought that he caused the mistake, and looked at Rachmaninoff who was very angry and who told him in his deep bass voice: “Play!” Afterwards Ormandy, terrified went to Rachmaninoff in his dressing room, who told him: “I was not angry with you, but with myself!” The famous New York Times emeritus critic Harold Schoenberg later told me how Ormandy once, in Beijing at a rehearsal of the state orchestra there, was asked by the conductor to lead to orchestra for a few minutes and without him even needing to utter a single word, the orchestra suddenly sounded totally different. I believe in this magic, in spiritual communication at a high level. Why can someone who plays perfectly leave you cold, and why is the playing of Horowitz or Cortot – who also made mistakes – so fascinating? It’s a mystery, something spiritual, something that is detached from the physical world. There’s something similar between composers as well. Franz Xaver Mozart composed Polonaises mélancholiques that remind of the early polonaises by Chopin, but Chopin was only five years old at the time. The same with the scherzo from one of Czerny’s sonatas, that sounds like Schumann, although it was written while Schumann was still a child.’

Respect and tolerance

A lot has been said about Beethoven’s humanitarian message. ‘Of course that all culminates in his Ninth Symphony. But the idea itself underpins many of his works. All these sforzati are like a protest against social injustice. In his time wars were raging incessantly and, alongside the protest, we hear the clarity in many works – the full gamut of emotions from fear, rage, strong interest and enthusiasm all the way to the ultimate, to serenity, to zen.’ Katsaris regards himself as a citizen of the world. ‘Beethoven wanted us to become brothers and sisters, but that is the message of every great composer: respect and tolerance. Without any chauvinism, I can see a parallel to the great philosophers of ancient Greece. They have the same universal and humanitarian message that people of all cultures, all over the world, can perceive and understand, whether they are in Korea or Argentina. People everywhere have tears in their eyes when they listen to music by Mozart, Chopin or Beethoven.’

Author: Eric Schoones Photo credit: Jean-Baptiste Millot

Ludwig van Beethoven | A Chronological Odyssey Cyprien Katsaris, piano – 6 CD | PIANO 21 Listen to samples at willowhaynerecords.com

This article is a contribution from the German and Dutch magazine Pianist through Piano Street’s International Media Exchange Initiative and the Cremona Media Lounge.

Pianist Magazine is published in seven countries, in two different editions: in German (for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein) and in Dutch (for Holland and Belgium). The magazine is for the amateur and professional alike, and offers a wide range of topics connected to the piano, with interviews, articles on piano manufacturers, music, technique, competitions, sheetmusic, cd’s, books, news on festivals, competitions, etc. For a preview please check: www.pianist-magazin.de or www.pianistmagazine.nl

from Piano Street’s Classical Piano News https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/cyprien-katsaris-beethoven-in-a-new-light-10692/

[anironsidh]

Knew I'd Find You Again || OSPBB fic 2022

Announcing my fic for this year's @oldschoolpbb event, an Anastasia au combining the movie and musical, from the end of the Russian empire to the wonder of Paris. Featuring Phil as the missing Grand Duke Philip Lestov of Russia and Dan as Daniel Howlov, a conman working alongside Cornelia in a scheme to find an imposter and gain a reward while finding the real thing on the way. They must stay one step ahead of Deputy Commissioner Kolya Petrov, set on finishing his father's mission, and Rasputin, determined to end the Lestov line for good.

In the twilight of the Russian Empire, the younger son of Czar Nigel Lestov finds an unlikely friend in a kitchen boy with a very different past. Philip Lestov has no idea what is to come, this future with his new friend stretching out as far as he can see, and Daniel Howlov gets a glimpse at a world so far from his own. Ten years later, the czar and his wife are dead and their older son is left to live with his grandmother in Paris; far from the new regime that wants the Lestovs dead. The young tsarevich Philip has gone missing while rumors fly of his survival. The dowager Empress has offered a reward, ten million rubles for her beloved grandsons return, a reward that does not go unnoticed by now conman Daniel Howlov and his close friend, former Duchess Cornelia. When they come across a man with no memories and a resemblance to the prince, the two hatch a plan. Followed closely by Kolya Petrov, an officer set on completing his fathers mission, and the mystic Rasputin, who wants nothing more than the death of the last Lestovs, they must journey to Paris with their fake prince. Instead of a reward, they find something much more unexpected waiting for them. Dan counted on a way out, not falling in love. (og in notes)

Featuring @spoiledmuffin and @husbants as my wonderful beta readers, and the amazing art of @paradisobound ! Header by me with photos from pinterest, edits of dnp were done by me as well.

