#Ludwig iv

[dreamconsumer]

Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. By Johann Jakob Dorner.

[grossherzoginalice]

The family of the Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse in 1872. From left to right- Irene, Ernst, Louis, Elisabeth, Alice, Victoria and Friedrich.

[ykzzr]

The Hesse family 1872

Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse his wife Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and their five children Victoria, Elisabeth, Irene, Ernest Louis, and Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine.

[pigdemonart]

Can you imagine Bowser sing a love song to Luigi :) ? With the piano and all :D

Incredible timing, because I was in the middle of doodling this:

It’s true love because they are both big cringe failures.

[palskippah]

Hi! Some human koopalings c:

[its-flame-art]

“wait a minute. wait a minute, Doc. ah... are you telling me that you built a time machine...out of a DeLorean?”

[mensiscollar]

bloodborne day is upon us

[nishihii]

Ludwig vc: It's joever.....

[0urgraciousqueen]

spouses of jacobite pretenders/heir-general of the Stuart pretenders during their tenure

[jekyllnahyena]

u think ur safe till the 1.92 m niqabi pulls out a magical Zweihänder

have a witcher au featuring royal knight Bushra to Fox surly princess with witcher Riyo and instigator/king Ponds!

putting the vague story under the cut for funsies :D

Bushra is Fox’ royal guard, charged with the princess safety and they’re hopelessly in love. Ponds, who’s had enough of of this courtly love and them making terrible love-struck eye contact all day, decides to leave in the knowledge that Fox would never go for her feelings with him present 80 percent of the time. (he’s using the opportunity to investigate a sighting of Jango, who should be very much dead, thank you).

But!

Knowing that Bushra would simply pull double duty and never relax to keep Fox extra safe now, decides to put out a call out for the most ‘diplomatic’ witcher, so Bushra will feel more assured in chilling for a bit.

Riyo has been unwittingly thrown into the whole ordeal and arrives at court because the new king, whomst she and her comerades have never met, declared her presence of ‘utter importance’. She meets the incognito traveling king on her way there and is slightly confused by this stranger casually dropping into convo with her, that does not happen to a witcher, but moves on. Ponds meanwhile has the time of his life, knowing he sent Riyo to Fox, who, famously absolutely does not want anyone she doesn’t know at court, this is more stress, Ponds, why the fuck did you ask for a witcher to come here?!

Shenanigans ensue, Riyo is stuck there now and gets a vague idea of what’s going on by seeing Fox and Bushra interact for 0.5 seconds, so she stays there to play bodyguard and watch those two go on their Not-Dates. (the moment she stepped before Fox, the princess looked at her, said “No.” and walked straight out of the room. There’s a reason Ponds asked for the ‘most diplomatic’ one.)

When Ponds returns mere minutes after Fox has finally asked for Bushra’s hand in marriage, he meets a very exasperated and exhausted Riyo, who marches up to him with a pointed finger and a very angry “Y O U”, to which he goes “who? me? :)”

Fox courted Bushra with another sword btw. She now has another magical one, next to her terrifying Zweihänder :)

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Two photos of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and By Rhine (father of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna and 6 others) with his younger brother Prince Heinrich of Hesse, mid-late 1840s

[subzeroparade]

lore question: do you think laurence had good intentions when he brought the old blood to yharnam, or do you think it was entirely out of self interest?

I think, like with any compelling/relatable character, it's a mix of both. 

(Caveat: the way I describe Laurence’s character here is mostly based on how I write him, since it requires the most engagement with lore while being thoughtful enough to build and shape a believable person with a compelling arc). 

I think there’s a significant degree of sincerity and good intentions that drive him to bring the old blood to Yharnam. Based on the info we get in-game, the scourge does not manifest immediately, and the effects of the old blood are real and miraculous. (He also benefits personally from the effects of the blood in my headcanon, so in a sense he sees himself as proof, and denial of that is unjust and frustrating). He seems to believe it’s worth abandoning a career/life at Byrgenwerth and drawing the ire of his mentor to bring this into the world. But surely there’s bit of ego there too, a bit of “if you won’t do it, then I will.” Part of the way I interpret Laurence is through personal experience - I left academia right when my career should have kicked off. So when write him, I write from that point of view of realising now that I’ve left, I need to do something to prove myself - to prove this wasn’t a waste. I think the old blood is the ideal vehicle for personal ambition, too. It’s for the good of the people, but also his own reputation, his own need to be important, to have done something worthwhile, to prove Byrgenwerth wrong.  Most of us who were at one time deeply entrenched in academia (professionally) can have a hard time seeing past it, and use it to measure our worth. When you leave, unless you have another kind of identity to latch on to, it’s easy to become unmoored. 

But I’d argue the way he went about it - via the Church and the acquisition of political power, and the kind of Foucauldian control of the definition of healing and normalcy vs insight and/or madness, for example - all these are obviously coloured by a kind of pragmatic cruelty. I don’t think any of Laurence’s bad or heartless decisions (the ashen plague if you attribute it to the Church, or the horrors of the Orphanage) are couched in wanton cruelty - wanton cruelty is usually not very smart. They are strategic sacrifices he thinks are justified in the pursuit of his goals. I imagine when everything is going well it's easy to point to the blood’s benefits and say they outweigh the cost. But upon the emergence of the scourge I think he would find greater need to justify himself, rationalise his actions, even the worst ones, by the notion that if we can just fix the blood, get ascension to work properly, this will have been worth it. Rather than back off, he doubles down. To do otherwise would be to admit failure. To admit that the whole enterprise, and everything that props it up, is worth nothing.

Someone left a comment on my work once describing Laurence as “cruel in a way you'd not expect” which I really like. I think he’s much more interesting without this dichotomy of blatantly tyrannical vs entirely good-intentioned. It’s a question of circumstance, of which buttons can be pushed and which sacrifices can be made, and how to weigh the value of whole city, or a single person, against the goal of ascension/a cure for the scourge. 

It’s also why I love thinking about the period where he starts to lose his grip on the situation, and begin to change; and why I write the Moon Deal going down as it did - another thing, perhaps the most critical one, that he thought he’d have control over - and instead that spirals out of his grasp, too, and he loses the thing he never really wanted to sacrifice in the first place. The shock of it, for a character so in control of the narrative, is irresistible.  anyway tldr I forgive him like the French forgive Napoleon. Ty for the ask! Here's a little recent holyvicar doodle.

[absakilit]

Lud & Jermy :]

[super-marihoes]

These took me way longer than they should have

[creedbates]

You want me to do it, don't you? But I won't, you can't make me

I may know next to nothing about tf2 but I do know it makes a good horror movie

[mayo-is-an-instrument]

Doodlings