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richmond-rex · 1 year

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(This has become a rant, I'm so sorry)

maybe it's just me, but I've always found comparisons between Edward IV and Henry VIII to be rather extreme? I think the superficial parallels and grandfather-grandson angle is interesting, sure, but ultimately, they seem like two very different people in very different times who lived very different lives, and I feel like their differences should he more emphasized than any similarities?

Edward IV was not raised or trained to be king, while Henry VIII was a royal prince raised as heir to the throne from the age of 10. Edward grew up in a world of rising political dilemmas and a looming war, while Henry, despite certain crises during his father’s reign, grew up in an era of determinedly maintained peace. Edward literally fought for the throne while Henry VIII inherited his relatively smoothly and retained it throughout his life; Edward was also an “usurping” king and had to establish a new dynasty, while Henry VIII was the product and heir or an already established royal line. The kind of nations they reigned over were extremely different as well – Henry VIII was one of the few heirs who inherited a nation at relative peace with an abundant treasury, while Edward IV’s was quite literally the opposite.

I don’t know much about their policies, but they seem very different, too – Henry VIII was pro war in a way that his father and Edward IV were not, and ultimately, he ruled with an absolution that neither of them did. Their personalities as well – there’s a parallel between energetic and charismatic young rulers who became jaded and ruthless later in life, but ultimately, it’s rather surface-level, because Henry VIII was cruel, capricious and sometimes brutal in a way that Edward IV was simply not (Henry VII’s ruthless pragmatism would be a better comparison for him). Even the Croyland Chronicle, which mentioned his change of behavior after George’s execution, ultimately seemed to like him a great deal, and he did retain semi-popularity till the end. And while both were renowned as very handsome, there’s no actual evidence that they looked alike; they both put on weight later in life, but Edward IV was still regarded as pleasant-looking by both More and the Croyland Chronicle (which is rather overlooked when talking about that aspect of him; Elizabeth of York being called “very handsome” is ALSO overlooked when talking about her weight gain), and also died far younger.

And their marital life, honestly, could not have been more different. Both married older women, both had love matches – but marrying a 27-year-old widow with no political or financial advantages was fundamentally different from marrying a princess of Spain whose father was a very powerful monarch and an important ally. Even early on in Henry VIII’s reign, there are recorded disputes with Katherine of Aragon that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville were not recorded to have throughout their marriage. Both kings had affairs, but Katherine was legitimately threatened by his illegitimate children and eventually replaced as queen by Anne Boleyn. In contrast, none of Edward IV’s mistresses (including Jane Shore) were given positions at court, none had any outward or noted influence during his rule, and none of them were actually singled out or emphasized by contemporaries like the Croyland Chronicle during his life (although they were talked about afterwards by non-contemporaries like Thomas More). He might have had affairs, but ultimately, Elizabeth was his acknowledged and uncontested wife and queen until the very end, and did not seem to experience any drop in affection and certainly not influence and respect on his part.

This devolved into a rant, but I guess what I was trying to say was that there’s a persistent view that both of them were extremely similar people who led parallel lives, and while the comparison can be interesting and fun at times, I think it’s ultimately very simplistic and superficial, and can lead to a distorting view of both their reigns (generally to Edward’s detriment), especially since I've seen this happen weirdly often by people interested in Henry VIII, and since since their differences are much more important. A much more apt comparison would be Edward IV and Henry VII, imo.

Generally, I think it's valid to make comparisons between monarchs and depending on what topic you want to talk about, you can compare Edward IV with many other monarchs too — it's certainly interesting to compare Edward IV and Henry VII (finances, rehabilitation of the monarchy), but it's also interesting to compare Edward IV and Henry IV (usurpation, founding a dynasty, fending off rebellions), Edward IV and Louis XI (diplomacy, taxation), Edward IV and Edward III (chivalric culture), etc. What bothers me the most about the comparisons made between Edward IV and Henry VIII is the moralising and frankly, ableist and fatphobic tone pop historians always take when doing that.

For example, it is interesting to compare how those two monarchs tweaked some aspects of the coronation process of Elizabeth Woodville and Anne Boleyn to make them more respected in their role as consort, but they rarely ever go there. Usually, it's always something only short of saying Edward IV passed the genes SLUT-1 and SLOTH-2 onto Henry VIII. It is reductive, deprives Henry VIII of his own free will and responsibility, and makes it seem like behaviour is something that can be dictated by genes. It's some incredibly insulting rhetoric, and if you're part of a racial minority you can easily see why. It's also why I loathe any talk about the alleged 'Plantagenet red-gold hair' they insist Edward IV possessed and passed onto his grandson. It's like Calvin's predestination idea but make it about genetic inheritance: a curse-glory embedded in the genes (and marked in one's hair?). I'll say it again: they need to stop racialising common human behaviour (or indeed, the Yorkist-Lancastrian-Tudor conflict).

And what can we say about the fatphobic quasi-delight with which pop historians always compare them: see how this 'golden prince' got tyrannical and fat. If they're going to imply weight gain is linked to moral corruption I'd prefer them to not talk about golden princes at all. I'm always uncomfortable when pop historians start talking about the appearance of a historical figure because I know they'll make some judgement about their morals and/or intellect sooner or later. A sense of barely conceived schadenfreude is never too far behind when they're comparing grandson and grandfather.

#ask #anon #edward iv

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car-hamro · 1 year

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HISTORY OF MOTOR CAR IN NEPAL. WHO INTRODUCED IT?

Today, when in a hurry or a moment of urgency to reach our particular destination, we always sigh relief with the easy accessibility to the mode of road transportation. It is only during such situations that we take a moment to appreciate the efforts taken to create cars.

But at the same time, the appreciation fills our minds with curiosity about when who, and how the first car was introduced in Nepal. Knowing that millions of vehicles inside Nepal today are providing facilities to millions of people across the country, we do credit Ranas for introducing cars back then.

But what if I say that cars were instead introduced in Nepal for their luxury than to think of an accessible mode of transportation? What if I say the people used to carry cars first before the cars started taking them? Indeed, there are plenty of stories about this topic, and today, we ought to discuss and deploy the details on it.

THE FIRST CAR IN NEPAL

As far as our legendary stories go, the first car introduced in Nepal dates back to 1922 and belongs to Britain’s Prince Edward (later King Edward VIII). Back then, he used to ride the car across the border of Chitwan, Kasara, to hunt tigers. Yes, it was also a similar timeframe when the Ranas ruling in Nepal got immersed in the idea of having cars.

It was an addiction, and the Ranas could not get enough cars, but there were no roads for them to bring these cars inside Kathmandu. But as we say, if there is a will, there is a way; Ranas bought those cars physically through the labor force. Back then, it was Chandra Shamsher who acted as the leading force in this mission, as he initially purchased one for himself.

Hundreds of young, influential youths from villages near Makwanpur were hired to physically carry the cars over the mountains from Bhimphedi to Thankot. During that tenure, Ranas would remove the wheels and seats separated from the car’s body and take them separately.

Without road connectivity, the Balami and Tamang porters of the Makwanpur district carried the cars in a bamboo cart. Their usual routes include Chitlang, Kushle Chaur, Markhu Pauwa, Kulekhani, and Phakhel. Initially, the rulers would bring the cars from Kolkata (then Calcutta) and move them to Amlekhgunj.

Later, the potters would carry them, and it would take almost 2–3 days to reach Chunikhel, Thankot. From there on, they would assemble the parts and ride the cars to their respective destinations.

What’s more shocking than the physical labor for cars? Well, the potters would often agree to this labor for free and would often take turns to deliver them. At times, if they were to get paid, the minimal wage started from 5 ana to Re.1 and an extra Re. 1 as a commission.

If you look down the history books, you will also see Gehendra Shamsher along the line to import a Ford company vehicle on his own. It is stated that Gehendra was quite fond of cars, and he was the one to install the light in them on his own, as the vehicles that were repurchased in Nepal then had no lights.

FOREMOST CAR RIDE IN NEPAL

Back in the day, no general public was allowed to purchase a car, which was illegal. Even after the first automobile had appeared in Nepal, it was only after 50 years that the general public got no restrictions on car purchases. It has been over a century since the first car was introduced in Nepal.

For more details click here

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dailytudors · 3 years

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Celebrating the New King of England & his Queen Consort:

On the 24th of June 1509, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon were jointly crowned at Westminster Abbey amidst huge pomp, greeted with public acclaim go from their subjects, high and low.

As some historians point out from contemporary sources, the coronation was a success and up to that point, one of the biggest demonstrations of dynastic power of the century. These contemporaries paint not just a portrait of an impressive king but two young monarchs who were both alike in royal dignity. "... the following morning Catherine and Henry processed from the palace into the abbey, where two empty thrones sat waiting on a platform before the altar. A contemporary woodcut shows them seated level with each other, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling as the crowns are lowered on to their heads. It is a potent image of the occasion, intimate in spite of the crowds behind them, suggesting a relationship of two people equal in sovereignty, respect and love. In reality, the positioning of Henry’s throne above hers, and her shortened ceremonial, without an oath, indicates the actual discrepancy between them. He had inherited the throne as a result of his birth; she was his queen because he had chosen to marry her. Above his head the woodcut depicted a huge Tudor rose, a reminder of his great lineage and England’s recent conflicts; Henry’s role was to guide and rule his subjects. Over Catherine sits her chosen device of the pomegranate, symbolic of the expectations of all Tudor wives and queens: fertility and childbirth. In Christian iconography, it also stood for resurrection. In a way, Catherine was experiencing her own rebirth, through this new marriage and the chance it offered her as queen, after the long years of privation and doubt. Westminster Abbey was a riot of colour. Quite in contrast with the sombre, bare-stone interiors of medieval churches today, these pre-Reformation years made worship a tactile and sensual experience, with wealth and ornament acting as tributes and measures of devotion. Inside the abbey, statues and images were gilded and decorated with jewels, walls and capitals were picked out in bright colours and walls were hung with rich arras. All was conducted according to the advice of the 200-year-old Liber Regalis, the Royal Book, which dictated coronation ritual. The couple were wafted with sweet incense while thousands of candles flickered, mingling with the light streaming down through the stained-glass windows. Archbishop Warham was again at the helm, administering the coronation oaths and anointing the pair with oil. Beside her new husband, Catherine was crowned and given a ring to wear on the fourth finger of her right hand, a sort of inversion of the marital ring, symbolising her marriage to her country. She would take this vow very seriously. The coronation proved popular. Henry wrote to the Pope explaining that he had ‘espoused and made’ Catherine ‘his wife and thereupon had her crowned amid the applause of the people and the incredible demonstrations of joy and enthusiasm’. To Ferdinand, he added that ‘the multitude of people who assisted was immense, and their joy and applause most enthusiastic’. There seems little reason to see this just as diplomatic hyperbole. According to Hall, ‘it was demaunded of the people, wether they would receive, obey and take the same moste noble Prince, for their Kyng, who with great reuerance, love and desire, saied and cryed, ye-ye’. Lord Mountjoy employed more poetic rhetoric in his letter to Erasmus, which stated that ‘Heaven and Earth rejoices, everything is full of milk and honey and nectar. Our king is not after gold, or gems, or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality.’ In his coronation verses Thomas More agreed with the general mood, explaining that wherever Henry went ‘the dense crowd in their desire to look upon him leaves hardly a narrow lane for his passage’. They ‘delight to see him’ and shout their good will, changing their vantage points to see him again and again. Such a king would free them from slavery, ‘wipe the tears from every eye and put joy in place of our long distress’. " ~The Six Wives and Many Mistresses Henry VIII by Amy Licence In his book on the Wars of the Roses (Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors), Dan Jones also highlights Henry's good looks and the similarities between him and his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, and the reason for his popular appeal: "Young Henry came to the throne confident and ready to rule. He was well educated, charming and charismatic: truly a prince fit for the renaissance in courtly style, tastes and patronage that was dawning in northern Europe. He had been blessed with the fair coloring and radiant good looks of his grandfather Edward IV: tall, handsome, well built and dashing, here was a king who saw his subjects as peers and allies around whom he had grown up, rather than semialien enemies to be suspected and persecuted." Henry VIII understood the power of propaganda. Like his father, he used powerful imagery to push Tudor propaganda but taking a page from his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, Henry also relied on popular acclaim. He knew how to win the people over and dance his way around every argument; his illustrious court and physical prowess won over foreign ambassadors who like Lord Mountjoy and Sir Thomas More also noted his wife's virtues.

#Henry VIII #Catherine of Aragon #coronation #westminster abbey #Tudor History #British Monarchy

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poorshadowspaintedqueens · 3 years

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Why was Robert so fat? He did not have the injury like Henry. People say it could be him becoming king and being an absent drunk but he looked in great shape at the Greyjoy rebellion. So why after 290 did he go hardcore overweight. What’s your thought on this? What could’ve happened?

Robert does seem to have been roughly based on King Edward IV of England. He was Henry VIII’s grandfather and the physical resemblance is, shall we say, striking. Both were tall, well-built, athletic men in their youth. Edward was an enormously successful warrior and commander who won his first battle at the age of nineteen, avenging the deaths of his father and younger brother (sound familiar?). He became king and was also, according to one chronicler at least, the “handsomest prince in Christendom.” While nobody claimed that he was muscled like a maiden’s fantasy, I assume it was implied. After he had been king for nine years, he faced a rebellion and was even chased out of England for a brief time, but managed to find allies, invade, and take back his kingdom through bloody battle once again.

In the remaining twelve years he spent on the throne, he spent much of his spare time feasting, drinking, and sleeping with as many women as possible (again, sound familiar?). This is in spite of the fact that he was married to a woman called the most beautiful in the country, who bore him no fewer than ten children (in addition to the two from her first marrige). By the end of his reign, he was reported to be extremely fat, and most probably suffered at least one stroke prior to contracting the case of pneumonia that killed him in April 1483.

We obviously cannot diagnose historical figures (or fictional characters, for that matter) with exact physiological diseases or disorders. But if I had to guess, what happened to Edward is similar to what happens to retired athletes. Someone accustomed to consuming large numbers of calories on the regular (think Michael Phelps or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) who suddenly stops burning through those calories is going to gain weight if they don’t change the way they consume food. And Edward, by all accounts, was also a heavy drinker, possibly an alcoholic, and that squares with what we see of Robert Baratheon in AGOT.

All that being said, I do want to point out that being fat does not automatically make a person unhealthy. That is a chronic misrepresentation of what fatness is and means, and it is highly ableist. I don’t think GRRM necessarily intended to be ableist here, but it is one of several issues of representation that we find in ASOIAF more generally. We also find it in the representation of Rhaenyra Targaryen in Fire & Blood and “The Princess and the Queen,” where her weight gain following multiple pregnancies over a very short period of time is held up as a personal failing rather than a simple physiological change that happens to a lot of people, particularly those who have given birth to children.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #robert baratheon #ableism in asoiaf #fatphobia in asoiaf #tw: fatphobia #tw: ableism #edward iv #Anonymous

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kaitycole · 3 years

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Black Dahila

Summary: Liam and Drake finally learn what happened when Constantine confronted Eleanor and Jackson about their affair.

