#do we even like henry?

[yrsonpurpose]

"How is a man to get anything done knowing Alex Claremont-Diaz is out there on the loose? I am driven to distraction."

[wonder-worker]

Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.

[vesperione]

Is your man an elderly scientist who lives in a mansion on an island that may or may not be inhabited by ghosts who's known to isolate himself, is known to wield firearms and who is also definitely gay. Then that might not be your man. That might be Kurt (Dread Weight) or Henry Hidgens (Hatchetfield)

[stephantom]

Becket (1964)

- But what will God say if I attack his church? After all, they're His bishops.

- We must manage the church.

[three-realms-archive]

Hello! We all know (or hopefully perceive the idea) that Satan would be a sweet romantic at heart! So imagine Satan x MC in an arranged marriage in TSL AU! For eg: everything was going well, they’re slowly falling for each other but MC has to keep secrets that hurts Satan! So MC tries gaining his trust by being honest, while Satan falls for MC again, as much as he denies it!

Of course, feel free to discard the idea, no pressure :)

Just A Small, Little Lie (TSL Arranged Marriage! AU)

(first request! i won't lie, i'm relatively new to the fandom and couldn't find any specifics for the tsl!au other than mc being henry and the demon brothers being the seven lords. but! i hope this suffices! all the tsl writings out there seem to have a more darker, sombre tone, too - so i hope that comes across :D but thank you so much, anon, for being my first requester! i hope its decently alright ahaha)

(Full fic under the cut! And feel free to plop ideas in the idea box :D)

Synopsis:

(Takes place in the TSL! AU - reader is Henry).

You used to be a knight serving the Seven Lords, popular amongst all in the realm. Then one day, without warning, the Lord of Corruption orders you to marry the Lord of Masks; of whom you had the closest relationship with out of all his brothers. However, the feelings for him that had once been growing in your heart turn sour as you're required to give up your knighthood, your life and your freedom for this arranged marriage.

Your husband gradually drops his mask, as he falls deeper in love with you.

And you gradually put up your mask, as you fall further out of love with him.

_

You don’t tell your husband that your fingers hurt, as you wind the stems of green willow between them into something that maybe, possibly resembles a flower chain. Fake green willow; because nothing survives here except him, you and the cats he allows to come and go from the castle. Fake green willow; with plastic that splits into sharp prongs that dig into your flesh when you bend it. Your husband’s flower chain is made with real green willow that has long since withered away; but today, for whatever reason he keeps behind the mask he wears, he’s decided to bring the flowers back to life by winding them into a chain. And, for whatever reason, he’s demanded you do the same.

Your flower chain looks horrible. His chain looks perfect. Like your perfect husband, with his perfect kingdom, and your perfect marriage.

The perfect, perfect marriage you never even asked for.

You don’t tell your husband much of anything, nowadays. You remember your days as Henry, the brave knight, who fights against evil and protects the seven, wise sages of the realm. You used to talk with the Lord of Masks before heading off on excursions, during breaks in military council meetings, over private, celebratory dinners… Anytime you could, you’d seek him out. You remember shifting in your seat the first time you had invited him to dinner, avoiding his gaze bashfully as you both had placed your hands on the table, fingers inching ever closer to touch. You remember he had taken your hand in his, lifting it to his lips. You even remember the exact knuckle where his soft, gentle lips had kissed. Such a romantic night; where you were free to speak and laugh and smile as you pleased. Free to possibly even fall in love with him.

… Free. You were free, until the Lord of Corruption had suddenly forced you over to the Lord of Masks as a prize. He had stripped you of your title as a knight, had forbid you from entering any other kingdom, and presented you to his brother with a shackle on your ring finger and a matching mask to wear.

So now, you do what you do best as a knight and steel yourself, putting up your guard. Everything you want to think, say or do… you keep secret.

_

The Lord of Masks doesn’t realise your fingers hurt, as you wind the stems of green willow between them into something that maybe, possibly resembles a flower chain. Fake green willow; because nothing survives here and he wanted you to have only the prettiest things which come close to matching your beauty. Fake green willow; which pales in comparison to the adorable expression on the face of his dear, beloved Henry, your tongue poking out of the corner of your mouth in concentration. He, himself, doesn’t really know why he’s decided to come to your room in the middle of the night to make flower chains, but he tells himself it’s to keep his spouse entertained. Nothing more than his usual behaviour and cunning. To keep up the façade of an upstanding, untouchable member of society.

