#USE THEIR PROPAGANDA AGAINST THEM

[keelanrosa]

started reading the cass review because i'm apparently just Like That and i want everybody crowing about how this proves sooooo much about how terfs are right and trans people are wrong to like. take a scientific literacy class or something. or even just read the occasional study besides the one you're currently trying to prove a point with. not even necessarily pro-trans studies just learn how to know what studies actually found as opposed to what people trying to spoonfeed you an agenda claim they found.

to use just one infuriating example:

Several studies from that period (Green et al., 1987; Zucker, 1985) suggested that in a minority (approximately 15%) of pre-pubertal children presenting with gender incongruence, this persisted into adulthood. The majority of these children became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults. These early studies were criticised on the basis that not all the children had a formal diagnosis of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, but a review of the literature (Ristori & Steensma, 2016) noted that later studies (Drummond et al., 2008; Steensma & Cohen-Kettenis, 2015; Wallien et al., 2008) also found persistence rates of 10-33% in cohorts who had met formal diagnostic criteria at initial assessment, and had longer follow-up periods.

if you recognize the names Zucker and Steensma you are probably already going feral but tldr:

There are… many problems with Zucker's studies, "not all children had a formal diagnosis" is so far down the list this is literally the first i've heard of it. The closest i usually hear is the old DSM criteria for gender identity disorder was totally different from the current DSM criteria for gender dysphoria and/or how most people currently define "transgender"; notably it did not require the patient to identify as a different gender and overall better fits what we currently call "gender-non-comforming". Whether the kids had a formal diagnosis of "maybe trans, maybe just has different hobbies than expected, but either way their parents want them back in their neat little societal boxes" is absolutely not the main issue. This would be a problem even if Zucker was pro-trans (spoiler: He Is Not, and people who are immediately suspicious of pro-trans studies because "they're probably funded by big pharma or someone else who profits from transitioning" should apply at least a little of that suspicion to the guy who made a living running a conversion clinic); sometimes "formal" criteria change as we learn more about what's common, what's uncommon, what's uncommon but irrelevant, etc, and when the criteria changes drastically enough it doesn't make sense to pretend the old studies perfectly apply to the new criteria. If you found a study defining "sex" specifically and exclusively as penetration with a dick which says gay men have as much sex as straight men but lesbians don't, it's not necessarily wrong as far as it goes but if THAT'S your prime citation for "gay men have more sex than lesbians", especially if you keep trying to apply it in contexts which obviously use a broader definition, there are gonna be a lot of people disagreeing with you and it won't be because they're stubbornly unscientific.

Also Zucker is pro conversion therapy. Yes, pro converting trans people to cis people, but also pro converting gay people to straight people. That doesn't necessarily affect his results, i just find it funny how many people enthusiastically support his findings as evidence transitioning is… basically anti-gay conversion therapy? (even though plenty of trans people transition to gay? including T4T people so even the "that's actually just how straight people try to get with gay people" rationale for gay trans people is incredibly weak? and also HRT has a relatively low but non-zero chance of changing sexual orientation so it wouldn't even be reliable as a means of "becoming straight"? but a guy who couldn't reliably tell the difference between a tomboy and a trans boy figured out the former is more common than the latter + in one whole country where being trans is legal but being gay is not, sometimes cis gay people transition, so OBVIOUSLY that means sexism and homophobia are the driving factors even in countries with significant transphobia. or something.) anyway i hope zucker knows and hates how many gay people and allies are using his own study to trash-talk any attempts to be Less Gay. ideally nobody would take his nonsense seriously at all but it doesn't seem we'll be spared from that any time soon so i will take my schadenfreude where i can.

Steensma's studies have the exact same problem re: irrelevant criteria so "well someone ELSE had the same results!" is not exactly convincing. This is not "oh trans people are refusing to pay attention to these studies because they disagree with them regardless of scientific rigor", it's "one biased guy using outdated criteria found exactly the numbers everyone would expect based on that criteria, i can't imagine why trans people are treating those numbers as relevant to the past criteria but not present definitions, let's find a SECOND guy using outdated criteria. Why do people keep saying the outdated criteria is not relevant to the current state of trans healthcare. Don't we all know it's quantity over quality with scientific studies. (Please don't ask what the quantity of studies disagreeing with me is.)"

Steensma also counted patients as 'not persisting as transgender' if they ghosted him on follow-up which counted for a third of his study's "detransitioners" and a fifth of the total subjects and. look. i'm not saying none of them detransitioned, or assuming they all didn't would be notably more accurate, but i think we can safely treat twenty percent of subjects as a bit high for making a default assumption, especially when some of them might have simply not been interested in a study on whether or not they still know who they are. Fuck knows i've seen pro-trans studies which didn't make assumptions about the people who didn't respond still get prodded by anti-trans people insisting "the number of people claiming they don't regret transitioning can't possibly be so high, some of the people who responded must have been lying. (Scientific rigor means thinking studies which disagree with me are wrong even if the only explanation is the subjects lying and studies which agree with me are right even if we need to make assumptions about a lot of subjects to get there.)"

and this is not new information. not the issues with zucker, not the issues with steensma, not any of the issues because this is not a new study, it's a review of older studies, which in itself doesn't mean "bad" or "useless" -- sometimes that allows connecting some previously-unconnected dots -- but the idea this is going to absolutely blow apart the Woke Media, vindicate Rowling and Lineham, and "save" ""gay"" children from """being forcibly transed""" is bullshit. At most it'll get dragged around and eagerly cited by all the people looking for anything vaguely scientific-sounding to justify their beliefs, and maybe even people who only read headlines and sound bites will buy it, but the people who really believe it will be people who already agreed with all its "findings" and have already been dragging around the existing studies and are just excited to have a shiny new citation for it.

the response from people who've been really reading research on transgender people all along is going to be more along the lines of "……yeah. yeah, i already knew about that. do you need a three-page essay on why i don't think it means what you think it means? because i don't have time for that homework right now but maybe i can pencil it in for next semester if you haven't learned how to check your own sources by then."