Word Count: 3328

Pairings: Constantine x Eleanor, Jackson x Eleanor, Jackson x Bianca

Warnings: Mentions of adultery, murder, illegitimate children

Song Choice: n/a

Part 19 of WP. To catch up, read here.

It’s not until he goes to sit down and catches a glare from Bastien that it finally hits Jackson why his former mentee is here and he makes sure to grab Luke’s arm when he goes to sit down.

Liam sits down in the arm chair that is close to the sliding glass doors he assumes leads to the backyard. He scrunches up his brows when notices Jackson’s hesitant to sit down. It has been three years since he took the throne and the weight of his title still hasn’t fully clicked with him.

“Oh no, please sit. I’m not here as King, this is your home after all.”

Jackson nods, slightly embarrassed before he lets go of Luke who sits on the left end of the couch closest to Liam and Jackson sits in his usual chair, one that is across from Liam.

“It seems a lot has changed in Cordonia.” He lets out a nervous chuckle, the atmosphere starts to feel heavy, like all the weight was resting on his shoulders.

“Leo abdicated for love, truly pulling an Edward VIII. Olivia had a lot to say about that.”

“How is Olivia?”

“She told me not to even bother to come here.” “Sounds like her. And Lythikos?” “She rules with a silver dagger, the people love it, the suitors not so much.” Jackson lets out a laugh and Liam feels himself untense for the first time since they pulled back in front of the ranch. It startles him at first, the fact that he could feel almost comfortable with the one person he wanted to set on fire. But it is truly rare that he gets a moment to just chat with someone.

“The Beaumont brothers, how are they? Bertrand married to some insufferable noble woman yet?”

Liam and Bastien share a brief exchange before the corners of Liam’s lips threatens to twitch into a smirk. “You’d honestly be surprised at who he married. He even has a son.”

“Poor woman.” Jackson jokes which gets Bastien to crack a smile.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Liam stands up, holding up his ringing phone before walking out the glass doors behind him.

“I don’t suppose we could share a drink and talk about the old days, could we?”

“I am on the clock.” Bastien continues to look straight ahead, trying to simply just avoid his old mentor. His first concern is Liam, next would Drake, then maybe once they were back in Cordonia could he worry about his own feelings on the matter.

To say Bastien is hurt would be a gross understatement, he is angry, pissed the fuck off and devasted that the man who taught him what he knew didn’t feel the need to clue him in on what happened. The fact that he had spent most of his life raising Drake and Savannah like his own because of how much he owned Jackson all while pushing down the grief and guilt he felt over their alleged deaths.

“How is that if Liam isn’t here on King’s business?”

He finally lets his eyes flick over to the man he used to look up to, keeping his face emotionless. “My job is to protect the King regardless of the business matter. You should know that or have you forgotten the duties you had sworn to uphold?”

“That was Drake, he’s almost here.” Liam walks back into the house, unintentionally interrupting their conversations. Bastien just nods, his glance refocusing on the wall in front of him, eyes scanning across the family photos lined up on the mantle.

There was no doubt in his mind that it was Eleanor’s idea to have so many photographs taken, she was like that when she married Constantine. Even before Liam was born, she had pictures taken of them with Leo, of Leo through the years and once Liam was born, even more were taken. She made sure Olivia was included in the family pictures they took, even if the official royal family photo didn’t have her in it, she still kept the ones with her in her personal photo albums. Bastien makes a mental note to have the servants look for them when he returns so that Liam will have them if he wants to see them.

* * “Luke, why don’t you go bring the cattle back in?”

Drake arrived just moments ago, taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch to Luke, meaning he’s closest to Jackson. Liam asked to hear Jackson’s version of Eleanor’s pregnancy which prompted Jackson to basically ask Luke to leave.

“This involves me too. I’m staying.”

“We can talk about this later, Luke.”

The young man simply crosses his arms, shaking his head. He wasn’t going anywhere, after everything he’s learned over such a short amount of time, he honestly didn’t trust his dad to tell him the same details he gave his older brothers.

“I’m old enough to know. You will literally be talking about me, I’m staying.”

“I really don’t see any problem with Luke being present. He must have questions just like the rest of us.” Liam’s regal tone comes out, while Drake is used to it, the other Walkers look at him amazed. A small smile curls the left side of Jackson’s lips, he could see so much of Eleanor in him.

* * With shaking hands, she pulls the tests out of her pocket and hands them to him; she had taken four of them. He looks at them, unsure of how to act and he feels himself unable to breathe. The unsureness of what this meant left him with a mixture of fear and unease.

“Please say something.” She pleas, tears swelling in her eyes.

“Congratulations.”

She reaches out for his arm, the plastic tests clattering against the floor as she drops them, throwing herself into his chest, “it’s yours.”

Jackson stumbles backwards, the reality crashes into him like a strong wave, leaving him breathless and fearful for another. The question on his tongue leaves a bitter taste, knowing that the words will hurt her, wondering if she’ll react the same way Bianca did when he asked her a very similar question.

“Are you sure?”

The Queen pulls away, her expression resembling a wounded puppy whose owner just pushed it away. She sucks in her bottom lip, eyes filling with even bigger tears as she bites down on her quivering lip. She lets out a shaky breath, nodding repeatedly before she turns and walks away, leaving him and the pregnancy tests behind her.

Liam stands up, anger radiating off of him which Drake quickly picks up on, standing up as well. “I’m sorry, did you really question my mother?”

“Liam…” Drake steps forwards, hands reaching out, trying to calm his best friend.

“How dare you? How fucking dare you act as though she was just some common mistress.”

Drake’s hands are on Liam’s shoulders, pushing him backwards even though he knows Liam can easily push him out of the way. He quickly looks towards Bastien who is watching, but not moving, honestly, he’d be completely fine if Liam beat Jackson to a pulp. He was completely surprised at Drake’s behavior, growing up he would throw a right hook without hesitation and for a lot less than everything Jackson’s done over the years.

“I know what it seems, but you have to…”

“I don’t have to do shit.” Liam pushes Drake off of him, sitting back down in his chair. “She risked her life, her family, everything for you and you dared to treat her that way.”

The room quiets, no one saying anything or even moving, the tension can easily be felt. Liam feels torn, torn between saying fuck it and leaving, returning to Cordonia as if none of this ever happened, but also wanting to know more about the events that led to his mother’s behavior. Drake is torn between his dad and his best friend and Jackson is torn between doing the right thing and telling the events for what they are or saving face with at least Luke.

“Would you like to call it a day, Sir?” Bastien takes a step closer to Liam.

“No,” he shakes his head, “I can’t continue to drag this or the trip out.”

* * Eleanor’s stomach drops, it isn’t uncommon for Constantine to have a guardsman summon her to his office, but something feels off. The last time she had even spoken to her husband was roughly two weeks ago, the day that he picked up on her sour candy craving. She has managed to stay holed up in her suite which wasn’t too bad seeing how her morning sickness was horrific this time around.

Jackson’s nerves twist even tighter when he sees Eleanor walking towards him, seemingly going in the same direction. He had been at home when Novak came to get him, telling him the King needed to see him immediately. For the last several days he’s tried to see the Queen, to apologize, but based off the maid gossip she had locked herself in the Queen’s suite, not even letting Liam in to see her. He tries to make eye contact with her, wants to try to give her a soft, comforting smile, but her eyes stay locked on the tips of her shoes.

Novak is standing outside the King’s office, opening the door when they both get close enough, a small bow for Eleanor and Jackson suddenly understands why he’s been called when Novak’s gaze avoids his.

The scene in the office isn’t reassuring for either Eleanor or Jackson, Constantine is standing with his back to the door and Timothy is standing to the right side of the King’s desk. Jackson can see something on the desk but he can’t make out what it is.

He turns around, sitting slightly on the edge of his desk, looking at both of them, a stone-cold expression in his eyes. Constantine stares at his wife, trying to or more like hoping that she will give him some reason to forgive her. He wants to be wrong, he wants things to go the way that they should. He wants to be told that he’s just been overthinking and connecting invisible dots, but when all signs point one way, it’s hard to go towards the other.

“How long have you been two sneaking around?” “Constantine, I…”

“I think it’s important to remind you that I already know the answers to the questions I plan on asking, there’s really no reason to lie at this point.” His words are often chilling, but the coldness of his words sinks deep into their bones, a shiver creeps down their spines.

“Over a year.” Eleanor wraps her arms around herself, trying to calm down her racing heart that’s lodging its way in her throat.

“And this?” He holds up the pregnancy tests, tossing them to the ground between them. The thin white plastic tests clatter against the floor, bouncing a bit on impact. It had been reported to him that a maid found a few tests in the guardsman suite not to mention there were some found in the Queen’s bathroom.

“Three or so months.”

Constantine’s stomach drops, but he doesn’t weaver from his stoic nature. He couldn’t exactly calculate when she could’ve gotten pregnant, but he could be for sure that she was in no way carrying an heir. But even with this reveal, he had already known that, just not really wanting to accept it. Accept the fact that he’ll most likely go down in history as the king that lost two wives.

“But there’s a chan—”

The King starts laughing, amazed at just how far his wife is willing to go to try to save her lover. She has to know that he wouldn’t have called them both there if he didn’t have all the evidence that he needed.

“These prove that to be a lie.” He grabs the thick envelope off the desk, walking closer to Eleanor, who tightens her grip around herself. “Or do you need a reminder?”

She lets out a gasp at the explicit nature of the photographs of her and Jackson, face turning red from embarrassment that her husband had seen them. It’s the first time since the pair had returned from Valtoria that she felt shameful of her actions, curious as to how he actually felt at her betrayal but scared of what his plan was.

“What’s going to happen?”

Constantine walks to his desk, sitting in the thick leather chair before swirling it around to face them, a sinister look on his face. He wants to laugh, the fact his wife cheated on him with a man that hasn’t even tried to take some of the blame baffled him. Even when Liana had left, when he knew he had nothing to do with her choice, he still carried the burden of blame because to him, a real man wouldn’t be able to tolerate the woman he loves name being tarnish in any way.

“Despite the obviousness of the paternity, I had an appointment made for you under Ellie Rhys, your two highest maids will help you disguise yourself.”

Eleanor just nods, what more can she do, she’s already done enough. Jackson still hasn’t said anything, if he was honest, he hasn’t thought much of the fact Eleanor had told him she was pregnant. He doesn’t want to think that it could be his because it means that everything will come to the surface and he isn’t ready for that. He’s not ready to own up to what he’s done, for all the damage that will be the result of his selfish actions.

** The week’s wait is dreadful for Eleanor, especially on top of her hellish morning sickness and practically nonexistent energy level. Towards the end of the week she’s surprised to see Constantine slip into her room, asking how she’s feeling. But when she tries to reach out, to get him to really look at her, he excuses himself, his only warmth being given to the unborn child.

She’s summoned to his office just a couple days later, this time without Jackson which has her completely worried, but he assures her that he just wanted to speak with her privately first. He has Timothy hand her the sealed envelope from the doctor’s office, telling her it was addressed to her not him so he didn’t open it.

He doesn’t have to ask for her the results, he can read it on her face and while he had a strong feeling it wasn’t his, a teeny piece of him had thought it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. She looks up at him, tears in her eyes, but receives no sympathy from him, his expression as icy as ever. He waves Timothy who goes to the door and lets Jackson into the office.

“You two are to leave the country, actually this side of the Atlantic. What’s that things Americans wanted?” Constantine snaps his fingers as if that gesture would trigger his memory, “ah yes, a white picket fence. Surely you two could have that ideal now.”

She sniffs, wiping a few tears from her cheeks. “What am I going to tell Liam?” “Nothing, he’ll think you died, a pretty standard death of a noble when there’s a coup.”

“A coup?” Jackson finally speaks up, much to the royal couple’s surprise.

“Ah, yes.” Constantine taps his chin before looking at Timothy, “care to explain.” “Yes, Sir.” Timothy nods before turning back to Eleanor and Jackson, proceeding to go into detail about how things will happen. That they’ve been investigating a radical group called ‘la Force de Pert’ and staging a coup, under their name, could help them take action against them.

He tells them that an announcement will be made that says the Queen was taken hostage by the group and Jackson made the heroic decision to go rescue her without backup. That night after the media left, the two of them would be escorted to a private airport where they’d be taken somewhere in America, free to live their lives however they please.

Timothy makes sure to emphasis what the King has just said, that they are never to return back to Cordonia or anywhere in Europe for that matter. That the fifty states that America has to offer should be big enough for them, even the US territories were up for grabs, but once they landed, they weren’t to cross any ocean for any reason. They weren’t to talk about their prior stations, anything related to Cordonia, the two of them were to simply fall off the face of the earth.

“You expect me to just leave Liam? Leave him here with you?” Her voice breaks, she tries to understand what is being said but the only thing she can think of is her son. “I won’t, I’m taking him with me.”

Constantine chuckles, pushing himself out of the chair, slowly striding towards Eleanor, his hand cupping her chin, forcing her to look at him. “It’s almost cute how someone in your position thinks you can tell me how things are going to happen.”

“Please, Constantine.” Her lip starts to quiver, but he tightens his grip on her face.

“You have no room to make demands.” He drops her face, turning to go back to his desk.

“I’ll just come back and take him! You will NOT keep him from me!”

“If you step foot on this side of the Atlantic,” he stops, turning around on his heel, “I will have him killed.”

There’s a heavy silence that drops over the room, it’s almost smothering as Eleanor tries to catch her breath. Tears cover her cheeks, shaking her head, trying to understand his callousness, how he could threaten his own flesh and blood.

“You wouldn’t! He’s a prince of this country!”

“He is the SPARE!” His voice booms throughout the room, causing her to flinch, his ice-cold tone ripping through her.

“Constan—” Jackson stops when he sees the bewildered expression on the King’s face.

“You may be on personal terms with the Queen, but I assure you that we are not.” He sits back down behind his desk, “I should hope you also know the same sentiment goes for your children, if you try to return.”

Jackson just nods and Eleanor looks at him horrified, confused as to how he could willingly agree to this, agree to give up his children so easily.

“Don’t look so down Ellie, it’s honorable for a guardsman to die a hero, isn’t that right, Jackson?”

“I can’t just leave my son, Constantine. You can’t ask me to do that!” Eleanor cries out, unable to stop herself from falling to her knees.

“You’re right, I’m not asking, I’m telling.” He leans back in his chair, “but are you even thinking about Liam when you shout things like that?”