He marries Henry and keeps them happy.

He shares in Henry’s immense popularity and gets the knight’s military prowess at his disposal.

Such a good deal for Henry, the Lord of Masks thinks… ignoring the unfamiliar, warm heat spreading over his flushed cheeks when you hold out your finished flower necklace out to him.

A good deal for Henry - no, not himself - indeed.

He tells you too much, these days. He remembers talking to you: Henry, the knight - not Henry, his spouse. Faking his smile in the breaks between council meeting and pretending to care before you headed off on military excursions.

But then you had invited him to dinner for the first time after a victory. Then, he had seen expressions he had never seen you show anyone. Not even his brothers. The Henry that wasn't just the tool he could use to conquer territory; nor the Henry he could use to gain status. This Henry smiled at him. Stuttered and faltered and even blushed when he kissed their hand - like the princesses in the fairytales he pretended he didn't love to read, or the fairies illustrated in the bedtime stories he read as a child. Someone enchanting, perfect and loving in a world where's he's only known masks.

So he does what he does best and dons his own mask. Through his various connections in high society, he had covertly pulled the strings and had the marriage arranged himself; masquerading it as his idiot older brother's idea. It’s on-brand; a marriage proposal masked as pure business, so he never has to face what he really feels. But he can pretend. Pretend he was brave enough to get down on one knee, ring in hand. Pretend that his story was exactly like that of the heroes of his favourite tales.

Pretend it wasn't the prince, instead, who was hopelessly, foolishly, in love with his loyal knight.

_

The Lord of Masks smiles. If one looks closely, past the haze of the lamplight, they might be able to notice that the smile reaches his eyes. He takes the necklace made by his spouse and barely squeezes it over his head and around his neck. Green willow-shaped plastic digs into his skin.

You try to smile, too. You look at him and try to remember the man who had lovingly pressed a kiss to your hand on that night, small specks of emotion spilling out from under his carefully-crafted guise. You keep his true image in your eyes - that of your rage-filled captor - a secret. It’s the only way for you to keep up your own act… and maybe stop yourself from breaking the heart of the gentleman you once held feelings for. If he was even still there at all.

“I love you.” The Lord of Masks says, forgetting how tight the flower chain had felt around his neck only seconds ago. His mask slightly falls forward, loosely, as he leans his head against yours and gently nuzzles you - like a cat would. He even rubs his nose against yours, basking in your scent. Internally, he curses himself. His body is betraying him.

“I… I love you, too.” You say, the band of your own mask chafing painfully into the back of your neck. You're unable to move when your husband shows his affection and you ready yourself to play it off as nerves. But something in your heart - as you look at him and see the man who had leaned forward to kiss your hand - falters. Were you still holding out hope, even now? Internally, you curse yourself. You need to learn to be better at acting.

The two of you stay there a while: the Kingdom of Masks' happy, perfect couple. Your foreheads touch, your fingers intertwine and, yet, your hearts are far, far apart. Into the darkness, the two of you continue to utter that sentence:

"I love you."

It's a whole-hearted truth after a lifetime of hiding, for one...

… And one of many, many small, little lies, for the other.

(hello, anon, i hope you enjoyed this! i went kinda tragic love story route; with hopeless romantic satan and a trapped mc, though i'd like to think mc is still holding out hope that the man they fell in love with is still there. if you wanted something a little happier though, anon, please let me know and i'll write a sequel, this premise is one i really enjoyed!)

[apocketfullofhobbits]

'trc adaptation is bad bc they mixed timelines and cut out lots of stuff' 'trc adaptation is bad bc they sanitised adam's bitchiness' 'trc adaptation is bad bc they made the ganseys democrats' NO TRC ADAPTATION IS BAD BC IT'S SET IN 2024 and not in 2001 like god intended!!

