#his wife managed to join him to france few years later but by this point their children had died

[0mega-x]

I am often wondering why my area, one city in particular, has so many people of East and South-East Asian descent, ESPECIALLY Viets, Khmers and Chinese. It's like, what was so attractive about this fucking village in the 70s of a few hundred people that was still in the countryside at time?! Yeah it was in a development area, sure. But there were many others even around Paris???

Half of my neighbours in my building are of Asian origin. There are vietnamese restaurants every 100 meters. The municipality has close ties to Cambodia- literally the only reason the village went from like 300 people to 15k is them, the Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Chinese, Thai and even Indian and Korean immigrants. They're legit the backbone of my area. The mayor himself said there might be up to 40% of the population being Asian. What made my area specifically so attractive to Asian immigrants back then?!

[thebadboyfanclub]

She Will Learn (Rio x Reader)

Look I will let y’all in on a little secret, the way this account is going to work is by me seeing your requests, making a mental note to finish them and then getting an idea for another imagine that wasn’t requested but can’t move on until I write it so.... Enjoy!

P.S I chose Greece cause I am from there and I never see us anywhere

(Y/n) had met Rio when she was about to graduate college, a business major that was striving for being the first millionaire in her family. She came from a lower middle class first generation immigrant from Greece, her parents were troopers for successfully raising her and her siblings, they never had things to spare yet they had enough to be respectful.

He saw her at a restaurant, completely overdressed and accessorized like she was dining in France, however she somehow made it look like she didn’t think about what she was going to wear, like this was her natural way of dressing, her nails were done and he noticed how... soft her hands looked. 

What intrigued him was that she was extremely kind to everyone, she smiled brightly at the waiters and she would often reach over to her friends for a touch of encouragement of just a simple caress, she exuded confidence that made you feel like you would never dare to touch her, still she carried herself with elegance and in a graceful manner.

“Excuse me, can you tell me who are the girls at the table over there?”

“Oh they haven’t been here before but I can tell you they are here to celebrate for the girl in the red dress, it’s her birthday”

“Oh is it? Send them a bottle of champagne please”

“Right away Sir”

He was never the flashy type of guy, he never cared for stuff that showed his status or economic achievements, people that had money knew to never flaunt it carelessly. When it came to her, he felt the need to show off, to woo her and catch her eye, she had this sense of luxury, she looked like she took care of herself way too much to let men not treat her anything less than that.

He watched her face switch into surprise when the waiter came with the bottle of champagne, a few seconds after that her gaze went to him, as the waiter pointed towards him and then proceeded to open the bottle of bubbly. 

She had noticed him when she entered for a few moments, although she decided that since it was her big night she wouldn’t waste time gawking at good looking men, she had saved money for months to be able to afford the finest for her big day, every year she wanted her birthday to be like the life she wanted. She send him a smile as her hand went to her heart to show gratitude for the gift. 

Except that didn’t feel like enough, she felt like she could push it a bit more, try her luck just a bit, she looked too good to worry about a man turning her down, he would have to be mad or blind to do so.

She walked to him with the glass of champagne in her hand, giving him the chance to take her in. Her legs were exposed as the dress went to the middle of her thigs, they shined and looked so smooth making him wonder how good would it feel to touch them. She had a figure of a dream, as her hips swayed with every step, her posture was proud and she walked like a supermodel, if he didn’t know the owner he would have thought she was the one that had not just the restaurant, the entire block.

“I don’t think we’ve met, I’m (y/n), I wanted to thank you for the champagne, you really didn’t have to”

“I wanted to darling, I’m Christopher but people call me Rio, how wonderful to meet you”

He said, taking her delicate hand in his and pressing a light kiss on soft skin. He could smell the lotion of vanilla she had chosen to moisturize her skin, settle yet unforgettable. His raspy voice made her flustered, trying to mask it with a smirk and confidence, he was intriguing to her, the cool, calm and collected exterior that suited him so much. 

“I wish I could stay and talk but I don’t like leaving my friends by themselves”

“I understand darling, we’ll be in touch”

-

It had been years since then, he had managed to not only stay in touch with you but make her the queen of his life. She was an asset that he so desperately needed, he trusted her with his life and knew she had the best intentions for him, her loyalty was iron made, her degree came in handy when he needed to handle business in a discreet manner, she was the master mind behind a lot of his negotiations, her brilliance on playing the trophy wife that didn’t know anything in front of others was the secret behind his success. 

She is his secret weapon, so secret that no one knew she even existed, the few that did didn’t even know her name and the people that knew were the most trusted ones that worked with Rio for years, she liked to be under wraps, walking in and out of the building with the men Rio had hire to protect her and the rookies wondered who was she, he only called her with pet names when others were around but they could only address her as “Miss”, she was the miss of the mister and his most trusted soldier. 

Despite that, (y/n) was no fool. She had broken up with Rio and called of the engagement several times, making Rio go wild every time. She wasn’t unreasonable, Rio was out of line a lot of the times, especially when Beth came in the picture, his men feared her just as much as him, maybe even more, so when she found out they had done such major damage multiple times but still took them back in, she would pack her stuff and leave without warning, leaving her ring and a note that wrote “goodbye” behind. That’s when he would hook up with Beth, make up for the loss of his queen, yet when he had manage to convince her to come back and buy her a new ring every time, he felt like he was on top of the world.

“Be honest with me Mick, who did this to him?”

“Everything points in one target, Beth”

“Of course. Thank you Mick, I got him”

She stood by him throughout his healing process, waited patiently until he was back on her feet, took care of his bullet wounds and had many sleepless nights to make sure he was alright. She was his wife to be after all, even kept in contact with Rhea and Marcus, made sure they were alright and taken care of in any way, shape or form.

“Are you ready mama?”

“Almost, can you help me with the necklace”

They were there when Rhea got the call from Beth, acting like there friends even though she caused Rios life and invited her for drinks. Rio knew (y/n) was boiling, wanted to take revenge for what Beth had caused and this time he understood, so they got dressed up to meet her instead of Rhea. 

As Rio approached and took the necklace in his hands he saw it was the necklace he bought her for their one year anniversary, her birth stone surrounded with diamonds. When (y/n) let her hair down he got a whiff of her scent, still making him feel weak in the knees, he got closer to her and wrapped his one arm around her, his lips found the nape of her neck and left light kisses. She closed her eyes for a second to enjoy the feeling of warmth and lust he brought her.

“You look beautiful princess”

“It’s my first time meeting her isn’t it?”

“What have you planned gorgeous?”

“That’s for me to know and for her to find out, let’s go daddy”

She knew exactly who she was. Seeing the back of her head made her want to pull out her gun and blast her right then and there, that wouldn’t be classy now wouldn’t it? She approached the clueless woman and sat on her left side, leaving the right seat empty for Rio to join later. 

“Can I get dirty martini please? Thank you dear”

She instructed the bartender before taking off the faux black fur coat to reveal a   Split Floor-Length Sleeveless Spaghetti Strap Pullover black dress. The first thing Beth noticed about the young woman that sat next to her was the big diamond ring that she wore on her ring finger, mentally thinking of what that girl had done to earn it

‘she probably hasn’t worked a day in her life’ she thought, making herself feel a little bit better, she had to admit that she looked really pretty, the jewelry she had on complimented her skin tone and the dress looked like it was custom made. (Y/n) waited for her drink to arrive before she looked at Beth and got ready to reveal her identity.

“You must be Beth, I don’t believe we’ve officially met. I’m (y/n)”

Beth looked at her puzzled. How did the young woman that looked like she was some old mans pretty young thing to show off knew her. (Y/n) was smiling as she took a sip of her cocktail, knowing damn well that Beth had already made up her mind about what type of woman (y/n) was and completely missing the purpose of this meeting.

“How do you know my name”

“Oh I know everything about you, where you live, the names of your children, your sister Annie and your friend Ruby. Rio has told me all about you”

“Rio? How-”

“I know he doesn’t talk about it, I like to be invisible to the public eye... his secret weapon as some would say. I also know you are waiting for Rhea”

“She ain’t comin”

Beth heard Rio’s voice and her eyes went wide with fear. (Y/n) let out a soft giggle and took one more sip of her drink as Beth turned to look at him like she had seen a ghost, judging by how pale she had gotten she was more of that vibe than he was. 

“Excuse me, can we get a glass of neat whiskey for the gentleman? Thank you so much”

(Y/n) ordered once more before hoping off her chair and joining Rio. He snaked his arm around her and brought her as close to him as he could before placing a kiss on her cheek.

“How you feeling mama?”

“Oh I was just having a chat with Beth”

“A-are y-you”

“His fiancé? Yes, we are planning on getting married on my homeland during the summer, aren’t we daddy?”

(Y/n) started rubbing Rios back as she smiled at him, she was super excited for her wedding, he had given her complete control to do whatever she wanted, it was her big day and he knew better than to object to anything.

“Oh we have to show her something”

Rio reached for his pocket and (Y/n) looked over at Beth who was in the verge of a mental breakdown. Rio pulled out his three bullets that the doctor had pulled out from his body, (y/n) wanted to throw them away but he insisted in keeping them, reminding him how he cheated death. 

“Lung, spline, shoulder”

He put each one down in front of her. Beth had terrible aim and for once (y/n) was thankful that one of their rookies missed the shots. Beth stayed silent, taking in all the information, not only was he alive he also had a woman he was planning to marry, calling him “daddy” right in her face, she looked like she was straight out of a magazine and even thought she was kind to her that terrified her more, her entire life was crumbling in front of her. 

“Now I think you understand that you are in a bit of a jam, Christopher has agreed that I should decide your punishment since he wanted to kill you-”

“Don’t, do that. I’m sorry babydoll, she will learn”

Beth had tried to leave in the middle of (y/n)’s sentence, making Rio grab Beth by the arm and restrain her from doing so. (Y/n) stayed stoic and just watched the scene unravel, she knew Rio would never allow anyone to disrespect her. As Beth sat back down Rio smiled (y/n) before taking her hand once more and placing a kiss on her knuckles. (Y/n) reached for his face and caressed his cheek with her free hand making Beth sick to her stomach, he had never looked at her like that, with such admiration and love.

“It’s alright, I will let it pass this one time”

“Go on mama”

“I feel like it would be too easy to kill you, such an easy way out. So now you will work for me”

“What?”

Beth felt her stomach twist at the statement. Working with (y/n), having to do daily tasks for her, a woman she had no idea even existed an hour ago, now she had work under her and take orders from her directly, for a second she thought that death would be better. (Y/n) left Rio’s side for a second and took Beth by the shoulders, standing right behind her, Beth’s eyes fell on her shinny ring, that only felt like someone was rubbing salt over her wound, he had probably spend a fortune for it. (Y/n) leaned closer to Beth getting next to her ear and causing goosebumps on Beth’s body. 

“Think of it as an assistant or maybe help Rio with anything he needs but mostly you will be on call for anything I need. Since you wanted to outsmart Rio and spit where you eat, I need some help to plan the wedding and also take care of our business. What do you think darling?”

“I think it’s an excellent idea”

Rio was pleasantly surprised. (Y/n) was one of the most intelligent people he knew, bring Beth so close to her and making her work for their wedding even though she knew she had slept with him was a very cruel and mentally humiliating way to punish her. 

She truly was one of the greatest choices he had ever done, no one could compete with her, she held such power that made Rio feel like he could not only trust her but also submit to her, let her take the wheel and not having to worry about anything going wrong. As he watched her look over at Beth there was no comparison, (y/n) had such way of carrying herself, that je ne sais quoi as some would say, she was the embodiment of female divine energy. 

Rio knew that her leaving him all these times was a game of push and pull, making him work for her and a mental slap in the face, yet every time he ran to her like an obedient dog and begged for her to come back and take her spot as his queen in the palace, promised her and gave her everything she wished for, every ring was bigger and better than the one before. It wasn’t like he did it because she wanted it, he was the one that wanted to spoil her, give her everything under the sun, she deserved everything and he was for sure not going to hold back for his sweet little princess.

“And then when all of that is done... Rio can take care of you, I feel like it would bring bad luck to our household if we killed someone before the wedding”

[usergreenpixel]

Frev Prompts, Part 8! That’s right, I’m not done with these yet. 😏

71. Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris, France. The protagonist is one of its many students in the 18th century and, due to his family’s social standing and his own success in academics, this boy is considered a popular student.

Most other students want to be friends with the main character but he is too reserved and suspicious of their intentions to get attached to anyone. That is until he defends two younger students from bullies. The boys, whose names are Maximilien de Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, are naturally grateful that the main character defended them, so the three grow extremely close.

But will they stay close when some unpleasant secrets about the main character suddenly surface and threaten to ruin himself and his family? Will the trio be able to solve mysteries that suddenly pop up in the school? And what will become of them in the end?

72. The protagonist has just inherited an estate from their parents, who are among the few residents of France who still possess their noble title and their wealth, both of which their ancestors had reclaimed after the revolution.

At first the protagonist doesn’t think much of it - they’re used to living a wealthy privileged life. That is until circumstances lead them to inspect a boarded up room in the estate, only to find a capsule with a prominent French revolutionary unconscious and trapped inside it, hooked up to multiple life support machines.

To the protagonist’s confusion and horror, opening the capsule reveals that the revolutionary is very much alive, unaware of what happened to him and more than furious upon finding out the protagonist’s name.

Confused, the protagonist attempts to try to both calm the revolutionary down and figure out the reason behind this rage, only to find out that their ancestors were far from innocent victims of Madame Guillotine like the protagonist believed them to be and that their wealth had not been obtained by lawful and honest means.

Perhaps this eye opening experience is exactly what the protagonist needed in order to realize that there’s more to life than being a privileged spoiled brat.

73. For as long as they remember, the protagonist, their parents and their younger sibling(s) have always had a habit of moving from place to place, almost like nomads from movies, even though they live in a van in the modern era and don’t quite fit the part.

As a result of this situation, the protagonist has issues with developing lasting relationships and suffers from the feelings of isolation from their peers and the resentment that their parents keep moving so often.

But eventually the protagonist finally gets a chance to find out the reason why their family lives this way when they get kidnapped by the government to be used as bait to lure in their father.

The protagonist is thoroughly confused as they hear the kidnappers talk about time travel, the French Revolution, a Thermidor survivor...and all of this in relation to the protagonist’s father (or rather, as they find out, their stepfather).

What’s going on? Will the protagonist be able to escape and reunite with their family?

74. Through what can only be described as a twist of fate, the main characters cross their paths once again.

They are identical triplets who were separated at birth and now belong to three different classes. One was adopted into nobility, another wants to take a vow of celibacy and devote their life to God, while the third one is a commoner.

But now that the protagonists have been reunited, their plans change since they have no intentions of letting life tear them apart again.

Together, they become masked avengers and make it their goal to oppose corruption plaguing the high society of France, all while the revolution begins to truly pick up the pace.

75. When the protagonist was merely eighteen years old, they got locked up in a reformatory facility where they are forced to deal with a rather unpleasant company of the mentally ill, petty thieves, prostitutes and other kinds of unpleasant characters.

Their only source of comfort is a peer named Antoine, locked up for having tried to run away from home and stealing silverware. Traumatized yet defiant, he strikes up a friendship with the protagonist and even shares his new writing, Organt, with them.

Now lovestruck by Antoine to the point of obsession, the protagonist is devastated when they part ways and keeps looking for him.

What’s worse, when they finally find Antoine in 1793, he has seemingly changed and not in a good way since he keeps pretending he doesn’t know the protagonist but they are determined to restore the old friendship at any cost.

76. The protagonist, a teenager, is sent to France by their scientist mother to spend the summer break with their maternal uncle and his family.

At first the youth is sure that this will be yet another summer in France and nothing unusual will happen, only to be proven wrong when their mother goes missing and they begin to get followed by suspicious people.

As if that wasn’t enough, the teenager soon finds out a few shocking things. Not only is their uncle not actually their mother’s half-brother but he is actually a man from the past and used to be one of Napoleon’s marshals. The protagonist’s aunt is also from the past and, as the teen finds out, so was their currently missing father who was actually a prominent participant of the French Revolution.

Hoping to find both their parents and thwart the plan of their stalkers to steal their mother’s time machine and travel to the French Revolution to change its course, the protagonist joins forces with their aunt, uncle and cousins in this dangerous situation.

77. After the end of the French Revolution Charlotte Robespierre, left with no family and fearing for her safety, moves in with a man and his daughter, the heroine of the story, essentially becoming the girl’s stepmother.

As the heroine matures, she and Charlotte develop a close bond and Charlotte develops maternal instincts towards this young girl, seeing her as the daughter she never had and planning to make her her heir.

So, when the heroine falls in love with an extremely suspicious man, Charlotte opposes the union and while everyone sees her as the jealous wicked stepmother, the girl herself realizes that she is doing it for a much more selfless reason and something is genuinely wrong with this guy.

Together, Charlotte and her stepdaughter decide to investigate the suspicious suitor…

78. The protagonist is excited.

After years of living with their adoptive family, they managed to locate their biological parents and are getting along pretty well with them without severing ties with their adoptive parents.

But when the revolution comes knocking, the protagonist is torn between their royalist adoptive parents and Jacobin-supporting birth parents.

The protagonist loves everyone in their family but, unfortunately, they will have to make a hard choice for the first time in their life.

79. When the protagonist, an orphaned street urchin, rescues Jean-Paul Marat from an assasination attempt, they don’t expect anything to come out of the situation and move on with their life.

But when Marat rescues the protagonist from bandits later on and recognizes them, he decides to take the youth under his wing. Thus the protagonist ends up in the care of Marat and his family and even becomes fascinated with science thanks to their guardian.

Marat, his wife and his sister slowly find themselves attached to the protagonist and become determined to raise the kid despite all the revolutionary madness and danger that surround them.

Perhaps, this is the protagonist’s chance to have a real family and a place to belong at long last.

80. 1812. The Patriotic War against Napoleon’s army is in full swing on the territory of the Russian empire. On the side of the French emperor is the protagonist, Brutus, a 19-year old nephew of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just himself.

Severely wounded in a battle, Brutus ends up being rescued from certain death by a surprisingly sympathetic “enemy” who nurses the young man back to health and hides him.

Having recovered from his wounds, Brutus decides it’s high time to return to his family as they probably think he was killed.

Now that the war is over, returning seems like an easy task but the young man’s rescuer warns him that his journey won’t be easy and gives him a small cross as a memento so God can protect Brutus on his journey.

And so, with said cross on his neck, meager possessions and some food, Brutus embarks on a long and challenging journey home. Along the way, he will face plenty of trials and tribulations, make new connections and maybe even find love.

But will he make it back to his family safe and sound?