Read the fic below, and enjoy!

[currentlycaptainparis]

So... what *really* went on with your son?

MUSE IS UNDER TRUTH SERUM FOR ONE HOUR. ASK ME ANYTHING. NOTHING IS OFF LIMITS AND EVERYTHING MUST BE ANSWERED. GO! ((Open for the rest of the evening, because making her be honest is fun))

"My son and I had a falling out after the war. We didn't talk to each other for about three years. I mean, I tried, but he didn't answer. He said it was because he disagreed with with the fact that I was digging up some... unsavory things that Starfleet did during the war. When we finally started talking to each other again, he told me that he had gotten married. And he told me about my granddaughter, Jiona. Then he apologized for cutting me out. He said that the real reason he did that was because he needed time to figure things out on his own. Which makes sense, I suppose."

[investmart007]

LONDON | UK's Treasury chief says Brexit deal 'doable' by November

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/london-uks-treasury-chief-says-brexit-deal-doable-by-november/169092/

LONDON | UK's Treasury chief says Brexit deal 'doable' by November

LONDON — Britain’s Treasury chief said Tuesday that striking a divorce deal with the European Union over the next two months is “doable,” while the boss of Jaguar Land Rover warned that tens of thousands of jobs could be lost if the country crashes out of the EU with no agreement.

With Brexit a little more than six months away, concerns have grown that the sides will not reach a deal because the British Parliament and the governing Conservative Party are divided on what Britain’s future relationship with the EU should be.

In that event, Jaguar Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth said a so-called “hard Brexit” could result in the “worst of times” for the U.K. He said the U.K. is the company’s “home” but that a hard Brexit would cost Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, more than 1.2 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) a year.

“It’s horrifying, wiping our profit, destroying investment in the autonomous, zero-emissions (technologies) we want to share,” he told a Zero Emission Vehicle Summit in Birmingham, England.

He said the loss of jobs would be “counted into tens of thousands if we do not get the right Brexit deal.”

Hopes are fading that Britain and the EU can strike a deal at an EU summit in October as originally planned, but there are growing expectations that the EU is planning another meeting for November.

Treasury chief Philip Hammond told a House of Lords committee that he agreed with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, that a deal was possible in six to eight weeks if both sides are realistic. “I think it is doable,” Hammond said.

Business groups and civil servants say a “no-deal” Brexit could cause disruption to shipping, barriers to trade with the bloc, a fall in the value of the pound and even shortages of essential goods.

Hammond said that “if we leave the European Union without a deal … we could expect a period when there would be some turbulence.”

He said it was “very welcome” that Bank of England Governor Mark Carney had agreed to delay his departure date from June 2019 to January 2020 to help navigate any Brexit-related economic bumps.

Hammond spoke hours after leading bankers downplayed the immediate impact of Brexit on London’s role as the hub of the financial services industry in Europe and on jobs.

“There’s no question this has been an unsettling event, but our industry is in a state of constant flux,” Mark Garvin, vice chairman of JPMorgan’s corporate and investment bank divisions, told a parliamentary committee. “We have been involved in far more significant tumult than this.”

Garvin said the jobs of only “hundreds” of JPMorgan’s 16,000 staff in the U.K. would be immediately affected by Brexit, though that could rise to around 4,000 in the years to come depending on the settlement reached between Britain and the EU.

In the immediate aftermath of Britain’s vote to leave the EU in June 2016, many experts warned that Britain’s financial services industry — a huge tax source for the government — would see hefty job losses as businesses relocated to EU cities such as Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris, to retain benefits related to Europe’s single market.