[cringelock]

i think talking about “cope” within a tjlc context is hilarious at this point. i’m not on copium baby i’m on something worse! we moved beyond notions of cope approximately 4 years ago. blog theory and EMP have burned out like great stars and all that’s left is the hardest stringiest life forms. what anyone still riding this train has going on is much more complicated and personal than cope. i invented cope. after what i’ve seen there’s nothing cope could do for me. i stare into the eye of the storm with breathtaking awareness. i welcome entropy. “what else could they possibly mean by this?” is our equivalent of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” almost a meditation on the nature of our state. there is no answer to this question, in fact the very lack of an answer is the point. cope is for those who still can shield their eyes, but we have been burdened with sight! i took an edible approximately three hours ago

[putuponpercy]

I had a vision of this being in Henry's wardrobe

[dee-in-the-box]

thinking about the line "You can never undo what I've done to her, you know." again.

[fideidefenswhore]

extremely annoyed in retrospect how often the phrase 'great whore' was scripted in BE.

[yrsonpurpose]

They still love you.

[wonder-worker]

Is it true that Elizabeth of York birth celebrated like she was a son? I have seen some historians say this.

Hi! Yes, Edward IV did celebrate his daughter’s birth as though she was a male heir (“a prince”).

While we have no contemporary reports at the time of Elizabeth of York's birth, we know that Luchino Dallaghiexia reported that the birth of Edward and Elizabeth's third child, Cecily of York, "rejoiced the king and all the nobles exceedingly*, though they would have preferred a son'. Wanting a son (ie: an heir) was typical for their time period, likely enhanced by Edward and Elizabeth's unprecedentedly controversial marriage, her very unsuitable origins and his own status as a usurper. The fact that he was described as being "exceedingly" delighted at the birth of his third daughter in a row regardless does support the claim that he would have gone over-the-top to celebrate the birth of his first legitimate** child.

Hope this helps!

*Bizarrely, I have seen several historians and blogs using Dallaghiexia's letter to claim that he was bitterly disappointed at Cecily of York's birth. I don't understand how historical reading comprehension can be so poor that "rejoiced the king exceedingly" has somehow been rewritten as the...exact opposite of that. With no self-awareness whatsoever. **His illegitimate daughter Margaret (known as Elizabeth for some reason) was almost definitely born before his marriage. We don't know the birth dates of his other two illegitimate children: I think the likeliest conception date for Arthur was in early 1470, but it's unverified; and we know nothing about Grace (which was in fact her surname, not her name) other than the fact that Elizabeth Woodville seems to have been very attached to her.

[noknowshame]

an epiphany: Silver does not, and cannot, have a backstory, simply because he is the archetypal pirate. and pirates do not have histories.

I do a lot of research on pirate history in my free time, and one thing that has always really struck me is just how little we have to go off of. We do have primary source records of their exploits - primarily reports from the crews of ships they attacked, and if they were unlucky enough, transcripts from their trials and executions , but as soon as you ask "well, who were they before they were pirates?", almost always, there is simply nothing to draw up, even for the most famous of figures. Calico Jack Rackham appears on the scene in 1718, already Charles Vane's quartermaster, with nothing to say of where he came from. Samuel Bellamy sailed from Cape Cod to raid the treasure-wreck of the Urca d'Lima, but his life in Massachusetts is marred in speculation. Blackbeard made landfall in Nassau soon after the War of Spanish Succession, but so many pirates used pseudonyms that we cannot even be sure that his real name was Edward Teach. All we can say is maybe, maybe, maybe.

so of course Silver, being the icon that we can trace nearly all of our modern conceptions of piracy to, would have no past. the real ones didn't either. As far as written history is concerned, the sea conjured them up. Even if their stories were not unremarkable, they were simply... without relevance.

[stephantom]

I’d need to watch it again to confirm this, but I’m pretty sure that Thomas Becket is the only character who independently initiates touch with Henry?

There are plenty of people whom Henry touches, and it’s almost always possessive or threatening: the villager woman in the first flashback scene, the Saxon peasant girl (and possibly the old man? I think he prods at both of them with his riding crop), Gwendolen (holding her shoulders/neck), the French prostitute (kissing, leaning over, sitting on, slapping her butt), his sons (pushing and kicking them), the bishop (strangling), his barons (clutching onto one, tapping one’s head to indicate his vapidness), and Thomas too—(clasping his shoulders when he realizes Thomas is hurt, holding his hand to put on the chancellor ring).