[alchemiclee]

i know this has been said 473773474833 times by the kavetham/haikaveh shippers and probably even nonshippers, but i'll say it again. I finally finished the genshin summer event and did the little after quest in sumeru and.....every time kaveh is sneaking around trying not to be noticed coming out of alhaithams house it's just such a gay vibe. he's basically screaming "I can't be caught being gay in a homophobic society!" even if that's not what the game writers are *actually* saying. that's just how it comes off and they can't make it come off any other way. with hoyo's gay history, it makes me wonder if it's on purpose and all a cover-up to have a technically different reason for it so they can get away with it lmao but we will never know.

[heartofstanding]

Seeing your views on Margaret of Anjou, I was told that Margaret of Anjou was firm, brave, but too radical, revengeful to the enemy and extreme political measures, which led to her failure. I want to know your views on the reasons for her failure?

Hi, sorry this took so long! I've been busy and this got very long. The short answer to all three, however, is that she had a shit-ton of bad luck.

The slightly extended version of is:

The Treaty of Tours which brought her to England had terrible terms for the English and thus terribly unpopular. As the face of the treaty, she was unfairly blamed for.

England was losing the Hundred Years War, badly. Her marriage was meant to bring peace but the only peace to be gained was through defeat and capitulation. Margaret was blamed for failing to live up to unrealistic expectations.

There was something of a succession crisis, the long wait for Margaret to conceive and give birth to an heir did nothing to easeit and only added to her unpopularity.

The long wait for an heir meant there was fertile ground for rumours and gossip, specifically the idea that she was an adulteress and Edward of Lancaster a bastard.

Henry VI's sudden mental breakdown, (probable) limited recovery and imprisonment left Margaret as the figurehead of Lancastrian rule and resistance. It made her the target for Yorkist propaganda attacks.

Following the Battle of Towton, the Lancastrians were in a weak position to negotiate with potential allies, meaning they made great concessions that were then seized upon by Yorkists to turn the general public against the Lancastrian side.

Severe weather hampered the Lancastrians on at least three occasions: Towton, Barnet and Margaret's return to England in 1471.

She lost. Yorkist rule continued to denigrate her and the Tudors weren't interested in challenging that idea.

Want more detail?

The Problem of Determining Personality

To start with, we don't know a whole lot about Margaret's personality. We don't know a whole lot about any medieval individual's personality, the evidence simply isn't there to tell us about their personal thoughts beyond brief flashes of insight. It's a fraught issue, as Rosemary Horrox points out, with reference to Margaret herself.

We also have to contend with the layers and layers of propagandistic narratives. Again, this is true for almost every figure in medieval history (cf. A. J. Pollard on Elizabeth Woodville). When we shift through the Lancastrian, French, Yorkist, Tudor and more narratives about Margaret, how do we know which one is telling the truth? The virago Yorkist writers derided is unlikely to be the true Margaret but that doesn't mean that the tireless heroine of French writers is the "true Margaret" either. Both images are stereotypes, both come from biased sources. Nor does acknowledging that the image of Margaret as the virago was a propagandistic creation that served Yorkist interests mean that Margaret must have been the exact opposite and she was really sugar, spice and all things nice.

These type of stereotypes are attractive to historians and historical fiction writers alike. They're simple but dramatic. They work well with other stereotyped figures, with "accepted" versions of history that are accepted because they've been repeated so often that they now seem true even if the evidence isn't there or doesn't tell us the things we think we know. It produces a simple, coherent narrative which confirms our own biases. The image of Margaret as radical, revenge-seeking and extreme is often tied to the narrative of Richard, Duke of York as a noble, hard-working and good man who was forced to rebel against his king (who is not rightful king, of course, because that's York) due to the plots and schemes of Margaret and her cronies. Margaret's inability and unwillingness to acknowledge and accept York's greatness becomes the reason for her defeat. She's just too petty and self-serving. She brings it upon herself. She could have been safe - but she unfairly and evilly attacked York and he was simply forced by her actions to rebel.

I don't find that view of York convincing. I don't find that view of Margaret convincing. It's too simplistic, too much of a children's tale where the good guys are so good and the bad guys so bad that the bad guy forces the good guy into any acts that are morally dubious. There's more than a little misogyny in it too, blaming a woman for the actions of a man.

"The Bad Queen" and Queenship

Margaret has long been seen as the "bad queen", a woman who abjectly failed as queenship and was the reason why the Wars of the Roses broke out. I've already discussed some of the issues with that view but I want to talk about a couple of other points.