She looks up at him, tears still blurring her vision, a broken expression on her face, “of course I am.”

“Tsk.” Constantine shakes his head, “think about it. If you came back for him, you’d basically be telling him that your bastard baby is more important than him. If Liam really mattered to you, you wouldn’t have put yourself in this situation to begin with, you didn’t think that I’d find out and just let it continue in the palace, did you?”

“What about Drake and Savannah?” Jackson quickly asks.

“Ah, yes. Bianca will receive a sizable compensation for her loss so they will be taken care of. They will be more than welcomed to stay at the cabin, as long as they don’t threaten Liam’s reputation.”

“Excuse me?”

“Although he is the spare, Liam has an important role to fulfill as prince. It doesn’t look good for people of his station to be involved with those with yours. Just look at the predicament at hand.”

#choices #the royal romance #witness protection #witness protection au fic #trr liam rys #trr drake walker #trr constantine rys #trr jackson walker #trr eleanor rys #oc luke walker

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minervacasterly · 4 years

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“Henry VIII was at Whitehall Palace when the Tower guns signaled that he was once more a free man. He then appeared dressed in white mourning as a token of respect for his late queen, called for his barge, and had himself rowed at full speed to the Strand, where Jane Seymour had also heard the guns. News of Anne Boleyn’s death had been formally conveyed to her by Sir Francis Bryan; it does not seem to have unduly concerned her, for she spent the greater part of the day preparing her wedding clothes, and perhaps reflecting upon the ease with which she had attained her ambition: Anne Boleyn had had to wait seven years for her crown; Jane had waited barely seven months.

It was common knowledge that Henry would marry Jane as soon as possible; the Privy Council had already petitioned him to venture once more into the perilous seas of holy wedlock, and it was a plea of the utmost urgency due to the uncertainty surrounding the succession. Both the King’s daughters had been declared bastards, and his natural son Richmond was obviously dying. A speedy marriage was therefore not only desirable but necessary, and on the day Anne Boleyn died the King’s imminent betrothal to Jane Seymour was announced to a relieved Privy Council. This was news as gratifying to the imperialist party, who had vigorously promoted the match, as it would soon be to the people of England at large, who would welcome the prospect of the imperial alliance with its inevitable benefits to trade.

Although the future Queen had rarely been seen in public, stories of her virtuous behavior during the King’s courtship had been circulated and applauded. Chapuys, more cynical, perceived that such virtue had had an ulterior motive, and privately thought it unlikely that Jane had reached the age of twenty-five without having lost her virginity, ‘being an Englishwoman and having been so long’ at court where immorality was rife. However, he assumed that Jane’s likely lack of a maidenhead would not trouble the King very much, ‘since he may marry her on condition she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not’. This apart, Chapuys and most other people considered Jane to be well endowed with all the qualities then thought becoming in a wife: meekness, docility and quiet dignity. Jane had been well groomed for her role by her family and supporters, and was in any case determined not to follow the example of her predecessor. She intended to use her influence to further the causes she held dear, as Anne Boleyn had, but, being of a less mercurial temperament, she would never use the same tactics.

Jane’s well-publicized sympathy for the late Queen Katherine and the Lady Mary showed her to be compassionate, and made her a popular figure with the common people and most of the courtiers. Overseas, she would be looked upon with favour because she was known to be an orthodox Catholic with no heretical tendencies whatsoever, one who favoured the old ways and who might use her influence to dissuade the King from continuing with his radical religious reforms.

Jane was of medium height, with a pale, nearly white, complexion. ‘Nobody thinks she has much beauty,’ commented Chapuys, and the French ambassador thought her too plain. Holbein’s portrait of Jane, painted in 1536 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, bears out these statements, and shows her to have been fair with a large, resolute face, small slanting eyes and a pinched mouth. She wears a sumptuously bejeweled and embroidered gown and head-dress, the latter in the whelk-shell fashion so favoured by her; Holbein himself designed the pendant on her breast, and the lace at her wrists. This portrait was probably by his first royal commission after being appointed the King’s Master Painter in September 1536; a preliminary sketch for it is in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and a studio copy is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Holbein executed one other portrait of Jane during her lifetime. Throughout the winter of 1536-7, he was at work on a huge mural in the Presence Chamber in Whitehall mural no longer exists, having been destroyed when the palace burned down in the late seventeenth century. Fortuitously, Charles II had before then commissioned a Dutch artists, Remigius van Leemput, to make two small copies, now in the Royal Collection and at Petworth House. His style shows little of Holbein’s draughtsmanship, but his pictures at least give us a clear impression of what the original must have looked like. The figure of Jane is interesting in that we can see her long court train with her pet poodle resting on it. Her gown is of cloth of gold damask, lined with ermine, with six ropes of pearls slung across the bodice, and more pearls hanging in a girdle to the floor. Later portraits of Jane, such as those in long-gallery sets and the miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, all derive from this portrait of Holbein’s original likeness now in Vienna, yet they are mostly mechanical in quality and anatomically awkward.

However, it was not Jane’s face that had attracted the King so much as the fact that she was Anne Boleyn’s opposite in every way. Where Anne had been bold and fond of having her own way, Jane showed herself entirely subservient to Henry’s will; where Anne had, in the King’s view been a wanton, Jane had shown herself to be inviolably chaste. And where Anne had been ruthless, he believed Jane to be naturally compassionate. He would be in years to come remember her as the fairest, the most discreet, and the most meritorious of all his wives.

Her contemporaries thought she had a pleasing sprightliness about her. She was pious, but not ostentatiously so. Reginald Pole, soon to be made a cardinal, described her as ‘full of goodness’, although Martin Luther, hearing of her reactionary religious views, feared her as ‘an enemy of the Gospel’. According to Chapuys, she was not clever or witty, but ‘of good understanding’. As queen, she made a point of distancing herself from her inferiors, and could be remote and arrogant, being a stickler for the observance of etiquette at her court. Chapuys feared that, once Jane had had a taste of queenship, she would forget her good intentions towards the Lady Mary, but his fears proved unfounded. Jane remained loyal to her supporters, and to Mary’s cause, and in the months to come would endeavor to heal the rift between the King and his daughter.

- Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII

“A story of a later date had Queen Anne finding Mistress Seymour actually sitting on her husband’s lap; ‘betwitting’ the King, Queen Anne blamed her miscarriage upon this unpleasant discovery. There was said to have been ‘much scratching and bye-blows between the queen and her maid’. Unlike the King’s invocations of the divine will, however, there is no contemporary evidence for such robust incidents; the character of Jane Seymour that emerges in 1536 is on the contrary chaste, verging on the prudish. As we shall see, there is good reason to believe that the King found in this very chastity a source of attraction; as he had once turned to the enchantress Anne Boleyn from the virtuous Catherine. Yet before turning to Jane Seymour’s personal qualities for better or for worse, it is necessary to consider the family from which she came … The Seymours were a family of respectable and even ancient antecedents in an age when, as has already been stressed, such things were important. Their Norman ancestry – the name was originally St Maur – was somewhat shadowy although a Seigneur Wido de Saint Maur was said to have come over to England with the Conquest. More immediately, from Monmouthshire and Penbow Castle, the Seymours transferred to the west of England in the mid-fourteenth century with the marriage of Sir Roger Seymour to Cecily eventual sole heiress of Lord Beauchamp of Hache. Other key marriages brought the family prosperity. Wolf Hall in Wiltshire, for example (scene of Henry’s autum idyll with Jane if legend is to be believed) came with the marriage of a Seymour to Matilda Esturmy, daughter of the Speaker of Commons, in 1405. Another profitable union, bringing with it mercantile links similar to those of the Boleyns, was that of Isabel, daughter and heiress of Mark William Mayor of Bristol, to a Seymour in 1424. Sir John Seymour, father of Jane, was born in about 1474 and had been knighted in the field by Henry VII at the battle of Blackheath which ended a rebellion of 1497. From this promising start, he went on to enjoy the royal favour throughout the next reign. Like Sir Thomas Boleyn, he accompanied Henry VIII on his French campaign of 1513, was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, attended at Canterbury to meet Charles V; by 1532 he had become a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Locally, again echoing the career of Thomas Boleyn, he had acted as Sheriff of both Wiltshire and Dorset. It was a career that lacked startling distinction – here was no Charles Brandon ending up a duke – but one which brought him close to the monarch throughout his adult life. Sir John’s reputation was that of a ‘gentle, courteous man’. That again was pleasant but not startling. But there was something outstanding about him, or at least about his immediate family. Sir John himself came of a family of eight children; then his own wife gave birth to ten children – six sons and four daughters. All this was auspicious for his daughter, including the number of males conceived at a time when women’s ‘aptness to procreate children’ in Wolsey’s phrase about Anne Boleyn, was often judged by their family record. It was however from her mother, Margery Wentworth – once again echoing the pattern of Anne Boleyn – that Jane Seymour derived that qualifying dash of royal blood so important to a woman viewed as possible breeding stock. Margery Wentworth was descended from Edward III, via her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Mortimer, Lady Hotspur. Indeed, in one sense – that of English royal blood – Jane Seymour was better born than Anne Boleyn, since she descended from Edward III, whereas Anne Boleyn’s more remote descent was from Edward I. This Mortimer connection meant that Jane and Henry VIII were fifth cousins. But of course neither the Wentworths nor the Seymours were as grand as Anne Boleyn’s maternal family, the ducal Howards. The Seymours may not have been particularly grand, but close connections to the court had made them, by the generation of Jane herself, astute and worldly wise. Sir John Seymour was over sixty at the inception of the King’s romance with his daughter (and would in fact die before the end of the year 1536); even before that the dominant male figure in Jane’s life seems to have been her eldest surviving brother Edward, described by one observer about this time as both ‘young and wise’. Being young, he was ambitious, and being wise, able to keep his own counsel in pursuit of his plans. Contemporaries found him slightly aloof – he lacked the easy charm of his younger brother Thomas p but they did not doubt his intelligence. Edward Seymour was cultivated as well as clever; he was a humanist and also, as it turned out, genuinely interested in the tenets of the reformed religion (unlike his sister Jane) … The vast family of Sir John Seymour began with four boys: John (who died), Edward, Henry and Thomas, born in about 1508. A few years later the King would speak ‘merrily’ of handsome Tom’s proverbial virility. He was confident that a man armed with ‘such lust and youth’ would be able to please a bride ‘well at all points’. Then came Jane, probably born in 1509, the fifth child but the eldest girl. After that followed Elizabeth, Dorothy and Margery; two sons who died in the sweating sickness epidemic of 1528 made up the ten. Apart from her presumed fertility, what else did Jane Seymour, now in her mid-twenties (the age incidentally at which Anne Boleyn had attracted the King’s attention), have to offer? Polydore Vergil gave the official flattering view when he described her as ‘a woman of the utmost charm both in appearance and character’, and the King’s best friend Sir John Russell called her ‘the fairest of all his wives’ – but this again was likely to loyalty to Jane Seymour’s dynastic significance. From other sources, it seems likely that the charm of her character considerably outweighed the charm of her appearance: Chapuys for example described her as ‘of middle stature and no great beauty’. Her most distinctive aspect was her famously ‘pure white’ complexion. Holbein gives her a long nose, and firm mouth, with the lips slightly compressed, although her face has a pleasing oval shape with the high forehead then admired (enhanced sometimes by discreet plucking of the hairline) and set off by the headdress of the time. Altogether, if Anne Boleyn conveys the fascination of the new, there is a dignified but slightly stolid look to Jane Seymour, appropriately reminiscent of English medieval consorts. But the predominant impression given by her portrait – at the hands of a master of artistic realism – is of a woman of calm and good sense. And contemporaries all commented on Jane Seymour’s intelligence: in this she was clearly more like her cautious brother Edward than her dashing brother Tom. She was also naturally sweet-natured (no angry words or tantrums here) and virtuous – her virtue was another topic on which there was general agreement.

... Her survival as a lady-in-waiting to two Queens at the Tudor court still with a spotless reputation may indeed be seen as a testament to both Jane Seymour’s salient characteristics – virtue and common good sense . A Bessie Blount or Madge Shelton might fool around, Anne Boleyn might listen or even accede to the seductive wooings of Lord Percy: but Jane Seymour was unquestionably virginal. In short, Jane Seymour was exactly the kind of female praised by the contemporary handbooks to correct conduct; just as Anne Boleyn had been the sort they warned against. There was certainly no threatening sexuality about her. Nor is it necessary to believe that her ‘virtue’ was in some way hypocritically assumed, in order to intrigue the King (romantic advocates of Anne Boleyn have sometimes taken this line). On the contrary, Jane Seymour was simply fulfilling the expectations for a female of her time and class: it was Anne Boleyn who was – or rather who had been – the fascinating outsider.

- Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII

“Whilst Jane was always denied a political role, her political interests are clear. She favoured Mary, attempted to save the monasteries and sympathized with the rebels during the Pilgrimages of Grace. Jane’s politics were largely conservative. Her strong character is visible both by her ruthlessness in watching the fall of Anne Boleyn and in the way in which she ruled her household. Jane could have been a queen as strong and influential as Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn had been in the early years of their marriages. Unfortunately for Jane, when the opportunity finally arose with the birth of her son, she did not survive. Had Jane lived, as the mother of the king’s heir, she could have asserted her authority safe in the knowledge that her position was finally secure. After Henry’s death, when Jane’s son was only nine years old, she would have had a very strong claim to the regency as the mother of the king. Jane Seymour could have been so much more and, whilst it is possible to glimpse her potential, much of what she could have achieved will forever be speculation. Jane did not live to take on the political role that would have been open to her as the mother of the heir to the throne and her real legacy is her son, Edward VI, and the prominence of her brothers, Edward and Thomas Seymour. Although Henry would go on to have another three wives after Jane’s death, Edward was his only son and, on Henry’s death in January 1547, he became king aged nine as Edward VI Edward was hailed by many in England as a future great king and Jane would have been proud of her son. Edward’s tutor, Sir John Cheke, for example, wrote of the king that ‘I prophesy indeed, that, with the lord’s blessing, he will prove such a king, as neither to yield to Josiah in the maintenance of the true religion, nor to Solomon in the management of the state, nor to David in the encouragement of godliness’. Roger Ascham, the tutor of Edward’s sister, Elizabeth, also sang the youth king’s praises, writing that ‘he is wonderfully advanced of his years’. Edward was raised to be a king and received a formidable education, writing very advanced letters even in early childhood (even if is clear that he must have received some assistance in the earlier letters). In one letter to his father, Edward wrote: In the same manner as, most bounteous king, at the dawn of day, we acknowledge the return of the sun to our world, although by the intervention of obscure clouds, we cannot behold manifestly with our eyes that resplendent orb; in like manner your majesty’s extraordinary and almost incredible goodness so shines and beams forth, that although present I cannot behold it, though before me, with my outward eyes, yet never can it escape from my heart. Edward was raised to be king in the manner of his father but in his appearance, with his pale skin and fair hair, he always resembled Jane. Jane’s greatest regret, when she came to realize that she was dying, was that she would not live to see her son grow up …

Jane’s legacy is also her own reputation and her relationship with Henry VIII. Jane never inspired the deep obsession in the king that he felt for Anne Boleyn or the admiring love that he, at first, felt for Catherine of Aragon. Instead, he married her almost on a whim. She was the woman best placed at the perfect time. There is even some evidence that Henry came to regret his haste in marrying Jane after seeing some other beautiful ladies at his court. Jane never raised the passion in Henry that some of his other wives did. Throughout their marriage, it is clear that Henry did not entirely view his marriage to Jane as permanent. It was essential that Jane fulfilled her side of the bargain and that was to bear a son. Until that time, as Jane was very well aware, she was entirely dispensable. In spite of this, with her death in giving him the son he craved, Henry’s feelings towards Jane entirely changed and he came to look back on their marriage through rose-tinted spectacles. A commemoration to Jane was written some time after her death and perhaps best sums up how Henry came to view her: Among the rest whose worthie lyves Hath runne in vertue’s race, O noble Fame! Persue thy trayne, And give Queene Jane a place. A nymphe of chaste Dianae’s trayne, A virtuous virgin eke; In tender youth a matron’s harte, With modest mynde most meeke.

