#French civil servant

[playitagin]

1943-Jean Moulin

Jean Pierre Moulin (French: [ʒɑ̃ mu.lɛ̃]; 20 June 1899 – 8 July 1943) was a French civil servant and resistant who served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance during World War II from 27 May 1943 until his death less than two months later.[1][2]

A prefect in Aveyron (1937–1939) and Eure-et-Loir (1939–1940), he is remembered today as one of the main heroes of the French Resistance and for his efforts to unify it under Charles de Gaulle. He was tortured by German officer Klaus Barbie while in Gestapo custody. His death was registered at Metz railway station.

On 21 June 1943, Moulin was arrested at a meeting with fellow Resistance leaders in the home of Dr. Frédéric Dugoujon in Caluire-et-Cuire, a suburb of Lyon, as were Dugoujon, Henri Aubry (alias Avricourt and Thomas), Raymond Aubrac, Bruno Larat (alias Xavier-Laurent Parisot), André Lassagne (alias Lombard), Colonel Albert Lacaze and Colonel Émile Schwarzfeld (alias Blumstein). René Hardy (alias Didot), a member of the resistance movement Combat and a specialist in railroads, was also present for reasons that are not clear and in what appears to have been a breach of good security practice.

Moulin and the other Resistance leaders were sent to Montluc Prison in Lyon (but not René Hardy, who either escaped or was allowed to flee). They were detained there until the beginning of July. While there, he was tortured by Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon and, later, briefly in Paris. According to witnesses, Moulin and his men had their fingernails removed using hot needles as spatulas. In addition, his fingers were placed in the door frame of the interrogation cell, with the door then repeatedly closed until his knuckles were shattered. They increasingly tightened his handcuffs until they penetrated the skin, breaking the bones in his wrists. He was beaten until his face was unrecognizable and he fell into a coma.

After the torture sessions, Barbie ordered that Moulin be displayed as an object lesson to other imprisoned members of the Resistance. The last time he was seen alive he was still in a coma, his head swollen and yellow from bruising and wrapped in bandages, according to the description given by Christian Pineau, fellow prisoner and member of the Resistance.[26][27][28][29][30] There is some uncertainty surrounding the exact circumstances of Moulin's death, including about the view that he died while being transported by train to Germany.[31] According to his death certificate (established by the occupying force), he died near or in the train station of Metz,[32] but there are conflicting reports on when and where he died.

[lumeha]

My colleagues trying to find a solution to keep me working with them rather than leave is genuinely very sweet

Probably a little pointless because it's all up to the city and they are already searching for someone to fill in once my contract is up, but... Genuinely sweet and heartwarming

[margaretthatchersdead]

Reasons to end the monarchy: Charles Edition

Well it's the coronation so you know what it's time for.

The entire concept of a monarchy is actively undemocratic. The head of state should not be someone who is only in that position because they were born into a certain family.

Having a monarchy upholds classism as a specific family of great wealth and power are viewed as superior to others.

They stand for a history of racism and imperialism. This country has done some truly terrible things in its history and the monarchy are a symbol of that. In order to attempt to begin to undo the harm that we have done, we need to remove this symbol of oppression.

The royal family have previously lobbied the government to hide their own personal wealth. Despite this, we are obviously aware that they have a large amount of wealth.

Prince Charles has himself lobbied the government on a number of occasions. His 'black spider memos' show that he has repeatedly pressured ministers on a wide range of topics from the Iraq war to badger culling to alternative therapies. He has used his power to lobby the government on subjects that would affect him.

The monarch does not occupy a ceremonial role as is frequently claimed. Ministers and civil servants have to consult the monarch. Civil servants have to get the consent of the royals on pieces of legislation, which can cause delays on implementation.

Even if the monarch did occupy a purely ceremonial role, as a literal billionaire he wields a ridiculously high amount of power over people.

Windsor Castle brings in less money than Windsor Legoland does. The many castles that are owned by the royal family could be used to create spaces for the public to enjoy or to be used as a shelter for the homeless. The Louvre in Paris used to be house of the French monarchy and gets over twenty times the tourists. Edinburgh castle hasn't had the monarchy live in it for centuries and yet still brings in tourism.

Prince Andrew is widely known to be connected to Jeffrey Epstein; yet he has not had to face any repercussions for his actions despite blatantly lying when being asked about his actions. The royal family have defended him and prevented him from facing the consequences of his actions.

They cost around £334 million per year. This money could be used to help the poor, given to the NHS, to repair and build infrastructure, to support small businesses that are struggling, pretty much anything.

The royal household publishes a much lower figure about the cost of the royal family, so they are actively trying to cover up their cost.

Charles has had access to confidential Cabinet papers, undermining our democracy.

He has publicly championed alternative medicine and has repeatedly promoted it. He sent at least seven letters to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, that then shortly relaxed the rules governing the labeling of herbal products, ones he as part of Charles's Duchy Originals produces.

He lobbied the health secretary regarding greater provision of alternative treatments on the NHS.

In 2018, 46% of Britons wanted him to abdicate immediately after Elizabeth died. He’s barely wanted by the country even with the sheer amount of pro-monarchy propaganda going around. Charles specifically is very unpopular.

In order to speak to him, broadcasters had to sign a 15-page contract, which includes Clarence house attending the rough and fine cut edits of films and if unhappy can remove that contribution, as well as stipulating that all questions directed at him must be pre-approved and vetted by his representative.

His personal wealth is £1.8 billion. He inherited a large amount of this from Elizabeth, with it being exempt from inheritance tax. Having an immunity from this tax when others don’t is ridiculous.

The Duchy of Cornwall was named in the Paradise papers.

The coronation is going to cost £100 million during a cost of living crisis.

People have been banned from protesting Charles with official warning letters were sent to anti-monarchists.

Protestors who block roads, airports and railways could face an entire year behind bars. Locking yourself to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine. Police are allowed to head off disruption by stopping and searching protestors that they suspect.

The public were encouraged to swear allegiance to the new King when he gets sworn in, this is a deeply disturbing suggestion.

He's a billionaire who's going to use the public's money to celebrate himself.

The monarch has sweeping immunity from many laws

He owns business parks and small rented cottages, six of the ten top residential homes, 285,000 acres of mineral rich land. He’s ridiculously rich in a country where so many people are facing extreme poverty.

[lollobarcollomanonmollo]

women artists that you should know about!!

-Judith Leyster (Dutch, 1609-1660)

During her life her works were highly recognized, but she got forgotten after her death and rediscovered in the 19th century. In her paintings could be identified the acronym "JL", asually followed by a star, she was the first woman to be inserted in the Guild of St. Luke, the guild Haarlem's artists.

-Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1656)

"... Si è talmente appraticata che posso osar de dire che hoggi non ci sia pare a lei, havendo fatto opere che forse i principali maestri di questa professione non arrivano al suo sapere". This is how the father Orazio talked about his nineteen year old daughter to the Medici's court in Florence.

In 1611, Artemisia got raped, and she had to Undergo a humiliating trial, just to marry so that she could "Restore one's reputation" , according to the morality of the time. Only after a few years Artemisia managed to regain her value, in Florence, in Rome, in Naples and even in England, her oldest surviving work is "Susanna and the elders".

-Elisabeth Louise Vigèe Le Brun (French, 1755-1842)

She was a potrait artists who created herself a name during the Ancien Règime, serving as the potrait painting of the Queen of France Marie Antoinette, she painted 600 portraits and 200 landscapes in the course of her life.

-Augusta Savage (Afro-American, 1892-1962)

Augusta started making figures when she was a child, which most of them were small animals made out of red clay of her hometown, she kept model claying, and during 1919, at the Palm Beach County Fair, she won $25 prize and ribbon for most original exhibit. After completing her studies, Savage worked in Manhattan steam laundries to support her family along with herself. After a violent stalking made by Joe Gould that lasted for two decades, the stalker died in 1957 after getting lobotomized. In 2004, a public high school, Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts, in Baltimore, opened.

-Marie Ellenrieder (German,1791-1863)

She was known for her portraits and religious paintings. During a two years long stay in Rome, she met some Nazarenes (group of early 19th century German romantic painters who wanted to revive spirituality in art),after becoming a student of Friedrich Overbeck and after being heavily influenced by a friend, she began painting religious image, getting heavily inspired by the Italian renaissance, more specifically by the artist Raphael. In 1829, she became a court painter to Grand Duchess Sophie of Baden.

-Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (French,1841-1893)

Morisot studied at the Louvre, where she met Edouard Manet, which became her friend and professor. During 1874 she participated at her first Impressionist exhibition, and in 1892 sets up her own solo exhibition.

-Edmonia Lewis or also called "wildfire" (mixed African-American and Native American 1844-1907)

Edmonia was born in Upstate New York but she worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy. She was the first ever African American and Native American sculptor to achieve national and international fame, she began to gain prominence in the USA during the Civil Ware. She was the first black woman artist who has participated and has been recognized to any extent by the American artistic mainstream. She Also in on Molefi Kete Asante's list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

-Marie Gulliemine Benoist (French, 1768-1826)

Daughter of a civil servant, Marie was A pupil of Jaques-Louis David, whose she shared the revolutionary ideas with, painting innovative works that have caused whose revolutionary ideals he shared, painting innovative works that caused discussion. She opened a school for young girl artists, but the marriage with the banker Benoist and the political career Of the husband had slowly had effect on her artistic career, forcing her to stop painting. Her most famous work is Potrait of Madeline, which six years before slavery was abolished, so that painting became a simbol for women's emancipation and black people's rights.

-Lavinia Fontana (Italian, 1552-1614)

She is remembered for being the first woman artist to paint an altarpiece and for painting the first female nude by a woman (Minerva in the act of dressing), commissioned by Scipione Borghese.