One: the Lancastrians lost, which cemented Margaret's reputation. As Katherine J. Lewis has pointed out, if the Lancastrians had been successful, Margaret would have likely been celebrated for her bravery and steadfast loyalty that saw the restoration of her husband and son. Instead, they lost and the Yorkist narrative about her became the norm.

Two: Margaret appears to have behaved as a conventional queen for as long as possible. She did not arrive in England and immediately begin she-wolfing it up and instead tried to behave in a way that lived up to gender expectations, even when she was forced to move beyond them (cf. Helen Maurer's comment here).

Three: when we talk about the ideals of queenship, we have to realise that while these were kind of a job description, they were subjective and often based in misogynistic "ideals" of womanhood. e.g. "motherhood" reduces the queen to her reproductive ability and this was something she had little to no control over. An infertile queen is often deemed to have "failed" at the "most vital" aspect of queenship by modern historians and commentators (for an alternate view, see Kristen Geaman on Anne of Bohemia) but very rarely is there an acknowledgement of how misogynistic this standard is.

Margaret was not a popular queen before the Wars of the Roses began. She became queen in a situation where she was set up to inevitably fail. She arrived in England to pageants hailing her as a bringer of peace, as the figure to end the war with France, but the terms of the treaty that included her marriage contract ensured that any benefits she could bring were minimal. There was a short, 21-month peace, a paltry dowry, the outlay of considerable expense to bring her to England, and her father had little to no influence with Charles VII of France to be able to help any future negotiations.

Another factor was that the surrender of Maine and Anjou came to be widely associated with her marriage. It wasn't an official condition of the marriage but it does appear to have been promised at the same time. It was disastrously unpopular in England and it very likely inflamed tensions within the nobility. Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset held large amounts of territory in Maine and Anjou and was made Lieutenant of France to make up for these losses, which offended his predecessor in the role, Richard, Duke of York. It has been argued, though I'm not convinced, that York continuing in the role would have at least maintained, if not improved, the English position in France instead of the massive decline that followed.

None of this was Margaret's fault. She was 14 years old when her marriage was negotiated. She had no role in negotiations beyond the symbolic. There is also some thought that the English side was hamstrung by Henry VI's instructions to make a peace at any and all cost. We don't know how she felt about marrying Henry or about the surrender of Maine and Anjou beyond speculation based on preconceived ideas of what she was "like". We don't know what she was really like to guess how she felt about these things. And even if she was in favour of the surrender of Maine and Anjou, she was still a teenager when it happened. Are we really saying that a bunch of experienced adult men fell over themselves to do exactly what a teenage girl wanted even though it was disastrously bad for England?

Margaret had basically walked into a scenario where she had very little chance of being the peace-bringer she was expected to be and her popularity suffered as a result. She wasn't the one making choices - at best, she might have influenced others to make choices, but most of the problems with France that she was blamed for began before she set foot in England.

The Succession Crisis

Margaret also walked into a succession crisis.

Typically, the succession crisis tends to be talked about as occurring from after the death of Henry's last paternal uncle and his heir, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, in 1447 but I would suggest that there was an underlying anxiety about the succession that predated Gloucester's death. Since 1435, Henry VI's one and only heir had been his ageing and childless uncle Gloucester (before 1435, Gloucester's elder brother, also childless, had been the heir), who was not terribly popular with Henry and his court. On one hand, Henry and his favourites did not want Gloucester to become king because they disliked him and his policies. From another perspective, Gloucester was getting on in years, childless, unmarried and possibly in poor health, so if he became king, he wouldn't be expected to reign long and if he managed to produce an heir before his death, the chance are this heir would still be in single digits when he succeeded the throne. If there was no child, the question of the succession was wide open. As it was, Gloucester died two years after Margaret's arrival and there was no longer a clear heir.

I know that you're probably thinking, "York, though. It's York." Well, yes and no. York probably had the claim with the least complications. He was Henry's closest male relative who had not descended through the female line or through a legitimised bastard line. But there were were two other lines that had viable claims to the throne: Somerset and Exeter.

Exeter's claim derived from from Elizabeth of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt and his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, making her the full sister of Henry IV. Somerset's claim was derived from John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset who was the eldest son of Gaunt and his third wife, Katherine Swynford. The Beauforts had been born bastards but legitimised by both the Pope and by Richard II. This legitimisation did not contain any clauses barring them the throne (this was done under Letters Patent in Henry IV's reign), quite possibly because Richard appears to have chronically avoided making any pronouncements on the succession and quite possibly because the there was little reason to imagine the Beauforts in contention for the throne.

Somerset was probably Henry's preferred heir. Since Exeter derived his claim through the female line, naming him heir meant that the female line counted in the succession and if it did, York had a better claim to the throne than Exeter and Henry, as he was descended from Lionel of Antwerp (Gaunt's elder brother) through the female line. It risked exposing the weakness at the centre of the Lancastrian claim to the throne which would in turn would reveal the reigns of Henry's father and grandfather were illegitimate. York seems to have never been particularly close to Henry; as Michael Bennett pointed out about Richard II (who, like Henry, faced a similarly uncertain and difficult succession), it's hard to love your winding cloth. But Somerset was a favourite, a Lancastrian from a cadet line and Henry's closest living paternal relative who was of legitimate birth.