However, the number of jobs lost has not matched the doomsday predictions, and with just six months to go until Britain officially leaves, there are few signs that banks are panicking.

A group of pro-Brexit politicians and economists, meanwhile, argued Tuesday that Britain will be better off, not worse, if it leaves the EU without a deal on future trade.

Economists for Free Trade held a news conference in Parliament Tuesday alongside several leading pro-Brexit lawmakers, including former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

The group argued that reverting to World Trade Organization rules, which can lead to the imposition of tariffs on certain goods, “would boost the U.K.’s trade with the rest of the world including Europe, lower domestic prices and boost inward investment.”

Critics say that assessment relies on overly optimistic assumptions, particularly on the extent to which trade would be boosted if Britain unilaterally abolished tariffs.

Hammond said the model used by Economists for Free Trade “are wildly out of line with assumptions that are used by other economic modelers, and frankly, I believe, are not sustainable.”

By PAN PYLAS and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

[how2to18]

IN HIS 2004 GQ essay “Upon This Rock,” about an excursion to the annual Creation Festival of Christian music and worship in central Pennsylvania, John Jeremiah Sullivan describes his take on the difference between rock music that happens to be made by Christians and “Christian rock” music:

Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off evangelical Christians. It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what’s more, it operates under a perceived responsibility — one the artists embrace — to “reach people.” As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability. […] A Christian band, on the other hand, is just a band that has more than one Christian in it.

Assuming this is accurate and supposing it is applicable to other art forms, what are the implications for Christians looking to make an impact on (or through) popular (or high) culture? For individuals with the talent and gumption to look at an entire pantheon of artists and try to force their way among them, circumscribing their output entirely to a genre that “rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability” is clearly not the best route. According to Sullivan, “Talent tends to come hand in hand with a certain base level of subtlety.”

Denis Johnson, who died earlier this year, called himself a Christian, although he once told David Amsden of New York, “I’m sure you could find any number of Christians who could assure me that I’m going to hell.” To say Denis was a great writer is not controversial. There have been many eulogies and appreciations of his work written in the months since his death, and while many allude, in a cursory way, to the spiritual character of his writing, none that I’ve seen explore the details of the realities he described or questions he posed, much less Denis’s personal beliefs and religious experiences. The closest is Will Blythe’s moving New York Times Book Review essay “A Lot Like Prayer: Remembering Denis Johnson,” and in the course of writing this I encountered Justin Taylor’s insightful “Gonna Try for the Kingdom if I Can” in n+1.

I had the incredible good fortune to be Denis’s friend, and I know some of his beliefs concerning God and religion. I observed him practicing his spiritual disciplines, which included prayer and daily readings of Alcoholics Anonymous, The Bible, and A Course In Miracles. I am a massive fan of his writing. I believe Denis’s faith suffuses his writings, although I could be wrong about the ways the two correlate. While Denis was incredibly, and famously, open and vulnerable among his friends and acquaintances, I suspect this had the unintended effect of pushing the unknowable parts of his identity even deeper. I would hate for any reader to think I were trying to shoehorn Denis’s work into a literary genre akin to Christian rock music, but my hope is that readers will be edified through my sharing, just as I have been by Denis’s life and work.

Denis believed he was personally affected by miracles, that God is supernaturally active in individuals’ lives in profound and unexpected ways. God saved Denis from alcoholism and addiction through Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps. Denis named his Idaho property “Doce Pasos North” and dedicated two of his novels (Angels and Tree of Smoke) to “H. P.,” which, I assume, stands for “Higher Power.” I’m tempted to say that in the firmament of Denis’s beliefs, faith in a Higher Power at work through AA and the 12 Steps is the fixed star. Substance abuse and addiction figure prominently in Denis’s fiction and plays, and he always extends to his characters the possibility of the same grace that he himself experienced.