-Elisabetta Sirani. (Italian, 1698-1665)

Her admirable artistic skills, that would vary from painting, drawing and engraving, permitted her, in 1660, to enter in the National Academy of S. Luca, making her work as s professor. After two years she replaced her father in his work of his Artistic workshop, turning it into an art schools for girls, becoming the first woman in Europe to have a girls' school of painting, like Artemisia Gentileschi, she represent female characters as strong and proud, mainly drawn from Greek and Roman stories. (ex. Timoclea Kills The Captain of Alexander the Great, 1659).

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Seeking English-language services from various kinds of government services in Quebec just became trickier — and the latest change isn’t going over well.

The François Legault government’s linguistic overhaul, known as Bill 96, is designed to protect and bolster the French language in the province. The goal is to guard against its decline, the government says, especially in Montreal.

After delays, more provisions of the law came into effect Thursday — one of which heavily relies on a self-imposed honour system in some cases.

Under the law, civil servants must now use French in an “exemplary” manner, which means they must speak and write exclusively in the language, except in certain cases. The new rule does not apply to the health and social services settings, according to Quebec’s language watchdog.

The latest restriction means only designated groups — such as Quebecers who have the right to English-language schooling, Indigenous people and immigrants who have been here for less than six months — can receive government services in English. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Jeanne Brousse

Jeanne Brousse was a Frenchwoman and devout Catholic who put her own life at risk to save Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of France.

Born in 1921, Jeanne grew up in a working-class family in Annecy, a charming town in the French Alps. Her mother worked as a maid, and her father, a cheesemaker, was a veteran of World War I who had been gassed by the Germans and suffered lifelong health problems as a result. After helping care for her injured father as a young girl, Jeanne decided to become a nurse and help other suffering patients. She moved to Paris at age 18, to train at a nursing school run by the French Red Cross, however war was declared and she was unable to enroll. Instead she returned to her hometown and became a civil servant in Annecy. In 1941 Jeanne joined the brand-new Refugee Service, an agency of the local government formed to help new arrivals to the region.

In her new position, Jeanne did much more than the job called for. Seeing an immediate need for French Jews to find a safe haven from encroaching Nazi persecution, Jeanne used her contacts in the government and the clergy to find out when deportations of Jews were scheduled so she could warn them and help them flee to safety in Switzerland. Incredibly, Jeanne had never met a single Jew before she decided to devote her life to saving them. She later said, “I felt horrified by the atrocious fate likely to befall all these innocent victims whose only ‘mistake’ was to be born Jewish. I was determined to find solutions so that the greatest number of those who came to me could be saved.”’

Word got out among the Jews of Annecy that Jeanne was an ally. In November 1942, a Jewish woman named Suzanne Aron approached Jeanne with a desperate request. Her husband, Francis Aron, was a reserve officer in the French army who was injured in 1940 and received the Legion of Honor, the highest award given by the French government. When he and his wife were ordered in 1941 to affix a yellow star prominently to their clothing, identifying them as Jews, Francis was furious. He was a decorated war hero who’d given everything to his country, and now he was being persecuted and humiliated by the government he’d sworn to protect and serve? Defiant, Francis refused to wear the yellow star and burnt his identity papers identifying him as Jewish. This impulsive act however did not provide freedom but rather increased danger. Francis’ wife Suzanne had heard about the woman at the Refugee Service who was helping Jews, and she went to Jeanne’s office and begged for help getting false identity papers.

Despite the danger not only to her career but her life, Jeanne immediately created new identity papers for the Arons, giving them the non-Jewish name of “Caron.” If the Nazi occupiers, or the collaborationist French police, discovered that Jeanne was creating fake documents, she would have been sent to a concentration camp, but her moral compass, inspired by her Catholic faith, was stronger than her fear.

Other desperate Jewish families approached Jeanne, and she started providing “survival kits” for each family, consisting of fake identity papers, clothes, food and ration cards. She tapped into her extensive network of friends and colleagues to find safe homes and jobs for the Jewish refugees. Prominent French Rabbi Henri Schilli and his three daughters were among those saved by Jeanne.

As the war dragged on, Jeanne’s rescue activities intensified. As a government employee, she was not subject to curfews and had a coveted “nightpass” which enabled her to move around freely at night. She used this opportunity to distribute anti-Nazi leaflets, and warn young local men who were on the government’s list to be drafted to work in Germany, helping the Nazis. Because of Jeanne’s actions, many young men avoided the labor draft and instead became resistance fighters.

Annecy and the surrounding region were liberated by Allied forces in 1944. Soon after, Jeanne married Jean Brousse, who had also worked with the French resistance. Jeanne had three children, and spent the next three decades focused on her family, not spending much time thinking or talking about her astonishing wartime heroism.

In 1973, Jeanne was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem, partly because of the testimony of Rabbi Schilli. After that, Jeanne began speaking to schoolchildren and other groups about her experiences during the war. She said of herself, “I am not a hero, I am not a lecturer. I am, quite simply, an ordinary woman who lived through extraordinary times.”

Jeanne Brousse died in October 2017 at the age of 96.

For risking her life to save others, we honor Jeanne Brousse as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[ltwilliammowett]

The Admiralty

I often mention the Admiralty, as some sort of vague governing body, but i think have not explain what it is and what it does. Well the term is used to describe the goverment department which was once responsible for Britain's naval affairs. In fact, until the union of Scotland and England in 1707 it was the English Admiralty, and the Scots had their own version. The term is - or was- used by other countries, and of course it had its equivalents to the US Department of the Navy, which is now part of the Department of Defense. The French equivalent was the Ministère de la Marine, but it is now run as part of the centralized Department of Defence. Today, Britain's naval affairs are administered by the Ministry of Defence.

The Admiralty in Whitehall, London

The origins of the Admiralty date back to the late 13th century and the reign of King Edward I (reign 1272-1307). He appointed a Lord High Admiral as the head of his small navy, and gave him a suite of offices in London. These offices became known as the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and when they met for their regular meetings they were known collectively as the Board of Admiralty. The Sea Lords were senior serving officers, who tended to handle operational matters, while the Lords of the Admiralty were civil servants or politicans who dealt more with administration and governance. This system continued in use for almost 7 centuries until the Admiralty was disbanded in 1964. From then on all three of Britain's Armed services were administered by the Ministry of Defence. The Admiralty building stands in London's Whitehall and in the time of the 18th and 19th century and aspecially in wartime its offices were a bustling hive of activity, with officers arrving in the hope for a ship, or to be court- martialled, or to receive their orders. Admirals, civil servants and politicians went about their business, holdings meetings, making judgements ans sending or receiving a welter of reports.

But the Admiralty was more then just a place where the Royal Navy was administered. There were also the Admiralty Courts, where piracy and other naval cases were heard, but the High Court of Admiralty was the highest and heard all British maritime cases and the Prizes (where it was determined whether a ship was a legal prize or not and how much prize money came out) until it was dissolved in 1875.

The High Court of Admiralty

The Navy Board (formerly known as the Council of the Marine or Council of the Marine Causes) was the commission responsible for the day-to-day civil administration of the Royal Navy between 1546 and 1832.

As the size of the fleet grew, the Admiralty sought to focus the activity of the Navy Board on two areas: ships and their maintenance, and naval expenditure. Therefore, from the mid- to late-17th century, a number of subsidiary Boards were established to oversee other aspects of the board's work. These included:The Victualling Board (1683–1832). Responsible for providing naval personnel with food, drink and supplies. The Sick and Hurt Board (established temporarily in times of war from 1653, placed on a permanent footing from 1715, amalgamated into the Transport Board from 1806). Responsible for providing medical support services to the navy and managing prisoners of war. The Transport Board (1690–1724, re-established 1794, amalgamated into the Victualling Board in 1817). Responsible for the provision of transport services and for the transportation of supplies and military equipment.

Each of these subsidiary Boards went on to gain a degree of independence (though they remained, nominally at least, overseen by the Navy Board.

So you see it was more than just a place where old admirals met for brandy, it was the heart of the navy and its administrative headquarters.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

For quite a while, the section “The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light,” was my favourite bit of Les Misérables, and this was my favourite line of that section:

“A cloud had been forming for fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen centuries it burst. You condemn the thunderbolt.” [1500 from at little before 1800 gives you somewhere around 300 A.D.; this is far too long to be referring to the Bourbon monarchy - thanks to a friend for the idea that it probably refers to the creation of a state church under Constantine in the A.D. 300s.]

N.K. Jemisin has a line communicating what is, I think, a very similar idea in her Broken Earth trilogy, in a world that is beset by great earthquakes:

When a comm [community] builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are build on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.

And this us not, in some respects, all that different from what Bishop Myriel himself said in an earlier chapter:

“The faults of women, children, and servants, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the faults of their husbands, fathers, and masters, of the strong, the rich, and the wise…If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”

As I’ve learned more detail about the French Revolution, I have become unconvinced of the conventionary’s assertion that it “loosened all the secret bonds of society, made the waves of civilization flow over the earth, is the consecrecration of humanity.” If it destroyed the old tyranny and oppression, it replaced it with a new tyranny and oppression (actual several new ones, from the partisan purge to the ‘managed democracy’ to the military dictatorship); if it removed the old religious intolerance, it replaced it with a new religious intolerance. It was more willing to kill people for following their consciences than the regime of Louis XVI that preceded it, and it encouraged ordinary people to kill not rich oppressors but ordinary neighbours (ref: Murder in Aubagne by D.G.M. Sutherland, a case study on the cycles of violence that came from it becoming socially normal to kill your neighbours for being associated with a different form of republicanism than yourself, and then normal to even kill anyone who agreed with you politically but objected to the murdering).