Interestingly, I don’t think we ever see Henry touch or be touched by his mother or his wife. There’s the moment when he grabs/kicks their needlework, and later on he knocks all the plates off the table, possibly vaguely in their direction—so there are two physical interactions which are violent but still sort of… distant? And still the direction is just Henry to them (in terms of physicality, anyway—verbally, they do initiate conversations/fights with him).

Does anyone touch Henry? There are the monks who whip him in the end, but Henry has ordered them to do it. Likewise, there’s the servant/valet/page who begins to wipe him dry in the bath scene, but again, that’s someone performing a duty. Thomas Becket though, cuts in and takes over the drying, and the dialogue tells us explicitly that he’s not expected to do this, and doesn’t have to (“You’re a nobleman—why do you play at being my valet?”) but Becket seemingly wants to do it, and he knows Henry likes how he does it: enthusiastically, confidently, warmly, and freely (“No one does it like you, Thomas”). He towels Henry’s head, helps Henry put on his boots, and then casually uses Henry’s legs to push himself up to stand.

There’s the scene in Henry’s tent, after the French prostitute has left and the two of them are sitting on the bed: Becket sort of leans in and briefly clasps Henry’s arm where it’s lying in his lap, casually and warmly.

There’s also the getaway horse ride, where Becket is holding onto Henry, arms wrapped around him, and they’re both laughing and smiling. Henry’s shirt actually falls open a little and Becket’s hand winds up on his bare torso.

And then there are the thwarted attempts at touch, after the split: the two scenes where Henry accuses Becket of not loving him. Both times, Becket moves toward Henry and reaches out to touch him, and both times, Henry moves away and tells him to keep his distance.

They’re quick little things, but if they are actually the only instances of anyone touching Henry affectionately (or even of their own volition) that we see over the course of the movie, it does support an impression of Henry as fundamentally isolated—maybe there is truth to his claim that Becket is the only person who’s ever loved him.

What’s tragic is that 1) Henry doesn’t really know how to express love himself (see: Henry expressing nothing but violence and entitlement to everyone else around him, and even to Becket for the most part), and 2) Becket’s love, albeit huge in Henry’s world, is conflicted and unfulfilling—for both of them.

Becket might be the only person who’s dared to reach out to Henry and meet him on something close to a human level, and Henry loves him for it, but why does Becket do it? Part of it may just be an instinct of Becket’s to fulfill a need where he sees one, if he can, and if it benefits him. I think it’s so interesting that Henry seems obsessed with the question of whether Thomas really loves him, when it seems the truth might be that Thomas actually doesn’t know; maybe it’s an unanswerable, even nonsensical question to him. Like, what else could he do? I don’t know. “Insofar as I was capable of love, yes I did [love you].” But the fact that his last words, unwitnessed and private, are, “Poor Henry.” Fuck me up.

Ok, that last paragraph got away from me and now I can’t stop. Tempted to draw comparisons to “Beauty and the Beast” (this is a sad version where no magical transformation happens… unless you take a particular Catholic stance and consider that both of them maybe took real solace and meaning in Thomas being made a saint and that Henry maybe found real absolution through his penance).

I also want to compare all of this to “The Lion in Winter”, where it feels like, rather than a story about one lonely monster in a castle full of people he sees as objects, it’s a whole microcosm of traumatized and power-hungry people, reaching out for power and security and love and stabbing each other in the back, over and over. (Like, of course his mother and wife and kids have complex feelings for him—some of which involve love!) I think that depiction is better and less myopic, more true to life and probably a more accurate portrait of the historical figures involved (even when it comes to Henry and Becket—Becket was of that world too, after all), but I think I’ve rambled enough about all of this, so I’m going to end this post now. I’ll just say that there’s something nevertheless appealing about the boiled-down fairytale melodrama of “no one else ever loved me but you!”

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[malinaa]

i said it once and i’ll say it again happy place is pwmov’s spiritual successor