Getting clean through AA marks the dividing line in Denis’s life. In his 2000 Paris Review essay “Hippies,” he describes his youth as a “criminal hedonist” followed by growth into “a citizen of life with a belief in eternity.” AA meetings provide ritual, prayer, and fellowship that includes the sharing of struggles, confession, and accountability. Denis, who regularly attended meetings as long as I knew him, told me that he hated small talk and that AA meetings spoiled him in this regard — people there only talked about real, personal issues.

He also read Alcoholics Anonymous, the program’s so-called “Big Book,” throughout his sober life. In it, alcoholics working the steps are encouraged to use whichever religious tradition, if any, works for them — “We think it no concern of ours what religious bodies our members identify themselves with as individuals” — while the foreword to the Second Edition (1955) claims that AA includes “Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of Muslims and Buddhists.”

I believe this perspective colored Denis’s thinking on religion. The last time I visited him, in 2015, something I said reminded him of an Emo Philips comedy bit that illustrates the absurdity of denominational hair-splitting, and he pulled it up on YouTube to share it with me. Viewed from the perspective of AA, doctrinal disagreements and accusations of heresy can seem like narcissism of small differences and thus suitable subjects for ridicule. This perspective dovetails with that of Denis’s hero Walt Whitman, who says in the introduction to Leaves of Grass, “argue not concerning God.” Denis felt that paying attention to or participating in these disagreements obscured the most important thing about God: He is active in one’s life.

Denis did get more specific in his faith, however. I know from many visits with him that he read the Bible regularly and found great, practical solace in it. The first time we met, in 2006, he told me he was a convert to Catholicism and that he had encountered Jesus during a Cursillo retreat. He said he had not been to Mass in years. I asked him if anything had changed in his faith since he wrote his “Bikers for Jesus” essay (from the 2001 collection Seek: Reports From the Edges of America & Beyond), and he said that nothing had.

“Bikers for Jesus” includes the clearest description in Denis’s oeuvre of his relationship to contemporary American evangelical Christianity. Describing his visit to the Eagle Mountain Motorcycle Rally sponsored by televangelist Kenneth Copeland in the 1990s, Denis writes:

In the heart of someone who might have just stumbled onto this rally, the man from Idaho, let’s say, fifteen years a Christian convert, but one of the airy, sophisticated kind, the whole business is a millstone — if he’s going to Heaven, shouldn’t he be more excited? Is he going to Heaven? In his questions, his doubts, his failure to submit unconditionally, hasn’t he been nothing but a cruiser, a shopper? Impressed with the drama of his own conversion — but as drama, rather than conversion — was he ever really broken? And more important, was he ever really healed?

This questioning of his own faith and sincerity is not surprising in the context of his familiarity with Jesus’s teaching that people will be surprised at the Final Judgment regarding whether they are counted among the saved or the damned (Matthew 25:31–46), and Paul’s teaching that Christians are to work out their salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

Denis recounts — not uncritically — the messages preached to him and the fellowship he shared with other attendees over the course of three days, and his reaction is one of increasing approval: “The white buckets ride the rows. On the first day the Idaho man put ten dollars in, twenty dollars on the second day. This time it’s a fifty.” The 1992 story collection Jesus’ Son, which is almost universally beloved by worldly literati and was recently hailed as a “modern masterpiece” by John Williams in the New York Times Book Review, was authored by a man who donated money at an event sponsored by the Reverend Kenneth Copeland, one of Earth’s ripest targets for ridicule.

“Bikers for Jesus” also contains details that point to Denis’s willingness to believe in God’s continuing revelation. When Denis encountered people who claimed to be hearing God’s voice, he tried to take them at their word. One particular exchange at Eagle Mountain seems to justify his faith in this approach:

The Idaho man introduces himself to the nearest person in his row, a middle-aged black woman who turns out to be Nancy, from Chicago. “God is saying something,” she says intensely as they shake hands, and won’t let him go, staring into his eyes … “He says you’ve been seeking, and just go ahead, you’re doing fine. He says you got a cross in your back, but that’s healed. And He says be sure and take a pen and a notepad with you, so you can write things down.”

The man turns away, but something about what she’s said strikes him now — more than the coincidence of the pen and the pad and the seeking. “Excuse me,” he says, returning to her. “Nancy, did you say something about my back?”