[josefavomjaaga]

What was Napoleon's relationship with Jean Rapp? Are there any interesting stories about them? The only conversation between the Emperor and general that I've heard about was when Napoleon asked Rapp to look at the sky and see if he could find his "star".

First of all, thank you for your question, even if I fear my answer will not be quite satisfactionary.

I have read very little about Jean Rapp, only a few excerpts from his memoirs. He does, however, appear quite often in the works of nineteenth-century German authors; probably because, like Ney, they wanted to see him as a kind of "token German" in Napoleon's entourage (he wasn't one, of course, but Alsatian). Unfortunately, most of the anecdotes are rather questionable.

He is said to have been in semi-disgrace at several occasions because of his outspoken ways, most notably when Napoleon divorced Josephine. But as will be told below, there may have been other reasons why Napoleon was unhappy with his unruly aide-de-camp.

The best-known anecdote, besides Rapp saving Napoleon's life by arresting Stapps in Vienna in 1809. must be the one according to which Rapp criticised Josephine's scarf on the evening of the attempted assassination with the "infernal machine", which caused her to depart a little later in her carriage. The slight delay may have saved the ladies' lives, because the charge exploded in the Rue St. Nicaise right between the coach of the First Consul and that of his ladies.

A very nice anecdote is told by Ludwig Börne: Napoleon played cards for money with German guests in Danzig during the day and then received his French officers in the evening, also for a game of cards. At some point he took a few of the gold coins lying on the table, so-called "Napoléons", and remarked to Rapp: "The Germans like my little Napoléons very much, don't they, Rapp?" - "Well," said Rapp, "they surely do prefer them to the big one..."

In one of the anecdotes in Laure Junot's memoirs, Napoleon at least briefly shows up together with Rapp. While the Bonaparte family spent some quality time in the garden, playing games with some of Napoleon's aides, Josephine and some other ladies noticed two rather rough-looking guys looking in from the street and become scared. Rapp immediately rushed out and barked at the men, asking what business they had to be there. Turns out, one of them was a veteran from Eugène's Chasseurs à cheval, who wants to introduce his younger brother into that same unit. Napoleon then comes up and talks amiably with the two brothers, making up for Rapp's rough ways.

On another note, Rapp's relationship with women is interesting (and might be what was truely annoying Napoleon) - he must have been quite a rapscallion at times. It is said that during the consulate he was deeply in love with Stéphanie Tascher, a cousin of Josephine. But, Rapp was far too lowly a figure in Napoleon's circle to be allowed to marry this distinguished lady. Instead, Napoleon gave him two young ladies to choose from and ordered him to marry one of them, pronto! After carefully examining their financial circumstances, Rapp chose Josepha Barbe Rosalie Vanlerberghe, the daughter of a wealthy army supplier, who came with a dowry of one million francs. The girl, however, was only thirteen years old (!). (A similar marriage with a fourteen-year-old girl was made around the same time by Duroc).

Now that Rapp was rolling in money, life was sweet - until, then already governor in Danzig, he suddenly found himself with 77,000 francs in debt and had to sort out his finances. And also his love life, because in Gdansk he lived with two ladies, his married wife in one wing of the house, and a Juliane Böttcher, by whom he had two children, in the one on the other side. Madame Rapp, of course, didn't like this much, especially since when Juliane died, Rapp gave his mistress a funeral as if she had been a queen. At some point, Madame Rapp had had enough of the daily quarrels and went back to Paris. A rather messy divorce ensued, in the course of which Rapp was made to pay quite a bit; he had to refund the entire dowry.

Rapp hired a Mademoiselle Julie as nanny for his two children from Danzig (he had none from his wife). Over the next few years, this nanny bore him two more children. (How does that always happen?)

After the end of the Napoleonic Empire, he managed to get into the Bourbons' good graces despite the fact he had joined Napoleon's side. He also married again, this time one Albertine, 26 years his junior and the daughter of a family Rotberg in Rheinweiler. She had no money and no other dowry, but promised to take care of his various children as if they were her own, and kept her promise. With Albertine he had another two children, including a son Max, whose godparents were none other than the Grand Duke of Baden Karl and the King of Bavaria Max Joseph. Max Joseph seems to have held Rapp in high esteem anyway; when his son Crown Prince Ludwig reluctantly joined the French army in 1806, Max explicitly recommended to him, in addition to Berthier, the old warhorse Rapp as a contact.

Sorry I cannot contribute more on this but maybe there is somebody else who could chime in and has more?

[rons-hermiones]

Come Find Me

Come Find Me

by rons-hermiones

Summary: Unplanned, Hermione is forced to spend Christmas at the Burrow due to her grandmother falling very ill. After being ignored by Hermione for weeks, Ron is determined to show her how much she means to him. Just before he gets the chance to tell her, Bellatrix Lestrange shows up with other plans for Hermione. Can Ron get to her before it's too late? (Ron/Hermione Half-Blood Prince AU)

Rating: M for language & dark themes in later chapters.

Chapter Four

Not even realizing it, Ron had wallowed in self pity and hatred the rest of the ride. Eventually, the train came to a halt as he hurried to leave Lavender’s compartment, not being able to stomach another talk with her. 

Scrambling, he walks down the corridor against the mass of students and eventually retrieves his trunk, stepping from the platform later then most. 

The mass of redheads is easy to spot despite the crowd. 

His Mum is embracing Ginny as he sees Harry shaking his Dad’s hand. Fred and George have also come, he watches as they step forward and tenderly embrace Hermione. The act is out of character for the pair, but he figured that this gesture coincided with the McLaggen stint. 

The three begin talking in what seems like hushed whispers, no doubt about what transpired, well that is until Ron gathered the courage to join his family. 

As his mother called his name and embraced him, Hermione went silent. Slowly, she slinked back, away from the twins, away from the Weasley’s. 

She was never supposed to even be here. Hermione had told herself that she needed to separate herself from them in order to ensure Ron had the holiday he deserved without her bothering him. 

Ron seemed to notice this, heart breaking a little. He wanted nothing more than to hug her himself and assure that he wanted her here, that he was so happy she was. 

He couldn’t though, not yet anyway, not when he was still reeling from his half breakup with Lavender not long ago. 

Instead, he grabbed onto the Port Key his father got from work, jolting slightly as Hermione’s fingertips gently brushed his as she grasped the old scarf they were using. 

Once the dizziness had subsided and they landed on the grass in Ottery St. Catchpole, he was disappointed to see Hermione already retrieving into the Burrow, ahead of everyone else. Alone. 

He can’t help but groan aloud. 

“Did you do it?” Harry asks as he offers a hand and helps Ron from the ground. 

In response all the youngest Weasley brother can manage is a groan. 

“Sort of.” Ron whispers slightly embarrassed. 

“Sort of?” Harry questions rather loudly, warranting a glance from Ginny who is only a few paces ahead. 

“Shush,” The ginger starts, “and I mean the words ‘I’m breaking up with you’, certainly left my mouth. More than once. In a variety of ways.” He explained, his anger bubbling back up at the recollection.  

“Alright so you did it?” The Boy-Who-Lived asked, confusion evident in his tone. 

“Yeah I told her that and she definitely heard but all she said was no,” at this point he’s stopped walking, “that’s completely mental! I told the girl it was done with and she said no!” He was yelling now. 

At this point, Ginny had come to a full stop, the twins were lingering by the front door, and Hermione had thankfully disappeared  inside along with his parents. Harry was faced with horror stricken on his features. 

“You keep it down!” The dark haired boy staged whispered. 

Ron twinged as red as his hair, “sorry,” he said lamely, “she even started on Hermione. By that time I had already told her it was done twice, maybe three times.” 

A low whistle escaped the chosen ones lips, “so let me get this straight, you broke up with Lavender at least three times, and all she said was no?” This sounded like something out of a Muggle film. 

He nodded, a sour look on his face, “And after all this, she kissed me on the cheek, called me ‘sweetheart’, and wished me a Happy Christmas!” He recapped sounding beside himself. 

“You’re right,” Harry said after a moment, “that is mental.” 

At this the pair started trudging along the grass again, taking it slow as they wanted to finish the conversation away from prying ears. 

“Good news is you did break up with her.” The green eyed boy tried optimistically, a rare thing from him these days. 

Harry was really trying to be a better friend. 

“Bad news is I don’t think Lavender broke up with me.” He notes. 

The pair seemingly sigh in unison, both frustrated, one more so then the other. 

“So what? I just tell Hermione I’ve broken it off with Lavender? I’m sure by now she’s owled all of England that we’re still together.” 

Potter contemplates the situation for a moment before answering, “well you can tell Hermione you’ve told Lavender you’re done but she didn’t seem to accept the fact. Even though that may be the case, when we head back you’ll be implementing this break up full force. Avoiding Lavender even more than before, as if we thought that was possible!” He tries to joke.

Surprisingly a small laugh sounds it’s way past Ron’s lips, “I suppose.” By this point they’ve reached the front door, “it’s kind of mad to be thinking about all this with everything going on isn’t it?” He thinks aloud. 

Harry shrugs, “I know your life may feel like a bad soap opera but it’s quite nice for me to focus on something else for a bit. Especially if it helps you and Hermione out.” He pushes open the door and finally steps inside. 

“A soap what?”

...

Hermione really wished there was a spare room in the Weasley home. Not that she’d ever ask for it, being she would never want to upset Ginny. But an escape would be nice. 

Surely Ginny will try and get her to talk about everything that’s transpired lately, especially with the red heads new found confidence her brother wants to try and patch things up. 

It didn’t matter though, Charlie and Bill were returning for holiday for the first time in years apparently so there was no available room to escape to. And being Fleur was joining as well, Percy’s room was off the table. 

Hermione supposes she’ll just have keep Ginny at bay as long as possible. Which should be easy enough considering all the action within the Weasley household. 

Even now, unpacking her trunk a floor above them, she could hear the hustle and bustle of the Burrow. 

The twins were no doubt sounding off somewhere. Ginny was probably yelling at them to keep it down. It’s very likely Mrs. Weasley was cleaning the house to prepare for Charlie and Bill’s arrival. Mr. Weasley was somewhere consoling said stressed out wife, resulting in more screams. And as previously mentioned, the twins were probably sounding off to Harry and Ron. 

And right now as she considers all this play out, she can’t help but feel a little empty. 

For the first time since she’s been a guest at the Burrow, does she feel like a true guest. Hermione doesn’t feel like she’s at home. Not like she normally does. 

She knows exactly why too. 

After the run in with Lavender and Ron this morning, she decided she’d back off. Ron was probably better off without her constant nagging and knowledge of useless facts. Hermione would do her best to stay out of his way, starting with holiday. She’d hate for him to feel uncomfortable in his own house of all places. And after, she supposes she’ll do the same at Hogwarts. For him. 

It’s kind of twisted isn’t it? Even after all the times she’s felt hurt by Ron, she still cares about him more than anything else. 

Even now, she can still feel her heart clenching, breaking, as he agreed to the terms earlier in the compartment. The feeling alone may kill her, yet, here she is, willing to make that sacrifice for him. For his happiness. 

All this coupled with the pain of her grandmother's condition has been borderline unbearable. She wishes she still had Ron to help her through this. She needs his strength. 

Too bad she’s ruined that. 

As much as she’s yearning to blame Ron for their divide she knows it’s entirely her fault. Because despite being the brightest witch of her age, she is surely stupid for thinking he could ever love her back. To even think he thought of her like that in the slightest. 

Asking him to Slughorn’s,  it had taken everything for her to do. To him it meant nothing. 

And if the past few months have taught her anything, it’s probably that Ron just stuck around for Harry and as an extension, Hermione. All the taunts and jabs Lavender was constantly throwing her way must be true in Ron’s eyes, she isn’t exactly shy about the whole thing. 

And part of her brain convinces herself that Ron thinks she’s an insufferable, ugly, no good know it all. But part of her knows that isn’t true. 

Ron, who saved her from that troll her first year. 

Ron, whose voice rang in her head every night while she was laying petrified. 

Ron, who defended her mercilessly during their confrontation with Peter Pettigrew, despite having a torn up leg. 

Ron, who comforted her to no end when the nerves struck before the second task. 

Ron, who gently would rub dittany on the backs of her hands after detentions with Umbridge. 

Harry hadn’t been there for any of that. Surely that must mean something. 

And deep down she knows it does, but whenever the rational part of her brain pushes that forward, images of him wrapped around Lavender flicker in her head. These thoughts quickly bring back unwelcome ones of the possibility of Ron loathing her. 

She really wishes things were simple. Harry spent summers and holidays with Sirius at Grimmauld place. That Neville could talk to his parents and they’d recognize him. That Ginny would stop tossing and turning, mumbling things about a diary in her sleep. That she didn’t fear for her parents lives everyday. That her grandma would be magically healed and she’d take Ron and Harry up to France one summer to meet her. 

She wishes that Ron was her friend again. If not more. 

But that’s the problem, these are all just wishes. Figments of her imagination, something her heart longs for. Something that’ll never come true. 

And just like that, her thoughts are becoming too much. She’s supposes it’s a bit of a curse to always have your mind working this way. 

Tears begin stinging the backs of her eyes and Hermione wants nothing more to immerse herself within a book. To forget for a little while. Maybe even let her mind wander to a brighter future. 

But instead, she makes use of her whizzing brain by beginning to unpack her trunk. First she checks for the black book, that’s now a lifeline to her. Once she spots it, she relaxes a little and silently begins preparing a letter to her parents in her head. 

Surely that letter would evoke more unwelcome emotions. 

Happy holidays to her. 

...

So far life at the Burrow has been rather uneventful. Sure, they only arrived here three hours ago, but deep down everyone had this silly little notion that upon their return everything would change. 

Of course it didn’t. 

The twins were still taking the mickey out of Ron and Harry. Ginny still yelled when their fighting reached her in the living room. Molly still fussed over preparing the house for her eldest sons as her husband tried to calm her. 

In a way it was nice though, that things were the same. Sure, everyone wishes they could be better 

There was one notable difference. 

Normally, Hermione could be found sniggering behind Fred and George or defending Ron and Harry from their taunts. If not, she was curled up on the sofa with Ginny as she complained over her Quidditch magazine. Oftentimes, the witch was offering Mrs. Weasley assistance with household chores or was explaining a Muggle appliance to Arthur. 

Instead, she was just gone. 

And no one noticed her absence more than Ron. 

“Ginny, be a dear and fetch Hermione for supper would you?” Molly’s voice didn’t leave much room for argument. 

Ron peered up from where he had been setting down the utensils to see his sister rush up the steps leaving a flash of red. 

Upstairs, Ginny tapped on the door lightly, waiting a moment before pushing it open. There, she found Hermione slumped over the youngest Weasley’s desk, writing mercilessly on some parchment. She was honestly shocked to find her nose not in that odd, coverless book. 

“Hermione.” She called out, the brunette hadn’t noticed her presence. 

Startled, Hermione jumped a bit before relaxing at the sight, “yes?” Her voice cracked. 

“It’s time to eat.” Ginny told her. 

“Gin,” The bushy haired girl sighed, “I hate to be rude, but could you tell your mother I won’t be joining you guys tonight.” 

The ginger shook her head, “Hermione if this is about,” 

Granger wouldn’t let the name pass her friends lips, “it’s not about him.” Not a total lie. “I just want to get this owl out to my parents as soon as I can. I have some questions about...” she trailed feeling the tears prick her eyes. Clearing her throat she went on, “anyway, I ate on the train. I promise once I’m finished here I’ll explain everything to your Mum.”

Ginny began to open her mouth questioning the use of the word ‘everything’. Hermione, being brilliant, seemed to sense where this was going and bear her to it. 

“Everything about my Grandma.” She amended. 

Noticing the sad look in the sixth tears eyes, Ginny conceded, “alright but I’m saving you a plate and you best eat it later!” She scolded, sounding just like Molly. 

At this, Hermione was able to muster a true genuine giggle, “thank you Ginny.” She called as the girl vacated the room. 

The last thing Ginny heard Hermione say was a quick ‘thank you’ before she descended back downstairs. 

As she re entered the kitchen she noted everyone seated already, waiting for her. For them. 

Molly however, was standing, hands on her hips and stern look on her face. 

“Now Ginny I asked you to fetch Hermione.” She scolded with a wag of her finger. 

Sighing, the girl plopped down, “she isn’t hungry.”

All the younger Weasley and Harry, had exchanged knowing glances. Ron however, decided to bow his head, focus his eyes on the floor boards. 

“Non sense!” Her mother started. 

“Mum honest, I told her we’d save her plate.” She pauses as her mother frowns, “look Hermione’s got a lot going on right now.”

Concern struck over Molly instantly, “oh Merlin! Is she okay? Are her parents alright?” Then she swiftly turned to the twins, “have you two done something to her?” The older woman asked sharply. 

“We didn’t do anything mother.” Fred starts. 

“Yeah it wasn’t us who did something.” George says next, emphasis on the statement as he looks to Ron. 

“Not us!” They sound off in unison. 

Noticing Ron’s fist clenching beneath the table Ginny jumps in, “it’s nothing like that, it hasn’t got to do with the Burrow.” Her eyes found Ron’s as if to tell him that Hermione wouldn’t spill to their mother about Lavender Brown, “Hermione and her parents are alright. It’s best if she explains.”

Molly opens her mouth to protest before Arthur cuts her off, “it’s okay Molly, the girls fine, remember? We saw her hours ago. Come on let’s eat.” He reasons. 

Nodding to herself Mrs.Weasley finally calms down as they start their meal. 

And dinner was going fine. Ron had done little talking, thankful that Harry was the one recapping the Quidditch season thus far. 

Again, everything was fine. Until Arthur asked his twin boys about their business. 

“So boys how are things down in the alley?” The older man asking, earning a scowl from is  disapproving wife. 

“Wicked dad.” George says. 

 Placing his fork down Fred jumps in, “absolutely wicked. Witch weekly wants to do an article on our love potions, it’ll be great for business.” 

Shockingly, a proud smile crosses Molly’s lips. 

“Yeah we’re thinking of making scented ones, something girls will like. What do girls like?” George wonders, sarcasm underlying his words. 

“Yeah Ronnie, what do girls like?” Fred repeats facing his younger brother. 

Mrs. Weasley not understanding, interjects, “flowers.”

At this Ron grips his knuckles on the table. His brothers are smiling like it’s Christmas morning. His mother just unknowingly set her troublemaker sons up for a joke to make Ron twitch. 

“Hear that Freddie? Flowers.” George grins like the Cheshire Cat. 

“It’s perfect. I wonder which ones though, there are roses.” Fred responds 

“And daisy’s.”

“Orchids.” 

“Jasmine.” 

The pair switch off before Fred’s eyes light up, “wait I got it, how about...”

“Lavender!” The two exclaim in sync. 