These competing claims and the uncertainty about who would succeed caused anxiety. If Henry died childless, who would become king? How would these claims be settled? Would there be civil war and strife? What would it mean if the Lancastrian dynasty came to an end and a new one began?

So it's easy to imagine the pressure on Margaret to conceive and bear a child was almost certainly immediate on her arrival to England. Bearing a child would help ease these anxieties considerably, continuing the Lancastrian dynasty, putting to rest any civil discord caused by competing claim and ensuring a peaceful succession. In view of the unpopularity of the marriage to Margaret, it would also be seen as having a legitimising the marriage.

The Long Wait For An Heir

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. It was eight years between Margaret's arrival in England and the birth of Edward of Lancaster.

We don't know why it took so long. There's speculation of course - a delay in consummating the marriage due to Margaret's youth, the stress and pressure of the situation, Henry being too pious for sex, Margaret undergoing rigorous fasting as part of religious devotion, Henry requiring a sex coach, Henry being the medieval equivalent of asexual and/or sex repulsed, or there being some subfertility issue. There's no real evidence, one way or the other.

Henry VI's sexuality and piety are one of those sort of myths of the Wars of the Roses, embedded in the narrative as a "truth" but lacking contemporary evidence (as Bertram Wolffe points out, there is little direct, contemporary evidence for Henry's piety, most appears in retrospect as part of an explanation for his failed kingship and part propaganda for the (Tudor-sponsored) efforts to canonise him as a saint). The evidence of a sex coach is based a historian failing to understand how a medieval king's bedrooms worked and going, "we don't know that these people in attendance on the king at night in his bedroom left when he had sex with his wife so... sex coach? Please buy my book!" We don't know that there was a delay in consummation or that Margaret was considered too young for sex (for comparison's sake, Henry's grandmother, Mary de Bohun, conceived her first son - Henry V - around her 15th birthday). Margaret herself complained of poor health caused by rigorous fasting during times of "many sufferings and tribulations" but we don't know that she was fasting throughout these early years. We don't have anything like medical records for Margaret (or Henry) to know how she tried to manage this childlessness.

But we generally don't know why a medieval couple was childless. Where we do have evidence, it's often speculative (e.g. Kristen Geaman's work on Anne of Bohemia suggests Anne suffered at least one miscarriage based on a letter she dictated).

What we do know is that Henry and Margaret never attempted to promote the image of having a chaste marriage, even though it would have provided a bulwark against criticism of their childless state - they were choosing the holy, pious option. The birth of Edward of Lancaster and Henry VI's joyous reaction to the news of Margaret's pregnancy also suggest that they were trying for a baby. I think this suggests there was some kind of uncontrollable issue, possibly medical, causing their childlessness than it being a deliberate choice to assign "blame" for. It was, in short, just bad luck.

The long wait for an heir meant the anxieties around the succession and continuation of the Lancastrian were not quickly eased. In some ways, they might have been exacerbated. Before his marriage to Margaret, there was no reason to believe that Henry would struggle to have children when he married (or at least, there is no evidence this was the case). Once married, though, Henry's continued childlessness began to appear to be an issue that couldn't be easily or quickly resolved, perhaps even being a permanent issue.

We know, too, that their childlessness was used to criticise them from as early as 1446, and Margaret was the chief target of this criticism. An example of this comes from 1448, where one felon in Canterbury gaol accused his neighbour in the isle of Thanet of saying:

oure quene was non abyl to be Quene of Inglond but and he were a pere of or a lord of this ream he woulde be on thaym that shuld hepe putte her doun for because that sche bereth no child and because that we have pryns in this land

There does seem to have been some view that in marrying Margaret, Henry had betrayed his promise to marry a daughter of the Count of Armagnac and the lack of children from their marriage could be seen as a sign of God's disapproval. It would have added to the unpopularity Margaret was already facing.

While the news of Margaret's pregnancy does seem to have been greeted with joy, the long wait for such news had exposed Margaret to ample criticism and hatred. It made it easy for the allegations of Margaret's adultery and Edward of Lancaster's illegitimacy to take root. It meant that when Henry VI had his breakdown, there was no son who could serve even nominally as a regent for him and the question of who was to govern while Henry was incapable exposed the conflicts between York and Henry and York and Somerset.

Conflict with York

A lot of the conflict between York and Lancaster began with York's quarrel with Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Somerset was considered a favourite of Henry VI and Margaret but we don't know how much Margaret was responsible for his position in comparison to Henry or how much York's quarrel with him was really him quarrelling with the crown without openly doing so and risking a charge of treason. It does seem likely, imo, that Margaret had sympathies with Somerset given her husband evidently trusted him, but we don't know if that's true and even if it is, it was Henry VI who ostensibly promoted Somerset.

Despite the retrospective reading we put on the events leading up to the outbreak of war with the First Battle of St. Albans, we lack surviving evidence for Margaret and York being in direct hostility to each other. As Helen Maurer says:

If there is no concrete evidence of hostility between Margaret prior to the crisis of 1453-54, there is some indication that they were on reasonably good terms. York's recent biographer, P.A. Johnson goes so far to characterise Margaret as a 'politically neutral figure', whose attitude prior to January 1454 was 'if anything sympathetic to York'.