You condemn the thunderbolt, is, I think, the more convincing assertion - if pressure builds up to a certain point, it will break, like a dam, and the primary blame lies with those who allowed it build up to that point. The argument is not that the dam breaking is the ideal, but that under certain circumstances it is inevitable. Oppression should be fought; reform should be made, firstly for its own sake became it is good and necessary and just and compassionate, and secondly to avert the damage the thunderbolt would do to the innocent; and if that reform is not happening fast enough, the answer is not to say to the suffering, “Be patient!” but to say to the powerful, “Move faster!”

[fatehbaz]

Sweden became a slaveholding nation when it acquired its only Caribbean colony, Saint-Barthélemy -- a.k.a. St. Barths or St. Barts -- from France in 1784. When the island was retroceded in 1878, the records created during ninety-four years of Swedish Caribbean rule were left behind and are now held in France. Examining the history of this archive that stands as a metaphor for Swedish colonial amnesia, [...] the reluctance in Sweden to recognize a past [...] goes against a self-image untainted by slavery and colonialism. [...] [There is now] a project that aims to open the archive to a larger audience [...]. Saint-Barthelemy was retroceded back to France in 1878, at which point the entire archive that had been created by Swedish civil servants during the ninety-four years’ possession was left on the island. The FSB’s 327 volumes (approximately 130 linear feet and three hundred thousand pages) provide, despite disorder and lacunae, a comprehensive picture of Swedish rule and slavery in the Caribbean.

[Text by: Fredrik Thomasson. “The Caribbean Scorpion: The Saint-Barthelemy Archive and Swedish Colonial Amnesia.” Small Axe. July 2020. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

---

St. Barthelemy’s history is deeply embedded in the settlement and economic history of the Caribbean. [...] References to Indigenous peoples are made in the form of the island’s Arawak name, Ouanalao, in the coat of arms, [...] and of brand names [...]. A table showing the development of the island’s population in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals that a small number of Caribs were enslaved and worked on the island [...]. That St. Barthelemy was by no means exceptional in the exploitation of Black labor is, however, manifested in a 1736 revolt by enslaved people, who obviously collaborated with protesting enslaved laborers on the neighboring islands [...].

With the arrival of the Swedish in the 1780s, the island gained from the transatlantic [...] slave trade. Under King Gustav III, the harbor town of Gustavia was erected [...]. [T]he port benefited from wars in Europe [...] and from Sweden’s neutral position among belligerents [...]. [B]etween 1800 and 1815, one-third of the altogether 2,000-3,000 enslaved workers on the island had been born in Africa [...], 10 percent had been born into slavery on the island, and 25 percent had been born elsewhere in the West Indies [...].

Sweden transferred the island back to France in 1878. The island then depended mainly on a subsistence economy again [...] until the 1950s, when members of the Rockefeller family and the adventurer, entrepreneur, and later mayor of the island [...] identified the island’s potential for the establishment of private estates and luxury tourism resorts. Luxury tourism, the real estate business, and connected services have since become the undisputed main source of revenue [...]. Easily accessible information about St. Barthelemy -- for instance, the results of a quick online search -- relays an image of the island as a high-end tourism destination and tax haven, and as a slice of Europe in the Caribbean. [...] [T]he island’s “Europeanness” and whiteness [might seem] to be some of the most surprising [...] aspects of the shared past of St. Barthelemy and Sweden. Historical and natural factors have given rise to a situation on the island that is unusual in its West Indian context and in the context of the French overseas territories and their legacy of colonization and slavery: namely, the [...] subordinated role of the region’s Afro-Caribbean heritage. [...]

The naturalization of whiteness and the downplaying of the relevance of slavery and of Indigenous presence and their manifold legacies are two features that have characterized the Swedish self-understanding of the country’s colonial history. [...]

In her overview of Swedish historiography related to colonialism, Gunlog Fur describes Scandinavia’s uneasy relationship with the history of colonialism:

Engagement with colonialism proper appears limited and distant in time, and this “indirect” form of Scandinavian involvement in colonial expansion allows room for claims of innocence in confrontations with colonial histories. Seemingly untainted by colonialism’s heritage, the Scandinavian countries throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first successfully maintained positions as champions of minority rights and mediators in global politics. (2014,18) [...]

Fur suggests that Sweden has skipped a phase of scrutinizing its own involvement in colonialism and transatlantic enslavement [...]. Another elliptical narrative concerns the celebration of abolition, often in the form of European abolitionist “heroes,” while the establishment and maintenance of systems of enslavement remain more obscure. [...] In the meantime, there has been a tendency to treat St. Barthelemy as an exotic but rather insignificant curiosity. This tendency in Swedish historiography is currently being remedied, with a range of recent publications [...]. Studies comprise, among other aspects, [Swedish] overseas colonialism and enslavement; the treatment of minorities and Indigenous peoples; the history of Swedish race biology, ideology, and the institutionalization of eugenics; as well as the assumed conflation of national belonging and whiteness [...]. However, [...] [t]here is thus no ready archive to resort to when studying the relations between Sweden and its former colony [...].

[Text by: Lill-Ann Korber. “Sweden and St. Barthelemy: Exceptionalisms, Whiteness, and the Disappearance of Slavery from Colonial History.” Scandinavian Studies. Spring/Summer 2019. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[Korber’s reference to “no ready archive” involving documentation of Swedish slavery/rule was made before the more-recent announcement of the availability of the FSB’s 327 volumes referenced above by Thomasson writing for Caribbean journal Small Axe.]

[scotianostra]

On April 1st 1571 Dumbarton Castle, under siege since January 1571, was captured by Captain Thomas Crawford scaling the walls.

This was all to do with Mary Queen of Scots, who had fled to England in 1568 after her army was defeated at Langside. There were many Royalist supporters left behind though and a civil war ensued, known as the Marian War.

Dumbarton Castle was being held by those loyal to Mary, John Fleming, 5th Lord Fleming, the Governor, he had initially crossed the Solway with the deposed Queen, but returned to take up her cause, he steadily refused to surrender it to the those loyal to the infant James VI.

Enter Thomas Crawford of Jordanhill, who had been in the service of the unfortunate Lord Darnley, and since his murder was a bitter enemy to the Queen,. Crawford with a select party of his retainers marched towards the castle after nightfall, provided with ropes and sealing ladders, among his company was a man named Robertson, who was familiar with every step upon the rock. Arriving at the castle about midnight, and being completely screened from observation by a dense fog, they commenced operations. When they looked up at the dark precipice and compared their frail means with the end proposed, the soldiers could hardly regard it but as an act of madness.

They reached the foot of the rock undetected and began scaling the slopes. The ladders were equipped with steel hooks or “craws” at their heads for wedging into the crevices of the rock and by passing the ladders up in turn and slowly advancing they hoped to reach the top of the cliff without alerting the castle guards. The first attempt failed when the ladders slipped from their perch and came crashing to the ground. If the guards had been more alert the attack could have been foiled before it had even begun, but luck was on Crawford’s side and a second attempt was made. This time the “craws” were wedged more securely and the advance party managed to reach a small ledge where a tree was growing. They quickly tied their ropes to the tree and this enabled them to haul the rest of their force up to the ledge. They were only half way up the rock at this stage however and the second stage of the climb began. It is said that during this second climb one of the soldiers was seized with a fit or convulsion whilst climbing his ladder and gripped the ladder so tightly that he could not be prised from it. With the situation so precarious that no-one could climb over him, the advance had come to a halt.

Crawford ordered the man to be tied to the ladder and the ladder was then turned around with the unfortunate soldier suspended beneath it allowing the rest of the force to climb the ladder. During the climb one man fell to his death, but the remainder reached the foot of the castle wall where three of the party climbed the wall into the castle to try and find a means of entry for the remainder.

At this point they were finally discovered by the castle guards who quickly engaged Crawford’s three men.

The castle walls were reputedly in poor repair and Crawford’s men on the outside were able to force their way through a partially collapsed section and stormed to the aid of their three comrades inside loudly shouting “A Darnley!, A Darnley!“, the battle cry of the Earl of Lennox’s followers. Some of the castle’s cannon were quickly seized and turned against the castle’s defenders, who decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valour and promptly surrendered.

In the confusion, and under cover of the mist, the castle governor Lord Fleming was able to make his escape, possibly by the Watergate of the castle where he fled, according to local tradition, by boat.

The French ambassador to Queen Mary was captured within the castle, but was released unharmed. He made his way to Edinburgh Castle where he continued to aid Mary’s cause.

The Governor’s wife, Lady Fleming, was also captured, but she was allowed to leave the castle along with her servants and possessions.

Another prominent occupant of the castle was not so fortunate. John Hamilton, the Archbishop of St Andrews, was captured in mail shirt and steel helmet, and sent to Stirling to be tried for his part in the murder of Darnley. At 6pm on 6th April 1571, three days after his capture, he was hanged beside the Mercat Cross at Stirling.

The capture of Dumbarton Castle was a major blow to those loyal to Mary and left Edinburgh as the only major stronghold still in their possession. Following his success at Dumbarton, Crawford went on to advise in the siege of Edinburgh two years later and in 1577 he was made Provost of Glasgow. In later life he retired to his family’s historical estates in Kilbirnie where he died on the third of January 1603 aged 73. He is buried in Kilbirnie churchyard within a tomb that he designed himself!

Pics are historical views of The Rock, as it is commonly knwn.

[scurrile-histrion]

Idk if anyone's talked about this before, but as a French person playing Disco Elysium in English, it really strikes me that people refer to Harry and Kim as "gendarmes".

Police is just police in French, and policeman is policier. Pig is poulet (chicken), and cop could be translated to flic.

DE doesn't use any of these French words, it uses "gendarme", which refers not to civil police (civil servants with guns) but to military police. Gendarmes means "people-at-arms". They're not your typical pig. They're fucking military. (more under the cut bc I'm having Thoughts)

It's so interesting that they use this specific word in the context of Revachol being a Zone of Control under the jurisdiction of the Coalition. The RCM was either formed by the Coalition to "restore order" or it was formed by the citizens of Revachol themselves, right?