Jane spent her entire marriage trying to prove to Henry that she was his ideal woman and, posthumously, she succeeded.

- Elizabeth Norton, Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s True Love

“How a woman like Jane Seymour became Queen of England is a mystery. In Tudor terms she came from nowhere and was nothing. Chapuys confronted the riddle in his dispatch of 18 May 1536, which was addressed to Antoine Perrenot, the Emperor’s minister, rather than to the Emperor Charles V himself. Freed from the decorum of writing to his sovereign, the ambassador expressed himself bluntly. ‘She is the sister’, he began, ‘of a certain Edward Seymour, who has been in the service of his Majesty [Charles V]’; while ‘she [herself] was formerly in the service of the good Queen [Catherine]’. As for her appearance , it was literally colourless. ‘She is of middle height, and nobody thinks she has much beauty. Her complexion is so whitish that she may be called rather pale.’ This is a neat pen-portrait of the woman whose mousy, peaked features and mean, pointed chin, are denred by Holbein with his characteristic, unsparing honesty. So much Chapuys could see. But when he turned to her supposed moral character he gave his prejudices full rein. ‘You may imagine’, he wrote Perrenot, man-to-man, ‘whether, being an Englishwoman, and having been so long at Court, she would not hold it a sin to be virgo intacta.’ ‘She is not a woman of great wit,’ he continued. ‘But she may have’ -and here he became frankly coarse- ‘a fine enigme.’ ‘Enigme’ means ‘riddle’ or ‘secret’, as in ‘secret place’ or the female genitalia. ‘It is said’, he concluded, ‘that she is rather proud and haughty.’ ‘She seems to bear great goodwill and respect to [Mary]. I am not sure whether later on the honours heaped on her will to make her change her mind.’ Whatever was there here -a woman of no family, no beauty, no talent and perhaps not much reputation (though there is no need to accept all of Chapuys’s slanders)- to attract a man who had already been married to two such extraordinary women as Catherine and Anne? But maybe Jane’s very ordubarubess was tge oiubt, Anne had been exciting as a mistress. But she was too demanding, too mercurial and tempestuous, to make a good wife. Like the Gospel which she patronised, she seemed to have come ‘not to send peace but the sword’ and to make ‘a man’s foes ... them of his own household’ (Matthew 10.34-6). Henry was weary of scenes and squabbles, weary too of ruptures with his nearest and dearest and his oldest and closest friends. He wanted his family and friends back. He wanted domestic peace and the quiet life. He also, more disturbingly, wanted submission. For increasing age and the Supremacy’s relentless elevation of the monarchy had made him ever more impatient of contradiction and disagreement. Only obedience, prompt, absolute and unconditional, would do. And he could have none of this with Anne. Jane, on the other hand, was everything that Anne was not. She was calm, quiet, soft-spoken (when she spoke at all) and profoundly submissive, at least to Henry ...”

- David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII

Images: Jane Seymour painted by Hans Holbein the Younger. Variousa actresses from costume dramas that have played Henry VIII’s third consort. Elly Condron from the documentary drama Secrets of the Six Wives documentary presented by Lucy Worsley. Anne Stallybras from the BBC miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970). Jane Asher from the BBC film Henry VIII & his Six Wives (1972). Lastly, Kate Phillips from Wolf Hall (2014).

#Jane Seymour #Tudor History #dailytudors #historians assesment of Jane Seymour #David Starkey #Alison Weir #Antonia Fraser #Elizabeth Norton

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mary-tudor · 4 years

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~HENRY TUDOR: A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.~

Today, I'll be discussing a character who left his mark in History, fathering a dynasty whose most proeminent members were his (second) son Henry VIII and his granddaughter Elizabeth I. Often overshadowed by his descendants, Henry's own deeds as a king and as an individual of his own days have been neglected until recently, when efforts from British historians have been working hard to change that.

The reason why I decided to bring him here was not only due to personal affections, though they certainly helped it, but because there are aspects overlapped in social structures that shaped him. In other words: what's Henry Tudor as a sociological individual? Can we point him out as a constant foreigner or someone whose socialization process were strongly marked by the addition of two different societies?

Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke, located in Wales, in January 28th 1457. His mother was Margaret Beaufort, a proeminent lady whose grandfather John Beaufort was the son of John of Gaunt, son in turn of King Edward III of England. The duke of Lancaster fathered four ilegitimated children (who were legitimated in posterity) by his (third marriage to his then) lover Katheryn Swynford, amongst whom John Beaufort was the oldest. Therefore, Henry was 3x grandson. to the duke and, despite what some might argue when Henry IV became king, in great deal to inherite the throne. Well, it's not my intention to deepen the discussion as to Henry's legitimacy or the Beauforts.

Though his father's ancestry, Henry's blood led him to the royal house of Valois. His paternal grandmother, Katherine de Valois, was the sister of Isabella, who had been the second wife of the ill-fated king Richard II. She was also descended of Louis IX and his spanish wife, Blanche de Castille. Henry was also a royal man from the Welsh lands, as Owain Tudor, his grandfather, was related to several princes of Wales. By all these I said, the first thing one might think (considering 15th century and it’s nobility) Henry would receive a proper education due to his status. However, this would not happen in the strict sense of the word. Let us not forget that England was collapsing by the time of Henry Tudor's birth and his childhood. Why am I using the word 'collapse' to qualify the civil war we know named as wars of the roses?

Émile Durkheim, a french sociologist, would write several centuries later, about how a society is formed: he compared it to the working of a human body. If the head, the brain of our body does not work well, what happens? The body will not work well, certainly. Neither would the head work well if other parts hurt somehow. Although if you did break a leg, you could still make use of your brain, but as a whole how limited wouldn't you be? He'd also say that when the human body, or as he called, the society was sick, it was because of the social structures which imposed the human being to the point where there would be no individuality, no matter of choice.

Such created social facts that were completely external (althoug well internalized through means of a process we call socialization) but coercitive. If they are not working, what does this mean? That soon another social facts will be replacing the former one. But between one and another, we have a "very sickly" society. Taking this understanding back to England's 15th century, it is not difficult to see what Durkheim was talking about.

The king was the head of the English body. If we have here two kings fighting over one crown, fighting over the rule of an entire body... Well, then? We have the collapse, a civil war that lasted for the next 30 years. Here, it's less about discussing who started what but why they did what they did, and the explanation for it. Power is power. It's crystal clear, and a statement that, however simple might it sound, points to the obvious. Factions that fought for power intended to dominate others, using the concept very well developed by sociologists as Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias. This domination is a large field, a concept that embrace all sorts of it. Looking back to England's latter half of the century, domination was peril. The head was about to explode. The society was ill... and dominated by it.

What were the values? What was the racionalization proccess of social action led by individuals that were not only individuals but a group? How would all of this affect Henry Tudor? It was not about merely blaming the capitalism, because such coercitive system wasn't present yet. But Henry was, directly or not, linked to the royal house of Plantagenets, whose eagerness for dominating one another and by extension the rest of the country would include him in the game.

"Game." For Durkheim, this would imply an agitation, like a wave of sea, from which no one could escape from. Let's not forget that Institutions created ideas, renewed them, shaped them to the practice whether to dominate the weaker or to defeat the stronger. Whatever the purpose, we here have the Church, not the religiosity, but the precursor of ideas would subdue individuals to share (or manipulate to their own goals anyways) values in order to keep determined mentality to it. But also, monarchy was too an institution which held control over the lives and deaths of thousands of people. A monarch, as we know, is never alone regardless of how "absolut" they could be in different times and contexts. They were not above the law, either. At least where the socialization process is concerned. For the monarch embodied the content which was the law back then. He was literally the law.

Furthermore, Henry's education would foresee this fighting, which I'm not merely referring to custody going from his mother to another, before finally staying under his uncle's responsibilities, as well as the civil war itself. (Anyone remembers Warwick executing Herbert before the boy?)

See, we all know and comprehend today what trauma are capable of doing to someone. Such experience is the main responsible for shaping ideas, values and even costumes. Now, a society which is very much sick by it's own values and moral costumes (a point here must be made: the public consciousness always preached for a warrior, strong king, but has no one thought how this "common sense", validated by a general expectation towards the head of society, was what led it to... well, for the lack of better word, suicide itself?

For it's widely accepted that weak kings do not last long. But that is when we deal with a good deal of expectations that, when turned to frustrations, bring awful results. If England's society was ill in it's very extreme sense of the word, was because the values they created turned against themselves and that would leave it's mark in a boy as Henry. And until the age of 14, he was still absorbing these concepts, these morals, values, costumes from institutions (let's not forget that a monarch shares such with the nobility that surrounds him, as was the case of House Lancaster,f.e) before he was casted out to Bretagne and, in posteriority, to France. Now, I believe you all know what was done whether in England or with our king during these 14 years spent outside his own country before he became king upon the victory settled on the battle of Bosworth field.

I am not interested in discussing historical facts. At least not now, as we are finally dealing with Henry Tudor as a social actor

----/-HENRY TUDOR: A FOREIGNER? AN EXILED? OR AN OUTCAST?--

These questions mobilized me as I came to read a text written by 19th century sociologist named Georg Simmel. He wrote an essay (pardon by any mistakes in translations done from here on) entitled "The Foreigner", in which he brings a sociological question at why foreigners are seen as strangers who are never entirely immersed in the society they attempt to be part in.

Here's an excerpt translated by me in which he explains it:

"Fixed within a determined social space, where it's constancy cross-border could be considered similar to the space, their position [the foreigner's] in it is largely determined by the fact of not belonging entirely to it, and their qualities cannot originate from it or come from it, nor even going in it." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1.)

Furthermore, he adds:

“The foreigner, however, is also an element of the group, no more different than the others and, at the same time, distincted from what we consider as the 'internal enemy'. They are an element in whose position imanent and of member comprehend, at the same time, one outsider and the other insider." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1).

Here's why Henry, as Earl of Richmond, was not well seen by the Britons and the French, in spite of being "accepted" by them. Never forget that he would still be seen as an outsider by his own fellows. As Richard III would call Henry a bastard, one could understand this accusation with sociological implications. English back then detested these foreigners and by the concept brought here by me from Simmel we can understand why. But we could also see being called a bastard as a way to point out Henry's localization. Where can the Earl of Richmond & soon-to-be king be located?

I have pointed this far the structures which were raised and caused a collapsed society to live broken in many, many ways and how this affected Henry this far. Seeing how foreigner he was, nonetheless, he did not belong neither to England (at first) nor to the Continent.

On that sense of word, says Simmel (2005: 3):

"A foreigner is seen and felt, then, from one side, as someone absolutely mobiled, a wanderer. As a subject who comes up every now and then through specific contacts and yet, singularly, does not find vinculated organically to anything or anyone, nominally, in regards to the established family, locals and profissionals”

Even though we find a dominant group of foreigners in France, as we are talking about of nobles displeased with the Yorkist cause and supporters of the Lancastrian House, they were not majority. Where can we locate Henry, then? We don't, because he was not a French and however well he could speak the language, it was not his birth language. The French culture was not passed nor naturalized by him through the teachings of a family or the church by the institutions: monarchy, church, family, parliament, etc; he would have been defeated a long time. But that he did manage to, using this popular expression, put things together and become the first king to die peacefully since Henry V, it tells us a lot. Not rarely an immigrant is accepted by a society whose demands are forced upon him, most of the times in aggressive ways. But it's not often either that we see a king occupying such place in society.

Indeed, one might say that kings as Henry II and the conquerors before him were too foreigners, but not in the sociological way I'm explaining. Because the social structures were different. Henry's government were settled in a more centralized ruling, far more just and peaceful, more economic and less concerned with waging wars than his antecessors. The need to migrate was not 'forced', neither 'imposed' and even back to the 11th and 12th centuries were motivated by different reasons. That's to accentuate how English society evolved throughout the centuries. And I used again and again Georg Simmel to prove my point about casting a sociological light towards Henry VII not as a historical character so distant of us and who remains an object of controversial discussions, but a man of his times who was forced to deal with expectations that placed him in social positions nearly opposed to one another to fulfill each role whether as king or as a man. For some reason, the broken society shaped Henry as an immigrant, but as history shows us, it was this immigrant who helped shape medieval society, directing it towards the age of Renaissance and in posteriority to Modern Age.

Finally, to close this thread I leave here another quote (translated to English by me) found in the text written by Simmel:

"The foreigner, strange to the group [he is in], is considered and seen as a non-belonging being, even if this individual is an organic member of the group whose uniform life comprehends every particular conditioning of this social [mean]. (...) [the foreigner] earns in certain groups of masses a proximity and distance that distinguishes quantities in each relationship, even in smaller portions. Where each marked relationship nduced to a mutual tension in specific relationships, strenghtening more formal relations out of respect to what's considered 'foreigner' of which are resulted." (SIMMEL, p 7).

Bibliography:

AMIN, Nathen. https://henrytudorsociety.com/

DURKHEIM, Émile. "The Division of Labor in Society”.

KANTOROWICZ, Ernst H.”The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieavel Political Theology.”

PENN, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England.

SIMMEL, Georg. The Foreigner. In: Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Berlin. 1908.