Ginny does her best to surprise a chuckle. Harry looks like he wants the floor to eat him. Ron is about to punch something. 

“Yeah how about it Ronnie, Lavender. You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” George says leaning in closer to his baby brother. 

A look of anger passes Ron’s face, his Mum  surveys the scene with a curious expression, “what would Ronnie know about Lavender?” Molly questions. 

“Oh mother!” George says scandalized. 

“Ickle Ronniekins didn’t tell you?” Fred asks, already knowing the answer. 

She shakes her head, “on with it.” 

“Your baby boy has a girlfriend.” George announces, loving the luck of disdain across his youngest brother's face. 

“Ronald Weasley!” His mother says standing from her chair and wagging her finger at him. 

Merlin he wishes You-Know-Who would kill him right now. 

“I don’t have a girlfriend Mum.” He defends gruffly. 

“You don’t?” Ginny says with slanted eyes. 

“Not anymore.” Harry mumbles loud enough for everyone to hear. 

“Not anymore?” Molly starts, “and you knew and didn’t tell me Ginny! You boys knew too!” She points to the twins. 

In defense the pair throws up their hands as the red headed girl starts to explain, “it wasn’t really my place to tell. Anyway Mum, it’s not like we were the only ones. Bill knew too.” 

Angrily, Ron stomps on his sister's foot. 

“You told Bill and not your own mother!” She screams, ignoring the yelp that left Ginny’s mouth. 

“Molly...” Arthur warns, trying to tug gently at her sleeve. 

She rips her hand away and places both on her hips, “I am very disappointed in you Ronald! All of you actually.” The woman huffs. 

Ron squirms, “it doesn’t matter. She’s not my girlfriend anymore.” 

“Well...” Harry can’t help but say. 

All eyes land on him. He thinks Ron may strangle him. 

“‘Well’ what Harry Potter?” Ginny asks, tone matching her mother’s. 

Now it’s the chosen ones' turn to squirm, “well,” he repeated, “I don’t think it’s my place to say.” 

At this, all eyes fall back onto Ron. Sighing in defeat, “well you see, the thing is, Lavender is,” 

“Annoying.” Ginny finishes. 

“Loud.” Harry cringes. 

“Pathetic?” George tries 

“Desperate.” Fred corrects. 

And to Arthur and Molly’s surprise, their youngest son nods in agreement, making no move to defend this girl. 

At this, the couple exchange a look. If the twins so much as look at a certain bushy haired witch the wrong way, Ron is up in arms, ready to curse anyone who crosses her. 

“Alright,” Ron says, stopping whatever they were going to say, “let’s just say I chucked her.” 

“That can’t be true! I heard her telling Parvati about how she won’t survive a month without snogging you when we got onto the platform.” Ginny calls out. 

Her brother groans, “Lavender is not my girlfriend anymore, but I might still be her boyfriend.” He explains. 

There’s a silence. 

“I don’t know what you mean son.” His dad finally speaks. 

“What I mean is that when I broke up with her she just said no.” He admits exasperated, pushing back his chair and digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

One of the twins lets out a low whistle. As the room enters a tense silence until Molly breaks it. 

“Ronald,” she sounds disappointed, “this Lavender wouldn’t have anything to do with why Hermione didn’t join us at dinner would it?” Her voice is growing louder. 

And there it is. 

Of course his mother would know. 

He had been painfully obvious over the years. 

Ron told himself when she didn’t come down that it was because she was probably writing her parents. But, he also knows, Hermione is capable of constructing a letter in minutes. 

“Why would you think that?” He chokes out sounding pathetic. 

The twins and Ginny laugh at this. 

“Ronald Weasley I am very disappointed in you. Look at the mess you’ve made! Your father and I raised you better than to go around treating women this way!” She screams. 

Losing it, Ron stands up angrily matching his mother’s tone, “why are you assuming any of this has got to do with Hermione?” He screams. 

In all the ruckus, he failed to notice the new presence in the doorway. 

“Hermione.” Ginny says loudly, rather soft. 

Annoyed, he turns to his sister, “Ginny I’ve just said,” before he can finish, Harry is pulling on his shirt and bucking his head to the doorway. 

As all eyes fall on her, she shrinks away, looking almost to tears, “I can come back, I just wanted to talk to...” she doesn’t get the words out, lamely she points to Mrs. Weasley. 

And just like that, any anger washes off the older woman’s face, “of course dear,” she steps over and places a hand on her shoulder, “why don’t you wait for me in the living room while I clean this up.” 

Hermione nods vaguely in response before sauntering out of the room. 

“Way to go Ronnie.” George whispers. 

And just like that, Molly is seeing red again, “all four of you, dishes.”  She says to her kids. 

The twins are ready to complain when they realize they can just do magic. 

“And no magic!” She berates. 

“What did we do?” Ginny retorts, “you’re mad at Ron remember?” She reminds. 

“You three didn’t bother to tell your mother anything!” She stops, “and you.” She turns to Harry. 

“Me?” He asks, scared. 

“Yes you, Harry Potter. You are to stay and make sure not one wand is flicked or else all five of you will be working in the gardens until all the gnomes are gone.” 

“But Mum it’s freezing.” Ron groans. 

“Well then you better do as I say, and being that I have no more house duties for tonight, I’m off to talk to Hermione. Goodbye.” At this she stomps away. 

Sympathetically, Arthur pats his youngest son's shoulder before walking off to his shed. 

A tense silence falls over the group as each of the Weasley’s exchange glares. 

“Well time for dishes!” Harry tries to break the tension. 

Scowling, they all work in silence.

[joachimnapoleon]

“Aim for the heart, but spare the face”

The 4th and final part of my narrative of Murat’s last days. (Part 1: Murat’s Fateful Decision) (Part 2: The Capture of Murat) (Part 3: Prelude to a Show Trial)

***

The commission chosen to enact the farcical trial of Murat convened on the 13th of October. A Sicilian named Captain Starace was to selected to serve as Murat’s advocate, and pleaded with Murat to change his mind about appearing in front of his judges to defend himself. Murat replied that the members of the court were not judges, but executioners; he ordered Starace to say nothing in his defense. Shortly after, the commission sent in a rapporteur to interrogate Murat, asking him his name, age, and homeland. Murat angrily declared: “I am Joachim, King of the Two Sicilies; get out, Monsieur!”

The trial concluded around four o’clock in the afternoon. He was unanimously found guilty, ironically on the basis of a law regarding insurrection which he had enacted himself in June of 1810. Murat received the news of his death sentence with, writes the Marquis de Sassenay, “a disdainful calm.” The sentence was to be carried out, he was told, in a quarter of an hour. He was permitted to write a final letter to his wife and children.

My dear Caroline,

My last hour has come; in a few moments I shall have ceased to exist; you will no longer have a husband, and my children will have no father. Never forget me; my life has not been tainted by any injustice. Farewell my Achille, farewell my Letitia, farewell my Lucien, farewell my Louise; show yourselves to the world worthy of me. I leave you without kingdom and without property, in the midst of my numerous enemies; be constantly united, show yourselves superior to misfortune, think of what you are and of what you have been, and God will bless you. Do not curse my memory. Know that my greatest pain, in the last moments of my life, is to die far away from my children.

Receive my paternal blessing; receive my kisses and my tears. Always have present in your memory your unfortunate father.

[Murat writes his final letter, by Jacques Onfroy de Bréville]

Into the envelope along with the letter, he placed several locks of his hair.

Completing this final task, he was met by Canon Masdea, the septuagenarian priest to whom Murat had bequeathed some money for the San Giorgio church two years prior. The priest prevailed upon Murat to sign a written declaration stating that he was dying as a Christian. He also managed to persuade Murat to make confession, standing firm on the matter when the officer on guard attempted to object due to a lack of time.

“Let us go,” Murat declared after receiving absolution, “and God’s will be done!”

At six o’clock in the evening, he was led out to the narrow courtyard of the castle. He coldly refused both the blindfold and the stool that were offered him. Scarcely ten feet separated him from the twelve-man firing squad. In his hand he held the miniature likenesses of his wife and children, which he now pressed to his chest.

“Soldiers,” he addressed the firing squad calmly, “do your duty. Aim for the heart, but spare the face.”

He gave the order to fire himself.

Details of the aftermath of the execution vary, with one account claiming three pistol shots were discharged into Murat’s head after he fell, which, if true, is excessive enough to appear as more an act of malice than a standard coup-de-grâce. There seems to be no doubt that he was killed instantly by the firing squad’s volley, fired at such a close range that his body was described as “mutilated.” His body was placed into a plain coffin and buried without ceremony in the yard of the church that had benefitted from his kindness two years earlier. Today a marker lies within the church, commemorating the spot where Murat’s remains are said to rest.

[Plaque marking Murat’s final resting place in San Giorgio church in Pizzo]

Caroline Murat had received no news of her husband’s whereabouts or well-being in months. Eight days after his execution, she wrote to Catherine, wife of her brother Jerome, that “this uncertainty is becoming unbearable.” Her older sister Elisa learned that Murat had ended up being apprehended in Calabria. Both sisters expressed the hope that he would be allowed to continue his journey from there to Trieste, but Caroline remained riddled with anxiety. “Oh, my dear Elisa,” she wrote, “loss of fortune seems nothing beside the agonies which oppress me and I would be happier completely destitute if I could thereby spare my husband and myself the cruel sufferings… until the hour when he can arrive and I can know him safe.”

The same day that Caroline wrote the letter above—November 2—news of her husband’s execution was printed in the Wiener Zeitung, the newspaper she had taken to reading daily since arriving in Trieste. Her servants endeavored to hide the paper, substituting another in its place; but she insisted on receiving it. It was yielded to her with reluctance. Catherine Davies, an Englishwoman who had served the Murats since 1804, describes the ensuing scene: “Upon reading the account of her husband’s melancholy death, she was attacked with violent fits which lasted until morning. The dear children were asleep, and knew nothing of their mother’s grief, nor of their own loss, till the following day, when seeing every one looking sad around them, Prince Lucien said to my late English companion, ‘Mimie, what is the matter, that you all wear such sorrowful faces: is papa dead?’ She replied she feared he was. At this moment, they all wept bitterly, for they were tenderly attached to their father, and he equally to them.”

While the Bourbon courts in France and Naples rejoiced at the news of Murat’s death, there were many who responded with horror, grief, and anger. General Guglielmo Pépé, who had come to love and admire Murat even in spite of his political differences with his former king, fell into this latter camp. “The tragical death of Joachim,” he writes, “plunged me into the deepest grief, which I only mastered after a long lapse of time: the whole country was horror-stricken by this sad event. Even to this day, when the inhabitants of Pizzo have occasion to travel the kingdom, they carefully conceal the place of their nativity, so great is the stigma it casts upon them.” Lord Byron, who had, years earlier, written a poem about Murat, likewise lamented the legendary cavalier’s sad fate. “Poor, dear Murat, what an end! …. His white plume used to be a rallying point in battle, like Henry IV’s. He refused a confessor and a bandage; so would neither suffer his soul or body to be bandaged.”

Napoleon, arriving on Saint Helena two days after the execution of his brother-in-law, did not receive news of it until months later. Writes Barry O’Meara, who briefly served as Napoleon’s physician on the island, “Some short time after his arrival at Longwood, I communicated to the Emperor the news of Murat’s death. He heard it with calmness, and immediately inquired if he had perished on the field of battle? At first I hesitated to tell him that his brother-in-law had been executed by military law. On his repeating the question, I informed him of the manner in which Murat had been put to death, to which he listened without any change of countenance.” This sangfroid was typical of Napoleon, who disdained outward displays of emotions (except for anger) in front of his subordinates. But his valet, Marchand, who had been with Napoleon longer and knew how to read him better, remarks in his memoirs that “This news had saddened him, and I heard him talking to Dr. O’Meara, which renewed this pain as he spoke. He said nothing of the King of Naples’ wrongs toward him, adding that to go down to Calabria with fifty men was the action of a madman, but those who had ordered his death were monsters.” General Gourgaud, in his diary, describes Napoleon, later in the evening after learning of Murat’s death, as “sad, preoccupied, plays mechanically with some coins during the reading. He suffers, we see it clearly.” Murat would remain a recurring subject of the Emperor’s conversation during his time on Saint Helena. His reflections on his brother-in-law were as conflicted as his feelings towards him had been throughout their relationship, ranging from fond reminiscences of Murat’s battlefield gallantry, to bitterness over his defection in 1814, to ridicule of his outlandish attire and poor judgment. He never ceased to regret Murat’s absence at Waterloo.

It is impossible to know for certain what Murat’s true intentions were as he began taking the road towards Monteleone prior to his arrest in Pizzo. He was indecisive by nature, but also stubborn. As appalling of a prospect as he found the idea of a life in exile in Austria, his desire to be reunited with his family was genuine; his children were never far from his mind. Yet equally abhorrent to him was the idea of living the rest of his life in a state of dishonor, having relinquished, without a fight, a throne he had never abdicated. The accounts of Galvani and Franceschetti both make it clear that his mind changed throughout the journey between Corsica and Calabria, his natural optimism and faith in himself repeatedly overriding the reality of the hopelessness of his original enterprise. Perhaps he truly had resolved to go on to Trieste by the time his party encountered Trentacapilli; if so, this only renders the outcome all the more tragic.

Some historians have theorized that his voyage to Pizzo was a deliberate act of suicide. This ignores not only his repeated insistences that he intended to join his family in Trieste, but also the resistance and attempt to avoid capture he made prior to his apprehension. If Murat was seeking death, he was not seeking it in the manner of a common criminal. He had been a soldier for his entire adult life, and would have preferred to die like one. Upon his return to Naples from his final defeat at Tolentino, where, like Ney at Waterloo, he appears to have been attempting to get himself killed, Murat dolefully remarked to Caroline that he had been unable to meet death. 

“Thus,” writes his former aide-de-camp Macirone, “fortune was again adverse to courage, and the blood of a hero was permitted to be lawlessly, uselessly, and inhumanly shed, by a sovereign who had never been wronged by his victim. His death was ignominious only to his enemies. Those who had been his subjects will revere his memory. France may reproach it for the evils to which he unintentionally contributed… but when the book of truth shall be unfolded, it will appear that the errors of Murat were not errors of the heart.” It is as fitting an epitaph as that of Murat’s childhood friend Agar, the Count of Mosbourg, who devoted to him a monument listing his military exploits and achievements, closing with the declaration: “He knew how to conquer, he knew how to reign, he knew how to die.”

***

Sources:

-Atteridge, A. Hilliard. Joachim Murat: Marshal of France and King of Naples, 1911

-Bear, Joan. Caroline Murat, 1972

-Cole, Hubert. The Betrayers, 1972

-Colletta, Pietro, General. Histoire des six derniers mois de la vie de Joachim Murat, 1821

-Davies, Catherine. Eleven Years’ Residence in the Family of Murat, King of Naples, 1841

-Franceschetti, Dominique-César, General. Mémoires sur les événemens qui ont précédé la mort de Joachim Ier, Roi des Deux-Siciles, 1826

-Galvani, Mathieu. Mémoires sur les événemens qui ont précédé la mort de Joachim-Napoléon, Roi de Deux-Siciles, 1843

-Gourgaud, Gaspard, General. Sainte-Hélène - Journal Inedit de 1815 à 1818 en 2 volumes

-Macirone, Francis. Interesting Facts Relating to the Fall and Death of Joachim Murat, 1817

-Marchand, Louis-Joseph. In Napoleon's Shadow: The Memoirs of Louis-Joseph Marchand, Valet and Friend of the Emperor 1811–1821, 2018

-O’Meara, Barry Edward. Napoleon in exile, or, A voice from St. Helena, Vol 1, 1827

-Pépé, Guglielmo. Memoirs of General Pépé, Vol 2, 1846.

[babylooneytoonz]

Trip Mines & Broken Hearts [Tommy Shelby x Reader]

Quick link to find all the other parts here.

Part-5

In the bleak midwinter, when everything was dark and decaying, you had one hope. A tiny ray of light; in the form of her shrill cries—

You named her Sophie.

All that pain, all those endless hours of screaming, cursing and writhing in pain, she had finally made an appearance at 4 am on an early winter morning in Birmingham, her tiny black hair mopped over her small, round head. She was beautiful, her tiny hand, it could fit in your wedding band.

She had her father's blue eyes, and maybe, she would have Tommy's cheekbones when she grew up.

How you loved those cheekbones—

As you nursed your newborn to sleep, you felt a pang in your chest, and a sudden breathlessness; your heart aching for him. If only, he was here right now. If only, he could hold her, press her to his chest, and promise he will watch over her for the rest of his life, devoting himself to the daughter he shared with you.

Now, six years later, the pain wasn't as severe as it was before.

Time heals all wounds—

No, it doesn't heal them, you just get so immune to the pain, you stop feeling it anymore. It's as though it becomes a part of you—

If there was one thing you could not have, the love of the man you wanted, you had found companionship; friendship in form of Theodore Wilkinson, your husband. Your daughter, your precious angel, your little Sophie, had a loving, nurturing father and you were happy.

But you couldn't stop her from growing up, could you?

You wished sometimes, that she was still a babe, curled at your chest, nestled away from all the harsh realities of this world, unaware, in a bliss. But then, she was growing up.

She was six today—

Although you couldn't afford to throw her a lavish birthday party, with all the money restrictions, the rent you had to pay, taking care of your husband, who was slowly dying, succumbing finally, to the infection that his leg had caught back in France, you did still do what little you could to make her day. Three of her friends had just left, their tummies full, remnants of the delicious chocolate lavendar cake you had baked still on the corners of their lips.

You stood by the door to your parlor, your eyes trained on your daughter who was sprawled over the carpeted floor, unwrapping what little presents she had, while her father sat in his wheelchair, not far from her, an excited, happy look on his face, causing you to smile as well. On days like this, you felt blessed, you felt thankful, that your daughter had gotten the love of both, a father and a mother. No child should be deprived of that.

Your husband's eyes caught you and you saw him bend slightly, whispering something into Sophie's ears as he slowly wheeled his way towards where you were standing.

"What's going on in that pretty head of yours?" He asked you.

"She's growing up so fast, Theodore, I just—" You grumbled, both your eyes trained on her as she was still unwrapping one of the boxes, "— I wish time would slow down. It's like her childhood is slipping away and I'm losing you to —" You bit back on your tongue, to refrain yourself from saying it out loud, but it was too late, he had already caught you.

"T's okay love, you can say it. I'm dying. But there's nothing to be sad in that, is there? You gave me a new life in France, if it wasn't for you, I would have died back then, wouldn't have had the fuckin' chance to father such a lovely child."

"Theo—" You whispered, placing both your hands on his shoulders as you towered over him, giving them a slight squeeze.