So why is it interesting, you ask? Because unlike the police nationale, the gendarmerie nationale has military missions: deterrence and weapon control (which includes nuclear security!!!!!), they're in charge of protecting the territory, especially civilian and military critical points, from external and internal threats, etc. They also intervene in events of catastrophes, like natural or environmental disasters.

So, depending on which creation myth we choose to believe for the RCM: either the citizens of Revachol really wanted to have this militia that could get organised efficiently in the event of, say, a nuclear pile meltdown, or the Coalition really, really wanted to have the people of Revachol in a chokehold. Because, as a general rule, the police is terrifying, but the military are more equipped for actual warfare, yknow?

On a lighter note, one of the main differences between police and gendarmerie is that gendarmerie units are versatile and follow a vertical organisation, wheras police units are highly specialised and have a more horizontal organisation. So it might mean that Harry-boy deals w lots of different cases, even if they're all "major crimes", like infringement on the environment and the public health, hatred crimes, crimes against humanity, etc, which is interesting for his character imo.

(Also gendarmes have to be available at all times since they're military lol)

Sources [in French, but u can check the wikipedia pages for gendarmerie nationale and police nationale, they're ok]: x x x x

[mariacallous]

The name Frantz Fanon has become inseparable from the history of decolonization. It is almost impossible to speak of anti-colonial violence or the failings of postcolonial elites without referring to the figure who inspired generations of activists to revolt against colonialism. Since the publication of his seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961, Fanon has been idealized by generations of activists in the global south and beyond. For them, the Black Martinican and Frenchman who devoted himself to Algerian independence is the fearless and uncompromising prophet of revolution.

The subtitle of Adam Shatz’s new biography, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, suggests that his life was not so simple. Shatz, the U.S. editor for the London Review of Books, is an expert guide through the thicket of Fanon-lore that has emerged since his death in 1961, and his book offers a compelling account of Fanon’s transformation from a medical student into a global icon of anti-colonial revolution.

But The Rebel’s Clinic tells another, more tragic story, too: the tale of a young Black man from the French colonies who never really belonged anywhere, no matter how closely he identified with a nation or cause. Despite his deep attachment to Algeria, he could never really embody the Algerian revolution, as hagiographic accounts of his life have suggested. His life and body of work were too complicated to be branded in this way. Although Fanon was a remarkable thinker, he could be conflicted and even contradictory, and simplifying him only simplifies the difficult and often fraught work that must go into anti-colonial movements.

The first words a young Fanon learned to spell were “Je suis français.” As a child in Fort-de-France, the capital of the French colony of Martinique, in the 1920s and ’30s, he enjoyed the privileges of a typical bourgeois family: servants, piano lessons, and a weekend home outside the city. This was not uncommon for Antillean évolués, or assimilated colonial subjects whose European education let them rise up the colonial hierarchy. Like many of their class, the Fanons looked down on the “nègres” from France’s African colonies, who they believed weren’t really French.

Fanon’s parents identified so deeply with the French Republic that they behaved “more French than the French,” Shatz writes. As for Fanon, whose father was largely absent, Shatz recounts that he would collect several adoptive fathers in his short life but the “symbolic father represented by France” was by far the most important. Fanon strongly believed in the universal values of the republic: liberty, equality, and fraternity.

It was not until Fanon joined the Free French Forces in World War II that his faith in European civilization was shaken. In the army, he witnessed the French generals’ racism; the rigid separation between white, Antillean, and African soldiers; and the horrors of trench warfare. “Yet the incident that seems to have hurt him most,” Shatz writes, “was returning to Toulon [in southern France], during the celebrations marking the liberation of France, and finding that no Frenchwoman was willing to share a dance with him.” Though Fanon had risked his life for France, it would never truly accept him, and he never recovered from the rejection he experienced when he finally arrived in the métropole.

After the war, he studied medicine in Lyon, a city Shatz describes as “notorious for its suspicion of outsiders,” and eventually practiced as a psychiatrist there. His first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), grew out of a period of intense frustration and suffering. He dictated the book to his fiancée, Josie, in a burst of anger and creativity. (Fanon never typed anything himself.) It was his reckoning with a city, and a country, that he was beginning to despise—an attempt to make sense of what he described as the “lived experience” of Black men in white society. The desire to “become” white, he concluded, alienated racialized people from themselves, and assimilation constrained their freedom. Today, the book is celebrated as a foundational text in the study of Blackness and of alienation. But at the time, few readers appreciated or understood Fanon’s methodology—a synthesis of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, memoir, and social theory.

As Fanon’s awareness of the appalling situation of Algerians in France grew, he gradually lost “interest in the psychological dilemmas of middle-class people of color like himself,” Shatz writes. His psychiatric study of the “North African syndrome”—a mysterious illness that plagued France’s Algerian population—was a turning point. Algerians kept going to French doctors saying they were in pain but without clear physical symptoms. Fanon discovered that their pain couldn’t simply be dismissed as “imaginary,” as most French doctors had done. The racism of French society was making Algerians sick, he believed, and their ailments could only be treated by addressing this uncomfortable truth. For Fanon, mental illness could never be divorced from social conditions. He considered himself an activist and, Shatz writes, “approached psychiatry as if it were an extension of politics by other means.”

The Rebel’s Clinic is at its best when Shatz describes Fanon’s early efforts to develop an anti-colonial psychiatry. In 1953, Fanon was hired as the director of the French-run Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria. His time there opened his eyes to the brutality of colonialism, and under his guidance, the hospital transformed into a center for experiments in social therapy. Initially, the Algerian Muslim patients regarded Fanon with suspicion. To them, his cultural attitudes represented those of France. But, as Shatz writes, Fanon had a plan:

Working with a team of Muslim nurses, he created a café maure, a traditional Moorish café where men drink coffee and play cards, and later an “Oriental salon” for the hospital’s small group of female Muslim patients. Muslim musicians and storytellers came to perform; Muslim festivals were celebrated; and, for the first time in the hospital’s history, the mufti of Blida paid a visit during the breaking of the Ramadan fast.

French colonialism dehumanized Algerians by destroying their culture. By reminding them of their culture, Fanon hoped to help his patients assert a collective identity, which would give them the confidence to undergo a process of “disalienation” and fight back against the French.

At Blida, the Algerian nurses shared Fanon’s radical politics, and together, they secretly treated fighters with the National Liberation Front (FLN), which sought to overthrow French colonial rule. The hospital staff formed a militant health care collective that challenged coercive approaches to psychiatry. For them, Blida wasn’t an isolated institution where patients were locked away to recover; rather, their work in the hospital was part of the struggle waged outside its grounds. Fanon and his staff even introduced day hospitalization so patients could maintain ties to their social environment.

In Shatz’s view, Fanon’s dedication to health care was perhaps his most important contribution to the Algerian revolution. (He never engaged in active combat during the war.) Providing health care remained a priority for the FLN throughout the years of fighting.

After the French discovered Fanon was secretly an FLN member, he fled to Tunis, Tunisia’s capital, where the FLN’s provisional government would be based, and took up a new role in the movement: He still treated patients traumatized by war but also worked as a propagandist championing the FLN’s armed struggle. Although his democratic vision of a people-led revolution clashed with the FLN’s authoritarianism, he dutifully justified its policies to an international audience. As Shatz points out, the strategic use of the phrase “we Algerians” in his articles for El Moudjahid, the FLN’s French-language newspaper, was a way to prove how closely he identified with the Algerian cause. His writing and speeches during this period helped create the myth of Fanon as a leader of the revolution.

The Rebel’s Clinic pushes back against this mythologizing. Fanon’s identification with Algeria grew as the war intensified, but he was an outsider: He spoke neither Arabic nor Berber, was not Muslim, and had come to Algeria as a representative of the colonial government. And while FLN leaders respected Fanon’s medical work, they never quite trusted him. Even as they presented him as a spokesperson of the movement to international audiences, Fanon had little influence over its direction and politics. When he learned that his close friend, key FLN figure Abane Ramdane, had been assassinated by another FLN faction, he was devastated. But he never questioned the leadership’s decision and refused to break ranks. Fanon had become a captive of the revolution he’d hoped to ignite.

Shatz notes that A Dying Colonialism, Fanon’s first book about Algeria, “reads like a record of revolutionary hopes soon to be dashed.” Written in Tunis in 1959, the book gives an idealized account of Algerian liberation, pieced together from his memories of the war’s early stages. But the social changes he praised—the emancipation of Algerian women (the subject of his famous essay “Algeria Unveiled”), the dissolution of classes, and the turn toward secularism—were never realized in practice.

Fanon never really understood his adopted home, especially when it came to religion. His belief in the revolution was so absolute that he failed to consider how the conservative, Islamist forces in the FLN might shape its outcome. Like Ramdane, Fanon argued for an independent Algeria that would welcome everyone who renounced their colonial privilege. He believed that the roles of “settler” and “native” ascribed by colonialism were never fixed. After independence, he hoped, Algerians would finally be able to “discover the man behind the colonizer,” as sympathetic Europeans too became equal citizens in a secular Algeria. But, as Shatz argues, these ideals clashed with the FLN leadership’s more narrowly Arab-Islamic vision of post-independence Algeria. Even the people Fanon had hoped would lead the revolution—Algeria’s poor peasants—embraced the FLN’s social conservatism.