#Henry VII #King Henry VII #Henry VII of England #sociology #socio-history #historical sociology #immigration #sociology of immigration #Henry Tudor #Tudor dynasty

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normadeathmond · 4 years

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the spanish princess ep 2 thoughts

I’ve been enjoying all the reaction posts so here’s mine (spoilers included):

- I’ve had kind of a revelation this week regarding The Spanish Princess. This show is basically the modern day version of those dubiously accurate medieval historical chronicles. Not only do we have extra supernatural elements (the cuuuuurse, prophetic dreams), but we also have the contemporary authors’ personal biases inserted all over the place, and the addition of mythical stories about the heroes (Catherine fighting at Flodden this week). For some reason, this has made me a lot more forgiving towards the show. (it probably also helps that my fave Maggie B is dead now, so I don’t have to worry about them shitting all over her anymore, and I don’t have a particularly strong attachment to any of the other historical figures depicted)

- erm wtf, did anyone else catch that scene with Maggie and Edmund de la Pole in the previously on that we’ve never seen before?? I guess this plotline was supposed to be included in episode one as well, which probably would’ve helped it feel a bit more developed and less like something they suddenly remembered had to be tied up from last year. The whole sequence of Edmund being reintroduced and killed off in less than five minutes was very rushed.

- I’m glad baby Henry’s death hasn’t been totally forgotten, but do we really need so many grief-stricken sex scenes between these two? These are supposed to be the years they’re deeply in love, let them have some happier sex

- ehh I’m not sure that Catherine’s big reveal to the council actually changes much. A very early pregnancy, possibly with a girl, doesn’t really make the line secure. I think the focus should have been on Henry’s own desire to prove himself in battle, which would also have added to the humiliation when Catherine successfully defeats the Scots while his military exploits fizzle out.

- I really like General Howard, Peter Egan is fantastic (albeit a bit too polished for a grouchy, uncouth soldier type)

- “and now this book is closed” - god I hope so, bc I hate Maggie’s plotline from last year. It was interminable watching her whinge about how unfair it was that the Tudors suspected her of plotting against them because she had always been the most loyal person ever, as though she was suffering from some kind of selective memory loss about literally being a spy for the Yorkist rebellion in The White Princess. ffs Maggie can be either a completely innocent woman unfairly maligned by the Tudors or she can be a badass Yorkist rebel, not both.

- it seems her memory problems are back this episode because she goes storming off to complain to Catherine about Edmund de la Pole getting his head chopped off, conveniently forgetting than she was also heavily involved in his plot and her family is only out of the Tower thanks to Catherine interceding for her with Henry. Catherine was 100% in the right here, Edward of Warwick was innocent whereas Edmund de la Pole was a fully cognisant adult who spearheaded a revolt to take the throne (and likely would’ve had both Henry VII and Henry VIII killed if he had succeeded), so the idea that she’s suddenly heartless because she apologised for the former’s death but not the latter’s is ridiculous. The whole scene, including Maggie’s kids’ ‘whoomp here she goes again’ reactions, unintentionally have her coming off as rather hysterical.

- hopefully the rest of her story this season focuses on her mending her relationship with her sad silent son instead and possibly getting her leg over Thomas More

- ahhh Lina’s face when Catherine bitchily says she’ll be having a girl. Catherine’s not going to be able to stop herself from lashing out at her now that she has twin boys.

- first the clothes comment last episode, now they have Ursula saying Charles may not be good-looking but he’s rich as fuck. I guess she’s being set up as a gold-digger.

- is it just me or does the Anne Boleyn’s actress look a little bit like Charlotte Hope? The dress they had her in when Henry returns even looks like something Catherine would’ve worn in season one. I’ve no idea why they’ve brought the Boleyn girls in this early though – are they going to be sent to France then come back later? Henry still has to make his way through Anne Hastings, Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn before he gets to Anne. The episode summaries make it look like his infidelities won’t start until episode four so he’s going to have to have a new girl every episode to get through them all.

- I’ve kind of come around on the whole Catherine-in-armour thing. Frock Flicks wrote an interesting article this week where they pointed out that while historically battle armour for women did not exist and women very rarely wore armour, depictions of women in armour have been around for a long time and would have existed in the Tudor period. In this pseudo-historical retelling of Catherine’s story mythologizing her as a warrior queen, it does make sense to carry on that visual tradition and have her armoured up.

- Unfortunately I think they did kind of undermine the visual impact of the armour on screen by focusing on it so heavily in the promos for the season. Possibly it wouldn’t have affected a casual viewer so much, but anyone who’s followed the show’s promo cycle has been seeing pictures and clips of Catherine in the armour for weeks now, and when she entered stomping down the corridor in her full battle gear it didn’t blow me away like the first look at that outfit should have done.

- I know this series is never going to have the budget of Game of Thrones, but Flodden was a disappointment, from the rousing speech (“mothers are warriors too, amirite ladies?”) to the battle itself. You can tell they really wanted this to be their big epic action sequence and unfortunately it felt underwhelming. I remember the battles in TWQ/TWP being much more impressive, for what was probably a similar budget.

- as soon as I saw how heavily pregnant Lina was this episode, I knew a birth/battle juxtaposition was coming. I get what they were trying to do with the whole ‘childbirth is women’s battlefield’ theme, but the attempt to fake-out Lina’s death fell flat - there’s no way they were killing her off. (I’m not sure why she was giving birth in the hallway, with apparently no midwives, but it was inadvertently hilarious watching Maggie - the only one with any childbirth experience - try and talk her through it while the other three were basically no help at all.)

- also everyone being like “omg Princess Mary you can’t possibly be at the birth” felt so out of place given that Meg and Catherine were both hanging around a battlefield at the same time

- on the one hand I did like that Catherine didn’t end up being some amazing warrior just off instinct; she’s almost immediately pulled off her horse, staggers around looking confused as fuck and then is shocked when she actually kills someone. But on the other, what was the point of all the warrior queen build up if she barely even does anything useful on the battlefield? (also why did they have her kill someone who looked so much like James?? I’ve seen several people think she killed James herself and I thought that too until he was shown being taken down afterwards - it was needlessly confusing)

- JAAAAMES. I’m so sad he’s gone. Georgie Henley knocked it out the park this episode, especially in her big mourning scene. Although given how sweet he and Meg were this episode, and her comment about him being her best friend, it just makes the punch last episode seem even stranger.

- I’m so sad we were robbed of seeing Catherine try to send James’ corpse to Henry as a victory gift and have to be talked into sending just the coat. If you’re going to make her ride out in armour let her keep her savage penchant for gruesome war trophies!

- oop, Catherine absolutely fails to sell the lie that she’s pleased about Lina’s two boys, and Lina can definitely tell.

- with Maggie B gone, Wolsey is the new evil religious cockblocker in town!

- I would like twenty more scenes of Lina and Oviedo being cute and bitching about their work days thanks

- I like Catherine defending Howard to Henry. It would have been nice if there was more time to show the development of a begrudging respect between those two.

- overall I found this episode disappointing. The big sequences weren’t impressive in the way last week’s were and there weren’t enough character moments to make up for that. I’m still looking forward to the rest of the season though, especially Meg, Mary and Maggie’s storylines.

#the spanish princess

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

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Unpopular opinions: Elia/Lyanna, Henry VIII/Jane Seymour

So sorry for the late response :) and thank you for indulging me dear xx mwah!

Asked Via: Send me a ship and I'll give you my (brutally) honest opinion on it: https://lady-plantagenet.tumblr.com/post/627331607624302592/send-me-a-ship-and-ill-give-you-my-brutally

Elia/Lyanna: Well, Do you mean like as in femlove or platonic? Because if the former then no, because I feel like the only basis for would be to get back at Rhaegar and I think that’s quite problematic because it becomes the old story of a man being the focal point of a relationship in spite of the fact it’s between women. This point applies whether you mean them being co-wives in an AU or leaving Rhaegar and being just them two. In the latter case if certainly looks like just something built in spite and in the former case... well, I’m not a fan of polygamy. Especially since it’s often 2 women - 1 men and almost never 2 men - one woman. Who knows maybe if Hizdar doesn’t die in the books Dany can change that lmao.

Platonically? It’s interesting because of the contrasting aesthetics and personalities. In a weird way, Elia has more of the traditional westerosi lady in her whereas Lyanna the Dornish spirit (especially if she voluntarily ran off with Rhaegar as this would mean she made her own path). So the way I see it they would compliment each other in a way. I like this platonic ship because it implies Elia doesn’t hold Lyanna responsible for Rhaegar’s actions and Lyanna doesn’t see Elia as the miserly wife that stood between her and happiness. This would be a refreshing portrayal of women.

Henry VIII/Jane Seymour: I don’t know why, but I personally always felt fond of this pairing. I think people who have no concept of history beyond pop culture tend to project onto Jane Seymour and see her as the antithesis to the more ‘Independent Strong Woman’ TM Anne Boleyn. In reality, I do not think people appreciate how conservative Henry VIII was as a man, I mean, he tore the country up to get a divorce but continued to persecute Baptists, Evangelicals AKA the true Protestants. His foreign policies were also very pro-war and I find it funny how he gets compared to Edward IV all the time when the latter was more a true renaissance man than Henry by a long-shot (in spite of the epoque difference).

That is why I think Jane Seymour provided indeed to be his rightful match. She had a lot of the attributes of Queens of Old, namely a merciful and reconciliatory nature. I find her treatment of Mary I (possibly my favourite Tudor) extremely heartwarming and I think that if she lived longer she would have steadied Henry a lot and tapped into his inner-catholicism to spare some of the Catholics. That’s not to say she via manipulation but rather by show of her own virtues (We dont know her but I doubt it). I do believe he truly loved her, because she was more similar to him and in some ways may even have reminded him of Catherine. The son had something to do with it for sure, but it was more than that in any case.

#🍷❤️#if anyone wants to send an ask feel free #I enjoy doing this #jane seymour #henry viii #jane seymour x henry viii #Sorry for rambling ahahaha

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richmond-rex · 3 years

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☠ and ♥ for margaret beaufort, ♥ elizabeth of york, ☾ and ★ henry vii, ★ margaret tudor

🌹 Hey there, thank you so much for your ask! Under the cut because it got long! ask me a headcanon

Margaret Beaufort

☠ - angry/violent headcanon: This is the thing, though. I don’t think Margaret was an angry or violent person! She’s earned a reputation as a demanding and somewhat strict mistress but all of her household servants were fond of her. Fisher said that ‘of marvellous gentleness she was unto all folks, but specially unto her own, whom she trusted and loved right tenderly. Unkind she would be unto no creature, or forgetful of any kindness or service done to her before’. Likewise, sometime later, a former servant of hers, Henry Parker, referred to her as ‘my godly mistress the Lady Margaret’. There were always fun pastimes at her house though eventually she would pull out her bible lol There’s the time she was visiting one of the colleges she founded in Cambridge, Christ’s College, and a dean was beating one of his pupils and Margaret saw it from a window and shouted: lente, lente! (gently, gently!).

I’d say that one thing that made her blood boil, though, if there was any, was her sense of justice. Fisher commented that ‘it is not unknown how studiously she procured justice to be administered by a long season so long as she was suffered’. We saw her unwavering determination in trying to get her son’s lands back to him, but we also see this trait in the fact that she was authorised to settle disputes and administer justice on the king’s behalf in the midlands. Apparently, the jail in her house of Collyweston was occasionally in use (*eye emoji*). She also tried to make the king of France pay her the debt that was owed to her family since before she was born, and for that reason she travelled to France in 1502 when she was 57 years old!

♥ - family headcanon: Maggie B loved a full house! Even before she was the king’s mother her house had always been full of people visiting, notably her half-siblings, the St Johns, and her half-brother, Sir John Welles. She sought the advancement of her nieces and nephews: one of her nephews, Sir Richard Pole, married Margaret of Clarence, for example, and her nieces Elizabeth and Eleanor St John were raised in her household. The king paid for the festivities of Elizabeth St John’s wedding. It seems Margaret was greatly interested in the future of children, including her royal grandchildren: she constantly brought them presents, and it seems she rewarded the queen’s midwives after each birth. We know that she paid for servants to go to Queen Margaret in Scotland so as to bring her news about her granddaughter. All-in-all she was the biggest gemini who liked being surrounded by company and knowing all that was going on with her family.

Elizabeth of York

♥ - family headcanon: We know Elizabeth was very close to her children, but she was also very close to her sisters (she paid them pensions even after they were married and even looked after their children, Katherine’s in particular) and that’s why I think Princess Katherine was named after her sister Katherine of York, rather than after Princess Catalina. Katherine of York was the chief mourner at Elizabeth’s funeral which implies she was with Elizabeth when she died and possibly with her sister during her niece’s birth. That she was attending the queen is also possible given that her husband was imprisoned at the time under suspicion of plotting with Edmund de la Pole. So, most likely Katherine of York was princess Katherine’s godmother, and we know that according to tradition the godparents were the ones to name the child during the baptism/christening. Elizabeth of York had known her sister Katherine all her life. In comparison, Elizabeth of York knew Princess Catalina for a total of two weeks at most. Also, compared to Katherine of York, it is unlikely that Catherine of Aragon attended the princess’s baptism at the Tower.

Henry VII

☾ - sleep headcanon: In my modern AU Henry VII goes to sleep very late and wakes up very early and is borderline insomniac lelel Ok, this is largely based on his reputation to be a workaholic but I’m not pulling this headcanon out of my arse: Henry VII was greatly relieved when they finally captured Perkin Warbeck because he had not been able to sleep very well (and was probably suffering from some sort of anxiety disorder). After Warbeck surrendered, Henry claimed that at last he had been ‘cured of those privy stitches which ... had long [been] about his heart and had sometimes broken his sleep’.

★ - sad headcanon: Whyyy would you ask for a sad headcanon hhh almost all of Henry’s life was sad! That’s the thing about him, though, he is a tragic figure, especially because there was a moment in her life where he finally got to be the hero and then everything started slowly crumbling down. We know how miserable he was after the deaths of Prince Arthur and Elizabeth (and presumably, Jasper), but many people don’t realise that starting in 1499 Henry lost many friends and loyal supporters who had been following him since his days in exile. Cardinal Morton, arguably a father figure, died in 1499; Reginald Bray, a friend and the head of the king’s fiscal policies so far, died in 1503, not long after Elizabeth of York. Daubeney, which people have called to be the equivalent of what William Hastings was to Edward IV, Henry’s Lord Chamberlain, fell ill whilst travelling with the king and died shortly after in 1508. Richard Pole, the king’s cousin and who had also served as his chamberlain for some time, died in 1504 (if I’m not mistaken). In short, Henry VII progressively lost all of his friends at the same time when he was also losing many members of his family. Henry VII’s last years were nothing short of tragic; I think he had always been a lonely child, and then as he got to the end of his life he must have felt like that lonely child again.