This man had been nothing but kind to you. You wished you could love him the way you loved the man who didn't look back, left you and your daughter but you couldn't. No matter how hard you tried, there is a thing about love—the heart had a mind of its own; it wanted what it wanted, no matter how hard you tried to confuse it. Theo had always known that you didn't love him, not the way a wife should love his husband but he was okay with it. He knew that someone had broken your heart, so bad, you had stopped living, you just existed and he had often tried to ask you who he was, but you had never told him.

It surprised you today, when out of the blue, on your daughter's sixth birthday, he asked you the question you didn't want to answer.

"Would you deny a dying man a last wish?"

"You are not dying Theo—"

"Who was he, love? The man that broke your heart? Who's her father?" He pointed towards Sophie with his eyes.

"You are."

"Biological father, love." He said, a little sternly.

You sighed, your fingers toying aimlessly with each other. You had tried to stir him away from this for six years, but you didn't think you could lie any longer. And he was right, not when he was inching closer to death everyday. You could already see his bones, he hardly could keep food inside, you often had to keep him on a liquid diet.

So you decided, that tonight in bed, you would tell him everything because he deserved to know. And when you did, needless to say, he was shocked.

"Thomas Shelby? Thomas Fucking Shelby? That bloody gangster that threatens men with those fookin' razor blades?" Your husband had a priceless look on his face; as though he had mined out diamonds and was about to get rich.

"You talk about him like he's some fuckin' God."

"He is, to almost all of Birmingham, you see there's only a thin line between God and the devil, the devil is, after all, a fallen angel—" He groaned as he tried to get comfortable in bed but could not do so, his sore body making him almost curse in pain.

You couldn't help roll your eyes at him, shrug your shoulders and lay down on your back, closing your eyes, as you mumbled, "Go to bed, Theo, I have to be at the clinic early in the morning." You worked at a tiny clinic on the other side of the town; a clinic for the lower middle class, those who couldn't afford going to expensive doctors. But he paid you enough to keep your house over the head.

The next morning, you had woken up early and headed to the clinic and much to your dismay, there had been a blast at a factory nearby, which meant you had to extend your shift by a few hours as the casualty number was starkly high. It was almost ten at night and you had been working non stop for almost fourteen hours. Your body felt like it had been run over by a motorcar, your shoulders were tense and you had a spurting headache that caused you to groan in annoyance at any sound that you came across, while walking back home.

Little did you know that you were soon going to forget all this—

Your house was eerily quiet, and usually you could hear the sound of your daughter's words even when you had not started climbing up the stairs to your front door. But of course, it was late at night and it wouldn't be a surprise if your husband had somehow managed to tuck her in.

You unlocked the door with a sigh, stepping in and immediately sliding out of your shoes. The living room was dark, but you could see that the lights in Sophie's bedroom were switched on. Taking off your overcoat, you placed it on the hanger, noting an unfamiliar overcoat hanging on it. Who was visiting your house at 10 at night?

"Sophie, baby?" Your voice was trembling slightly, ringing through the hallway as you aimlessly called out; although you didn't know why.

That's when you heard the floorboard creak, somewhere in the house, just lightly but you had still caught it; and you knew you weren't alone.

The first thing you did was lunge at a vase nearby as a reflex, curling your fingers tight around it; switching on the light.

A sudden panic took over you and you turned towards the intruder.

"It's me, put the fucking vase down."

Just like his words, the vase slipped from your fingers, crashing against the floor as the horror sunk in. Oh, how you had imagined this night to be; the countless times you had rehearsed in your mind, what you were going to say to him, but right now, all you could manage to do was let out the breath you didn't even realise you were holding in.

It was as though you were standing face to face with your past—

After all these fucking years, he looked just the same; just a tad bit older perhaps & the way his hair was styled was so different now; and was that pain in his eyes? Was that regret? Regret he fucking left you like a discarded toy—

The relief of seeing him again was short-lived, and what followed it was a fear, a mother's instinct.

"Sophie. Where is she? Where is she?" You screamed out loud, hot tears sliding out of your eyes.

"Fucking hell," He almost snapped in annoyance, "Stop, she's inside —"

"How the fuck did you even find us? What the fuck are you doing in my fucking house?"

You were going mad; you were going crazy. You could feel your body shake like a leaf. Tommy tried to hold you by your shoulders to stop you from shaking but you pushed his hands away, taking a step away.

"Sophie?" You turned back around; running towards your daughter's bedroom. Pushing the door open, you stepped in, only to find her asleep in bed, her teddy bear tucked into her arm. You slid down on the floor, next to the bed, running your fingers through her hair and slowly, she fluttered her eyes open, probably having been woken up from sleep, "Mummy?"

"Baby, mummy's here, you don't have to be afraid. Where's your daddy?"

She shifted in bed, bringing her teddy up to her chest, "Which daddy mummy? The old one or the new one?"

"What do you mean? Of course, you've got one daddy, baby."

There was a sudden silence in the room. It didn't make sense; there sat your daughter's real father, in the living room of your house. And here, your daughter's words didn't make any sense.

"Daddy said that he is my new daddy, I haven't seen him since then," your daughter's sleepy voice reached you.

"When did this happen, baby?"

"When daddy took me to meet my new daddy. Now will you come to bed with me?" She rubbed her sleepy eyes with her palms.

It all made sense now.

"Go to sleep, baby. Mummy will join you in a minute. Mummy wants to speak to your daddy."

Her real daddy.

You were about to stand up, when her sleepy, broken words reached your ears, "Is my new daddy still here? I want him mummy."

You sighed, barely audible as you tucked her into her blanket, kissing her forehead before you made your way out, closing the door slowly without slamming in. Your shoes flapped against the wooden floorboards as you stormed your way into your bedroom, only to find an empty bed, the place where Theodore used to rest. You didn't understand.

Your nostrils flared; your eyes burnt in hatred. That man had probably done something, of course, he was Thomas Fucking Shelby, capable of anything.

You stepped into the hallway, screaming his name until you were once again standing face to face.

"THOMAS?!"

Today, you were going to confront him, this was the day you had been waiting for, but you sure had hoped it would be in better circumstances—

"Where the fuck is my husband?"

"Sit down."

"Thomas, just tell me what did you do to him? Did you kill him? Did you fucking kill him because you couldn't stand —"

"FOR FUCKS SAKE, WILL YOU BLOODY SIT DOWN?"

He cut you off, screaming back at you, just as loudly as you were screaming, your chest heaving up and down.

Finally, you dropped down on the edge of the couch, as though you were nothing but a lifeless corpse. You looked at him, your eyes clouded with mist; hatred in your eyes.

"You shouldn't have come back, I was so happy without you."

From the corner of your eye, you saw Tommy sit doen on a couch opposite to you, his elbows coming to rest on his knees as he pushed them apart, arching his body forward, his cold, conniving eyes scrutinizing you. His fingers shuffled through his breast pocket to pull out a box of cigarettes and a stick, pinning it to his lips. As you saw him light a match, his face glowing orange under the light from the tiny source of fire, you could see the haunting in his eyes, the questions buried deep within his soul.

"Why didn't you fucking tell me?"

You sat back, your back brushing against the backrest as you eyed him, a bitter smile creeping against the corner of your lips.

"What good would have come from telling you anyway? You were busy with that blonde bartender of yours, what was her name? Ah, yes, Grace."

Tommy's hand clenched into a fist at the mention of her name, his knuckles almost cracking and a warning look crossed his eyes.

"Don't drag her into this mess you've fucking created."

"Where is my husband?" Your immediate question followed; your body a little relaxed now. If he wanted to have a discussion like adults, you were going to give him one.

"Your husband—" You stiffened, sensing the bitterness in his throat; the way the words rolled out of his lips, venomous, ugly. You could sense the danger lurking within the walls of his emotionless eyes, a danger you wanted to shield your daughter from.

"I freed him."

You stood up, towering over him, blinking; confused.

"What?"

You watched as the man you once loved bring the cigarette up to his lips, smoke belting out of his mouth, coiling around him like a snake.

"Guess I had a visitor, an unexpected one, for that matter. At first, I didn't believe what he told me; that he was your fucking husband."

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY HUSBAND?"

"I just handed him the gun—"

You could listen no more. Your throat contracted, a sudden feeling of someone choking and twisting your insides took over you, and you doubled up, pressing your palm to your lips, a wave of nausea hitting you. You then recoiled away from him.

He killed your husband.

"Why?" You whispered; your tears falling freely off your eyes, looking into his eyes for any form of emotion, if there was any left inside of him.

"He begged me for release."

You knew he wasn't lying, the man that was dead inside him, the boy you knew, did not lie to you. Not when he was looking you straight in the eye. Your memories flew back to the day he had confessed to not having given Jasper the locket that was intended to be his goodluck charm, which was now dangling from his waistcoat.

"You couldn't live without taking another one's life, did you? You couldn't fucking keep your hands off my husband, you fucking did it again."

Tommy stood up, letting the butt of the cigarette drop to your floor and he stomped on it, his hands flying to his waist. He took a step forward, towering over you, his mind struggling to keep in control the rage that was building inside him.

"I did what he asked me to, hand him the fucking gun. It's a soldier's thing, you won't bloody understand."

"Are you religious, Thomas?" You stood up abruptly, ignoring how close you were standing from him, your chest almost parallel to his.

"Never was."

"Then stop trying to be a fucking God."

You felt numb, your thoughts scattered, your heart wailing in agony. You turned away from him, you couldn't look him in the eye. He was a murderer. Even if it was your husband who had wanted it.

You knew it, with every bit of your heart, how Theodore hated being like this; in pain, like a heavy burden on your shoulders, but he shouldn't have done it. The realisation hit you, how he had asked you who Sophie's father was and maybe, just maybe you had lied, maybe it wouldn't have happened.

"Is she mine?" That cold voice was at it again, clawing through your mind like a shovel.

After all that you had been through, he thought she wasn't his.

"Why are you here if she isn't yours?"

He didn't answer.

"Get the fuck out of my house, out of my life, back into the fucking hole you crawled out from and out of my daughter's life. You've murdered my husband, I wouldn't let you touch a hair on my girl's head."

Something shattered around you; a beautiful vase, scattering to pieces around you as Thomas took his anger out on it, smashing it to the wall. Without saying anything, you watched as he turned around, taking his coat off the coat hanger.

"If she's my girl, there's no one that can stop me from seeing her, ay?"

With one last warning, your front door slammed shut and you were engulfed in a sudden emptiness, in a big empty house— a widow, with a daughter to raise.

(A/N - The GIFs are not mine, found one on Google and liked it so I saved it. Let me know if it is yours and I will credit you. 💕)

@sighonahurricane hope you like it.

[vampire207343]

Venus Mikaelson

What if....Fem!Harry Potter, Stella Lilian Potter died, 10 years after the war with the Dark Lord after her own husband Ron Weasley betrayed her after she catch him having an affair with their bestfriend Hermione Granger. She was reborn into another world as Venus Gilbert.

My parents Miranda and Greyson Gilbert died last Summer because of my sister Elena who is born a month after me well that's what Everyone tells me that we're twins born in different months from one another. I was in the car with our parents seating beside Elena, when our parents drowned and I also died for about 10 secounds before someone manage to bring me back to life, but every since I return from the dead the mark of the deathly Hallow has reappear on my left arm like a tattoo and my memories of my past life as Stella Potter has return to me as well as my Magic.

After our parents funeral, Jeremy and myself left Mystic Fall for a little while to get away and mourn our parents death, which our Aunt Henna allow us to get away for a time being, Jeremy and I have been to Australia and Georgia during the Summer after our parents death, before we return to Mystic Fall for the new School year.

I also been collecting copies of many Witch Grimoire I find during our travel and I made sure that Jeremy and myself are wearing a Vervain necklace, before we return to Mystic Fall. Which happen to be a Supernatural Central.

   2 months after the First day od School Viki Donovan, who happen to be Jeremy's girlfriend and end up getting turn to a Vampire and was killed by one of the Salvator Brothers, and one of Elena's new Boy Toys. Elena tried to have Damon Salvator compell Jeremy to froget any feelings he currently have for Viki after they killed her.

Elena removed his vervain necklace before Damon compell him again before returning his necklace unknown to both Elena and Damon Salvator that Venus saw what they did to her younger brother.

The supernatural Drama center around Elena, so I avoid her group as much as I can so that I don't get drag to her Drama that might end up killing me. I Meet the Hybird Klaus Mikaelson the guy who wanted to Sacrifice Elena to break the curse that his mother put on him. And Aunt Jenna was the Vampire Sacrifice. If Elena wasn't keeping it secret  from Aunt Jenna what has been happening then she might still be alive. I don't fully blame Klaus for Aunt Jenna's death, I blame Elena and her boy toys. 

🌹🌸🌹

 1 and 1/2 years later...

   I meet Klaus Mikaelson's younger brother Kol Mikaelson and the both of us end up falling in love with each other. And evenutally began dating one another in Elena's displeasure but I didn't care about that, Kol is the first guy I ever fell in love with in this new life of mine. But her happinese didn't stay for long, Elena and Jeremy hurt her the worse way by Killing Kol when he tried to stop tgem from reviving Silas the immortal, but they didn't listned  all they cared anout is getting the Cure for Elena so that she can human again, not caring that Venus Loves Kol, they putt a dagger into his heart unknown  to both Jeremy and Elena that Venus saw what they did. She expected this from Elena but not from her brother who she help rise when their parents are to busy with Elena.

    I mourn his death for days, like I did my own parents death and since I am the mistress of Death I was able to summon hos soul by my side he told me about a spell that would be able to resurrect him which Death allow since Kol was not ment to stay dead. I aquired two blood belonging to Elijah and Finn Mikaelson along with Kol's own ash. I aquired Finn's blood before he was kill by Elena and her friends since Death warn me to take a few sample of Finn Mikaelson's blood which I did.

But It took me 4 months to get everything prepared and ready in the Maraduders retreats the house that I build just outside Mystic Fall that no one knows about with the exception of Kol. By the time everythung is ready for the Ritual. Jeremy Was already dead for months during the quest in Elena's search for the cure. Bonnie Bennett girlfriend of Jeremy plan to lower the viel to the other side  just as Venus Gilbert began the ritual bring Kol back to life.

"Le Sang des deux feres, les cendres de leurs morts. Le sang des deux feres, les cendres de leurs morts " Venus Gilbert chanted spell 2 times, during the highest point of the moon.

Which was successful Kol Mikaelson is alive once more as a vampire again but regain something he thought he will never have again after being turn to a vampire, his magic, he js now the Original Heretics.

In the next few days would be their High School Graduation while Kol waited for her in Marauders retreats. Rebekah and her brothers now knew that Venus Gilbert managed to bring their dead brother Kol Mikaelson back to life at the same time Bonnie Bennett brought back Jeremy but their was price to bring Jeremy back to life, a Life for a Life. 

Venus and Kol are waiting at tge end of Graduation before they leave Mystic Fall for good.

But the First Mikaelson to leave Mystic Fallhas been Elijah and Klaus who are now in New Orlean, While Rebekah spend the summer with Matt Donovan traveling like they both agree on before graduating High School. While Kol and I decided to go to England and I'm going attend Combridge University and oddly enough Kol decided to join me to School.

   Kol and myself heard from Rebekah that Klaus gotten a she-wolf pregnant and it's not just any wolf either, it's tge very werewolf that Tyler Lockwoid end up cheating on Caroline Forbes. And Elijah seem to care for the little She-wolf, Hayley Marshall.

Elena and her friends fonally found out from Jeremy that Bonnie is dead. And Elena is devested maybe she will feel a small degree on how I felt when she and Jeremy killed Kol. Elena dosen't know how to handel it, but her boyfriend Damon Salvator was their for her when she discovered that her best friend Bonnie  Bennett is dead.

On May 2, 2012

   Hayley Marshall gaved birth to Klaus Mikaelson's Miracle Daughter Hope Mikaelson, who was taken by the New Orlean witches and they plan on sacrificing the new born, but Klaus, Elijah along with the newly turn Hybird Hayley saved Hope Mikaelson from being Sacrifice.

     Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall gaved their Daughter Hope to Rebekah to hide along side his younger brother Kol and Venus until they had taken care of the problem that want Hope dead.

      Luckly it's school break that Kol and Venus manged to protect Hope along side Rebekah, but it wasn't long When Klaus and the others has taken care of the witches of New Orlean. And Kol and Venus return to England for 1st year, in tge 2nd semester.

3 years later...

Kol Mikaelson and Venus Gilbert finally geaduate College now their moving to New Orlean to help Klaus and the others take care off their long lost Aunt Dahlia who take every first born child of the Mikaelson family as payment for helping her dister Esther Mikaelson have children of her own.

They even meet Klaus and others long lost older Sister Freya Mikaelson who was taken by Dahila when she was give years old. The family is trying to hide 3 years old Hope Mikaelson while they all take care of Dahlia and Easther Mikaelson along with the newly resurrected Finn Mikaelson that taken over the body of Vincent.

And with Kol Mikaelson now being the Original Heretic, he is much powerful than Finn currently is and he might even be stronger than his brother Klaus who's the original Hybird.

    Klaus and the others finally manged to kill Dahlia, Esther and Finn Mikaelson. They were able to save Hope before she is taken from her family. Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall are finally reunited with their little daughter Hope Andrea Mikaelson.

Davina Claire the wife of Klaus Mikaelson help Hayley and Klaus rised their little daughter.

   Kol and Venus spend travel that year after taking care off Dahlia, Esther and Finn. They travel Alaska and now they are in Paris France where Kol propose to Venus Gilbert, And she said "Yes".

      So the whole family are gathering in New Orlean for Venus and Kol's wedding. But they didn't invited Venus two siblings since Elena might try to ruwin the wedding just so she can stop Venus from marrying Kol and that is something Both Caroline and Rebekah agree that Elena might do if she was invited to the wedding and Venus isn't going to chance it by inviting her sister. Venus use to be so close to her younger brother Jeremy Gilbert until he willingly kill Kol and that is the one thing that Venus would never forgive her brother for. 

🌹🌸🌹

1 and 1/2 year later...

On March 15, 2017

    The Hallow took possessed of Hope's five years old body so in order save Hope Mikaelson. They have decided to split the Hallow evenly before all of them going in their seperate ways.

   The first to leave New Orlean is Elijah Mikaelson and he moved to England. Then Rebekah fallow she move in Washington D.C., then their Kol and Venus who left next and they both decided to settle down in Sydney Australia. Then finally Klaus and Davina moved to New York. 

Both Venus and Davina Mikaelson are pregnant their respected husband are excited to have a child with thrir wife.

While Hayley Marshall and her daughter Hope Mikaelson moved in Mystic Fall to attend Salvator Broading School with people like herself.