“You got a cross pinching your right back, down low. But it’s gone now. He fixed it yesterday.”

For four months the Idaho man has been undergoing weekly treatments for a pinched sciatic nerve in his lower right back. It hasn’t occurred to him until this minute that it didn’t bother him last night and hasn’t bothered him all day. “I believe you’re right,” he tells Nancy.

“You didn’t want to ask for healing,” she says, “but He healed you anyway.”

“Do these little incidents happen to you very often?”

“Every day.”

While all believers necessarily employ heuristics to address claims of supernatural revelation, Denis’s stance was skewed, more than anyone I have ever met, toward curiosity and the reservation of judgment. He was drawn to claims of miraculous new revelation just as he was drawn to settings of political collapse and anarchy (in Liberia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere). He believed his encounter with Nancy was a miracle from God. Denis also visited the Children of the Light at their Agua Caliente commune and recorded their stories of miracles in his essay, “Three Deserts.” This attitude toward the miraculous, that “[m]iracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong,” is actually one of the principles listed in the first chapter of A Course in Miracles.

In “Hippies,” Denis references a friend of his, “Mike O,” who at the Rainbow Gathering dispenses “information about the Course in Miracles, a heretic sort of gnostic brand of Christian thinking that doesn’t recognize the existence of evil and whose sacred text is mostly in iambic pentameter.” I met the famous back-to-nature hippie “Barefoot” Mike Oehler of Idaho in 2006, and after I overheard him speaking with Denis about the Course I bought a copy and attempted to read it. When I saw Denis in 2008, I told him I had not been able to make much sense of the book, and he sympathized. He told me he only read the Workbook section, and he gave me a copy of what he called the “Reader’s Digest version” of the Course: a slim paperback with cartoon illustrations called Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD.

A Course in Miracles, which resembles a Bible, is purportedly a divinely inspired text that failed to fully convince the person who wrote most of it down. Beginning in the mid-1960s and over the course of several years, psychologist Helen Schucman heard an inner voice and transcribed what it said with the help and encouragement of her colleague Bill Thetford. The voice claims to be that of Jesus Christ, who teaches that the world we perceive is an illusion and that the way to return to God is through love and forgiveness.

The Course also refers to a concept called the “holy instant.” I don’t claim to understand it, but to the extent that the concept describes how much import can be packed into a moment of subjective experience, I see a relationship between it and Denis’s writing. Some of the most moving and memorable passages in Denis’s stories deal with radical subjectivity and time slowing down, especially in moments on the border between life and death, and how these moments reorder the characters’ priorities: Bill Houston’s death in the gas chamber in Angels (1983); Grandmother Wright floating endlessly in the sea after fleeing the fall of Saigon in Fiskadoro (1985); Nelson Fairchild Jr. making his way, bleeding, down to the beach of the Lost Coast in Already Dead (1997).

There are other echoes of the Course in Denis’s books. The narrator of The Stars at Noon (1986), a sometime-prostitute who insists that Nicaragua in the year 1984 is Hell itself, states: “Anger is fear. Lust is fear. Grief, excitement, weariness are fear — just feel down far enough, look hard enough.” This thought aligns with the Course, which simplifies all human experience to two reactions or choices: love or fear. There are probably more such examples, but it would be difficult in most cases to determine whether Denis’s use of metaphysical concepts and vocabulary springs from the Course or from orthodox Christianity, as there is substantial overlap.

Did Denis believe in the Course? All I know is that he used it. I think of his use of it in the context of his remark to David Amsden noted earlier — it could be that Denis did not want people categorizing him, boxing him in, from either within or without Christianity, with all the judgment and baggage it carries in our culture. Denis was a storyteller fascinated by the question of who has authority in spiritual matters, but he didn’t want to force a set of answers on his readers. He was not a theologian, but he knew what worked for him.