Margaret Tudor

★ - sad headcanon: I headcanon Margaret as the biggest daddy’s girl hh and from what we got from her letters as soon as she went to Scotland, she was homesick, but above all missing her father! I think losing her mother must have been a terrible blow to her (from Elizabeth’s accounts it seems they were constantly together by the time of her mother’s death), and then she had to be separated from the one parent that was left to her. From her letters it seems she was also saddened by what she perceived as James’s lack of interest in her: she goes on to say something along the lines of the king doesn’t pay attention to me as he should, that is, she was used to seeing her father the king paying a great deal of attention to her mother the queen, and thought that was how marriage looked like. Many people think that Henry VIII sought in his successive marriages what his parents had but I think that Margaret (and Mary) also wanted to have a marriage similar to her parents’.

Thanks for sending your ask! ❤️️🤍

#sanssremovyr #headcanon meme #margaret beaufort #elizabeth of york #henry vii #margaret tudor

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joannalannister · 5 years

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Do you think grrm could have based the targaryens on the aryan race? Their obsession with keeping their Valariyn blood pure, with being exceptional and special (superior = master race anyone ?). Their looks set them apart from the rest of westeros too, they're meant to have white hair (blonde hair) and violet eyes (blue eyes). They seem like a mix of colonizers and arryans the more deeply I think about them, a Targaryen restoration seems like the worst possible idea to me.

Why would you ask me, a Lannister blog? Me, a Lannister blog. Yet here I am hoisting the Targaryen banner; the things this fandom makes me do smh. Nobody’s even gonna read a post this long but I’m not doing this by halves.

So, GRRM has said that the Targaryens have an “obsession with the purity of their blood”. Let’s look at the text to get more details:

The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew; a boy, a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. “The blood of the dragon must remain pure,” the wisdom went.

The way the Old Valyrians maintained a “pure bloodline” was by marrying “kin to kin”. Marrying one Valyrian-blooded person to another Valyrian-blooded person was not enough in Old Valyria to keep the blood of the dragon “pure.”

What historical precedents could GRRM have been drawing on when he wrote that Targaryens “marry kin to kin”? Fortunately we don’t need to speculate, especially when speculation leads to … this anon. GRRM has told us that he based the Targaryens on the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 323BC to 30BC:

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. Also, there’s sometimes a fine line between madness and greatness. Daeron I, the boy king who led a war of conquest, and even the saintly Baelor I could also be considered “mad,” if seen in a different light. ((And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interpreted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction)) [SSM]

The Ptolemaic dynasty included Cleopatra, who married her brothers and whose parents were the products of incestuous unions to keep their Macedonian bloodline pure. Here is an interesting article comparing Daenerys and Cleopatra. Another fun article. (I am throwing this wish out into the void that I would like to see in-depth Dany-Cleopatra comparisons on my dash please.)

It’s interesting to me to read that the doylist reason GRRM chose to include interbreeding among Targaryens to accentuate “both flaws and virtues.” To me, GRRM has written ASOIAF as a story much larger than life, like the Paul Bunyan of fantasy, with impossibly large castles and impossibly vast geography and impossibly long seasons, an oversized place where GRRM’s characters do superhuman feats. GRRM’s characters have glaring flaws, but they also have glorious virtues to which I can only aspire. That’s the point tho. That’s one reason why we read: to see ourselves, only magnified.

Why do Targaryens have a tendency to interbreed and keep their Valyrian blood pure? GRRM says the Targaryens intermarried to avoid conflict. It’s a matter of common sense to avoid fights when giant fire-breathing lizards are involved, as the Dance of the Dragons illustrates.

The Targaryens are the extreme example of that policy [to reinforce the family’s bloodline]: they only marry within the family to keepthe purity of the blood, and that way you avoid the problem of having several candidates for thethrone or the rule of the family.

If you have a generation of five brothers and each of them hasseveral children (sons?), after two or three generations you could find yourself with thirtypotential heirs: there could be thirty people named Lannister or Frey, and that produces conflict,because all of them are going to get involved in hereditary fights for the throne.

That’s what originated the War of the Roses; An excess of candidates for the throne, all of themdescendants of Edward III. Laking an heir (like Henry VIII) is just as bad as having too many ofthem. If you have five sons and you want to avoid that kind of problem, maybe it’s not such abad idea to marry the firstborn girl of the oldest son with the third son (or with the firstborn of thethird son?), and that way you avoid fights and the bloodline remains united

Something to note about this SSM entry is that GRRM was discussing all this blood purity stuff in the context of Tywin. The asker was literally asking why Tywin married Joanna, and GRRM answered that it was a love match and to reinforce the Lannister bloodline. Now, why would GRRM jump to discussions of blood purity when Tywin Lannister comes up?? Why ever could that be??

I know why. If we’re looking for the family that was inspired by fascist ideology, we don’t need to look far.

This issue of blood purity is a way to maintain dynastic power in a feudal system.

Which is bad, in the sense that feudalism is inherently a bad system, especially in comparison to, say, democracy. Even Ned Stark’s benevolent feudalism is bad compared to democracy. Lemme say that again - Even Stark feudalism is bad.

There should be a populist revolution in Westeros and literally every noble should lose their aristocratic status and wealth and power, and all this wealth and power should be redistributed to the common people, and everyone in Westeros should be given equal rights and there should be free and open elections to choose democratic representatives.

But I suspect anon isn’t interested in TWOW detailing their fav aristos losing all their fancy jewels and samite, and I don’t think anon is making signs saying “Down with feudalism! Down with monarchy! Down with the aristocracy! Eat the rich!” Somehow I really don’t think that’s what this anon is campaigning for.

*~*~*~*~*~*

(Note to self: is there a correlation between real-world economic systems and the types of fantasy produced under those systems? In other words, does capitalism motivate medieval fantasyland? And how do real-world levels of income inequality influence income-inequality in fantasyland? These are questions I am interested in.)

*~*~*~*~*~*

Anyways.

If we accept feudalism as par for the course in medieval fantasyland, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that the nobility wants to maintain their dynastic power in a feudal system. It’s what they do with that power that’s important.

As the original asker of this SSM question pointed out, marriages are a way of maintaining power and building alliances in a feudal system, but such marriages also raise up the lesser House and make it more powerful

For example, I believe Lord Roger Reyne wanted to marry one of his sons to Genna Lannister to gain more power in the Westerlands, but was thwarted when Tytos betrothed Genna to Emmon Frey instead. Similarly, the previous Lord Reyne, Lord Robert Reyne, arranged a marriage between his daughter Ellyn Reyne and Gerold’s heir Tywald Lannister. The Reynes wanted more power and influence in the west, perhaps even to go so far as to topple House Lannister and become the dominant House in the West.

The Targaryens face a similar problem, on a much larger scale. Whatever House they marry into, it raises that House up and grants them considerable power, potentially creating a disequilibrium point in the game of thrones and causing more innocents to suffer. (…honestly why do you think Tywin wanted his daughter to be queen?)

This is why the Targaryens (and all the nobles really) need to consider their marriages (or even mistresses) very carefully. If you choose your partner poorly, without concern for dynastic politics, it could throw the land into chaos. (See: Tytos Lannister, Rhaegar Targaryen, Duncan the Small, etc)

So, who are the Targaryens marrying? Because anon seems to be making the assumption that the Targs don’t marry outside their bloodline in any significant numbers, and I intend to challenge that assumption.

The Targaryens certainly do have a tendency to intermarry, as we see in The Sworn Sword:

Egg spoke as if such incest was the most natural thing in the world. For him it is. The Targaryens had been marrying brother to sister for hundreds of years, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. Though the last actual dragon had died before Dunk was born, the dragonkings went on. Maybe the gods don’t mind them marrying their sisters.

“The Targaryens had been marrying brother to sister for hundreds of years, to keep the blood of the dragon pure.” And yet, despite Dunk’s observation, the Targaryens have been marrying outside of House Targaryen for hundreds of years as well, suggesting to me that dynastic politics rather than blood purity is their greatest concern.

I will attempt to compile a list of people who are not of Valyrian descent who married a member of House Targaryen. I have not read Fire and Blood yet, so I hope that someone will let me know if I’ve forgotten anyone and I will edit this post to include them (I do not mind spoilers). Any corrections to this list are appreciated.

Ceryse Hightower

Elinor Costayne

Alys Harroway

Jeyne Westerling

Tyanna of Pentos (Tyanna of the Tower)

Argella Durrandon (who married Targ bastard Orys)

Rodrik Arryn

Rhea Royce

Alicent Hightower

Corwyn Corbray

Garmund Hightower

Rohanne of Tyrosh (who married Daemon Blackfyre)

Michael Manwoody

Ossifer Plumm

Ronnel Penrose

Aelinor Penrose

Betha Blackwood

Dyanna Dayne

Mariah Martell

Maron Martell

Jenna Dondarrion

Kiera of Tyrosh

somebody from House Tarth

Jenny of Oldstones

Lyanna Stark (I believe in R+L=J. I personally do not think R/L got married in the books, but even without a marriage I think this relationship should be included here. When Rhaegar chose someone to have his ice & fire prophecy baby with, he did not choose someone with valyrian blood.)

I think it’s also important to note that there are various Targaryens who wanted relationships outside of House Targaryen, but who couldn’t marry outside their House / couldn’t marry who they wanted, for various reasons. For example, Aerys and Rhaella did not want an incestuous marriage.

And gay marriage is not legal in Westeros but anyways:

Daeron Targaryen, son of Aegon V - in love with Jeremy Norridge

Rhaena Targaryen, daughter of Prince Aenys - idk if she was bisexual or a lesbian or what but Rhaena definitely liked a lotta non-Targ girls, and Westeros is a homophobic, misogynistic place that hates women and hates wlw so it’s not like Rhaena could have married any of these women

I am counting this as (at least) two non-Targ “marriages”. Fight me.

This makes a total of 27 non-Targ relationships.

There are also instances where a Targ has married someone outside of House Targaryen, but that person has some Valyrian blood. As mentioned above, tho, keeping the blood of the dragon “pure” is defined in the books as marrying “kin to kin” but I will keep this as a distinct subcategory for now.

Valaena Velaryon

Alyssa Velaryon

Jocelyn Baratheon (valyrian blood through Orys)

Corlys Velaryon

Larra Rogare

Aemma Arryn

Laenor Velaryon

Laena Velaryon

Alyn Velaryon

Daenaera Velaryon

Ormund Baratheon

Elia Martell

This brings us to a total of 39 non-Targ marriages. These 39 marriages do not fit the in-world definition of keeping the blood of the dragon ~pure~.

So how many Targ*Targ marriages do we know of exactly, so that we can figure out if blood purity was the main concern for House Targaryen?

Gaemon and Daenys

Aegon and Elaena

Aegon and Visenya(+Rhaenys)

Aegon and Rhaenys(+Visenya)

Aegon and Rhaena

Jaehaerys I and Alysanne

Baelon and Alyssa

Rhaenyra and Daemon

Aegon II and Helaena

Aegon III and Jaehaera

Aegon IV and Naerys

Baelor and Daena the Defiant

Aelor and Aelora

Aerion and Daenora

Jaehaerys II and Shiera

Aerys and Rhaella

I’ll list Targ*Targ affairs too to make it fair, since I included potential gay marriages above:

Aegon IV/Daena the Defiant

Brynden/Shiera

Aemon the Dragonknight/Naerys (this is only speculated and I honestly don’t actually think this was consummated but let’s throw it in here)

This is a total of 19 Targ*Targ relationships.

It is possible I’ve forgotten someone and I appreciate corrections.

So I have a total of 58 relationships here in my sample.

25+12+2+16+3 = 58

Let’s break that down:

~pure dragon blood~ relationships = 19/58 = 32.8%

~impure~ relationships = 39/58 = 67.2%

Roughly two-thirds of known Targaryen relationships do not keep the blood of the dragon “pure” by the book definition of blood purity.

If you wish to break the ~impure~ relationships down further:

Targ*Valyrian-blooded relationships = 12/58 = 20.7%

Targ*non-Valyrian-blooded relationships = 27/58 = 46.6%

At the very minimum, at least 46% of Targ relationships were not motivated by blood purity reasons. Note, I think this number is too low, because like Queen Victoria “the grandmother of Europe” and her descendants, the nobility tend to intermarry a lot (because of classism). People like Aemma Arryn have valyrian blood because everyone is intermarrying.

I will say again, roughly two-thirds of known Targaryen relationships do not keep the blood of the dragon “pure” by the book definition.

Targaryens intermingled with the people of Westeros, they didn’t keep their blood “pure”. This is a very different attitude from, say, the 20th century anti-miscegenation laws that made it illegal for people of different races to have sex.

I already pointed out above how GRRM has said these incestuous unions were motivated at least in part by dynastic politics. Could there be any other reasons?

Why did the valyrians before the Doom all practice incest? The “blood of the dragon” is not just about valyrians marrying valyrians, although that’s how anon is trying to spin it. The text specifically says that maintaining “the blood of the dragon” is about marrying “kin to kin.”

We do not yet know why the valyrians practiced incest. Why is it important that “the blood of the dragon must remain pure”? It has not yet been explained. But there are theories. @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly has already addressed this issue, so I will refer you to her posts: 1, 2 and her entire tag for #the blood of the dragon.

Why is it important that “the blood of the dragon must remain pure”?

I don’t know, but we’re definitely not reading books with magic. We’re definitely not reading books with blood magic. We’re definitely not reading books with giant magical fire-breathing lizards. We definitely don’t need easy ways to control those lizards. Definitely not.

I mean, we still don’t know exactly what “the blood of the dragon” means but I think what GRRM wrote with House Targaryen’s incestuous ~blood purity~ is something different from Aryanism.

Which isn’t to say that all this blood purity bullshit GRRM wrote shouldn’t be criticized. Placing importance on the ~purity~ of someone’s blood in any context is … not a good look. GRRM has been kinda playing this trope straight so far, but I am hoping he smashes it in future books; Tyrion is eager to ride a dragon, and A plus J does not equal T.

To quote what @moonlitgleek said:

I hate it when people start talking about percentage of Valyrian blood as if that’s the measure of who rides a dragon. Whip up your calculators, everyone. We need to figure out how much Valyrian blood it takes to ride a dragon, be the subject of prophecy or be a savior. Anyone below a certain percentage can not measure.

This blood purity bullshit is bad, I actually agree with anon on that. But I’m not sure why that means we should condemn the entirety of House Targaryen.