Hope made friends with the Saltzman twins Lizzy and Jossie.

🌹🌸🌹

5 years later...

Davina and her daughter Faith Rosalinda Mikaelson

Are visit, Venus and Kol along with their daughter Sadiya Lilian Mikaelson

They always visit each other when they can, while they are cousin they mostly see one another as sisters. They are only 5 years old but they are already smart enough to know that their Klaus and Kol Mikealson can't be near one another it's to dangerous because of the enity that was split equally between their Aunt and Uncles before they were born to saved Faith's 10 years older half sister Hope Mikaelson who they have never meeg before.

6 years later..

   Hope Andrea Mikaelson is now 16 years old, but she is jealous of her younger half sister she never meet since she gotten the chance to grow up with their father, while he can't go near her without endanger her life that it feels like I don't exist to him anymore since he never try to contact her the only one stay in contact with her is Her Aunt Freya and that's because she dosen't have a hallow sealed inside her.

      Elena Gilbert end up marring Damon Salvator but they never had children together. Their is one greatest regret she ever did force Damon to Compell her younger brother Jeremy to Kill Kol Mikaelson to stop him from stoping them search for the so call vampire "cure" but in the end Jeremy end up dead, my sister Venus end hating me and Jeremy for killing Kol. And bonnie lower viel to bring back Jeremy to life in return she died I lost my bestfriend. And Jeremy also end up hating my guts for forcing him to kill Kol which end up our sister Venus hate us even know she still never forgived us for Killing Kol even though she manged to rescurrect him.

Jeremy Gilbert end up marring a woman he meet in College after Bonnie died and they have one daughter together an 8 years old by tge name of Lydia Rose Gilbert.

[the-busy-ghost]

Shoddy History Edits: Mary Stewart, Countess of Arran

The oldest surviving daughter of James II of Scotland and Mary of Guelders, Mary Stewart was probably born in Stirling in July 1451*. Over the course of the next decade she would be joined by at least five siblings, four of whom lived to adulthood- the future James III (b.1452), Alexander Duke of Albany, John Earl of Mar, and Lady Margaret Stewart. Although their births secured the future of the Stewart dynasty, the early lives of these children were not exactly stable and Mary would lose both her parents by the age of thirteen. Following her father’s accidental death at Roxburgh in 1460, her mother took charge of the government of Scotland on behalf of the young James III, until her own early demise in late 1463. After this Mary’s powerful kinsman James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews, assumed a leading role in the kingdom’s affairs but when he died in turn in 1465, things began to get a bit out of hand. Possession of the king’s person was a valuable commodity during Scottish minorities and it wasn’t long before the favoured tactic of ‘rule by kidnap’ was employed by Robert, Lord Boyd. 

In summer 1466, a group of Boyd supporters led by Robert’s brother, Alexander Boyd of Drumcoll, seized the fourteen year old James III while the king was out hunting near Linlithgow, and took control of government. A  reasonable amount of nest-feathering ensued, which was not entirely unexpected. However the Boyds seem to have overstepped the mark when, on or around 26th April 1467, Lord Boyd’s eldest son Thomas was created Earl of Arran and wed the king’s older sister Mary. We don’t know what Mary herself thought about this sudden development but her brother certainly didn’t like it- James would claim in later years that he wept at the wedding, but was unable to stop it out of fear that he and his brothers would be destroyed. This bold move from the Boyds- whose chief representative was only a lord of parliament before 1467- may not have impressed the wider political community much either, especially since Mary was the eldest daughter and was probably expected to make an important match with another powerful European dynasty*. After all, several of her paternal aunts had married into princely dynasties- like the late Margaret (d.1445), who had married the dauphin of France, Isabella (d. after 1494) who married the duke of Brittany, and Eleanor (d.1480) who married the (Arch)duke of Further Austria, while three other aunts had also been involved in important, if obviously less impressive, marriage negotiations. During her mother’s negotiations with Margaret of Anjou in 1460, Mary herself had been suggested as a bride for Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, the son of the exiled Henry VI of England. But as fate would have it, neither of James III’s sisters were destined to marry outside the kingdom- although, like her younger brother Alexander, Mary would experience her fair share of European travel.

After three years of power, the tide began to turn for the Boyds in the summer of 1469. Robert, Lord Boyd had been busy over the past year arranging the king’s marriage to Margaret, daughter of Christian I of Denmark, and now he and his son Thomas, Earl of Arran, had the honour of escorting the royal bride back to Scotland. But in the meantime James III had finally managed to seize the reins of government, and, by the by, he had also come to the conclusion that Lord Boyd and his son weren’t really in need of their heads. This must have put something of a damper on proceedings when the Boyds’ ship docked in Leith. Later sixteenth century accounts claim that Thomas Boyd was intercepted on board by his wife Mary, who warned him of her brother’s intentions. Instead of disembarking with the rest of the fleet, the couple promptly sailed away from Scotland again, with Thomas’ father Robert joining them later in exile- a sensible precaution really since James had Robert’s brother Alexander Boyd of Drumcoll executed on the castle hill of Edinburgh a few months later, and forfeited the possessions and lives of Robert and Thomas Boyd in absentia**. Whether or not Mary played an active role in the flight of her husband and father-in-law like the sixteenth century writers claim***, we do know that she joined them in exile. Sixteenth century sources claim that the Boyds in vain sought the support of the king of France, while contemporary sources show that Mary and the Boyds took refuge in Flanders, throwing themselves on the mercy of her cousin Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. 

Bruges was then a fashionable place for exiled British royals to mooch around (Edward IV of England and co. were also in residence over the winter of 1470-71). Charles the Bold was not always a reliable ally but, in the Boyds’ case, he did at least send a message to James III through his ambassador Anselm Adornes (soon to become a favourite with the king of Scots), asking for the Scottish exiles to be pardoned and allowed to return home. James thanked the duke for his courtesy to his sister but stoutly refused, recounting the Boyds’ crimes and arguing that the duke, “ought no longer to favour traitors, who to the king’s dishonour had brought his sister to exile in many foreign lands.” So the Scottish exiles remained in Bruges for some time, staying at the Hotel de Jerusalem which belonged to Anselm Adornes while its owner went on pilgrimage to the real Jerusalem. During this time Mary gave birth to two children- James and Margaret Boyd- whose godmother was Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy. 

In late 1471, though, the situation looked like it was improving. Some modern historians interpret the sources as stating that a plan was developed for the Boyds and Mary cross the sea again, and for Mary to travel to Scotland to soften her brother up while the Boyds waited in England until it was safe for them to return. On the other hand, sixteenth century writers like George Buchanan and John Leslie were of the opinion that James III had lured his sister home under false pretences, “on account of the great love she bore to her husband.” In any case, a safe conduct from Calais was granted to the exiles, and to Anselm Adornes who was to accompany them, and they sailed for England in October 1471. Thomas Boyd said goodbye to the rest of the group in the southern kingdom, and went to the court of the newly restored Edward IV, where he had business with the king. The rest of the party went on to Alnwick, where they were to remain to await the outcome of Mary’s mission (Robert, Lord Boyd, now quite old, is supposed to have died there). Mary then crossed the border with Anselm Adornes and his wife. She is not known to have seen her first husband again. 

Little is certainly known of Mary’s career between her return to Scotland in 1471-2 and her second marriage in 1474, but clearly any plans to restore the Boyds to favour failed. Mary herself was receiving ferms from lands in Scotland by late 1473 at least, if not earlier, indicating that, if not exactly back in favour, she was at least able to conduct some business without royal obstruction. Both Leslie and Buchanan (and other writers) claim that she was detained by her brother in Ayrshire while James III wrangled a divorce between Mary and Thomas. The grounds and exact process of any such “divorce” are unknown, other than Buchanan’s puzzling story that the king summoned Thomas Boyd to Kilmarnock to answer for his crimes within sixty days and that, when Boyd naturally failed to appear, the marriage was declared illegitimate. Mary was then married (by force and “against her inclination” according to Buchanan) to James, Lord Hamilton, a man many years her senior but greatly favoured by the king. Once again we do not know Mary’s thoughts on this match, but it had taken place by Easter 1474, when, at the king’s command, “my Lady of Hammiltoune the Kingis sister” was given six ells of purple velvet for a kirtle.  We know this was not James III’s younger sister Margaret (though she did later reside in Hamilton) since in July of the same year, Lord Hamilton surrendered several lands into the king’s hands so that they could be granted back in conjunct fee to the couple, with the wife named as “Marie Senescalli ejus sponse, sorori regis”. But aside from the minor detail that Mary’s first husband was perhaps still cutting about, there were other impediments which made the new couple’s relationship less than legal. Accordingly, in April 1476, Pope Sixtus dispensed them from the impediments of consanguinity, affinity, and public honesty, and declared the child which had since been born to them legitimate. By the time of Lord Hamilton’s death three years later, at least two children had been born of the marriage- a boy named James and a girl named Elizabeth. 

In the meantime, Mary’s first husband Thomas appears to have died abroad, though we have almost no information about his life following their separation, and even the sixteenth century writers do not agree on this point. Buchanan claims that he died in Antwerp not long after the “divorce”, and was buried there with great honour on the orders of Charles the Bold (he also gives his personal opinion that James Hamilton was far inferior to Mary’s first husband- hindsight is a wonderful thing). The Italian humanist Giovanni Ferreri had obviously heard very different stories about Thomas and his character from his Scottish sources, and, in his rather unreliable continuation of Hector Boece’s history, he gave Thomas a reputation as a man capable of any vice, and claimed that, after much travelling in Europe, he was murdered in Italy by a man whose wife he had seduced. But two letters in the celebrated collection of the Pastons of Norfolk have survived which refer to Thomas Boyd’s time in England , and the first of these gives a very different character sketch to that offered by Ferreri- and a rare contemporary insight into the whole affair. On 5th June 1472, John Paston the younger wrote to his older brother of the same name:

“"Also I prey yow to recomand me in my most humbyll wyse unto the good Lordshepe of the most corteys, gentylest, wysest, kyndest, most compenabyll, freest, largeest, most bowntesous knyght, my Lord the Erle of Arran, whych hathe maryed the Kyngs sustyr of Scotland. Herto he is one the lyghtest, delyverst, best spokyn, fayrest archer; devowghtest, most perfyghte, and trewest to hys lady of all the knyghtys that ever I was aqweynted with; so wold God, my Lady lyekyd me as well as I do hys person and most knyghtly condycyons, with whom I prey yow to be aqweynted, as yow semyth best; he is lodgyd at the George in Lombard Street.**** He hath a book of my syster Annys of the Sege of Thebes; when he hath doon with it, he promysyd to delyver it yow."

We are offered no such contemporary insight into Mary’s character, which must remain something of a mystery, although if even half of what the sixteenth century writers claim about her is true, she must have had her fair share of both mettle and misfortune. Though she never saw her husband again, her two children by Thomas Boyd were eventually allowed to return to Scotland and, in the early 1480s, young James Boyd was even allowed to succeed to his grandfather’s title of Lord Boyd, possibly through his mother’s political influence. Norman MacDougall has raised the possibility that the young Boyd- then only in his early teens- returned to Scotland in 1482 in the company of his uncle Alexander, Duke of Albany, who had invaded Scotland with Richard, Duke of Gloucester and an English army. Since James III wasn’t entirely free to govern as he liked during this troubled period, MacDougall suggests that Mary Stewart may have seen her chance to rebuild the Boyd patrimony in Ayrshire. The fact that the grants of land made to James Boyd (several of which which Mary received liferent of) were part of the queen’s dower and supposedly could not be alienated meant that the grants were semi-illegal, and unlikely to have been made by the king acting on his own initiative. But James Boyd’s career was destined to be brief and when his uncle Alexander fled to Dunbar in 1483, the nephew followed and the grants made to him were rescinded. The following year, the young James (who could not have been much older than fifteen) was killed by Hugh Montgomery of Eglinton, sparking a local feud in Ayrshire between the Boyds and the Montgomeries which lasted over a century. 

Mary was only in her early thirties but she had already lost two husbands and was now left to bury her teenaged son. Of her four siblings, only two remained by 1488, since John, Earl of Mar, had perished in mysterious circumstances in royal custody in 1479 and Alexander, Duke of Albany met his end in 1485, when he was hit by a splinter from the lance of the Duke of Orleans (the future King Louis XII) during a tournament in France. However, Mary did not live long enough to see the death of her last brother James III at the Battle of Sauchieburn in June 1488, since she herself seems to have died earlier that year, aged around 37.

Her posthumous legacy, as with so many other women of her time, has generally been seen in terms of the later prospects of her offspring. The descendants of her two children by Lord Hamilton were destined to play an important role in the fraught politics of sixteenth century Scotland. From her son James Hamilton were descended the Earls of Arran, including the Regent Arran who governed Scotland on behalf of the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, by virtue of his position as “second person of the realm” and the little queen’s direct heir through his descent from her great-great aunt and namesake. Mary’s younger daughter Elizabeth Hamilton married Mathew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, and Elizabeth’s grandson the 4th Earl of Lennox would later challenge the claims to the throne of his cousin the Regent Arran, creating a rivalry at the very heart of Scottish politics. Margaret Boyd, the only surviving child of Mary’s first marriage, married first Lord Forbes and then returned to Ayrshire to marry the first Earl of Cassilis. Although Mary Stewart herself remains a shadowy figure to this day, her story- both factual and speculative- has attracted interest and sympathy throughout the centuries and still offers opportunities for further discovery.

Additional notes and references below the cut.

Edit: the ‘read more’ section isn’t showing up on a lot of versions of this, so I will just have to put all the notes and sources below, even though it’s messy:

* In the twentieth century there was quite a bit of debate over the correct dates of birth for James III and Mary. Despite what is on wikipedia, this has largely been resolved and the general consensus is that Mary was the elder sibling.

** Some historians have debated whether Mary’s marriage prospects were quite so important to the political community in 1467 as has been traditionally assumed, but the Stewart dynasty’s contemporary European marriage alliances are nonetheless important to bear in mind.

*** Lord Boyd’s two younger sons were spared the king’s wrath however, and the youngest of them, Archibald Boyd of Naristoun, was the father of Marion Boyd, a mistress of James IV.

**** In all fairness though, we have so few contemporary chronicles/histories for the reign of James III that we have to take the sixteenth century writers at their word sometimes, especially where they agree with each other. Nonetheless we should always be cautious.

**** It’s worth noting that the site of the George in Lombard street in London is still occupied today, since there has been an inn on the spot since the twelfth century and its current incarnation is an eighteenth century building housing the George and Vulture restaurant. It seems that several of the buildings of Anselm Adornes’ estate where the Boyds were housed in Bruges also still exist, though I will have to do more research on this.

References (I have included links to online versions where available):

- “The Date of the Birth of James III”- there are two articles by this name in the Edinburgh Historical Review for the years 1950 and 1951 respectively, and both of them were consulted. The author of the first was Annie I. Dunlop while corrections and debate between Dunlop and Dr William Angus comprise the second. 

- “James III”, by Norman MacDougall

- “Power and Propaganda: Scotland, 1306-1488″, by Katie Stevenson

- “The Boyds in Bruges”, W.H. Finlayson

- “A Letter of James III to the Duke of Burgundy”, C.A.J. Armstrong

- John Lesley’s “The Historie of Scotland”

- This translation of George Buchanan’s “History of Scotland”

- “Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland”, vol. 1

- “The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland”, vol. 5

- “Register of the Great Seal of Scotland”, vol. 2

-  “Vetera monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum historiam illustrantia...”, Augustin Thenier

- “The Paston Letters”, vol. 3, edited by James Gairdner 

- Giovanni Ferreri’s continuation to Boece I had to use the translation from this website since I couldn’t get access to the 1574 printing any other way, though my reading is backed up by secondary sources.  

[xtruss]

Philip, In Role With No Job Description, Was Queen’s Bedrock

— By Jill Lawless And Gregory Katz | AP | Friday April 04, 2021

LONDON (AP) — When Prince Philip married the heir to the British throne, he knew he was stepping into virtually uncharted territory.

There was no official role for the husband of a sovereign queen, no constitutional duty or legal responsibility.

“There was no precedent,” he said when he turned 90. “If I asked somebody, ‘What do you expect me to do?’ They all looked blank. They had no idea.”

His wife Elizabeth knew exactly what she had to do when she became queen in 1952 after the premature death of her father, King George VI. For Philip, though, her ascension to the throne marked the end of his career as a naval officer and a plunge into uncertainty.

But at that crucial moment, he carved out the part he would carry through the decades: the queen’s honest and unwavering bedrock of support through a turbulent reign in which the thousand-year-old monarchy was forced to reinvent itself for the 21st century. It was a role the Duke of Edinburgh played until his death Friday at age 99.

His marriage both defined and constricted his life, placing the irascible, tough-minded Philip three steps behind the queen in public, even if he played a significant role at home, including in raising four children.

His life spanned nearly a century of European history, starting with his birth as a member of the Greek royal family and ending with him as the longest serving consort in British history, surpassing Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III.

He was known for his occasionally deeply offensive remarks — and for gamely fulfilling more than 20,000 royal engagements to boost British interests home and abroad. He headed hundreds of charities, founded programs that helped British schoolchildren participate in challenging outdoor adventures.

Philip saw his sole role as providing support for his wife as she confronted the changing demands placed on a constitutional monarch who began her reign as Britain retreated from empire and steered the monarchy through decades of declining social deference and U.K. power into a modern world where people demand intimacy from their icons.

In the 1970s, Michael Parker, an old navy friend and former private secretary of the prince, said of him: “He told me the first day he offered me my job, that his job — first, second and last — was never to let her down.”

The queen — a very private person not given to extravagant displays of affections — once called him “her rock” in public.

In private, Philip called his wife Lilibet; but he referred to her in conversation with others as “The Queen.”

Over the course of the decades, Philip’s image changed from that of handsome, dashing athlete to arrogant and insensitive curmudgeon. In his later years, the image finally settled into that of droll and philosophical observer of the times, an elderly, craggy-faced man who maintained his military bearing in public despite a host of ailments.

Not content to stay on the sidelines, he promoted British industry and science, espoused environmental preservation long before it became fashionable, and traveled widely and frequently in support of his many charities.

In those frequent public appearances, Philip developed a reputation for being impatient and demanding and was sometimes blunt to the point of rudeness.

Many Britons appreciated what they saw as his propensity to speak his mind, while others criticized behavior they labeled as racist, sexist or out of touch.

In 1995, for example, he asked a Scottish driving instructor, “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?” Seven years later in Australia, when visiting Aboriginal people with the queen, he asked: “Do you still throw spears at each other?” On one visit to a military barracks, he asked a sea cadet instructor if she worked in a strip club.