There is no evidence that York opposed Margaret's marriage to Henry. We have evidence of Margaret intervening in a property dispute in York's favour and giving York and his servants' generous New Year's gifts. The gifts to his servants in 1453 were of the same value as she gave the to the servants of Somerset and Cardinal Kemp so there was no deliberate slight there. In 1447, they were higher than the gifts she gave the Duke of Gloucester's servants (although alienated from Henry VI, Gloucester did outrank York so you'd expect his servants to get the more valuable gifts), the archbishop of Canterbury and duchesses of Bedford and Buckingham. Maurer speculates this was to reassure York in the face of his appointment to the lieutenancy of Ireland. We also have evidence of an outwardly cordial relationship between Margaret and Cecily in the early 1450s. It is not enough to suggest Margaret and Cecily were friends or what they really felt about each other but it does suggest they were both invested in keeping up at least the facade of cordiality.

The relationship between Margaret and York did sour some point. It's impossible to know what was the fatal blow was or who was the first to turn hostile. It may have been Margaret's attempt to claim the regency when Henry VI suffered his breakdown, it may have been York's imprisonment of Somerset during his protectorship, it may have been when York lost the protectorship, it may have been the rumours of York's involvement in William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk's murder in 1450.

Maurer notes that Margaret probably viewed the First Battle of St. Albans as an alarming attack on Henry's royal authority by York. She would not be wrong to do so. York may have felt justified and may have been justified in taking action to remove the individual he saw as a threat to his own authority - Somerset - but he raised his banners and fought a battle against his king. A battle where the king, Margaret's husband, had been injured. Regardless of whether or not York was "justified" or whether or not Henry pardoned him, his behaviour was, actually, treasonous (and it is likely he was only pardoned because Henry felt forced into it).

We can argue about the semantics and justifications for York's behaviour but it doesn't really matter when it comes to Margaret's reaction. York had raised an army against his sovereign and fought against his sovereign's own forces in a battle where his sovereign was wounded in the neck. There is no world in which Margaret would not see York as a threat to her family after this. If we argue that York was justified in this action because he perceived (correctly or not) that Somerset was a threat to him, then we must also accept that Margaret had every justification in viewing York as a threat to her family.

I tend to get the feeling that by 1456, Margaret and York were both in the same position. They were at a point where they viewed each other as a threat to the safety of their position and family. Whether one was more justified than the other is impossible to say. It's likely, though, that York held considerably more responsibility that the myth of him as the noble-hearted man forced to rebel to save himself.

The Problem of Henry VI

Another factor in "who do we blame for the Wars of the Roses" is Henry VI himself. We don't know when he began ruling in his own right and what periods, if any, he was unable to rule beyond the breakdown of 1453-54. We don't really know if the criticisms of his favourites, i.e. Suffolk and Somerset, were really criticisms of individuals who were ruling for him or if they were more in line with the attacks on the favourites of Edward II and Richard II. In the case of Richard II, the Lords Appellant maintained the image of loyally serving Richard while purging his household, threatening him with deposition, executing his friends, and placing themselves in positions of power by claiming that they were merely rescuing the king from the influence and bad advice of his evil councillors. This doesn't mean they didn't also have a grudge against the king's favourites, that their attack on them didn't really matter (after all, they killed a lot of them), but by focusing on the favourites, they maintained the image of loyalty to the king which helped them sidestep a charge of treason (though they also forced Richard to pardon them) and maintain popular support.

All of that is just to say that this may very well have been the case with Henry VI. York's attacks on Somerset (and maybe Suffolk, since he was rumoured to be involved in Suffolk's downfall and murder) may have simply been an attack on Somerset, perhaps justified or not, but York may have also been using Somerset as a proxy for Henry.

If he did, his quarrel could, at its core, actually be with Henry. It also raises the possibility that, after Somerset's death at the First Battle of St Albans, Margaret was simply the last one standing between York and Henry and so became the proxy for his attacks on Henry. This only intensified once York gained custody of Henry, and Margaret, with Edward of Lancaster, was out of reach and leading Lancastrian resistance.

We know that Tudor efforts to rehabilitate and canonise Henry tended to place more blame onto Margaret to absolve Henry of blame. All of this means that in terms of "how responsible, really, was Margaret for the policy decisions that alienated York?", we simply don't know. She may have served as a receptacle for blame (though personally I think she was more involved than not) or been the prime actor but we can't negate the possibility that some of the things she was blamed for were actually Henry's fault.

On the subject of Henry's mental illness... obviously, neither he or anyone else are to blame for it. Certainly, no one wakes up and goes "I know, now I shall have a deliberating mental illness that will ruin the kingdom, I totally want and will this to happen". But it did make things... very difficult. The medieval monarchy just wasn't set up to deal with a king with a severe, incapacitating mental illness (this was also the case with Charles VI of France). It tended to aggravate factionalism as nobles jostled against each other for power and influence. It placed the queen in an unenviable position of trying to protect her family and govern for the king while also appearing politically neutral, above factionalism and still living up to the ideals of queenship and only wielding soft power. Even if Margaret had managed to be appointed as regent for Henry, the case of Isabeau of Bavaria who had been regent for Charles VI suggests she wouldn't have fared much better.