To avoid conflict over its social policies, the provisional government promoted secular leftists to diplomatic positions in West Africa. In 1960, Fanon was stationed in Accra, and he soon came to share the Pan-Africanist views of Ghana’s president, Kwame Nkrumah, who insisted that all Africans would be united by their common struggle against colonialism. Fanon was convinced that Algeria would lead the rest of the continent toward liberation. But ironically, his influence in the FLN waned as he became more famous, and he “would have little success in ‘Algerianizing’ the strategies of African liberation struggles,” Shatz writes.

Fanon wanted to convince African anti-colonial movements to engage in guerrilla warfare, as the FLN had done. But their leaders often chose peaceful organizing or negotiations as the preferred route to independence. Fanon rightly feared that this approach to decolonization would enable former colonial powers to “recolonize” Africa through favorable arrangements with compliant leaders. His evisceration of Africa’s post-independence bourgeoisie in The Wretched of the Earth was inspired by his work as a diplomat.

Fanon was not always prophetic about the future of African politics. As Shatz points out, he underestimated the impact of the Cold War on Africa, insisting that it was merely “a distraction from the larger drama of decolonization and the rise of the Third World.” Two of Fanon’s closest friends and political allies in sub-Saharan Africa—soon-to-be Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the Cameroonian communist Félix-Roland Moumié—would be assassinated in the early 1960s because of their leftist politics. (Fanon had himself survived an attempt on his life in Rome in 1959.) Another close friend, the Angolan Holden Roberto, turned out to be a CIA asset and was secretly working to undermine Lumumba, whom he described as a communist “puppet.”

The process of decolonization, then, was not only a struggle between anti-colonial movements and colonial powers but part of the global struggle among competing ideologies. As much as he tried to ignore it, the Cold War found Fanon, too. Following an FLN expedition to Mali to assess the possibility of a weapons corridor to southern Algeria, Fanon fell ill and was diagnosed with leukemia. In a show of “friendship” to the FLN, the CIA agreed to bring Fanon to the United States—a place he’d previously dismissed as “the country of lynchers”—for treatment. Fanon died in a hospital in Maryland in December 1961. A few months later, Algeria achieved its independence.

Today, various activist causes, from Black Lives Matter to the Palestinian solidarity movement, have again embraced Fanon as a leading thinker. But his work has also found favor with scholars in disciplines such as psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. In her recent interviews with Shatz, Fanon’s former secretary, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan, mentioned that she didn’t like him “to be chopped into little pieces.” Manuellan insisted that Fanon’s “pamphlets” were “texts written in the service of a political movement, not works of philosophical reflection,” Shatz writes.

Yet this is precisely what the canonization of Fanon has too often done. Fanon’s psychiatric and philosophical writings merit renewed attention. But this attention should not come at the cost of gaining a fuller understanding of how Fanon’s anti-colonial thought builds on his earlier psychiatric studies or of his fraught and often conflicted role in the revolution. The Rebel’s Clinic is careful not to reduce Fanon’s life and thought to a single interpretation. Fanon’s advocacy of anti-colonial violence cannot be separated from his belief in a revolutionary humanism. For him, violence was a necessary step in the struggle—a kind of “shock therapy” that would restore confidence to the colonized mind. But he also understood that the traumas of the war would not disappear at independence.

Shatz does suggest that one aspect of Fanon’s work is most relevant for our world today. Fanon knew very well that the struggle for decolonization was only a first step toward the birth of a new humanity, which would allow both colonizer and colonized to finally be free. He never described exactly what the social revolution he so strongly believed in would look like, but he was certain that the poor and oppressed of the “Third World,” not liberals or the European working classes, would lead the way. This anti-colonial and universalist Fanon is, perhaps, the one Shatz would like us to remember most.

[denimbex1986]

Everyone gets lost in Cillian Murphy’s eyes. At the end of his latest film, “Oppenheimer,” in which he plays the titular character, Oppenheimer stands alone, staring at the pattern of rain droplets over a still pond. As the camera lingers on his face, a ring of fire begins to consume the Earth, and an immense blaze fills the whole scene. Not a sound is uttered, but the emotion conveyed in those piercing blue eyes speaks louder than words.

Murphy’s eyes that speak surely bring the character of Oppenheimer to life, even in the black and white parts of the film. “I try not to think of actors as I write, but Cillian’s eyes were the only eyes I know that can project that intensity,” Nolan said to the New York Times. This is their sixth collaboration, but the first time Murphy has played the lead. With “Oppenheimer” surpassing $900 million at the global box office — becoming one of the most acclaimed biopics to date — audiences have become as eager to learn about it’s as they are about the father of the atomic bomb.

Even though it took Hollywood a while to recognize Murphy’s potential to play a starring role, this quietly intense actor has long been celebrated in the UK and Ireland. A survey of his portfolio since his debut in 1996 reveals a daring selection of characters: Jackson Ripper, a terrorist leader in “Red Eye;” Fischer, the heir to a multi-billion empire in “Inception;” Daniel O’Donovan, an Irish republican in “The Wind That Shakes the Barley;” an anonymous, shivering soldier in “Dunkirk.” None of these names carry the same fame as the legendary physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer on screen today, but Murphy honored them all.

In order to get ready for the part of Patrick “Kitten” Barden, Murphy spent weeks working with a real-life drag queen, who took him clubbing with friends so he could study women’s body language and learn how to dress. To be able to convincingly act out Tommy Shelby, a WWI veteran, he followed a hard-hitting workout plan to look “physically imposing” for the part. The quest to achieve Oppenheimer’s chiseled cheeks and a haunted look took him to the opposite end of the spectrum. According to costar Emily Blunt, on set he would only eat one almond a day to slim down and was so immersed in the role that he skipped cast dinners. According to Murphy, “It’s not the scale, it’s the quality.” For him, great dedication is necessary in order to fully embody his characters.

Clearly, his hard work has paid off. Murphy is now the 5/4 favorite to win Best Actor at the 2024 Oscars for his performance in “Oppenheimer,” as predicted by The Online Betting Guide, and his last role as Tommy Shelby in “Peaky Blinders” earned him his first BAFTA TV Awards nomination for Leading Actor. Prior to this, he also received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for his role as a transgender woman in “Breakfast on Pluto.”

Yet Murphy did not always know he wanted to be an actor, and it took him a long time to discover his life-long passion. His father was a civil servant and his mother a French teacher, but the house was always busy — non-stop music, bookshelves filled with literature, and the radio often on. His parents sent him to an all-boys private school, where he was involved in rugby for some time before giving it up. Then, he tried for a law degree at University College Cork, but he quit that too. He devoted years to doing what his parents wished for, not necessarily what he wanted, and “he didn’t feel good enough.” After that, he had a fleeting music career before a stage production of “A Clockwork Orange” guided him to his true passion — acting.

His first breakthrough came in the 2002 movie “28 Days Later,” where he played Jim, the lone survivor of a pandemic in a desolate London. It was a modern horror classic which served as a launching pad for Murphy’s career, with Nolan later recalling the poster of Murphy with his bald head and “crazy” eyes in a conversation for Entertainment Weekly. His profile continued to grow in 2005 following his roles in several successful films, namely the Scarecrow in “The Dark Knight” and the villain in the action thriller “Red Eye.” For the last two decades, he has built strong relationships with directors such as Boyle and Nolan and continuously wowed audiences with his talent for playing dark, troubled, and tormented characters. But these complex characters are not strictly villains. As Murphy said in an interview with The Guardian, “Villains are good if they’re well written, but if it’s one note or a trope, then they are dull.” He relishes playing these complex characters and likes scripts to stretch into “all the shades” of the human spectrum.

“I can’t remember which director said it, but he said it takes 30 years to make a good actor,” he said to PORT Magazine. 27 years later, coming off the heels of a starring role in a major film, Murphy appears to have achieved his aim.

In an industry that often rewards fast success, Cillian Murphy has chosen a different path. “Peaky Blinders” made the Irish actor a household name, and Nolan’s blockbuster epic took him even further. However, Murphy continued to pursue roles which were often underrated, because it is “a film that you're very sort of proud of and excited by.” Known for his introverted personality, Murphy has chosen a quiet, normal life away from the public eye, even revealing at one point that he did not enjoy the “personality part” of being an actor. “I don’t understand why it’s expected I’ll be scintillating on a talkshow,” he said in an interview with The Guardian. He is true to his word — Murphy’s bored face during interviews has become a popular meme. Indeed, 67 million people on TikTok have watched videos on “Cillian Murphy interview zoning out,” and they can’t seem to get enough of his dissociating clips. Part of his appeal to fans seems to stem from this authenticity, in contrast with so many other celebrities who aim to please.

To Murphy, character is in fact all that matters. Murphy is satisfied with being the man in the shadows, and though he may not be as flashy as Tommy Shelby with “that charisma and swagger,” he believes that this shows that “I’m doing my job” correctly. “Cillian and Tommy are almost polar opposites,” Steven Knight, the “Peaky Blinders” creator, attested in an interview with Esquire.

As recounted in the Esquire interview, when Murphy auditioned for the role, Knight doubted whether this very thin man was the right fit for a Bringham-based gangster. Murphy said a simple yet powerful thing then: “Remember, I’m an actor.” His point was that when he enters a room, he is not Tommy Shelby. But when he is acting, he can become anyone — a gangster, a woman, or a physicist.

What is so mesmerizing about Murphy’s eyes? It is not the color, but the complex, varied emotion that is seen in each glimpse. Murphy can draw people into a story and make them think twice about it afterwards. While he has worked for close to thirty years in the acting industry, making him one of the most prolific actors, neither the standard film crew hierarchy nor his fame will keep him from choosing what truly captivates him. His success is a natural result of his unwavering pursuit and love of the craft.'

[adarkrainbow]

Aulnoy's famous fairytales: The White Doe (1)

Do you remember the reblog I made about the giant crab attacking fairies? Well if you recall it, be happy for this is the fairytale I am about to talk today - and if you don't, you're in for a wild ride.