Many believe his propensity to speak his mind meant he provided needed, unvarnished advice to the queen.

“The way that he survived in the British monarchy system was to be his own man, and that was a source of support to the queen,” said royal historian Robert Lacey. “All her life she was surrounded by men who said, ‘yes ma’am,’ and he was one man who always told her how it really was, or at least how he saw it.”

Lacey said that during the royal family’s difficult times with Diana, Philip spoke for the family with authority, showing that he did not automatically defer to the queen despite her position as monarch and head of state.

Philip’s relationship with Diana became complicated as her separation from Charles and their eventual divorce played out in a series of public battles that damaged the monarchy’s standing. It was widely assumed that he was critical of Diana’s use of broadcast interviews, including to accuse Charles of infidelity.

But letters between Philip and Diana released after her death showed that the older man was at times supportive of his daughter-in-law.

After Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris in 1997, Philip had to endure allegations by former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed that he had plotted the princess’s death. Al Fayed’s son, Dodi, also died in the crash.

During a lengthy inquest into their deaths, a senior judge acting as coroner instructed the jury that there was no evidence to support the allegations against Philip, who did not publicly respond to Al Fayed’s charges.

Philip’s final years were clouded by controversy and fissures in the royal family.

His third child, Prince Andrew, was embroiled in controversy over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier who died in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

U.S. authorities accused Andrew of rebuffing their request to interview him as a witness, and Andrew faced accusations from a woman who said that she had several sexual encounters with the prince at Epstein’s behest. He denied the claim but withdrew from public royal duties amid the scandal.

At the start of 2020, Philip’s grandson Prince Harry and his wife, the American former actress Meghan Markle, announced they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America to escape intense media scrutiny that they found unbearable.

Britain’s Prince Harry talks to Prince Philip as members of the Royal family appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, during the Trooping The Colour parade, in central London on June 14, 2014. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Last month, they gave an explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey, saying that Meghan had suffered neglect and racist attitudes while a working member of the family, though Winfrey later said Harry told her one particularly hurtful remark did not come from either of his grandparents. The palace called the issues raised by the couple “concerning” and said they would be “addressed by the family privately.”

Born June 10, 1921, on the dining room table at his parents’ home on the Greek island of Corfu, Philip was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew, younger brother of the king of Greece. His grandfather had come from Denmark during the 1860s to be adopted by Greece as the country’s monarch.

Philip’s mother was Princess Alice of Battenberg, a descendant of German princes. Like his future wife, Elizabeth, Philip was also a great-great-grandchild of Queen Victoria.

When Philip was 18 months old, his parents fled into exile in France. His father, an army commander, had been tried after a devastating military defeat by the Turks. After British intervention, the Greek junta agreed not to sentence Andrew to death if he left the country.

Philip went to school in Britain and entered Dartmouth Naval College as a cadet in 1939. He got his first posting in 1940 but was not allowed near the main war zone because he was a foreign prince of a neutral nation. When the Italian invasion of Greece ended that neutrality, he joined the war, serving on battleships in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

On leave in Britain, he visited his royal cousins and, by the end of war, it was clear he was courting Princess Elizabeth, eldest child and heir of King George VI. Their engagement was announced July 10, 1947, and they were married Nov. 20.

Then, in 1952, King George VI died of cancer at age 56.

Philip had to give up his naval career and his subservient status was formally sealed at the coronation, when he knelt before his wife and pledged to become “her liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship.”

The change in Philip’s life was dramatic.

“Within the house, and whatever we did, it was together,” Philip told biographer Basil Boothroyd of the years before Elizabeth became queen. “People used to come to me and ask me what to do. In 1952, the whole thing changed, very, very considerably.”

Said Boothroyd: “He had a choice between just tagging along, the second handshake in the receiving line, or finding other outlets for his bursting energies.”

So Philip took over management of the royal estates and expanded his travels to all corners of the world, building a role for himself.

Since 1956 he had been Patron and Chairman of Trustees for the largest youth activity program in Britain, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, a voluntary, non-competitive program of practical, cultural and adventurous activities for young people that exists in over 100 countries worldwide.

He painted, collected modern art, was interested in industrial design and planned a garden at Windsor Castle. But, he once said, “the arts world thinks of me as an uncultured, polo-playing clot.”

In time, the famous blond hair thinned and the long, fine-boned face acquired a few lines. He gave up polo but remained trim and vigorous.

To a friend’s suggestion that he ease up a bit, the prince is said to have replied, “Well, what would I do? Sit around and knit?”

But when he turned 90 in 2011, Philip told the BBC he was “winding down” his workload and he reckoned he had “done my bit.”

The next few years saw occasional hospital stays as Philip’s health flagged. He announced in May 2017 that he planned to step back from royal duties — after roughly 22,000 royal engagements since his wife’s coronation.

Philip is survived by the queen and their four children as well as eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

— Katz and Associated Press writer Robert Barr contributed to this report before their deaths.

[eopederson]

Centenary Celebration! Three photos of my father-in-law who turns 100 today: top in Korea during the Korean War, middle with his wife  in 2007, the year of their 65th wedding anniversary and the year she died; and wearing the hat of his WWII outfit, the 503rd paratroopers.

Although he is not of Norwegian ancestry, my father-in-law turns 100 on the Norwegian national day, and that country would be proud to have a citizen like him, for his life has been quite an amazing one. Born into rural poverty in Michigan, he was not given an opportunity to attend high school, but he did join the CCC and as a teenager worked on the construction of parks in northern Michigan and Wisconsin. Shortly after that life defining period, he joined the US military, attended “jump school” in North Carolina and Georgia (and of all things mountain school in Colorado), and was then dispatched as an army paratrooper to the South Pacific where he served for most of WW II. Fighting in the swamps of New Guinea in the early part of the war, his outfit was decimated in battle. He was given a field commission and later attended OCS in Australia - he retains fond memories of that country and its people. As the war turned in the Allies favor, he participated in the recapture of several South Pacific islands culminating in a jump on Corregidor in the recapture of the Philippines. He was positioned to be a member of the invading forces as the military pushed toward the Japanese home islands, but the war ended. He has bittersweet memories of a 60 day trip back to the US, landing in San Francisco on Christmas Day 1945. Only after almost a week more of train travel could he join his wife and three-year old daughter, born after he was deployed to the South Pacific.

After a brief stint as a civilian, he decided he wanted to be an engineer and rejoined the army. Soon thereafter he was among the first to be sent as a military advisor to Korea where he taught South Korean soldiers to blow up bridges in order to block the advance of North Korean and Chinese troops. Spending weeks on end with no contact with anyone other than South Korean soldiers (he still speaks a little Korean) and more than a few months behind enemy lines, he was in Korea until the end of that conflict. Somehow he managed to avoid serious physical injury in both WWII and Korea, though he has more than a few mental scars from the horrors of those wars.

Upon return from Korea, he was given the opportunity to attend the army engineer school then at Ft. Belvoir where he passed with honors and, despite his lack of formal early education, earned the credentials of a Professional Engineer. That was followed by two stints at U.S. military bases in post War Germany interspersed with a fascinating posting supervising construction on the Greenland ice cap (look up Camp Century on Google). At the end of his second posting in Germany he was sent to France to close down a base at Verdun when DeGaulle pulled France out of NATO. That was followed by a brief stint in Texas where he was offered a chance for promotion supervising an engineering batallion in Viet Nam. With 8 children by that point, he decided he could not take the risks and was unwilling to be away for yet another long deployment. It was time to retire and “spend more time with family!”

After retirement from the army he worked for the District of Columbia government where he was, among other things, the civil servant responsible for snow removal - a thankless job to say the least. He retired  from the DC government job at 65, worked as a consultant until age 70 and then truly retired.

His 8 children, their spouses, his 14 grandchildren, and his 12 great grandchildren had planned a major bash for this day inviting tens of friends and relatives for a celebratory lunch at Ft. Belvoir’s officers club, but Covid-19 intervened. Instead we are limited to a family gathering on his lawn, 2 meters between each of us, to sing happy birthday and raise a glass of champagne.

Happy Birthday Fred!

[chicagocityofclans]

Isabetta Sofia Cornari → Sophie Skelton  → Vampire

→ Basic Information 

Age: 601

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Bisexual

Birthday: October, 31st

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio 

Religion: Catholic

→ Her Personality

Isabetta might look gentle but that’s only true if you’re on her good side. She has a long memory and never forgets any slight against her. Holding grudges is almost a hobby at this point. But whether you manage to avoid her bad side or not she can be disarmingly charming. If on her good side you have nothing to worry about this and can rest assured her friendship is genuine but if not you are best to wonder what her motivation is. She was brought up in a family where one used any means necessary to get what one wanted, where life was a chess board. And Isabetta is very good at chess. As a result of all of this she is generally very good with people, being able to read them fairly easily and adjust accordingly. 

Under these schemes and defenses lies a romantic heart, that craves loyalty and love. She was devoted to her family until they betrayed her and now she is devoted to her sire. She also craves and loves beauty - in people, art, architecture, music and dance. It is something she can get lost in, spending hours upon hours dancing, playing her harp or just looking at art. And she thanks God for all of it. Despite what she is, Isabetta is a firm Catholic who prays daily and still attends confession when she can. 

→ Her Personal Facts

Occupation: Architectural History Teacher at Hema

Scars: None

Tattoos: None

Two Likes: Bodies of Water and Roses

Two Dislikes: Bugs and Wearing Jeans

Two Fears: Desecration and Being Abandoned 

Two Hobbies: Playing the Harp and Ballet 

Three Positive Traits: Intelligent, Charismatic and Loyal

Three Negative Traits: Vindictive, Flirtatious and Opinionated

→ Her Connections

Parent Names:

Pietro Cornari (Father): Her father was head of their wider family and a very ambitious man. His ambition kept him busy and he did not spend much time with his daughters.

Lorrella Cornari (Mother): Isabetta spent a good deal of time with her mother, learning much from her. Though most of her memories of her are fading, Isabetta can always remember the smell of her perfume. 

Sibling Names:

Maddelena Ginori (Sister): Though she learnt much from her mother, she learnt more from her sister. Being a lot older than Isabetta, Maddelena took her under her wing and taught her how to survive in the political and dangerous world of their time. As a result Isabetta idolised her eldest sibling. 

 Giulio Cornari (Brother): Giulio was as ambitious as their father and paid his family even less attention. As a result Isabetta barely had any relationship with her older brother at all.

Federico Cornari (Brother): Her other brother was as pious as the rest of the family was corrupt. He was constantly trying to get them to see the error of their ways. Isabetta loved him dearly and credits him for her faith, even if he would always despair at how much she followed in their sisters footsteps. 

Luca Cornari (Brother): Luca was the baby of the family, the only one younger than Isabetta. With their siblings grown up when they were still children, the pair were naturally close. Out of all her family he is the only one who fought for her later on and she misses him still.

Children Names:

None

Romantic Connections:

Enrico Molza (Husband/deceased): It was an arranged marriage and not a happy one. Isabetta detested him from the moment they met and it only got worse from there. After just six months of marriage, with Isabetta still not pregnant, Enrico became violent. After becoming a vampire she ensured he’d never hurt anyone again.

Platonic Connections:

Scorpius Getta (Sire): Isabetta quite literally owes her life to Getta. They clicked the first time they met at a masked ball in Venice. Neither knew then that a week later she’d be one of his vampires after he saved her from dying rather more permanently. Even if he hadn’t turned her like that though, Isabetta knows she would be loyal to him, that she’d count him as a friend, not just a maker. She admires him for everything he’s done and is trying to do. It’s been just over 600 years since he turned her but she still enjoys his company and her loyalty has only grown stronger through the years. 

Chiara Ricci (Friend): Isabetta and Chiara met when the younger vampire started teaching at the Hema academy. They bonded over stories and they fact that Chiara’s ‘parents’ are from Italy like Isabetta. 

Farrokh Alvi (Friend): In Farrokh, Isabetta found someone who like her was well versed in the ‘chess games’ of life. She enjoys his company very much and they often have a game of actual chess on the go. 

Sadie McCoy (Friend): Isabetta appreciates how well Sadie runs things, and always likes to see women in positions of authority. She can’t remember how or even when they became friends but it seems to Isabetta they have been since Sadie joined the seethe. 

Morana “Ana” Vikors (Friendly): Those who have been in the seethe a long time are all aware of each other, as is the case for Ana and Isabetta. Isabetta also deeply respects Ana for her loyalty to Getta. 

Aleksander Mazur (Vampiric Brother): His protective streak reminds her a little of her younger brother. It was maybe part of what drew them together in the beginning but she now considers him to be just as much her brother as Luca was. 

Fiona ‘Fi’ Marz (Vampiric Sister): Fi and Isabetta share a common flirtatiousness, though Fi is much more blunt. This has on occasion caused ruffled feathers between them but it never lasts long. Fi has always been so much more loyal than Isabetta’s birth family and Isabetta has become loyal to her vampiric sister too. 

Raphael Caron (Vampiric Brother): Isabetta has always enjoyed Raphael’s company and was happy to welcome him into the family. 

Petra Chak (Acquaintance): Isabetta hasn’t always liked Petra, in fact she used to get rather annoyed by her. Over the years this has mellowed and whilst they’re not friends Isabetta doesn’t mind the older vampire. 

Aisling Rois (Friendly): Isabetta met the younger at a dance class, and then again at the bar Aisling works at. They always get along quite well whenever they see each other. 

Hostile Connections:

Richard Fili (Annoyance): Fili is only 42 years older than Isabetta but he has frequently treated her like a child. That, along with the assumptions he made about her early on because of the upbringing she’d had, has gotten under her skin and she only has to think about him to get annoyed. 

Pets:

None

→ History Isabetta was born in a prospering Venice, into a family who were as rich as they were ambitious. Her childhood was fairly typical for the time. She spent little time with her father and older brothers, only really seeing them at family dinners or in church. Most of her time was spent with nannies and tutors well out of the way of the grownups. She was instructed in etiquette, languages, music, art and dance - all things she fell in love with. She grew up loving her family too, wanting to be just like her older sister. Though the one she loved the most was her sweet younger brother, Luca. He was the closest in age to her and thus the one she spent the most time with growing up. They would spend hours watching the boats from a window in their families grand home, talking about what the future would be like. Neither could have predicted what it would be, at least not for Isabetta. 

Her older sister, Maddelena, had married long before Isabetta was of age. Her husband was rich, handsome and not much older than her. It was only natural that Isabetta believed it would be the same for her, no one had ever considered to tell her Maddelena had been extremely lucky. If her husband’s much older uncle had not passed on it would have been to him that Maddelena would have been married. Their family did not marry for love, they married for political and financial gain. 

Isabetta was so excited the day her mother told her that her marriage had been arranged. But as she walked down the aisle her heart sank. Her soon to be husband was rich and powerful yes, but he was also much, much older than Isabetta and was gruff with her from the start. 

Married life wasn’t much what she had thought it would be either. She only saw her husband at dinner and when he visited her bed. Outside of that he didn’t spend any time with her. As the months passed she took solace in her faith, in her rose garden and in the rare visits with her family. At first her brother tried to tell her he was probably just getting used to having a wife and her mother tried to convince her that was just the way things were done. After a few months though she accepted she wasn’t going to have the marriage she’d always imagined and she turned her attention to doing what she had been brought up to do - be a political advantage. She’d win people over at dinner parties, gather information at balls and make introductions at Mass. For a while this seemed to gain her husband's attention and he started spending a little more time with her. It didn’t last long. After six months of marriage Isabetta still wasn’t pregnant and her husband blamed her. She wondered if he might be right but when his anger turned physical Isabetta knew she didn’t deserve it. Any feelings close to love or respect she’d had for him soured to bitter resentment. She turned to her family for help, telling them what he was doing. Her father yelled at her to just suck it up and get on with it, her mother blamed her, her eldest brother ignored her. With her sister away in France it was only Luca who stood up for her. Over the next month he got into several very heated arguments with their father over it but in the end the families reputation and connections mattered more to the head of the family than she did. 

When the Carnival came around that year Isabetta used it as an opportunity to avoid her husband at every ball they went. It was easily done as his attention was soon distracted by other women. Whilst sneaking through the crowd away from him at one such ball the ribbon on the sleeve of her dress got caught on someone. He was kind about it and they got talking. Isabetta spent the rest of the night with the mystery man and his friends. It was a welcomed breath of fresh air compared to those she was normally in the company of. She found him to be fun and engaging company. At the next ball he found her again, though she wasn’t sure how. And again she was happy to spend the evening in his company rather than that of her own so called friends. It was the same again at the next event but little did she know someone had noticed. 

The next evening she came down to the dock of her house with a bright smile, happy at the thought of another evening with her new friends. This was when her husband confronted her. When he came down he took one look at her and told her she looked like a whore, that no wife of his was going out in that dress. It was a dress that was no more low cut than was the fashion at that time. With an unnecessarily firm grip on her arm he started to pull her back towards the house. Isabetta had had enough though. She tore her arm from his grip and told him to go to hell. Storming away from him into their small garden. He followed her yelling, accusing her of being unfaithful and saying her inability to get pregnant was a punishment from God for her sins. She retorted in kind, calling him irrelevant, a whore monger and saying that God was saving her from having to bear the child of such an ogre. It was an argument she was sure would have been overheard by many if it hadn’t been Carnival. The other side of their garden wall was a busy canal, with plenty of boats passing by, but as it was their shouting was drowned out by the sounds of an entire city celebrating. Maybe if they could have heard someone would have come to intervene. 

The argument turned violent, her remark about God saving her prompting him to slap her so hard his ring cut her. Her anger was already boiling over though and instead of just taking it she punched him square in his nose. She wasn’t sure if the resulting cracking sound was his nose or her hand but she didn’t care. Even if it was her hand the look of surprise on his face had been worth it. That look turned harder though and before her racing mind could realise what was happening he’d grabbed her by the back of the neck and plunged a dagger into her chest. Without a word he released her, letting her fall to the floor where he left her. She faintly heard him telling their servants waiting at the dock that she would not be joining him. Shock soon set in both physically and mentally. She’d never imagined he’d go to this extreme. As the warmth of her own blood pooled around her though her thoughts turned to anger. Not just towards her husband but towards the father who had sealed her fate the day he’d arranged this marriage. 

Isabetta isn’t sure how long she was left lying there, maybe minutes, maybe hours. All she knows is that her view of the stars was at some point replaced with an unfamiliar face. When he spoke though she instantly recognised his voice as that of her new friend. If she hadn’t been so cold and so tired she would have wept with relief. The rest of that night and the days following are even fuzzier. She recalls saying yes to something, to drinking something and then a darkness pressing in around her. 