On top of that, Henry's breakdown came at a bad time. He was unable to recognise Edward of Lancaster as his son upon his birth, which may well have provided some of the initial fodder for the rumours of Edward's illegitimacy. Once again: none of this was Henry's fault but it all had an impact on how much Margaret was viewed and blamed for Lancastrian failures.

Military Defeat

Margaret was widely regarded as the head of the Lancastrians and very likely this was true during the times when Henry VI was unable to rule (i.e. due to mental illness or breakdown, during his imprisonment by Edward IV). However, she was not a military commander and there is no evidence she ever donned armour or was present at any battle (we know she was in Scotland at the Battle of Wakefield, not personally overseeing any indignities heaped on Richard, Duke of York's corpse, for example). When she was travelling with the army when a battle took place, she probably stayed nearby in reasonably secure locations, such as a castle or abbey, a short distance away from the battlefield.

Responsibility for the Lancastrians' military defeats should be laid at the feet of those who actually commanded the Lancastrian forces, not Margaret. We don't know if the Lancastrians had better commanders to say that was Margaret's fault for not appointing better ones (and given the position was often granted to those of high rank, this seems likely - to appoint a man of greater ability but lesser rank risked disaster, as the narratives about the French defeat at Agincourt tells us). This is something more down to misfortune than any choice Margaret could have made. We know that Margaret had wanted to return to France following the news of the Earl of Warwick's defeat and death at the Battle of Barnet but was overruled or convinced otherwise by other Lancastrians. Had she gotten her way, the Lancastrians may never have gotten another chance (or at least a better chance) to challenge Edward IV but they probably would have survived.

There were also elements of bad luck in the Lancastrians' military defeats. The Lancastrian forces at Towton were blinded by the snow and their arrows ineffective against the wind. At Barnet, a heavy fog caused confusion amongst the troops. Storms delayed Margaret and Edward of Lancaster's return to England in 1471; had they arrived earlier they might have been able to take a better position or unite with Jasper Tudor's forces and won the Battle of Tewkesbury. Had the weather been against Edward IV and the Yorkist forces at Towton or at Barnet, had Edward IV's return been delayed by storms - well, the Lancastrians might have won.

This isn't to say that nothing was Margaret's fault. Margaret's delay at returning to England during the readeption was also partially credited to her own mistrust of the situation (a fair if ultimately fatal judgement, given the risk involved to her son and Warwick's untrustworthiness as an ally). The delay meant that Warwick struggled to muster forces under his own authority to deal with Yorkist resistance. This situation wasn't all her fault, though. Her delay was also caused by Louis XII of France, who had refused to let her leave until he got guarantees from Warwick about English support against Burgundy and the storms mentioned above. Another factor is that Warwick was simply reaping what he had sowed - very few Lancastrians had reason to trust the man who had been the chief ally of York against Henry VI, who had put Edward IV on the throne, then attempted to crown George, Duke of Clarence before allying himself with Margaret. He also seems to have been heavily involved in the creation and promotion of the stories slandering Margaret and her son.

We should also be wary of suggesting, as B. M. Cron does, that Margaret of Anjou was partly to blame for her son's defeat and death at Tewkesbury because she didn't let him fight in battle before Tewkesbury. For a start, Lancastrian hopes rested on Edward's survival. He was the viable alternative to Yorkist rule, the figure around whom opposition could gather, and the future of the dynasty. Putting him at risk was a very bad decision. His death meant the end of Lancastrian hopes.

Secondly, Tewkesbury was the first major battle he was actually of an age to fight at. Was he supposed to fight at Towton when he was 8? Hedgeley Moor or Hexham when he was 11? Thirdly, from the few accounts of his time in exile, we know he was military-minded and dedicated to martial exercises so it seems he was prepared as much as was safely possible. Finally, it is unclear whether Edward engaged in the battle proper or whether he was killed attempting to escape when it became clear the Lancastrians had lost.

Summing Up

In short, there were a lot of factors in Margaret's failure and a lot of them compounded on other. Her initial unpopularity only grew as the the English position in France weakened and as the years went by with no sign of an heir. As unrest broke out and Henry was incapable of responding or ruling, Margaret became the de facto head of the Lancastrian court and the focal point for anger at the way things were being governed. Yorkist and later Tudor propaganda built on all these factors, depicting her as the central flaw in Lancastrian rule, the one reason for its failure.

We simply don't know what Margaret was really like. The image of her as a radical, extreme figure bent on revenge fits into narratives that imagines Richard, Duke of York was faultless in his actions, that she had pushed him to an extreme and he reacted in order to save his own life. The idea that Margaret could have felt similarly threatened by York's actions is never once considered, yet she had every reason to fear him.

Do I think Margaret was entirely the innocent in the Wars of the Roses? No. Of course not. But she probably was at fault for far less than is typically attributed to her.

[kelluinox]

One day I will draw a venn diagram between Russian vatniks and pro hamas supporters

[shynerdwantscuddles]

Some of you need to realize that being a leftist doesn’t automatically make you a good person, nor does it make you immune to being a bigot. And it most certainly does not give you an excuse to discriminate against other people or mean that your own prejudices must be for the right reasons because you’re a leftist who can do no wrong. I’ve come across plenty of people on here who call themselves radical leftists or communists who preach violence and Nazi ideology. I’ve seen Nazi groups take advantage of that and try to swoop in and recruit those people, and they were probably successful. There are a concerning number of leftists who are only leftists and not conservatives because they want to feel morally superior (and just superior in general) to others. And they are absolutely invested in spreading bigotry and upholding the status quo under the guise of some leftist ideology to keep themselves feeling superior. I.e., if everyone were actually equal, they wouldn’t be able to pretend to support oppressed people, so they don’t actually want equality at all.