Especially when GRRM loves the Targaryens so much he keeps writing history books about them instead of finishing the series…

Like, from Fire and Blood, Jaehaerys I and Alysanne Targaryen are one of those Targ*Targ marriages that I admit help reinforce Targ blood purity. But this marriage was how Alysanne exercised her own bodily autonomy, by marrying who she wanted, because she and Jaehaerys had their dragons and no one was able to stop them. But anon … anon gonna call that Aryanism ��

Anyways. I want to move on to anon’s other claims, but first I think it might be useful to define Aryanism, since anon seems to think it is about marrying brother to sister, which it is not.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Aryanism grew out of 19th century fascist ideologies. The term Aryan is related to the root -arya which is related to a Sanskrit word meaning “honorable, respectable, noble.” In the mid- to late-1800s, the term “Aryan race” was coopted by racists to justify their repellant “scientific racism” that claimed that “blond” Germanic / Nordic / Northern European people were a “superior race.” Note that “blond” is specifically mentioned by these ~scientists~ espousing their racist ideology. They claimed that “Aryans” were “natural leaders, destined to rule over” the other races. According to Jackson Spielvogel, Hitler described the Slavic peoples as “a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master.” Himmler said, “whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. Otherwise it is of no interest.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Anon was correct that racial superiority is a characteristic of Aryanism.

But do the Targaryens consider themselves to be a superior race to the other peoples of Westeros, or other peoples in general?

GRRM says he wanted the Targaryens to be “a race apart”:

Speaking of Valyria… right from the start I wanted the Targaryens, and by extension the Valryians from whom they were descended, to be a race apart, with distinctive features that set them apart from the rest of Westeros, and helped explain their obsession with the purity of their blood. To do this, I made a conventional ‘high fantasy’ choice, and gave them silver-gold hair, purple and violet eyes, fine chiseled aristocratic features. That worked well enough, at least in the books (on the show, less so).

But in recent years, it has occured to me from time to time that it might have made for an interesting twist if instead I had made the dragonlords of Valyria… and therefore the Targaryens… black. Maybe I could have kept the silver hair too, though… no, that comes too close to 'dark elf’ territory, but still… if I’d had dark-skinned dragonlords invade and conquer and dominate a largely white Westeros… though that choice would have brought its own perils. The Targaryens have not all been heroic, after all… some of them have been monsters, madmen, so…

Well, it’s all moot. The idea came to me about twenty years too late.

What does it mean to be “a race apart”? Does “apart” automatically mean superior? To me, “apart” here means different or distinct. But does that mean “superior”?

I’ve already addressed the fact that Targaryens are on average twice as likely to marry someone outside their House than to marry a Targaryen, so I don’t think the incest can be used to say the House as a whole claims superiority.

There are certainly some Targaryens who view themselves as racially superior. Aerys Targaryen comes to mind; he said of his newborn granddaughter that she “smells dornish.” The Blackfyre cause is certainly racist (for example, Team Blackfyre did not like it that their ~precious white princess~ Daenerys Targaryen, was married to Maron Martell). There are many other Targaryens who were racist. But racism isn’t exclusive to members of House Targaryen. Many nobles in Westeros are racist: Joffrey, Cersei, Tywin - but we were talking about House Targaryen.

What of Daeron Targaryen, who married a Dornish princess, who surrounded himself with Dornishmen and women and artists and intellectuals, and he wanted to include all these people at his court? I don’t know where the textual evidence is that King Daeron adopted an attitude of racial superiority.

What of Maegelle Targaryen? Would you truly accuse her of an attitude of superiority? Maegelle was a septa who nursed children with greyscale, until she herself caught greyscale and died.

When Aegon the Conqueror became high king, he adopted some Westerosi customs to assimilate. For example,

Heraldic banners had long been a tradition amongst the lords of Westeros, but such had never been used by the dragonlords of old Valyria. When Aegon’s knights unfurled his great silken battle standard, with a red three-headed dragon breathing fire upon a black field, the lords took it for a sign that he was now truly one of them, a worthy high king for Westeros.

Aegon the Conqueror literally wanted to join with the Westerosi nobles and become one of them. Compare this to Tywin, who disparages nobles from another continent as nothing but "spice soldiers and cheese lords”. So who has the superior attitude?

And what of Daenerys Targaryen? Dany embraces the Dothraki customs of her husband. (Contrast this with how her brother Viserys belittles the Dothraki.) Daenerys befriends orphans, former prostitutes, former slaves, people of many different races. I don’t think Daenerys adopts an attitude of racial superiority. (It’s true that GRRM does fall into some racist tropes when he writes ASOIAF, but I don’t think this means that Daenerys supports Aryanism, or that GRRM was inspired by white supremacy when he first imagined Daenerys. (Like, srsly, wtf??) Daemon Blackfyre I can definitely see being inspired by white supremacist movements in the real world, but Daenerys?)

Anon accuses the Targaryens of being “exceptional and special”. idk I thought controlling dragons was special. Kinda like controlling direwolves is special. Controlling magical creatures is special. But I didn’t think controlling magical creatures made you a fascist or a supporter of Aryanism.

If you want to make the case for a group of white people in ASOIAF posing as ~the master race~, I would actually suggest the valyrians of Old Valyria. The sorcerer-princes of Old Valyria captured and enslaved people and used people to fuel their magical empire. The attitude of Old Valyria actually seems very similar to that Himmler quote I gave you above: “whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. Otherwise it is of no interest.” The dragonlords of Old Valyria definitely colonized other places and practiced imperialism.

But the Targaryens were like the hillbillies of Old Valyria. They weren’t very powerful. Shortly before the Doom they relocated to a rock in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the Valyrian empire, and then the Doom and the Century of Blood meant suddenly the Targs were on top by accident (and a really smart woman). It’s like an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard or The Beverly Hillbillies, and this is why Tywin and his ancestors before him were so fucking pissed, because who the fuck even is this hillbilly targ family with their ~dRAgoNs~ and their ~InCeSt~ that’s ~bEtTeR~ than our ~LAnNiCeSt~ and ~~~We were kings in Casterly Rock for thousands of years, so who the fuck are these hicks~~~

Anon mentions the characteristic silver-gold hair and purple eyes of House Targaryen. GRRM explains that he “made a conventional 'high fantasy’ choice, and gave them silver-gold hair, purple and violet eyes, fine chiseled aristocratic features.”

Is there racism in conventional high fantasy? Yeah.

Does ASOIAF have racist writing? Yeah.

Is GRRM playing some of those racist tropes straight instead of subverting them? Yeah.

Could GRRM do better? Yeah. GRRM himself thinks he might have made the Targaryens dark-skinned.

Despite GRRM’s racist writing, I don’t think this means that the Targaryens as GRRM wrote them are all, without exception, terrible people.

I would also like to point out that House Targaryen exhibits a variety of phenotypes. They are not all the same, they’re not all blond and fair and ~Nordic looking~. Here is a partial list of Targaryens without the traditional look. If someone has statistics on the percentage of Targs without Valyrian features, I would appreciate a link, but I’m math’d out right now.

Speaking broadly, House Targaryen has certainly done some terrible things. For example, I think the Targaryen conquest of Dorne was imperialistic. Many people have already addressed imperialism in ASOIAF in detail, so I will refer you to this tag.

Was Aegon’s Conquest of Westeros a good thing, or a bad thing? I don’t know. Truly I don’t know - there is good and bad both in what Aegon the Conqueror did.

GRRM says this about him:

“Aegon finally decided to take over Westeros, and unify the Seven Kingdoms (that existed at the time) under a single rule. There is a lot of speculation that, in some sense, he saw what was coming 300 years later, and wanted to unify the Seven Kingdoms to be better prepared for the threat that he eventually saw coming from the North – the threat that we’re dealing with in A Song of Ice and Fire.”

Individually, some Targaryens were certainly awful. Others were good and kind. Some of them were mediocre. I think we should evaluate these characters individually, instead of condemning an entire family. I think that is what GRRM is trying to get us to do, judge each character individually based on their crimes and/or their heroism.

“a Targaryen restoration seems like the worst possible idea“

Anon thinks the worst possible thing that could happen to Westeros is that Dany becomes queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

That’s “the worst possible idea” of what could happen.

The Others could win the War for the Dawn and enslave/murder every single living creature on Terros. That’s a distinct possibility.

But anon would rather have every single person on Terros die than for Dany to become queen of the Seven Kingdoms?

And people say this fandom isn’t misogynistic.

I really don’t think it would be a bad thing for a person as compassionate as Daenerys Targaryen to become queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

Westeros could certainly do worse than Dany. The Lannisters could stay in power, for example.

Cuz you know which family is repeatedly described as blond and fair and there is a LOT of uniformity in their appearance? Which family didn’t want to marry a Dornish girl? Which family described the Westerlings as “doubtful blood” and wouldn’t marry them? Which family had a common girl gang raped because the heir married her? Cuz it sure wasn’t Aegon V’s family.

Who said Lannisters are “worth more” than other people? Who captured and enslaved people at Harrenhal while burning their lands?

Tywin Lannister did that. GRRM ain’t exactly subtle about pointing out the fascist. It’s Tywin and Randyll and people like them who are the fascist who support Aryanism.

Daenerys is repeatedly in direct opposition to Tywin’s philosophies. Daenerys is one of the heroes. She’s a complex, well-written hero. She flirts with darkness but ultimately rejects it. She’s a grey, complicated hero.

This fandom doesn’t deserve Dany, but she’s gonna save the world anyway.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf #lannister thoughts #a song of ice and fire #dany meta #no pink hearts for you @anon #fascist masculinity in asoiaf #Anonymous #replies #cleopatra #racism tw

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meta-shadowsong · 4 years

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Some Thoughts on Mandalorian Religion/Culture

Basically, this post exists because The Mandalorian got me thinking some about the culture, particularly as relates to the Mandalorian Civil War, and how that reflects certain IRL religious movements and upheaval. This has been percolating in the back of my head for a few weeks, actually, and this seemed like a reasonable time to write it all out, now that at least the first season is over. There are brief spoilers involved for the season finale.

Which means it’s time for a Long Complicated Metaphor! (Not the road-building one about Anakin and his fall, though I really should write that up properly and share that here, too, but y’know.)

Basically, I’m going to talk a little bit about how, as I see it, some of the Mandalorian Civil War issues parallel the Protestant Reformation, particularly in England, leading up to the English Civil War and Interregnum.

(As a note--from what I recall, the Amarna period in ancient Egypt is also a good parallel; maybe even a better one. But since I’m significantly less well-read on the subject and what reading I have done was a very long time ago, I’m sticking with the English Reformation analogy for the purposes of this essay.)

So, it has been a while since I’ve done some in-depth reading on this subject, both the general history and the specific religious/church history. If you’re interested in the church history side of things, I’d actually recommend Cromwell to Cromwell--it got a little dry for me, especially since I didn’t read the summary carefully enough and thought it was going to be a little more biographical than it ended up being, but it is still a solidly researched book on the subject in question.

Anyway, the point is, I’m going off of memory from something I read about/researched a few years back, as well as my general background knowledge of the subject/period, so please forgive any slight inaccuracies as I build up my metaphor/essay/point.

So, to start with, some background of why I’m viewing this through a religious lens, based on some things we’ve seen in the TV show. Obviously, there is the fact that Din Djarin specifically refers to this as a creed/religion in the first couple episodes. However, that’s not…super-well defined, other than it is analogous to a religion. But in terms of specific details--

First, there’s the helmet thing, which I know has been brought up by other commentators as well--this is the Way, we don’t take off our helmets for any reason unless we’re stepping off this path.

If we view combat as Mandalorian religion, in the organized/Western religion sense, this actually makes a lot of sense to me. In this reading, our titular friend from the show about baby Yoda is, essentially, a priest (or possibly a monk; or more likely a friar since he’s a wanderer and not cloistered even if the rest of his covert might be, but that’s probably a little too nitty-gritty for an essay on this level; for analysis purposes, I’m just going to go with ‘priest’). Priests are subject to stricter vows, and while laypersons can (and indeed are expected to) perform certain religious duties/offices, priests have greater responsibilities and restrictions. Like prayer, only instead of rosaries and Christmas, Mandalorians have blasters. And flamethrowers. And occasionally jetpacks. Etc.

(Obviously, not a perfect analogy, in the same way that comparing the PT-era Jedi to monks or priests is not a perfect analogy, but it’s a reasonably convenient one.)

Anyway, this explains why Mandadlorian and the other members of his covert/group won’t take their helmets off, but we’ve seen a variety of Mandalorians do so before--all of the Wrens, Bo-Katan and her close allies, various other members of Death Watch (though not all)…it’s part of something akin to a clerical vow.

Which brings us back to the Civil War, and the IRL parallels.

So, the English Reformation--yes, a large part of what kicked it off was Henry VIII being…well…Henry VIII about things, but there was a lot of back and forth beyond the Great Matter/Divorce, and Lutheranism, Calvinism, and other Protestant movements had some level of foothold at varying levels of society. In terms of actual doctrine and practice, the Church of England varies quite a bit during the reigns of the later Tudors (with Edward VI being pretty hard-core Protestant, Mary I bringing England back to Rome, and then Elizabeth I being more moderate than her brother), so it’s not a straightforward question. Eventually, Protestantism wins out, but it’s a half-century or so of minor upheavals and doctrinal shifts, much like in the rest of Europe during this period.

Again, I recommend Cromwell to Cromwell for more detail about the specifics, but by the time we get to the 17th century and the Stuarts, we’re sort of starting to see a split between the Puritans (who stayed in England with the intent of making the English Church more fundamentalist, rather than the ones who left and settled in Holland and the Americas, who would be better referred to as Separatists) and the more elaborate High Church. There were other sects/factions, and other/secular/political factors that led to the Civil War, of course, but that was the gist of the religious one.

Which brings me to Satine and the New Mandalorians. Who, in this case/analogy, are similar to the Reformers (eventually, Puritans).

Which might sound weird, given that we’ve established that the Mandalorian culture/religion in this context is All About Combat, but hear me out.

We don’t know exactly what went on with the New Mandalorians forming and building steam, but I highly doubt that Satine came up with the idea on her own--they were a radical movement to reform Mandalorian religion and culture that she gravitated to, and eventually made official/the law of the land when she and her faction won the Civil War and she took power in Sundari. We don’t know where her parent(s) fell on this spectrum, if they were hardline traditionalists or fairly neutral moderates or mild reformers (I doubt they were hardline reformers), or essentially traditionalists in terms of their personal beliefs/doctrine but making serious reformer steps for unrelated political and/or personal reasons (a la Henry VIII).

The point is, much like the more radical Reformation politics and philosophies as put forward by Edward VI and, later, Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, Satine is operating in a larger context and, however devoted she is to this movement, she probably didn’t found it.

The reason I think she lines up with the Puritan model is that the New Mandalorian philosophy is an extremely stripped-down version of the approach-to-combat religion/culture. Basically, New Mandalorian philosophy takes away the fancy trappings and asks “what exactly does it mean to have this faith?” She says to Obi-Wan at one point, “just because I’m a pacifist doesn’t mean I won’t defend myself.” What her philosophy is asking--maybe; possibly; I’d love more canon context but this is a reasonable reading of the text IMO--is “our faith is combat, but does combat need to be physical? Do we need to continue to kill each other and spill the blood of our kin as well as outsiders, or are there other ways to fight?” After all, Satine is extremely combative; she just doesn’t use weapons or overt violence when she fights for what she believes in.