"La Biche au Bois" (The Wood Doe/The Doe of the Wood) is one of madame d'Aulnoy's most famous and renowned fairytales, still present in fairytale collections of the 19th and 20th century. It was notably included in Andrew Lang's Orange Fairy Book as "The White Doe", and it received several alternate English translations - The Hind of the Forest, The White Fawn, The Enchanted Hind, The Hind in the Woods and many more... Today I am here to talk about the original fairytale, the true story and the true meanings behind it. For the sake of convenience I will use the common English title "The White Doe" - but know that this isn't the actual French title, and rather an English invention. Know also that this fairytale is not part of madame d'Aulnoy's first fairytale book - but rather her second one, "Contes Nouveaux ou Les Fées à la moe", "New Fairytales or Fairies in fashion".

In this post, what I will do is simply summarize the fairytale in an (I hope) easy way - all the subtle meanings, cultural allusions, literary twists and turns will be talked about in a different post. So get ready for one of d'Aulnoy's most famous story.

THE DOE OF THE WOOD

Once upon a time, there were a king and a queen who had a perfect couple, loved each other dearly, and were beloved by their subject. There was only one thing missing for their absolute happiness: a child. The queen desperately wanted one - not only did the couple had no heir, the queen was certain the king would love her more if she had a child. For five years the queen tried to have a child, with no success, and she regularly visited miraculous or curative waters at various "fountains" (in the French language at the time, "fountain" also meant natural springs, but frequented and used enough to become more "civilized" than wild streams only frequented by beasts - so in the text, the queen visits a wood with several "famous fountains" in it, these aren't our modern fountains, just water streams and springs). As the queen sat near one of the fountains, and asked her servants to leave her alone, she complained out loud about her not having any child - and suddenly a big crayfish appeared out of the water, and talked to her (which surprised her). I insist: in English translations you will find the words "crab" or "lobster" but in the French text, it is an écrevisse, aka a crayfish or crawfish.

The crayfish tells the queen she will obtain what she seeks, and informs her of the existence nearby of a palace where fairies live - it is hidden from "mortal eye" by magical clouds the fairies created. But if the queen agrees to follow the crayfish, it will guide her towards the palace. The queen agrees but worries slightly over the fact that the crayfish can only walk backwards - and suddenly the Crayfish transforms herself into a "pretty little old lady". She leaves the fountain without being wet, beautifully dressed - the good-looking old woman is actually the Fairy of the Fountain. The Fairy of the Fountain takes the queen through a path that is usually blocked by thorns and briars - but on their path roses, orange-trees, violets and all sorts of other plants bloom, and birds sing. They arrive at a shining palace made entirely of diamonds, and in it live six beautiful fairies. The fairies announce to the queen that she will give birth to a daughter, that she will named "Désirée" (Desired), because she was a desired child - they also give her a bouquet made of six different flowers sculpted in precious stones. Each flower corresponds to the name of one of the fairies, and they explain that when the baby is born, the queen will merely have to invoke them while holding their flower, so that they may come and give the baby their gifts. They then let the queen visit their palace, and its wonderful gardens with abnormally large abricots and cherries, before the Fairy of the Fountain escorts her back. Her servants were in panic because, not finding the queen anywhere, they thought she had been kidnapped - but she returns fine, and in fact she returns eight more day to visit the Fairy of the Fountain and the six fairies' palace, before finally settling back home.

The queen became pregnant and gave birth to the little Desired, as the fairies had predicted. Immediately, she used the precious-stone bouquet to invoque the six flower-named fairies, who arrived on chariots of precious materials (ebony for one, ivory for another, cedar for a third) dragged by birds (the ebony chariot has white pigeons, the ivory one has black crows). This is explicitely described as a sign of the fairies coming "for friendship and alliance", because when a fairy is angry or vengeful, she rather travels on a chariot dragged by dragons, fire-breathing snakes, lions, leopards or panthers. The fairies offer the baby all sorts of impressive fairy-crafted presents - cloth that can't be worn out even after a thousand years of use, lace in which was embroidered the whole history of the world, bed covers in which are depicted a thousand types of games, a craddle with four little Cupid statues that animate themselves and rock the babe whenever they need to be put to sleep or quieted down... The fairies even touch the ground with their want to summon a nurse out of thin air when the baby starts crying for milk. Finally, the fairies give their six gifts: 1) virtue 2) spirit (intelligence) 3) miraculous beauty 4) happy fortune (good luck or good fate) 5) a strong and good health 6) that she may succeed in everything she tries.

But of course, as one expects in fairytales, this is where things go wrong. A gigantic crayfish, so big she barely goes through the door, appears in the bedroom - it is the Fairy of the Fountain, angered that she was disdained and not called upon, despite being the one that allowed the queen to discover the fairy-world in the first place. The angry fairy even says that she had a feeling the queen would be ungrateful, and this is why she took a crayfish form in the first place - to hint at her that "her friendship would go backward". The queen begs for her forgiveness, to no avail, but the other six fairies (referred constantly as her "sisters") manage to quiet her down. And that's because the Fairy of the Fountain is actually pretty vain - and by flattering her (for example begging her to leave her monstrous and dreadful shape so they can admire her natural beauty), they manage to calm her down a bit. The Crayfish Fairy decides that she won't harm the baby as much as she originally intended to... But she will still harm it. So, she declares that an unspecified misfortune would happen to the princess if she ever saw the light of day before her fifteenth birthday, and that this misfortune might lead to her death.

Once the Crayfish Fairy leaves, the queen begs the six good fairies for help. Their solution is to create by magic a beautiful palace with an underground entryway but no door nor window, and lit by so many candle-lights that there is as much light in there as if it was bright day. Desired is forced to live in this palace, shielded from the light of the sun, until her fifteenth birthday. Hopefully for her, her life in there isn't too boring or dreadful - the fairies made sure she has a thousand different beauties around her, and that she gets to learn in a fun and entertaining way the completely history of the world ; and all sorts of teachers on all the subjects possible are sent to her. She notably grows so beautiful that "if her mother didn't have to be by the side of her husband, she would have stayed with her daughter all day long". The fairies also regularly visit the princess, offering her all sorts of gifts. But one fairy in particular loved Desired more than the others - it was the fairy named Tulip, and she kept insisting that the queen must be vigilant and protective, because the Crayfish Fairy is a vindicative one and might do great harm to the princess. The queen promises her many times that Desired will not be exposed to sunlight before she is fifteen... But the queen does something that ends up dooming it all: she prepares the portraits of her daughter and has them sent to all the courts of the world, as one usually does to prepare a princess to enter the world of royalty.

And so, the portrait reaches the hands of a prince named Prince Guerrier (Prince Warrior, a name given to him because he won "three great battles"). Prince Warrior falls in love with the portrait of Desired. He falls in love so much that he refuses to be parted from it, he locks himself in a room with it to speak to it as if it was alive - and of course, people immediately start thinking the prince has gone mad. The king his father summons him for a stern chat, because he won't have his son just turning mad for no reason and speaking to furniture. We learn here that prince Warrior is engaged to princesse Noire (princess Black), an arranged marriage - but he says he has fallen in love with princess Desired and wants to marry her, he is even ready to die if he can't be with her. To appease his father who doesn't understand his son's passion, Warrior brings to him Desired's portrait, and when he sees it, the king is just as charmed as his son, and he immediately agrees to break off the engagement with Black and have his son wed to Desired. He says he is even ready to fight off a war with princess Black's kingdom, that it would be worth having Desired as his daughter-in-law!

To be sent as an ambassador to Desired's court, is selected a man named Becafigue (it is a type of fig-eating bird), an eloquent courtier, a young lord that was known to "dearly love the prince" and always be ready to pleae him. Becafigue goes to Desired's court with an enormous amount of golden carriages and magnificent horses, and a thousand gifts of diamonds and precious stones and rubies, all engraved with love messages or shaped like hearts - as well as a portrait of the prince, "painted by a man so talented, the portrait could speak and make compliments". Before this whole ambassy can arrive to the court, the fairy Tulip appears to the queen and warns her of the arrival of Becafigue - she insists that the queen must NOT let Desired out of the palace, because she isn't fifteen yet, and she warns her, no matter what Becafigue says or does, do NOT allow Desired under the sunlight. The queen promises again to follow Tulip's warnings...

But unfortunately all the incredible riches of Warrior's courts, and Becafigue's mockery of the "useless and ridiculous warnings of fairies", and the impressive talking portrait of Prince Warrior, all make a great effect on everybody. The queen shows her daughter the portrait and the gifts, which makes Desired fall in love with the prince, and the marriage is quickly accepted - but given Desired is only fourteen, her parents send back Becafigue without her, insisting that the prince must wait three whole months, until her fifteeneth's birthday, to actually see her. And this news... doesn't please Warrior. He falls for the typical thing of 17th century romances: this sort of "love-sickness". He is so sick and sad to not see and be with his love he stops eating, he stops sleeping, he stays sleeping or lying down on a sofa all day long, only writing to Desired and speaking to her portrait, losing his strength... The king is very alarmed at seeing his son's health deteriorate, and the doctors are clear that it is a love problem with no actual remedy beyond the prncess herself. So the king decides to go see Desired's court himself, in person, to beg her parents to rush the wedding - the problem is that the king is actually old, and as it turns out he can't do such a long travel himself. So he sends again Becafigue, with very touching letters, to try to bend the king and queen to their will.

Meanwhile, princess Desired is also in love, constantly looking at Warrior's portrait and constantly worrying about him and her wedding (though she doesn't fall sick like him). We are here introduce to the two personal servants/company ladies of Desired. One is Giroflée (Gillyflower) who loves her mistress dearly and was her faithful servant ; the other, called Longue Epine (Long Thorn) is actually secretly jealous of the princess. It is noted that Longue Epine's mother was the governess of the princess and that, after raising her, she should have loved her too... But the governess loved even more her own daughter, and so seeing Long-Thorn's hatred of Desired made her hate too the princess.