[biblicalhorror]

The most frustrating part of engaging in any of this discourse with pro-Israel people is that they claim there's just something ineffable about "seeing and understanding" how supporting Palestinian liberation is directly calling for the eradication of Jewish people (as if that type of rhetoric isn't exactly how actual antisemitism often manifests in online spaces but that's a topic for another day)

They get through people debunking the "the land belongs to the people of Israel anyway" argument and the "LGBTQ Palestinians are safe in Israel" argument and the "Genocide isn't what's happening here so you should educate yourself" argument and when all of those points are meticulously disproven over and over they still stand with "Well, myself and your Jewish friends see the hate you have in your heart for us" and it truly doesn't matter what you say at that point because even if you yourself are Jewish they will claim that refusing to support the state, government and military of Israel is inherently hateful and bigoted, as if a religious ethnostate is some inherent human right that is being taken away from them. I know many of them are blinded by the relentless propaganda that's been around their whole lives and how hard it is to break free from a belief system that is so tied to your core identity as a human being but it is so frustrating watching people being led straight to the point over and over again and just turning around and refusing to see it.

It's also so frustrating to see people using the momentum of this movement to casually tack on actual antisemitism to these discussions, as if having Jewish people in positions of power is why the US bends over backwards to excuse the actions of Israel and not, yknow, the fact that our government directly benefits from having a military stronghold in the middle east. I've talked to some well-meaning pro-Palestine friends irl who casually use antisemetic talking points because they've ALSO bought into the narrative that Israeli = Jewish and so they blame the actions of Israel and the IDF on Jewish people's "religious values" and ignore the fact that this conflict really has almost nothing to do with religion itself and everything to do with capitalism, imperialism and maintaining the US's status as a so-called "global power".

[mushtoons]

extremely funny of you to post those mikey and jake doodles while theyre fighting to death over who gets to be canonized as latino on latinoblr hahah i also think they'd be friends your drawings are so cuteeee

HSJSKDKDD THEY'RE WHAT?! /silly

[daecaerys]

META , 𝑫𝑨𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑹𝒀𝑺' 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑰-𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑷𝑯𝑬𝑻, 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑰-𝑴𝑬𝑺𝑺𝑰𝑨𝑯, 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑯𝑼𝑴𝑨𝑵 𝑸𝑼𝑬𝑬𝑵: often talking with @ruingod and the tropes around characters, i realized how of an antithesis dany is to the common messianic trope ( unlike paul who absorbs himself in it to gain power ) and since recently there has been going on a discussion about it as if she's the same trope as his ( sigh ), i decided to come here and express my opinions ( which are just that, opinions and interpretations ). well, daenerys does not see herself as anything but a queen, a ruler, and she views it as a duty and not a priviledge. she sees ruling ad a responsability to protect those around her ( coming from the sense that she often wasn't protected ), and does not use their dependance on her and their views of her figure as means to create prophercies or even propaganda about her rule. she never sees herself as above her people, as their savior, but a member of their reality/society with the power of bringing change. daenerys did not conquer the free cities to gain numbers to battle, or to rule them with her iron first of ideals ( in fact, one of her issues is that she did not count with that part and is falling under creating her own ruling ). daenerys conquered the cities to free the slaved and their oppression. she had no need to do it either, with enough gold and ships to sail to westeros before doing so.

there's no questioning that daenerys is doing what she does because she believes in the good, not in vengeance, not out of need for power. she's there to serve the oppressed, and not the opposite. she's not their messiah. there's a reason why mhysa resonates with her: she's mother, she's freeing, amidst the fear of being the opposite due to her roots ( remember the valyrians were slavers themselves ). like dragons, there's no cruel inner nature. there's the singular thing: dany is good. intrisically. she struggles in understandig that good intentions do not make a good realm - it only, sometimes, makes it weak. and to be ruthless to protect those she swore to protect is what makes her shake in fear of becoming entirelly ruthless. losing herself. becoming what people believe dragons to be: monsters, and monsters only.

daenerys does not use speech to gain support. her actions did so, and she did not do them out of the selfish reason: yes, this will have me be their queen. i'll become their god. no, dany did it because she loathed to see such suffering. she acted out of her heart. when she freed the unsullied she did not do it knowing they would follow her afterwards, nor when she fred drogo's slaves. their freedom was theirs, just like hers was hers. they followed her because they saw it as just that, someone worth it, someone who did it because it was right, and not someone who used them.

her iron throne goal becomes secondary in her mind as she decides to stay in mereen to keep things under control. to not let those people back in chains and in even more pain before she met them. if she wanted just to control them, dany would become the tyrant that season 8 wants you to see her as. she'd burn her enemies, and make others follow her with the disguise of being their savior. make them cross the sea and fight in her name only. she'd be flawless before their eyes, she'd see herself as flawless, she'd see herself as righteous. daenerys does not do it, in any moment. she constantly does what sacrifice is needed to help others and not herself. staying in mereen is proof of that, still, we constantly read she's a selfish person who only does what she does out of greed. when speaking of paul, for example, and the parallels, it is just a mirror of different perspectives of similar situations. one leaning towards the opressed for power, and the other leaning towards power to help the opressed.