So, again. Stripping away all the fancy trappings to get back to the core of the belief--only instead of gold and icons and stained glass (and Christmas), it’s blasters and flamethrowers and occasionally jetpacks. And whips. And so on. (…I feel like Mandalorian Christmas involves a lot of blasters…)

This was all probably reinforced by her experiences on the run with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan during the Civil War itself; but that’s something I’m going to at least partially cover in our faces like a mirror. The fic focuses more on Bo-Katan and why she makes her choices in all this, but Satine’s personal worldview is obviously profoundly shaped by her experiences during that year, and is, of course, a key part of all of this.

(As a side note, Bo-Katan, in this analogy, is soooooort of related to either Mary I or Charles II--although I tend to read her as a younger sister/there’s no succession dispute involved. But the Traditionalist heir in exile; with a level of devout belief that’s more aligned with Mary than with Charles; although she’s a bit more willing to compromise until she can’t anymore, and then seems to have found a more moderate approach when she’s in power/after she leaves Death Watch? We’ll see what the relevant TCW episodes have to say. Also, I would love to see her show up in season 2 of The Mandalorian or some other live-action thing (maybe the Obi-Wan series?); still played by Katee Sackhoff as is only right and proper. Just getting that out there.)

[Also, given the way s1 of The Mandalorian ended--I fear for my girl Bo-Katan and am even more interested in seeing her in something live-action/post-Rebels D:]

…yeah, this felt like I had more of a Point when I got started, lol. I guess what I’m trying to say is--a lot of seeming inconsistencies in worldbuilding about Mando culture make a lot more sense when viewed as a religion, with a variety of sects and interpretations and relative levels of devotion, particularly in parallel with IRL religious movements. And while Satine’s aesthetic is an homage to Elizabeth I, her politics/role as a hardline Reformer in power are more aligned with Edward VI or Oliver Cromwell. It’s just…an interesting way of looking at things, I think? One I figured was worth sharing.

#fandom #star wars #originally posted january 2020

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skippyv20 · 5 years

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Thank you😁❤️❤️❤️❤️

Gold hat pin found in field believed to be from glamorous warrior King Edward IV

A metal detectorist found a gold hat pin fashioned in the 15th century in a field in Lincolnshire, England. The jewel is believed to have belonged to Edward IV, a king who was famed for both his good looks and his dramatic victories in the Wars of the Roses. The ring is estimated as being worth as much as $18,000. Lisa Grace, 42, an amateur detectorist, discovered the medieval jewel, which is in pristine condition.

“It is believed the pin is linked to royalty as Edward IV and his circle wore strikingly similar pieces during his two reigns as King from 1460 until his end in 1483,” wrote the Daily Mail. “The jewel is designed as a sun in splendor — the personal emblem of Edward IV.”

The piece may have been lost in battle.

Other clues to its royal ownership: At the center of the piece is a purple amethyst stone, another of Edward IV’s favorites. The pin closely resembles a jewel depicted on Edward IV’s hat in a portrait preserved in The Museum Calvet in Avignon, France.

Grace said she was stunned at her discovery, just a few inches below the surface. “When I found it, the jewel wasn’t far under the ground at all as the field had recently been ploughed,” she said to the media. Specialists say they have been experiencing “early interest from both collectors and museums and are expecting offers between £10,000 and £15,000.”

Edward IV of England meets with Louis XI of France at Picquigny to affirm the Treaty of Picquigny

An official from Duke’s Auctioneers said: “The jewel does bear a striking resemblance to the one in a well-known portrait of Edward IV from the Musee Calvet.” But he also said that it could have belonged to a courtier.

“The fact is we shall never know, but it clearly belonged to someone of high status in the upper echelons of medieval society.” Edward IV was not born the son of a king but was the oldest son of Richard, Duke of York, descended from Edward III. Richard and his supporters came into conflict with Henry VI, the Lancaster ruler who was widely derided for his weak character and suffered from at least one complete mental breakdown.

King Edward IV

Richard of York served as regent during Henry VI’s incapacity. He died when Edward was in his teens and Edward became the claimant of the throne as the Yorks attempted to assume leadership of England through defeating the Lancasters in battle. Edward IV was made King of England on March 4, 1461.

Weeks after declaring himself king, he challenged the Lancasters in the Battle of Towton. It was one of the bloodiest battles in English history, with nearly 30,000 dead, and Edward won, even though the Lancaster army had more men. In battles, Edward IV was an inspiring and able general.

Battle of Towton

Edward was over six feet tall and considered very handsome. The Croyland Chronicler described Edward as “a person of most elegant appearance and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person.” He was interested in creating a fashionable and glamorous court.

His chief supporters wanted him to make a dynastic marriage but he fell in love with a beautiful widow, Elizabeth Woodville, and made her queen. She was highly unpopular, and Edward lost his throne to a resurgent Lancaster force for a time. After more battles, he was made king again in 1471.

Edward IV, line engraving by Simon François Ravenet. National Portrait Gallery, London

After this comeback, Edward IV ruled until his sudden demise from illness in 1483. He had become overweight and devoted to his mistresses. When he passed, his oldest son was only 12, and Richard III, Edward’s younger brother, usurped the throne. Edward’s two sons were both imprisoned in the Tower of London and disappeared from public view.

Edward IV’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, married Henry VII, the Lancaster claimant who vanquished Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth. Their son, Henry VIII, resembled his grandfather, Edward IV, in some say his character. The present Queen, Elizabeth II, is directly descended from Edward IV.

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bbclesmis · 5 years

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Josh O’Connor: Every actor should just turn up on time, be nice and learn the lines

The actor has charmed as Larry in The Durrells and next up he plays Marius in Les Miserables and Prince Charles in The Crown

Unremittingly grim is how I would describe the BBC’s Les Misérables. Andrew Davies’s song-free adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel is a litany of grinding poverty, injustice, corruption and exploitation occasionally leavened, if that’s the right word, by short bursts of extreme peril. It’s also completely gripping.

This weekend’s episode introduces a new face. Until now Marius Pontmercy has appeared only as an angelic moppet, parroting royalist slogans fed to him by his overbearing grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand. Now time moves on and we see him as a young law student, played by Josh O’Connor. It’s an episode full of upheaval for young Pontmercy: without giving too much away, there’s a girl, a family bombshell and a political awakening.

When we meet in a central London café, O’Connor, 28, whom viewers might recognise as Larry from ITV’s The Durrells, is considerably jollier than his earnest student. Dressed in jeans and a well-loved chunky sweater, his very dark, very curly hair constantly threatening insubordination, he is excellent company — all smiles and unfailingly polite. As we talk, it’s clear that, although he’s having a delightful time at the moment (the cast and crew on Les Misérables were “lovely”; working on it and The Crown — he will play the young Prince Charles in the third season, of which more later — had him “wide-eyed and pinching yourself”), he’s very serious about work. He has even read Hugo’s novel, which in unabridged English translation tends towards 1,500 pages.

“I know, that’s mad, isn’t it?” he says. “And I’m a terrible reader. I’m very dyslexic and I find it incredibly hard. It was a struggle, but the themes of it — it’s all about redemption essentially. I was obsessed with that idea, which I’ve stolen from my dad, who is an English teacher. He’s always been really interested in forgiveness and redemption and hope, and it’s very present in that book.”

Although the story is set in Paris between 1815 and 1832, O’Connor thinks it retains its relevance. “There were different translations for the title, like ‘The Wretched’, ‘The Wretched Poor’, ‘The Dispossessed’. I think they’re more accurate. It’s all about class, and the forgotten and the sidelined, which is obviously relevant to now. Marius has an important role in that he is like the audience looking in — he exists as part of a higher social class, but he has this social conscience.

“Obviously we’re in different times, but I would say that we’re experiencing politics in the extreme on both sides at the moment. And while we’re not building barricades, we are setting up camp outside parliament, and how that has manifested itself in recent news has been pretty nasty. To me it seems that there are lines to be drawn from that.”

So upright is Pontmercy — even when languishing in a filthy garret — that you might not immediately make the link between the young lawyer and the role that made O’Connor’s name, the taciturn Yorkshire farmer Johnny Saxby in Francis Lee’s extraordinary 2017 film God’s Own Country. The similarities are almost non-existent — apart from anything else, it took O’Connor’s Saxby about half the film before he cracked a smile. O’Connor’s committed performance as the emotionally inarticulate youth being painfully and beautifully taught how to love and be loved by the tenderness of another man was universally praised and earned him a Bafta rising star nomination and a best actor win at the British Independent Film Awards, among other accolades. Not that he had much choice about commitment: Lee made him spend nearly four weeks working full-time on the farm where the film was shot before they started.

“John, the farmer, he’s an incredible man. He hadn’t had a holiday I don’t think for 25 years. We’d get up at 6am and we’d go and feed the sheep, then we’d come back and have these sandwiches [he uses his hands to indicate something about the size of an entire standard loaf] — plain white bread, greasy bacon, ketchup, more bacon, bread. I turned into an animal, but it was the best energy source. His lifestyle is non-stop. Of course he can’t have a holiday. Sheep don’t rest.” The physicality of O’Connor’s performance is one thing that gives it authenticity — all from John, he says.

“He was hunched over. There are practical reasons — the rain in Yorkshire even somehow rains up, so you’ve got your hood up, and the sheep are down here.” It helped his casting that O’Connor has huge hands. “They’re like spades.” You don’t see much of them in Les Mis — apparently his “city hands” had such terrible eczema when he started filming the series he could hardly open them, which he puts down to subjecting them to farm work on God’s Own Country, although he concedes that the diet may also have been a factor.

If you think Pontmercy and Saxby are different, his next TV role, as Prince Charles, is an even bigger leap. He’s filming at the moment and says it’s “probably the most enjoyable job I’ve done”, perhaps because, instead of a freezing Yorkshire hillside, the locations are “every nice stately home in England, seemingly. We’ve been in Grantham, Buckinghamshire — we rock up and are, like, ‘Who lives in this house?’ I feel like I’m on Antiques Roadshow a lot of the time.”

It’s odd, he says, playing someone so present in the public consciousness, but for him, finding that performance “starts with the voice, and then they’ve got teams of researchers and professionals who work on dialect and movement. If you watch footage of the young Charles, there’s this thing — when he turns, he doesn’t turn with his body, he turns with his neck first, in a weird sort of Justin Timberlake-esque dance move. I find it helpful to have an animal to imagine, because it gives a certain pace to someone.”

Er, OK, I wonder, fearing treason, what animal is the Prince of Wales? O’Connor laughs. “I like to think of Charles at the moment as a sort of tortoise, because he puts his neck out. It’s not even that he’s particularly slow, it’s more this idea of inquisitive head first.” This time it wasn’t the hands that helped O’Connor get the role, but the ears — they’re not, in fact, particularly large, but they are sort of swivelled forwards, as if anticipating something of great interest.

O’Connor was more or less ambivalent about the royal family before — although his grandmother takes a keen interest, he says — but since taking over the role he has developed a fascination with and, he admits, an affection for Charles.

“Essentially you have someone whose whole life only comes into focus when his mother dies. That keeps hitting me — he only has meaning when his mum dies. Where does that put a young man? And then you’ve got his relationships — you can’t just get married or be with someone, they have to meet a set of [outside] criteria. That is a lot to get your head around. I’m discovering something every day about him and the world he exists in.” He tells me about a scene he has just done with Derek Jacobi, who plays the Duke of Windsor, formerly Edward VIII. “You’re playing that interaction, and you think, ‘Who does Prince Charles have, at that stage, as a guide?’ ”

Of course, there’s always his mother, played in the new cast by Hollywood’s queen of the moment, Olivia Colman. O’Connor is predictably adoring of the star of The Favourite, which he thinks is “the film of the year”.

“She’s everything that’s said about her. She’s a proper actress and a proper person. Turns up on time, does her job professionally — she’s wicked. It’s great that the world is loving her because we should.”

He is equally gushy about his co-star Emerald Fennell, who will play the young Camilla Shand, later Parker Bowles, and whom he describes as “such a laugh” (series three and four take us up to 1976, so we’ll have to wait a while for the appearance of Lady Diana Spencer — her casting has not been revealed).

He seems to take immense joy in things, which he puts down to “a pretty perfect upbringing” in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, as the middle son of three to John, an English teacher, and Emily, a midwife, both now retired. “I’ve got two lovely brothers and I’ve got cracking parents.” He recalls a phrase improbably culled from the American TV crime drama Ozark — “I’m rephrasing it, but if I were to have kids, and they’re half as proud of me as I am of my parents, then I’m sorted. They’re decent and kind and considerate, and as I’m getting older I’m learning that those qualities are the most important things.”

Inspired by his parents, last year he came up with a manifesto for his career: “Turn up on time, be nice and learn your lines. If everyone just did that in the acting world, everything would be just great.” His younger brother, Seb, is an ecological economist and is doing a PhD; the eldest, Barney, is an artist.

O’Connor lives in east London with his girlfriend, whom he politely declines to name, but hopes that they’ll be able to live predominantly outside London in future. “Drama schools say you have to be in London because that’s where the work is and that’s where the auditions are, but more and more the auditions seem to be tapes, for film and television, so maybe we’ll all move up to Yorkshire.” I’m sure Yorkshire would be delighted, I say. “Yeah, who are all these people with scarves? They’re all wearing scarves!”

Soon, although the release date is uncertain, we’ll see him in another film, Hope Gap, in which he plays the son to parents divorcing later in life (Annette Bening and Bill Nighy). It’s a “tiny little film” written and directed by William Nicholson, who is better known for such epics as Gladiator, Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It won’t surprise you to learn that O’Connor is unfailingly enthusiastic about it and his co-stars. There’s another film, with a much bigger cast, coming up, he says, but it hasn’t been announced, so he can’t tell me what it is, except that it isn’t Star Wars. He is, of course, very apologetic.

As I’m leaving, something occurs to me — is it indeed him shoving his arm inside a cow in an early scene in God’s Own Country? “Yeah!” he says, with startling enthusiasm. “And that was actually really nice. As you know, it’s incredibly cold in Yorkshire, and it’s incredibly warm in there. You go in through the bum, because there’s a thin membrane between the bum and the womb, and you’re checking to see where the head is. And it’s really comforting to the cow. It’s just really pleasurable because you know you’re caring for this animal, but also you’re, like, at least this arm is warm.”

I think we could all learn something from Josh O’Connor’s outlook on life. Les Misérables continues on Sunday at 9pm on BBC One. The third season of The Crown will be on Netflix this year

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/josh-oconnor-every-actor-should-just-turn-up-on-time-be-nice-and-learn-the-lines-r8bqkcpcb

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #josh o'connor #Marius Pontmercy #Interviews #articles #the times

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