WARNING! OBLIGATORY RACIST MOMENT OF OLD-TIMEY TEXT!

So, we catch up to the famous "princess Black", who we learn is actually an Ethiopian princess - and "the most vindicative being in the world". She is furious at being tossed away like that by having her engagement broken, and she argues to the ambassador that she has the two things a prince would want from her 1) she is VERY rich and 2) she is beautiful. This is the most racist moment, as the princess describes her "beautiful" feature - "the flat nose, these big lips, this dark skin". Which are indeed in this story beautiful features for Ethopians themselves - but which are meant to be taken as a mockery here, since these traits, thought at the time to be typical of Africans, were at the very opposite of the beauty canons of 17th century France. At the time, to be beautiful, a woman needed to have 1- a thin mouth, with thin lips, almost nothing at all 2- a small nose, the smallest the better and 3- a pale skin, not just "white" because even a white skin can be ugly if it is tanned, but a truly paper white, chalk white skin. Of course, as a result the description of "Ethiopian beauty" becomes an "ugly portrait" by French standards. The Ethiopian princess is also shown to be very cruel - as she almost "begins her revenge" by killing the ambassador that brings her the bad news, and it is only because he flatters her and praises her that she accepts to spare his life.

The thing is that, to make sure her revenge is complete, princess Black goes to visit (on an "ivory chariot dragged by ostriches") her best friend and godmother... the Crawfish Fairy! The Fairy of course shares the pity of her goddaughter, and quickly searches why the prince Warrior might have rejected her... Only to find that it is all because of Desired. And the Fairy, who until this point had actually forgotten almost everything tied to Desired, saw her desire for revenge re-ignited. The narration even points out that, without princess Black's fury, the Crayfish Fairy might not even have done anything against Desired is she saw the light of the sun - meaning her own curse would have not been activated. But princess Black convinced her to rather unleash all of her fury against the princess... [Note that this is the last time we see princess Black, she had her revenge, she is satisfied, she returns home after gifting Crayfish with flowers and fruits].

Back to the main story! Becafigue arrives at Desired's court, and again does a very powerful plea, once again accusing a "too great credulity in little fairies", and explaining how the prince might die of heartbreak due to thinking the princess hates him and doesn't want to see him. When Desired learns her beloved's prince bad states, she herself faints - and ultimately she decides of a solution, a way for her to see Warrior and have a happy wedding (without the bethroted dying first), while tricking the "wicked fairy of the Fountain" and avoiding her curse. She convinces her mother the queen to prepare for her a shielded, windowless, pitch-black carriage for her to travel into - to undergo a journey where they will only stop and rest when night falls, so that she can reach Warrior's castle without ever seeing the rays of the sun. This is all promptly done - and that despite Tulip's earlier warnings that the princess should not leave her palace and not follow Becafigue to the prince's castle.

The travel goes its way, with Desired inside the pitch-black carriage with her two ladies-in-waiting, the faithful Gillyflower and the jealous Long-Thorn. Long-Thorn has also fallen in love with the prince upon seeing his portrait, and so she, alongside with her mother, hatched a devious plot to take the place of the princess... As they arrived in sight of Warrior's city, and when it was high noon, Long-Thorn brutally opened the carriage, letting the sunlight flow in. The second Desired saw the sunlight, she turned into a white doe and ran into the woods. Her servants split in two - one group running after her, another running to the city to warn Warrior. But the Fairy of the Fountain was nearby, and caused such a huge thudnerstorm and all sorts of disorienting charms, that neither group could reach their goal and they all ended up completely lost. The only ones spared were Long-Thorn and her mother. Long-Thorn promptly stole the clothes, jewels and belongings of Desired, her mother acting as lady-in-waiting, and decided to march to the city, pretending to be Desired. (There is even an humorous section where Long-Thorn realies that the jewels of the princess are a bit too heavy for her, since they include a crown with diamonds "big as fists", and a sphere "bigger than her head" to be held in her hand - but her mother insists on her carrying it all so she doesn't get mistaken for a fake princess)

Long-Thorn and her mother end up meeting the carriage of Warrior and his parents, who were rushing to welcome Desired. The royals are very surprised to learn that Desired is walking to their city, all on her own, outside for one servant - and when they see "Desired" they are horrified because Long-Thorn doesn't look at all like the portrait Warrior fell in love with. Long-Thorn is so tall, that the clothes of the princess barely reach her knees. She is extremely skinny, to the point the prince calls her "a skeleton" and a "mummy". Her teeth are black and they don't line up in any kind of order - and finally she has a hooked nose shining of a "bright red", making her look like some exotic parrot. The prince and his parents, outraged and disgusted at having been deceivedby a fake portrait, and thinking the whole "We hid her from the sunlight" was just a scam, decide to imprison Long-Thorn and her mother in a castle as hostages (and later we learn that Warrior's father decides to go to war against Desired's father, despite his old age).

Warrior meanwhile is broken - completely broken. His dreams and hopes were crushed, and yet he is still in love, madly in love - but only with what he thinks is a portrait of a person that doesn't exist. Despaired and unable to stand living at the court anymore, he decides to secretely escape his city (with the help of his faithful servant Becafigue), and to exile himself into some lonely place far away from humanity so he might spend there his "sorry life". They traveled for three days inside a deep, vast and dark forest, but filled with fresh herbs and fresh streams.

Back to Desired, now turned into the White Doe, she worries about a lot of things - she worries about finding what to eat (and is quite surprised when she naturally starts eating grass and feels satisfied by it) ; she worries about the various "wolves and lions and bears" that haunt the forest ; she wonders how long her metamorphosis will last, and if there is a remedy to the curse... For several days she flees and hides throughout the woods. Now, the fairy Tulip is still around, and despite being angry at everybody ignoring her warnings, she still cares about Desired (earlier in the text, it was explicitely said that, when she spoke to the queen about Desired, she called her "our daughter" as if she was her mother too). So, since she is too angry to help her directly, she rather guides Gillyflower towards the Doe, so that the two can help each other. Unfortunately Gillyflower isn't much help, since all she does is also cry a lot, recite all the dangers they face, and be blatantly unable to find food or shelter. Gillyflower cries for her poor mistress, the White Doe cries because Gillyflower cries - and because the White Doe cries, fairy Tulip is also saddened and decides she will forget her anger, and help her goddaughter.

Tulip promptly appears in front of the two lost girls, and she explains that she cannot undo the Crayfish Fairy spell because she is more powerful than her - but she softens the spell, by allowing Desired to return to her human shape every night. She also points out a path and says the girls will find there shelter and help. Indeed, at the end of the path, there is a nice and cute little house, with in it a nice and helpful old lady, who agrees to shield them ina two-person bedroom, "simple but cute and clean", and giving them excellent food to eat.

And would you look at that! Prince Warrior and Becafigue also arrive near the old woman's house, and she also gives them shelter - but she gives them a different bedroom, and she doesn't talk to them about her other guests, and since the two groups keep going in and out of the house at different times, they never actually meet or realize they share the same house. (This is part of the humor of the fairytale). The following day, to distract/entertain himself, Warrior goes hunting in the woods (which is one of his main pleasures), and he finds the White Doe that he immediately starts to hunt. Given Warrior is a talented hunter, he would have called the Doe if it wasn't for Tulip's protective spells that made sure the transformed princess wouldn't be harmed. They both lost each other and exhausted themselves in the hunt. When she returns to her bedroom in sweat, Desired explains to Gillyflower what happened, that a "young hunter" almost got her killed. Gillyflower tries to convince her to not leave her room anymore when she is under her doe shape, but Desired explains that the curse forces her to "do what the deer do" - aka, leave for the woods every day. Meanwhile Warrior explains to Becafigue that he doesn't understand how he couldn't capture "the most beautiful hind I ever saw", and he decides to return hunting for her the following day.

However said following day, after looking everywhere for the white doe and finding her nowhere, he eats some apples and falls asleep on the grass. The doe passes by and takes the opportunity offered by the hunter's sleep to study him - and she immediately recognizes him as prince Warrior. Forgetting any survival instinct, she decides to sleep near the prince. This however wakes up the prince, which in turn makes the doe flee. The prince, who thinks the doe has something "lovely" and "familiar" to her, runs after the animal - and after running several times around the forest, the exhausted doe gives up, lets the prince catch her... Only for Warrior to pet her, hug her and feed her some grass, making clear that he doesn't want to kill her anymore but rather make her some sort of company animal. Desired is very pleased with this... But upon seeing the sun going down, she forces herself to escape the prince, fearing too much what would be his reaction if he saw her transform.

Desired tells her story to Gillyflower, while prince Warrior tells his to Becafigue (he is especially angry that the doe tricked him to flee, despite him doing all he good to make her happy and content. Becafigue mockingly advises the prince to "punish" the doe for her "infidelity", and the prince decides to do so before leaving this house and the woods. The following day the doe and the prince meet again, and after some joyful petting the doe tries again to escape discreetly from the prince - but the prince, knowing what would happen, shoots an arrow through the doe's leg to prevent her from leaving. (The narration points out that the reason the prince acted in such a way was because of the evil influence of the Fairy of the Fountain, whose spell was supposed to put "in danger" the transformed princess)

After making sure the doe can't run anymore, the prince starts putting bandages and all good things that heal on her leg, but at the same time makes clear he won't let her escape anymore, and will take her with him in his next travels. He takes back the doe in front of the house and ties her to a tree, before preparing with Becafigue. While the prince is away, Gillyflower sees her mistress wounded and tied up - she promptly unties the knots and frees her, only for the prince to return. "That's my doe!" he says. "No that's mine!" Gillyflower replies, and to prove this, Gillyflower keeps giving specific orders to the doe (like "kiss me on the right cheek, put your hoof on my heart") that the doe of course obeys. The prince is saddened to see his new pet already has a mistress, but he lets Gillyflower leave with the doe... Only to discover to his surprise that the two return to the old woman's house!