When she awoke it was into a completely new life. Isabetta learnt that her new friend, and now sire, was one Scorpius Getta and that she was now a vampire. More than that, she was now part of Getta’s family. Before she could fully give herself to this though there was one thing she had to do. Under another starry sky Isabetta went to say goodbye to her husband. She was pleased to find how surprised he was to see her. This time she got the better of him. She left his body where he’d left her and his head on her father's desk. 

There is only one thing she misses from her old life and that is Luca. He was the only one that stuck by her and tried to fight for her. She knew from the start her new family would do that for her as he had, and that she would do it for them too. Over the following centuries she learnt to better control herself and everything that came with being a vampire. She’s never felt the desire to leave her new family and her loyalty has only grown stronger.  

→ The Present Isabetta is in full support of what Getta is doing with the seethe and the Underground. She admires his goals and knows they come from a good place. She also doesn’t mind that it means that Chicago will likely be home for most of her life. The friends she’s made here and the job she now does haven’t hurt in making it feel like home. She’s enjoying teaching architectural history, having been interested in that area of art for most of her long life. In time she hopes to branch out into teaching other areas of art and music history too.

[josefavomjaaga]

How did Eugène occupy his time after 1814? Did he have any responsibilities or functions, or was he put in mothballs?

First of all, thanks for the question. Eugène’s final years, those ten years of agony that, ostensibly, were filled with nothing but joy and pleasure, are a sad story. But if you want the short version: yes, mothballs, mostly. Or as Eugène put it later to Planat de la Faye: »I have sacrificed my independance for the sake of my family.«

Let’s start at the beginning: In 1814, after Josephine’s death, Eugène left France for good. Despite the fact he still owned both Malmaison and Navarre he would never be allowed to return to his country of birth. After leaving wife and children in Munich, he joined the Congress of Vienna in order to receive that »suitable« principality that was to be given to him according to the treaty of Fontainebleau. He is, to my knowledge, the only »napoleonide« to go to Vienna in person.

His situation there is best summed up in a diary entry by archduke Johann, his former opponent in the war of 1809, about Eugène’s obligatory courtesy visit:

1815, October 3: Beauharnais. I quite liked this man […] He has acted most honestly of all the French; how must he feel; he a few months ago at the head of Italy, now barely a French marshal, begging for some piece of land […]

As Eugène would soon realize, he was indeed reduced to begging, and beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll leave out all the humiliations during the congress, or this will turn too long. In the end, he nominally received his principality: Ponte-Corvo. Yes, Bernadotte’s former principality. It was, however, clear that Eugène would not accept it, but immediately sell it off for, according to Auguste, »12 millions«. With that money, he could settle down whereever he pleased and whereever people wanted to have him (which excluded France, from where Napoleon’s family was exiled).

Eugène chose Bavaria, in order to please Auguste, and because he could expect this country would be the least hostile to him. He was right, as far as regular people and king were concerned, who both loved him dearly. Not so much about nobility and crown prince though.

The relationship between Ludwig of Bavaria and his French brother-in-law is a topic of its own, and I do not know enough about Ludwig to be able to truely comment. Let’s just say that as crown prince, according to the law, he did already have some say in matters of the state, and when King Max Joseph wanted to make Eugène and his children official members of the royal family, i.e., a new branch of the house of Wittelsbach, he intervened. There were family disputes and public humiliations for the pesky French brother-in-law. At one point, Eugène was so fed up he wanted to leave the country, leading to workers rioting in front of Ludwig’s house. In the end, Max Joseph had to give in. He gave Eugène a principality (Eichstätt), the title of a duke (Leuchtenberg) and a status of »first prince after the Royal house of Wittelsbach«, with the rights of a mediatised prince. That was in October 1817.

Just for comparison’s sake: The Kingdom of Italy had had about 6 million inhabitants. Eichstätt had 24,000. The principality also was deficient, it had no real economy to speak of and would always cost Eugène more than it earned him.

But he now was at least officially a nobleman of the country – or as his French biographer Françoise de Bernardy put it, he had found his »corner in the world«. His very, very small corner of the world. He did take part in all court activities, built himself a representative palace in Munich, where he had brilliant parties and receptions, thus ostensibly claiming his former rank, was officially declared colonel of a regiment of chevaux-legers (the 6th, »Leuchtenberg«-regiment), and he belonged to one of the chambers of the Bavarian parliament (Landtag). He even can be seen taking an oath to the Bavarian constitution of 1818 among the Royal princes in the drawing below (in truth, even this was vetoed by Ludwig, Eugène took his oath together with the other nobles).

He did take part in the sessions of the Bavarian parliament and at least once held a speech in German (which was duely noted in all the newspapers!) but in general his personal situation and his lack of language skills prevented him from playing an active role. Auguste was already mortified to see Eugène get involved in politics at all, especially as in the matter concerned Eugène did not agree with his father-in-law and sole protector (Max Joseph wanted to weaken the role of the parliament, Eugène wanted to strengthen it). She would always fear that at some point the family would be chucked out of this refuge they had found.

She needn’t have worried. With that incredible Beauharnais tact, Eugène, a changed man ever since the fall of the empire, overweight, taciturn, circumspect, managed to die one year before king Max Joseph and before, under new king Ludwig I., his person would have become a real burden for his family. He suffered his first stroke during mass of Holy Thursday 1823, then briefly recovered during summer and finally gradually got worse until his death on February 21, 1824.

I have left out his relations with Napoleon on Saint Helena as I am not fully clear about them myself, and in any case, those were hardly political except in the eyes of all the foreign observers and secret agents who seem to have panicked whenever Eugène was seen or even only suspected of doing ... anything.

A drawing by Godefroy Engelmann that, if not directly done by Eugène, seems to be based on a sketch by him, according to the museum of Malmaison, hints at the fact that Eugène was quite aware of what was in store for him:

That would be a French soldier deserting his comrades calling after him, led by his wife to a future where a cross (Auguste was indeed very religious) rises above some faceless figures.

Or as he told Planat: »My position here is fake and entirely dependent on the king.«

[opera-ghosts]

The History of Faust The Opera by Charles François Gounod

In the matter of the libretto of "Faust" Gounod was fortunate in finding a coadjutor in M. Jules Barbier, one of the most fertile of French dramatic authors.  Meeting Gounod one day, Barbier confided to him that he wished to make an opera libretto out of "Faust."  Gounod jumped at an idea which he had himself secretly cherished for years, and the collaboration was arranged there and then.  Barbier proceeded to discuss the plan with his friend and habitual co-worker, M. Carré, who, curiously enough, had just had a small piece called Faust et Marguerite acted at the Gymnase.  On this work Carré had probably expended all the courage he possessed.  At any rate he accepted with the greatest stolidity the notion which already fired Barbier and Gounod with such enthusiasm.  The plot, he said, was worn out; it was too vast; it was not theatrical enough; and so on.  Still, though he had no faith in the project, he would take his usual share of the collaboration.  As it turned out, Carré’s share was very limited -- just enough, in fact, to enable him to claim to have his name connected with the immortal work.   At the end of the year the opera was finished.

Marie Caroline Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite in Gounod's opera, Faust (1860)

Now came the question of finding a manager who would produce it.  One after another was tried in vain.  Roqueplan, described as the most Parisian, the shrewdest of business men, would have nothing to do with the work.  The plot, he averred, was out of date.  Imagine a theme of such human interest being ever out of date!  Alphonse Reyer succeeded Roqueplan at the Imperial Academy of Music, and to him the manuscript was next submitted.  "Not stagey enough," he exclaimed; and again "Faust" went on its travels.  At last the manager of the Théâtre Lyrique decided to give the almost despairing artists a chance.  Gounod’s score pleased him, he was good enough to say.  But, alas! the long-deferred hope was still further deferred.  A "Faust" by Dennery intervened, and delayed Gounod’s opera for a whole year. When at length the work was put in rehearsal, it was only to encounter fresh vicissitudes.  For many months, as we read in Marie de Bovet’s "Life of Gounod," the two librettists, the composer, and the manager, M. Carvalho, met in the latter’s office, and strange scenes were exacted sometimes until far into the night.  Carvalho was capricious, and day after day altered his mind about this or that.   Carré, doubtful of success as he had been from the first, yielded weakly to every whim.  Gounod protested, pleaded, threatened, and then yielded too, mainly out of deference to his nervous system, which always got excited by these encounters.  Barbier alone held out -- fought inch by inch to maintain the integrity of his work.  But for him these "epic battles" in the manager’s office might have resulted in a "Faust" very different from that which was finally brought to the test of a public interpretation on the 19th of March 1859.  It is told, indeed, that poor Barbier was so prostrated by the wranglings at these nocturnal sittings and by the worries of the rehearsals that he was unable to be present when the great night arrived. And what, then, was the immediate fate of a work which had involved so much preliminary toil and anxiety? Did Fortune smile on "Faust" that spring night? Alas! its hour of triumph was not yet come. "Decidedly the devil does not bring luck to M. Gounod," was the significant observation of a cynical "first-nighter." To say that the opera was a failure would be an exaggeration, but it certainly was not appreciated as it afterwards came to be appreciated. Scudo, of the Revue des Deux Mondes, prince of music critics, said it had only a waltz and a chorus; Berlioz (but then he was jealous) declared that the composer had not the smallest conception of the subject he sought to treat! A certain Martin d’Angers, thundering in a musical journal, concluded his notice with the hope that Gounod would never repeat the experiment. It was unlikely; masterpieces are not often duplicated. As for the public attitude, that can best be expressed by saying it was not hostile but hesitating. "The most contradictory feelings," writes one, "were manifested with regard to the new work, and opposing tides of opinion stemmed the regular current in one direction or the other." There was no enthusiasm. The Parisians went to the Théâtre Lyrique, but receipts were uncertain and success was slow. Manager Carvalho, convinced of the final triumph of the opera, perseveringly pushed it on to a fifty-seventh performance, at which point he failed and the theatre was closed -- a result the import of which does not require to be emphasised. Meanwhile, the composer had been trying to find a publisher for his score. But the publishers, like the managers, were shy. Nay, they shunned "Faust" as if it were the devil in propriâ personâ. Heugel wanted to print it, declaring that the waltz alone would cover the expense; but Heugel had a partner, and he decided that the firm could not publish a failure. It seemed as if Gounod and his librettists must undertake the printing at their own cost. They had, in fact, almost decided upon that course when the score was shown to one M. Choudens, who had just started business. Choudens resolved to risk all his capital on it. He bought "Faust" for 10,000 francs, and laid the foundation of the fortunes of his house. Rarely, indeed, has so hazardous an experiment met with so rich a reward. "Faust" has proved a veritable gold mine for the publishers and impresarios alike. In thirty years from the date of Choudens’ bold venture, the modest sum he so timidly advanced brought him in nearly three millions of francs, representing an investment at a thousand per cent. The English publishing right, it may be added, is conserved; but, happily for the popularity of the opera, the performing rights in England were lost to the composer. In this connection, a word or two may be said about the first performance of "Faust" in England.  It was at Her Majesty’s Theatre on June 12, 1863, and such was the dubiety as to the success of the opera even then that Messrs. Chappell, who had secured the publishing rights in this country for the ridiculous sum of £30 (curiously enough, Gounod received from Messrs. Boosey £800 for his next opera, "Mireille," which was never a success), had to pay Mr. Mapleson £500 to induce him to stage it!  The story is succinctly told in both Mr. Kuhe’s and Signor Arditi’s "Reminiscences."  In our days, as Mr. Kuhe observes, whenever, through unforeseen circumstances, it is necessary to substitute for the opera to be performed on a certain evening some other work, the choice of a manager generally lies between "Faust" and "Carmen."  In either case he feels that the disappointment of the audience will vanish as soon as the ear is greeted by the strains of Gounod or Bizet.  But bold indeed would have been accounted the prophet foretelling in 1863 a success so enduring as that which has fallen to Gounod’s great work. London gave by no means a favourable reception to the opera, though there was a very strong cast, including Titiens, Trebelli, Giuglini, and Santley.  Signor Arditi, who was then conductor at Her Majesty’s, tells how his orchestra cared so little for the music that he had to encourage them to persevere by the assurance that they would be delighted with it on a more intimate acquaintance.  At the performance nothing seemed to take the fancy of the audience but the old men’s and the Soldiers’ Chorus and the tenor air "Salve Dimora."  Signor Schira, who had just had an opera of his own produced at Her Majesty’s, was present, and at one part stopped his ears with his hands, exclaiming aloud:  "That is execrable.  It reminds me of a couple of cats squabbling on the tiles."  At the second representation the audience were mush less frigid; at the third the turning point on the road to success was reached.  Still, the work had many enemies, and encountered a great deal of opposition and unmerited abuse.  We have Arditi’s word for it that although it was constantly repeated, it was not a financial success during the first year. In the following year, 1864, pay and popularity joined hands in a grip that has "held" ever since.  Mario, the great tenor, then figures in the title-rôle -- in appearance and as an actor an ideal Faust, though vocally Faust was never one of his peerless parts.  Probably the very best Faust yet seen, from the point of view of personal appearance as well as vocally and dramatically, is Jean de Reszke, though Nicolini was also superb in the part.  Towards the end of the 1864 season Madame Patti appeared as the heroine, when for the first time was heard a Margaret such as Gounod might have dreamed of -- perfection of voice, singing, and acting being in the great diva personified.  "What a feast it was," exclaims the veteran Kuhe, "to hear the Jewel Song given at length with matchless excellence, and to see associated with the singer such a Faust as Mario looked!"  A few years later London opera-goers were sent into raptures by the appearance as Margaret of Christine Nilsson -- in looks an ideal Gretchen such as any student of Goethe might picture, and in dramatic intensity equal to any artist who had previously been seen in the rôle. The Margaret of the 1863 London production was, as has been indicated, the famous Titiens, but it was impossible to reconcile her tall and massive figure with the girlishness of an ideal Gretchen, though it is said that her singing of the passionate music in the church scene and final trio has never been surpassed.  In the Paris production of 1859 the Gretchen was Mme. Carvalho, the manager’s wife.  Her voice was described as "a thin, shrill soprano, as slender as her person, cut in two by three or four hasty notes -- a regular bird pipe."  The Jewel Song is often said to have been written expressly for her, but this is untrue.  It was with reluctance that she agreed to sing it, dreading lest her personal success might not sufficiently compensate for the strain on her voice.  Ultimately she conquered the natural defects of her voice until Gounod wrote of "that marvellous style and power of execution which have set her in the highest place among contemporary singers."

[jupiterjunebug]

WHERE'S THE WEREWOLF ESSAY, OP??

@malaloba @bisexualducknewton You also dared me to say this so you get a tag

Okay so fun facts about Tyler Keegan Casey (I literally just wanted to make a joke about Tyler Casey abbreviating to Tyler K.C):

His parents, Edgar Casey and Rebecca Wilson, got married at 18. Their reasoning was "hey, we've been together all of high school, we still like each other, and I think our kids would be really hot." A bit of the shine wore off for Rebecca, though, when it turned out Edgar inherited a controlling streak from his parents. He got it in his head that his growth as a person required moving as far away from tiny little Casper, WV as he could. Which was fine, and would've been true if he’d put any actual EFFORT into growing up, except he made that decision without consulting his wife. Family was the most important thing in the world for her, which meant she didn't want to leave. Unfortunately, family was the most important thing in the world to her, and Edgar was technically her family.As far away as possible turned out to be Fortville, Indiana. At around 3000 people, it was certainly bigger than Casper, but much smaller than Edgar's ambitions. Unfortunately, they'd run out of gas, and got stuck in town long enough for Rebecca to work up her courage and deliver an ultimatum: they were eight hours from Casper, close enough to drive over, and she'd live no further away than that.Tyler was born a few years later and grew up the only "daughter" of the household, pretty in a generic way and polite to a fault. His homesick mama taught him that he'd know when he found his people on account of the decision to give up everything for them would only hurt a little. His pyramid-scheme chasing daddy taught him that the key to success is for people to think you're one of their people, and who gives a shit if it's true or not?Up until he was twenty he was a full-on social chameleon: he wore the closest thing he could get to the "right" clothes, he did his hair in the "right" way, he laughed at the right jokes and had a crush on all the right boys. Third runner up for prom queen, dated at least three members in the football team (the breakups were never his fault, of course. He'd take a relationship as far as the other person wanted, he only dated them because they wanted to date him after all), popular but not so popular for people to consider him a threat.Every holiday, Tyler and his mama went off to Casper to visit her family. That meant he ended up at the kids table with his two younger cousins Franc ( @keplersheetz) and Vicki. Franc and Vicki were practically sisters, Franc lived with Vicki's parents whenever her ma was off dealing with her host of mental issues, which meant that Tyler was kind of the third wheel.

Tyler ended up the responsible one, and town gossip went on about how they hoped he'd be a good influence, because wasn't he just a perfect little child? Gossip about Franc went on about how she was wild, about how she didn't follow rules, if she wasn't careful she'd end up just like her mother and didn't Vicki's parents worry about if she was a bad influence? No one gossiped about Vicki at all.

It created a weird circle of jealousy, where Tyler envied Franc for having the guts to be herself, Franc worried that Vicki would end up liking Tyler better than her, and Vicki wished somebody might talk about her instead of other people’s “influence” on her. In general, Tyler and Franc didn't get along on account of they were very different and had no interests in common, but when you spend months each year as an obligatory playmate you end up developing at least a little fondness.Tyler went to Indiana University Bloomington, close enough to home for both his parents and also in possession of a Bachelors program for early childhood education. He quickly acquired a job at the library, a reputation as "a pleasure to have in class," an overcommitment to several clubs, and a thoroughly mediocre boyfriend. He also ended up in two classes with and as a coworker to Monet, ( @pleasekalemenow). In sophomore year, the two were roommates and in three classes together, which was haha a funny coincidence. Then in Spring term Tyler had a stress breakdown and Monet was so thrown by composed, fake-ass Tyler losing his shit over something completely minor that she ended up sitting with him for four hours and now they're best friends.In the summer before Junior year he was like "hey wait a fucking second, if I'm completely changing my personality around other people so that they'll like me...do they actually like me?" and decided that fuck it, I'm going to just have my own personality and work my hardest to make it so people find that person likable. The most obvious shift - aside from him breaking up with his mediocre boyfriend and quitting half of his clubs - was coming out as, you know, a dude.