Denis was a Bob Dylan fan (he was the first person I ever heard suggest that Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature), and it may be that in living out his faith he was reacting to or mirroring Dylan’s conversion experience. A final point regarding Denis’s use of the Course: it is something I am personally grateful for, because meeting me — a stranger who approached him at a gala — presented him and his wonderful wife Cindy with an occasion to choose either love or fear, and they welcomed me and offered me friendship without reservation. This seems like a miracle to me, looking back.

When I first traveled to Northern Idaho and met with Denis, he was still writing Tree of Smoke. The first night I stayed at Doce Pasos North, I slept on a sofa bed in Denis’s office with a draft of the novel sitting next to me in a cardboard box. I noticed Denis had handwritten notes taped up by his desk. One was from Emerson: “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards — SELF RELIANCE.” Another said this:

If I’m some kind of James Hampton and this is some kind of Throne of the Third Heaven, if it’s two thousand pages and two hundred years, SO BE IT.

A photo of the Throne, Hampton’s midcentury religious art assemblage, was taped up underneath. Readers of Denis’s poetry will not be surprised at this reference to Hampton’s famous work; Denis’s collected poetry was published in 1995 under the title The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, and it includes his poem of the same name, which describes a visit Denis made to the Throne with the painter Sam Messer:

Sam and I drove up from Key West, Florida, Visited James Hampton’s birthplace in South Carolina, And saw The Throne At The National Museum of American Art in Washington. It was in a big room. I couldn’t take it all in, And I was a little frightened. I left and came back home to Massachusetts. I’m glad The Throne exists: My days are better for it, and I feel Something that makes me know my life is real To think he died unknown and without a friend, But this feeling isn’t sorrow. I was his friend As I looked at and was looked at by the rushing-together parts Of this vision of someone who was probably insane Growing brighter and brighter like a forest after a rain — And if you look at the leaves of a forest, At its dirt and its heights, the stuttering mystic Replication, the blithering symmetry, You’ll go crazy, too. If you look at the city And its spilled wine And broken glass, its spilled and broken people and hearts, You’ll go crazy. If you stand In the world you’ll go out of your mind. But it’s all right, What happened to him. I can, now That he doesn’t have to, Accept it.

It’s not hard to imagine the Throne as a sort of visual analogue to A Course in Miracles. Both Hampton and Schucman had private conversations with God, and the message imparted to each was “FEAR NOT,” the highest words written on the Throne.

Denis appreciated, sought out, and befriended outsiders, mystics, and misfits, past and present. They included Julian of Norwich, mathematician/philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and the anonymous author of the 14th-century religious text The Cloud of Unknowing, in addition to Hampton and Schucman. I was blessed to be one of the misfits.

Finally, Denis believed in the power of prayer. In 2007, he told me that he had had an addiction relapse while in Vietnam doing research for Tree of Smoke, and that prayer was what saved him. He and I prayed for one another as we both went through cancer diagnoses and treatments. I was surprised when he died, because he had shared that his treatment for liver cancer was successful. I had thought he was in the clear. I now suspect he was simply adopting a perspective increasingly aligned with the eternal. One of his last emails to me paraphrased the message Julian of Norwich received from God: “All is well, all will be well, all was always going to be well.”

¤

Brian B. Dille recently finished his doctorate in Policy Analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica. He now lives in Georgia.

The post Books of Revelation: Christianity and Miracles in the Life and Work of Denis Johnson appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2zbjEPh via IFTTT

[currentlycaptainparis]

Alright, Philip. Tell us another bad joke.

Ask me anything

“If you ever get cold, you should stand in a corner. They’re usually ninety degrees.”

[currentlycaptainparis]

You only ever cared about advancing your career, not me or mom or anything else. - Philip

Send my muse anons pretending to be someone they care about. The twist: make these anons as heartbreaking, disappointing, or anger-inducing as possible.

"Philip. I love you more than anything. And I felt the same about your mother." Afsaneh paused, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I know that you disagree with what I did. But it was the right course of action. When something wrong happens, you do something to fix it. I didn't do it for my career. I did it so I could sleep at night."

[currentlycaptainparis]

@time-traveling-pitchforks replied to your post:

booooooooooooooo

“What? You’re the one who keeps asking. How about you tell a joke?”