[sybbi]

People will see the Star of David and be like "Is this Zionist propaganda?"

[sarroora]

“If it weren’t for Allah exposing what Pharoah was really like in the Holy Quran, people today would be studying Pharoah’s life and accomplishments as a martyr who tragically drowned in the sea while ‘pursuing the terrorists’.”

—

YO. YO I LOVE THIS

[randomnameless]

I missed that detail about House Vestra. House Vestra oversaw the consorts, while it's personal battalion of “sorcery engineers” are dressed as Slithers. And Hubert was given to Edelgard when she was four despite her being the 9th child of Ionius. Everything seems to point to House Vestra being Slithers pushing the moral decline of the Empire, and with the detail about consorts it could also be they were selectively breeding in order to create a perfect candidate for their plans. Their own Kwisatz Haderach as it were, after all they expect Edelgard to give them salvation.

Their own Kwisatz Haderach as it were, after all they expect Edelgard to give them salvation.

I'm having the worst mental images of Thales trying to have sexy times with random Empress #55 to further the breeding project and I'm not thanking you for that lol

More seriously,

As I mentioned in the other ask, the "get a heir with two crests" plans only popped up recently, since Word of God said the Ordelias were a prototype.

So why would they need to breed a perfect heir before having the idea to "infuse" one of them with the Crest of Flames or at least two crests ? Send a major blooded Seiros Hresvelg against Nabateans? It wouldn't work, the poor Hresvelg would be stomped on.

I always was under the impression that the Slither's influence was more in the lines of political influence, like saping the image the CoS had in Adrestia and ultimately, turn humans against Nabateans (again) while ruining things because that's what they do.

Emperor Proud (i don't have a name for him :() who ordered the Brigid and Dagda invasion was the kind of dude who, 1/ wanted to invade other countries bcs why not 2/the kind of dude who would be so angry at his people returning home without having conquered anything that said people prefer to die at sea, fighting.

Then we have the Emperor who was in charge during the Southern Church incident, who was so pissed that someone dared to rebel that they piss on an agreement their father made and banished that branch away, as an excuse to distance themselves more from the Central Church for ~reasons~.

Those Emperors are far from Willy, as Rhea (a biased source!) described him, or as the "Nobles of old" Hanneman, in a certain way Ferdie and Lorenz seem to admire. Did Adrestia fall bcs of Agarthan influence? I want to believe that it's not the case but... Fodlan games seem keen on putting everything "bad" that happens on the Agarthans, as if people can't be asses without an "alien" influence...

I've read your theory about Vestras being Agarthans themselves but, well, idk.

I really don't like blaming doylist writing here, but Hubert being given to Supreme Leader still reeks of the writers' lack of continuity guys, especially given the scarce mentions of her siblings and the unknown fate of her step-mothers - i know Mothers aren't prevalent in the FE series, but Anselma gets more mentions from her than Ionius's first (legal) wife!

Also, IDK where I read it, but it was said that House Vestra and House Hresvelg were together since the "dawn" of the Empire, imo it means since the Willy Era, so unless those "real Vestras" were bodysnatched after Willy and Rhea's departure, I can't believe the Vestras were Agarthans since day 1 (Macuil throws a tantrum over sparing the descendants of the Elites, imo he would never have accepted to work, less to even let live, an agarthan).

Back to them being there since the "dawn" of the Empire, does it also mean the harem tradition traces back to that era too?

Or, after seeing the fuckery that followed after Lycaon's death (Wilhelm, who could have assumed the throne again, fucked off instead of supporting the new emperor!) they devised to "look after/take care/organise" the harem and the Hresvelg heirs?

IDK

[news4dzhozhar]

'Don't We Have a Single Good Counterargument Other Than 'Double Standard' and 'Antisemitism'?' - Israel News - Haaretz.com

**They really need to come up with a new card to play. The directors themselves are jews but still Israel claims antisemitism. They're like the boy who cried wolf but on a global scale. Accountability isn't antisemitism**

The documentary 'Israelism' charts the growing disenchantment among young U.S. Jews toward the Jewish state. Since the October 7 massacre, there have been calls to boycott the film, with allegations of antisemitism being made against the Jewish directors

[shieldwife]

also worth saying that this is driving me to writing thg fanfic bc I'm genuinely pissed off, but my favourite way of engaging with thg isn't even with canon characters at this point. it's through thinking about two ocs I've had for years that I mentally refer to as "toxic fishermen yuri", and I'm incapable of writing extensively abt anything related to thg that doesn't involve them lol

[multigenderswagbracket]

The brackets were randomised to avoid any accidental bias from me, but this means some of the pairings are a very popular character versus a niche one. Because of this, I've decided that there will be a redemption round for all the characters knocked out first once the finals are over! (details not yet decided)

Also, to all the people upset at Klavier vs Yuri, here's a deal: if they end at 50/50 they will progress together as a single entity a la team rocket. I expect crackship art/fics in return /j

[angelsaxis]

you really can't critique anything america does if youre going to leave out ant-Black racism lol

[morgandekarios]

a drow adopting a gith kid is something that can be so personal actually