His parents didn't really...get it? His mom continues to this day to treat it as something she supports but just can't understand, and his dad kind of took it as a personal attack because his dad is a self-obsessed jackass. The rest of the family didn't really express an opinion on any of this, on account of Vicki had a baby and Franc ran away from home just a little while later. Compared to having a daughter under 18 and just straight up disappearing, being trans wasn't all that embarrassing to them.Things went pretty decent for half of Junior year. Then one day while he was watching a kindergarten class, the last kid to be picked up at the end of the day turned into an eldritch horror and ate the other student teacher. The FBI’s Paranormal Research and Investigation division showed up and was like "hey I'm pretty sure you can guess that we're going to tell you to keep this hush hush, so keep this fucking hush hush." Tyler went "wow you know I don't like being kept in the dark about all this," so he changed his major to criminal justice and worked his ass off to graduate at the same time as everyone else. Then he joined the FBI, and when they were interviewing him he dropped some line about "oh, I saw something once and the, uh, I think it was PRI? Said that it was top secret dangerous business. I'd like to solve murders like that :)" and the PRI kind of went "well...I guess? we can hire? Him? He did a god job on all of his exams...we have no reason not to."At around this time he played the love interest in Monet's breakout limited access TV show, Once Upon a Cryptid. This show eventually gained Dr. Horrible levels of cult-classic fame, and Tyler is eternally thankful that T has at this point changed his look enough that no one really recognizes him beyond people he talks to on case being like "haha isn't it funny that you look kind of like actor Tyler Casey and you're an FBI agent just like his character?" And he just says "haha yeah I get that a lot :)"The PRI was also like "hey can you keep an eye on this person who is causing trouble with conspiracy theory shit?" Tyler says "uh yeah, sure? Anything I should know?" And the PRI is like "well it's your cousin, but other than that, nah, glhf :)"Tyler found this situation Vaguely Uncomfortable, so instead of being actually good at his job he took this opportunity to leave reminders to eat and warnings to keep her head down when she overreached. They were all signed with "The FBI Agent That's Watching You Right Now" and wow isn't it fucked up that they're closer as anonymous FBI stalker and conspiracy theorist than they were as proper childhood playmates? It fucks me up sometimes.Five years before the game starts, he goes on an investigation into what may or may not be a supernatural murderer. While in the area he runs into August Caraway ( @transagentstern), who is. Super his type. He immediately starts finding excuses to spend time w/ the hot, sensitive, painter, asking August to be his guide around the area. And also if he could see that painting that August is working on because it sounds really :) great :). Eventually he comes to the conclusion that the long periods of time between attacks and the COD indicate either a werewolf attack or a very patient predator. He goes "well, it's the new moon tonight...so if I take August out on a da-I MEAN INVESTIGATION into that clearing in the woods it'll be safe."Spoilers! It isn't!They get attacked by a werewolf. Tyler says "well, I'm an FBI agent so I should be the one to sacrifice myself" and tries to shoot the werewolf. It quickly takes him to the ground, but hey! At least August has time to run! Except instead of running, August goes up to try and save Tyler. Which ends in them both getting bitten before the silver bracelets August always wears fend the thing off. August manages to drag Tyler to civilization before losing consciousness, and the two wake up in separate hospitals. August is told Tyler got sent to a special FBI hospital, but is fine. Tyler is told August got tired of waiting around for him to wake up and left. (More fun facts: this happened the day before Pigeon's birthday! Wow! Terrible)Tyler is kept under observation for the rest of the month, just to make sure he's fine. He is, of course, not fine. The PRI is super stoked to have access to someone who is fully willing to spend the rest of his month j chillin' and then come in on the full moons, on account of most of the werewolves they have access to are ones they caught and have to keep hold of all the time. Which, like, unlawfully contained civilians are a shitty baseline.So, despite having research in their name, the PRI kinda fucking sucks at research. Their methodology is to just try shit until they figure out 1. How to kill the monster and 2. How to spot the affliction/how it progresses. They are perfectly aware of how to kill werewolves, so really all they do is stage observations under different stress conditions to play “how to spot a werewolf”.

Every experiment is just put them in a cage with moonlight access, see whether the transformation is faster/slower when the person has a certain diet/fitness level/etc. Most of the subjects can’t leave bc they’d run away and are also liable to transform sometimes which is inconvenient.

The PRI isn't especially concerned about Tyler, because they know one of the conditions for a transformation is high stress and if there's one thing he's good at it's completely repressing an anxiety attack, so he's able to pretty much do his job aside from the whole "locked up under the full moon" thing. Of course, he's ostracized by his coworkers on account of he's like. Literally a monster. But that's fine! He has Monet! Who he never tells anything about all this because he doesn't want to worry her, and also because her brother (coincidentally August, though Tyler doesn't know that) died around the time of his attack and he doesn't want her to blame herself for never trying to come see him.Good things that happen in these 5 years: he has an amicable relationship with Franc. He gets good at his job. He and Monet discover that the uncanny coincidences which led to them always having classes together carry over into their adult life, and they constantly run into each other while performing their respective jobs. She sometimes invites him to parties to stop men from hitting on her, and because he looks vaguely like Jake Gyllenhaal (that's Tyler's face claim) they get to laugh about all the tabloid rumors that Monet is dating Jake.The bad news is Tyler never had access to the other werewolves prior to the attack (it wasn't his division, and he wasn't usually in a position to take anything alive) which means he's never been around to see a new one, to watch the arc of their deterioration. Usually it goes like this: they wake up, alone and naked in a room with only a bed, a desk, and an uncomfortable wooden chair. They are given clothing by an FBI agent, sometimes that agent is sympathetic, sometimes sneering, but usually expressionless. Each full moon they transform, and remember nothing of it save pain, hunger, and the feeling of their claws digging into the metal walls. Fear is a trigger for transformation, as is anger. They are always afraid, always angry. Eventually, it becomes rare to see them in their human forms.The PRI is fucking stupid. A reasonable person might say "duh, werewolves turn when they're scared, maybe if we put them someplace less scary they'll stop turning so much." Instead, they write in their notes, the notes Tyler receives, "we're fairly certain that, at some point, the humanity of a werewolf is completely lost." He only sees werewolves that have not been human in months, or even years. Or, he sees the ones who are even worse off.The worse news is that Tyler is told there's a cure. Sometimes, the PRI manages to poke and prod at a werewolf and for reasons we just don't understand they never transform again. So he doesn't argue with the tests, and even if he writes a will he doesn't tell Monet anything because he might be fine, and he doesn't want to worry her. He throws himself into his work and into making Monet happy, because he wants to make sure that if he is lost he leaves a legacy. There's something to prove that Tyler Casey's existence was justified.Then he finds out what the cure entails. It's not recovery, not at all; it's pushing someone so hard, making them so afraid, that their body can't take being afraid anymore. A person who’s too tired to feel doesn't shift, not even under the full moon, because the werewolf's state of mind is defined by the person's emotions before it happens (so if someone was actually CALM, really truly calm, then they'd manage to control it, but hunger and anger and fear can all throw that out of wack). If the person is numb, there is nothing for the curse to react to.Tyler Casey would rather die after trying his hardest than live longer but not be able to do anything. So, when he manages to find a job opening at The Askar Foundation, a secret society with more funding and more knowledge than the FBI could ever hope for, he has no qualms spilling the PRI's secrets in exchange for a position as a field agent.As you can probably guess, August, Monet, and Franc are all there as well. The circumstances of their recruitment were significantly less...consensual than his (Monet and Franc recently saw too much and got pressganged in, and after nearly killing Franc while transformed August got dragged in for Askar's own brand of tests). This leads to a veritable five layer dip of fucking drama:1. Franc and Tyler have a private conversation which leads to the revelation of several character secrets on both their parts. This ends when Tyler and Franc both insist that they saw different things during one of the scenes. Franc has always had the ability to tell when people lie to her, but she is also convinced she's right about their topic of conversation (which uh, she IS right, so). That means that, despite the fact that she can't feel him lying, he MUST be. She's convinced that he's had the supernatural ability to get around her own uncanny powers this whole time, and thus they engaged in a Comedy of Errors where instead of mistaken identities it’s Tyler saying things that further convince Franc he's trying to manipulate the entire team2. The Askar foundation would very much like to keep their shiny new field agent, and also Tyler still has connections to the FBI and him snitching to them would be.........inconvenient. So they're willing to put effort, within reason, into making sure he doesn't find out anything that might cause problems, like the fact that August is a kind of monster Tyler has a massive vendetta against. Or uh...anything else that might make him question them. This leads to3. Askar shutting down a conversation between him and Monet, leading to her concluding that talking about their past experiences with the supernatural OR the workings of Askar will never go well. (Exacerbated by the fact that Askar had already been trying to keep her from finding out shit about her brother) 4. Consequently, Monet will no longer talk to him about deep personal topics if they lead back to these things at ALL5. Franc ended up in a romantic entanglement w/ the monster of the week, who is a shapeshifter unwillingly being used to bring about...the apocalypse. He thinks the reason she doesn’t trust him is because she figured out he was a werewolf, and doesn’t trust him/is keeping an eye on him so she can put him down when he becomes dangerous. So he thinks she hates him bc he’s a shapeshifter that has no control over himself, but then she’s fine with...the OTHER shapeshifter that has no control over himself.6. August thinks Tyler hates werewolves because of the attack, and is afraid to enter a relationship with him because he wouldn't be able to keep his condition a secret7. Tyler refuses to let himself entertain notions of actually DATING August, because Tyler thinks he's going to die and doesn't want to hurt even MORE people when he goes8. Tyler and Monet platonically love each other so much and are also living together in Seinfeld's mansion that she stole the keys to, and Tyler is an idiot which means August thinks Tyler wants to date Monet (August's SISTER)So tl;dr, Tyler thinks that after Franc gained access to more Askar files she suddenly doesn't trust him (he assumes she knows he's a werewolf), he knows that Monet suddenly doesn't want to TALK to him and knows that if he discovers anything suspicious he thus cannot tell her, and he knows he......really, really, REALLY is starting to enjoy August's companyThis means that conversations oscillate between Tyler being professionally friendly with all his coworkers, Franc interpreting something random as a personal attack, Monet deeply wishing she could tell Tyler something, and then a completely stupid conversation where Tyler and August are flirting about something stupid and getting cockblocked by Tyler's hangups and August remembering that as far as he's concerned Tyler and Monet should get together.Oh and also Askar definitely is fucking with his head at least once a session.

[husheduphistory]

Jeffrey Hudson: Height, Fight, and a Remarkable Life

When the small body was given to the ground those handling it may have had no idea who they were dealing with. When alive this dearly departed stood only several feet tall, but this was no child. They now shared a grave with countless nameless others, yet during their lifetime their name crossed the lips of royalty and was uttered on multiple continents. It was an unseen and unmarked ending to a life that was anything but anticipated. 

When Jeffrey Hudson was born in the small English town of Oakham on June 14th 1619 he entered into a perfectly normal family. His father, John, was keeper of the baiting bulls for the Duke of Buckingham and he had the company of three brothers and a half-sister. As Jeffrey got older however, one thing began to set him far apart from the rest of his family. Even as a young child his siblings towered above him. Jeffrey, although perfectly proportioned, stood only eighteen inches tall.

When Hudson was seven years old he was presented by his father to the Duchess of Buckingham and her attention was so immediately captured that she invited him to formally join her household in London, a move that Hudson’s father approved. Within months of his arrival at her home the Duchess received two more guests of considerable importance, King Charles I and his French wife Queen Henrietta Maria. A royal visit was an event to be celebrated and the Duchess held a lavish banquet in their honor. At the height of the festivities a large pie was presented to Queen Henrietta and Hudson burst out from the crust dressed in a custom made miniature suit of armor. Like the Duchess, the queen was immediately captivated by him, but for all the wrong reasons. Young Jeffrey was charming, polite, and by all accounts he was a pleasure to be around but the queen had a collection of human “curiosities” back home and she wanted to add Hudson to her troupe. The Duchess obliged and in 1626 Hudson moved to  Queen Henrietta’s home at the Denmark House in London.

Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson by Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

While living in the royal household the line between resident and pet was often blurred. Hudson was raised Roman Catholic, educated, and was taught skills like horseback riding and shooting. However, at the same time he was still considered inferior to most others in the home. He lived with Queen Henrietta’s other “rarities” including a monkey named Pug, two other dwarves, and a Welsh man named William Evans whose height labeled him as a “giant” and paired him with Hudson in a comedy act where he would pull Hudson and a loaf of bread from his pocket. He was highly intelligent, witty, and well liked by all, but even at his young age Hudson was painfully aware that it was the novelty of his appearance that kept him in royal company and later made him the subjects of several poems and works of art. In his time people with his condition were kept as pets, their function was amusement, and despite any consideration and cordiality that came their way it was always made clear one way or another that they had a very specific place within the elite home. This was made clear to Hudson not only by having him live with the other “rarities” and perform comedic acts, but also in the name he was later dubbed in the queen’s home, Lord Minimus.

Fortunately, the monarch was able to see beyond Hudson’s novelty and he was eventually made a page in her court. Several years after his arrival at the royal home Hudson, though only ten years old, was given a role to serve in a mission from the queen herself. Queen Henrietta was pregnant, and Hudson was assigned to a party tasked to travel across the English Channel and fetch a midwife from her home country of France. The voyage to the continent was successful but on their return trip to England the ship carrying Hudson was ambushed by pirates. The ship was completely plundered, but everyone on board was eventually released back to England.

Portrait of Jeffrey Hudson by an unknown artist.

It would be another ten years but Hudson’s harrowing experience on his first trip across the English Channel did not sway him from making the journey again. In 1637 Hudson made a second trip, this time traveling to the Netherlands with an entourage in order to observe the Fifth Siege of Breda, a siege during the Eighty Years War during which the Dutch were attempting to expel the Spanish army.

These brushes with conflict would serve Hudson well in the coming years. By 1642 the relationship between King Charles I and Parliament had dramatically crumbled and the schism between the two led to all out brawls, plots, and arrests between those standing with the King (the Royalists) and those on the side of Parliament (Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians). The Royalists were in need of funds so while the King headed his army Queen Henrietta traveled with Hudson to the Netherlands in hopes of gaining their financial support during the conflict. The effort was greatly unsuccessful with the Dutch government declining their support and the only new funds coming from the queen selling some of her belongings. Although this was a blow, it was nothing compared to what met the queen and Hudson when the returned home to England, the country had fallen into civil war. Finding their home no longer safe the queen, Hudson, and the rest of her small company were moved to Royalist safe ground in Oxford. It was at this time that Queen Henrietta appointed Hudson as Captain of Horse, a title that traditionally meant he would have been responsible for commanding troops in cavalry raids orchestrated by Prince Rupert, the nephew of King Charles I.  

Jeffrey Hudson. Photo by Wellcome Images CC BY 4.0.

The queen and her company may have stayed in Oxford hoping to be able to return home soon, but this would not be the case. As tensions grew it became unsafe for them to stay put and in 1643 they were forced to flee to France. By this point Hudson was approximately twenty-four years old. He had traveled on official business, been captured and freed by pirates, was considered a close confidant of the queen, was given the title Captain of Horse, and was one of the few trusted to accompany the monarch through dangerous territories and war. As Hudson saw it, he was no longer the comedic puppet of the court, he had more than earned the respect of his peers and he would no longer tolerate any jokes, pranks, or insults directed toward him.

This new stance of Hudson was tested in October 1644 when he challenged the brother of William Croft, the queen's Master of Horse, to a duel. The Master of Horse was a powerful man and it is alleged that his brother provoked Hudson by saying he could not win in a fight against a turkey. What is known for certain is that he arrived at the duel armed not with a pistol, but with a weapon loaded with sarcasm. Croft brought with him a syringe, filled with water, and squirted it at Hudson. While Croft laughed Hudson rode up to him on horseback and killed him with a gunshot to the forehead. As described in The Letters of Henrietta Maria:

 “The giving cavalier [Croft] took no firearms, but merely a huge squirt, with which he meant at once to extinguish his small adversary and the power of his weapon. The vengeful dwarf, however, managed his good steed with sufficient address to avoid the shower aimed at himself and his loaded pistols, and, withal, to shoot his laughing adversary dead.”

Captain Jeffrey Hudson made his point, but it came at a deep cost. Dueling was illegal in France and on that basis alone, let along for killing the brother of the Master of Horse, Hudson was sentenced to death. He would have met this fate, except Queen Henrietta intervened and had his sentence lessened to exile. He was banned from France and forced to flee home to England.

Jeffrey Hudson, aged thirty. Stipple engraving by R. Page, 1821. Photo by Wellcome collection CC-BY-4.0

It is unknown what Hudson expected to do once he returned home but he most likely did not expect the next sharp turn in his story. Within months Hudson was again on a ship and captured by pirates, a scenario he had faced once before but this time the ending was very different. When he was captured by pirates at ten years old he was quickly released back home, but this time when he walked off the ship it was to step into North Africa and a life of slavery.  

The next time the Captain Jeffrey Hudson appears on any record is 1669 when it is suspected he was released into the hands of the British during one of several campaigns where captives from England were ransomed and allowed to return home. He had spent approximately twenty-five years being a slave and upon returning to England one thing was obviously very different about the former confidant of the queen. During his time in Africa Hudson had inexplicably grown to the height of nearly four feet tall, almost doubling his height since he was banned from France. When asked what could have caused such sudden growth the only answer Hudson would give was that it was the result of abuse he endured over the years.

Hudson may have believed that returning home would bring him some peace, but this was not to be. It is suspected he went home to Oakham, living off small grants of money from the Duke of Buckingham, before returning to London in 1676. When he returned to the city that was his home for so long he received no welcome. Queen Henrietta had died in France seven years earlier and the city was in the midst of raging anti-Catholic turbulence that included events like the “Popish Plot”, an entirely fabricated plot concocted by Titus Oats (also from Oakham) alleging an assassination attempt on King Charles II in order to bring his Roman Catholic brother, the Duke of York, to the throne. Hudson was raised a “Roman Catholick” and for this offense he was imprisoned in the Gatehouse Prison of Westminster Abbey. He was not released until 1680.

When Hudson was finally freed from prison he was approximately sixty-one years old and had been through more than most people could imagine. He no longer had financial support from the Duke of Buckingham and he was penniless and in ill health from his years inside a cell.

Within two years Captain Jeffrey Hudson was dead and unceremoniously buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. His cause of death is unknown.

Today the remains of Hudson’s remarkable life include several artistic depictions, poems, and small pieces of letters written by Queen Henrietta. Despite these mostly visual representations of him, his story would have been lost entirely if it were not for an antiquarian named James Wright who interviewed Hudson during his brief stay in Oakham in between his release from slavery and his imprisonment in London.

Today a marker can be found near his birthplace with an inscription only reading: “Sir Jeffery Hudson - 1619-1682 - A dwarf presented in a pie to King Charles 1st.”

Jeffrey Hudson marker. Image via FindAGrave.com.

******************************************************************

Sources:  Lord Minimus: The Extraordinary Life of Britain's Smallest Man by Nick Page