Confused, he asks the old woman who basically answers "Oh yes, that's a lovely girl and her doe who have been living in the room right next to you all this time. Isn't it funny?". And Becafigue recognizes Gillyflower as one of the personal servants of Desired - since he saw her at Desired's palace when he acted as the ambassador of the prince! Deciding there is a mystery to unveil, Becafigue doesn't hesitate to create a hole in the wall between their room and the room next door - and what a surprise he has upon seeing Gillyflower tend to the wounded arm of the real princess Desired, who complains about the evil spell that forces her to become a doe each night! The prince also looks through the hole, and in a burst of mad love just kicks down the door of the girls' room and puts a knee on the ground before Desired, giving her a passionate love declaration. Their love exchange continues all up until the night, and by the miracle of love, Desired doesn't turn into a doe anymore - the curse is broken!

Wrapping it all, Desired and Warrior understand the full story and the treachery of Long-Thorn. The old woman of the house turns out to have been the fairy Tulip in disguise all along: she heals the princess' wounds, and gives her and Gllyflower all sorts of beautiful dresses and jewels (as well as strong horses) so they can all return together to the castle of Warrior's father, in time to prevent the upcoming war. Once there, Desired actually asks for Long-Thorn and her mother to be pardoned instead of severely punished, her charity going even as far as to allow them to leave to go wherever they want to be. Of course, such kindness makes the old father praise her even more.

There are great festivites for the wedding of Desired and Warrior, and the six benevolent fairies are all invited - as a gift, they decide to offer the newly wed couple their own palace, the one Desired's mother visited regularly. The fairies even move by magic the palace on a beautiful meadow near a river, so it could be more reachable by humans. Becafigue ends up marrying Gillyflower, with who he fell n love ; the Tulip fairy gives four gold mines to Desired "so that her husband might not claim he was wealthier than her", and it is said that the "adventures of the White Doe were sang throughout the world".

THE END

[queer-here-and-in-fear]

ok i feel like the government has fuckin lost the plot.. like. the entire point of the government was to be held to a Higher Standard to keep the peace and shit. theyre literally called "civil servants" like??

but now, they have gotten so fucking high and mighty, that they think they can do Whatever They Want Forever and also get Special Princess treatment.

like. cops thinking they deserve special discounts. cops being trained to assure their own survival above all else. politicians being rich men making sure the rich dont get taxed. the president usually being some rich old cunt no one likes all too much who barely does shit. etc. etc. etc.

istg we need a revolution french style. the government needs to remember that even if theyre ruling, the people theyre ruling outnumber them 10 to 1.

[anomaly-hivemind]

Our Choice || No. 8 King Bradley/wife reader

Kinktober Masterlist

Warnings: Breeding,breeding kink,rough sex, unprotected sex, vaginal sex, overstimulation,impregnation, missionary position, mating press, kinktober 2023, pre-existing relationships

Word Count: 1200

Note: Takes place about twelve years before the start of the story.

You were sitting in your office when Fuhrer King Bradley stepped into the closed door, without knocking. Eyes drifting upward to look at the mustached man with a half smile. He had a determined look on his face as he stared back at you.

“Hello Fuhrer Bradley, sir,” You stood and gave the man a bow.

“Must you be so formal?” Bradley sighed and crossed his arms.

“You are the Fuhrer, and I, just a measly civil servant~” You said, pressing your arm to your hand in a dramatic fashion.

“Yet,you are my wife” He said while leaning on the doorframe.

“Hah, you’re no fun. So what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“Direct order from Father, it’s time for you to perform your wifely duties,” Bradley said as he put his hat back on.

“Oh… well I’ll see you tonight,”

You had been anticipating this night since you and King Bradley had gotten married. You had found out he was a homunculus when you saw under his eye patch. Maybe it should have turned you away but it did the opposite.

“You should get ready to head home, get ready.” Bradley saw before turning to leave.

Gathering up the last bits of your paperwork you placed them into your drawer. Grabbing your keys to lock your office you head home as you were told.

Did you have a thing for the dramatics… maybe but tonight was going to be romantic. The Fuhrer would like all the sweet candles, the dim lighting and the pastel colored lingerie set you had put on right after a nice rose bath.(well the last part was for you but still.) Now you were just sitting on the freshly washed egyption cotton bed sheets.

Your eyes gain weight, Body feeling heavy while laying against the plush pillows; Sleep quickly starts to overcome you. An unknown amount of time passess when the sound of the door jingles. Stirring you a bit, shifting your head to the faint sound. Fuhrer Bradley stepped into their shared bedroom.

Bradley walked over to you, eyes trailing up and down your partially exposed body. He moved his hands across your stomach slowly. You hum while still stirring from your nap as Bradley’s hands roamed across your torso.

“Look alive dear, this is the start of a long night,” Bradley said. As he bent, his breath tickled your ear and his voice low and sensual sent shivers down your spine.

“Sorry dear, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” You push the resilient pull of slumber away the best you could. Eyes trained on the sight of Bradley unbuttoning his shirt, his shoes long gone.

He carefully placed the shirt into the laundry basket,then he sat next to you. Scooting over beside you, he drapes his arm on top of yours and pulls you closer. Heartbeat pumping faster with anticipation.

You could already see his growing erection through his work pants. you were fully awake now and starting to get turned on by the second. Leaning into him, you give him a smile.

“Do you like my outfit?” You place a finger mall kiss on his cheek. His warm hand rubbing up and down on your side.

“It's cute, but I would have preferred you wearing nothing at all.” The Fuhrer mumbled against your skin as he kissed your neck lightly. He then snaked his hand to the clip to her bra to undo it.

His eyes were set on your supple breasts, kneading one in his hands. Your mouth opens a bit but little sound escapes it, aside from a small squeak.

Bradley rolls your tender nipples in between his rough fingers, to which they quickly grow erect. He moved his head to place a kiss on your breast, before running his tongue on it. His soft kisses turned to open mouth frenching and licking then that turned into sucking and even biting. You let out a moan as your hand ran through his head.

He moved to take off your lingerie bottoms, you shiver and watch him. Bradley let out a sharp breath, running his thumb on your folds.

“You’re such a filthy woman, already soaking wet,” Bradley said, slipping two fingers into your dripping cunt.

“F-uck~” You cried out, your hips bucking into Bradley’s large hands. He curled his fingers within her as he thrust his digits in a slow pace. He was kissing her here and there as rubbed her clit.

He slips out his boxers in quick motions as he starts to stroke his erections with his other hand, matching the slow pace as his fingers plumbing in your wet walls.

“Can I?” you looked down at the size of him, wanting to suck him off.

“Maybe another time dear, I need to save all my seed for this beautiful cunt your yours.” He lifts your chin so you are looking up at him. Bradley gives you a quick peck, before moving you down on the bed where you were laying down and gets in between her legs.

Lining himself up with your fat cooch, Bradley’s hips snap against yours as he starts with a brutal pace.

“Ah- ah- A- oh fucK~” You cried out, the sound of for flesh snapping against eachother filling the bedroom with lewdities.

He starts to thrust into you with a slow and even pace. Rocking his hips as he held your thighs in his hands. He lets out a faint groan from his movements. Your eyes shut as you let out shaky moans.

“I want you to look at me dear.” he places a kiss on your cheek as he pulls your chin down to look at him. You do your best to keep your eyes on him as he thrust into you with his rhythmic pace that was starting to get faster.

He let out groans as he rocked his hips deeply inside your cunt. He pulled your thighs further apart as he started to pound at your g-spot. He leaned closer, making your legs get closer to your own chest. Bradley’s movements made your walls tense and flutter as you started to fall off the edge of a climax.

“Ah~” you let out another moan as you clench around King Bradley’s cock; your walls sucking him and pulling him deeper, the veins of his dick were rubbing you in all the right places. Your legs become shaky as you reach a climax.

The Fuhrer didn't let up, in fact he started to hit into you harder. Forcing your legs closer to your ears and basically hovering above you. Your…everything was basically shaking, whole body quivering as your husband abused your wet glistening soaking and dripping pussy.

“Can't wait for this beautiful body of your to be caring for our kin.” His breathy voice muttered into your neck. You cum with another shaky cry.

“Too much- ha it's too much-“ you wrapped your weakening legs on his hips.

“You'll be fine my dear, just hold out a bit longer my dear.” His movements got a bit more sloppy as he got closer to finishing.

Hot tears rolled down your face,the pleasure was overwhelming. After a few more deep thrust the Fuhrer’s releases his hot sticky man goo into your cunt.

He pulled out and the cum leaked onto the bed sheets, yet Bradley pushed some of the dripping cum back into your stuffed hole so as to not waste his precious seed.

You let out a whimper as Bradley’s thick fingers slip into you.

“You can’t quit just yet dear , we have to make sure you’re pregnant and I still have a whole lot left in me.”

You were diligently sweeping the floor when you heard the front door unlocked.

“Welcome home,” you turn to face him at the door, giving him a smile as he gets closer.

“You’re supposed to be on bedrest,” King Bradley said with a sigh.

“I Know but I just couldn't help myself, I get bored being in bed all day. ” You give him a sheepish look, You rub your stomach tenderly. “If I let my body get weak then our baby will be weak as well, and we can’t have that can we.”

“No I suppose not” he nods and helps sit you down in the chair carefully.

“So I was thinking of names and if it’s a boy, about the name Selim?”

Thank you so much for reading and thanks to @cafekitsune for the banners.