#it's just that The Atrocities are an inextricable part of her and The Atrocities in question are domestic abuse so not many people like her

[ghostietea]

I get from a logical angle why people might be put off by her but I think it's a shame that Akito Sohma doesn't get more appreciation because she is truly one of the characters of all time. She's the evil female reincarnation of God. She's so androgynous one of the anime adaptations guessed her gender wrong. She dresses like a theater tech. She sits like a gremlin. One time someone said something that upset her and she was bedridden for months. She wore a full coverage pure black outfit to the beach in summer and then complained about the heat. She has flower symbolism. She's campy and dramatic. She was assigned male at birth for political reasons. She simultaneously looks like a twink and a dyke. She has no friends until she's 20. She passive aggressively flirts with the protagonist the first time they talk. When she's not fucking up people's lives she just lounges around at home being depressed. She's a tragic villain almost certainly doomed to be a bad person by her upbringing and part of the tragedy is that it's still her fault. She doesn't know murder is wrong. She's pretty much a cult leader but that's one of the few things that isn't her fault. All of her schemes backfire on her in a poetically ironic way. She likes the in universe Pokemon equivalent. She looks like the evil twin of one of the main characters and this is never explained because the author forgot why she did it. She's a decent transfem allegory and a bungled transmasc one. She has world's worst internalized misogyny but is willing to change her whole life the minute another woman wants to have a legitimate positive relationship with her. She's the human manifestation of a cycle of abuse who then goes on to break it. She's extremely sexy. She is simultaneously very dangerous and intimidating and a pathetic failgirl. She's a perfect foil and parallel to the protagonist. She marries a man who had revenge sex with her evil mom. The author said that she ships her and the protagonist in a no homo way. She can be easily interpreted as autistic. She has catastrophic abandonment issues. She's hiding that she's a girl but wears her kimono improperly open in a way that makes it so she's constantly at risk of accidentally flashing someone. She has daddy issues and mommy issues. She was even homeschooled.

[grammarpedant]

I'm obsessed with Leonide, btw. I'll probably write more coherent meta-thoughts later nominating her as a new take on the Antagonist Human Ally Who Has a Point archetype, but for now I'm just gonna say: wow. queen. I stan. she did nothing wrong, ever, except for the part where she's inextricably complicit in colonial/imperial/capitalist atrocities and personally benefits from the enslavement of whole groups of people. she will never learn that what she does is wrong, because the cushy life that provides her beautiful cosmetic surgery and a comfortable life is based on never confronting her moral bankruptcy, and because admitting that she was wrong would be tantamount to admitting vulnerability, and everything in the cutthroat life she's led up to now has taught her that showing vulnerability is an invitation to become a target.

Leonide is a hashtag girlboss. slay. she made herself strong at the expense of all the bodies of the people she stepped over to achieve her goals. Leonide effectively utilized girl power when she tried to trick the hidden colony into enslaving themselves. i support women's rights AND women's wrongs.

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Battle of the Boyne (1690):Cementing the divisions that make modern Ireland.

Ireland’s history with its British neighbors is ancient and storied.  Their are stories dating back to the waning days of Roman Britain of Irish raiders capturing unsuspecting slaves to be traded on the mysterious island to the west known as Hibernia.  According to written records, Ireland’s future patron saint, St. Patrick was one such Romano-Briton who served as a slave and later returned to Ireland as a missionary helping to convert the pagan Celtic Irish en masse to Christianity bringing them in “closer” contact with their fellow Romano-British Celts, known historically at the Britons, now known as the Welsh.  In time, Irish missionaries traveled to the north of Britain, known as Scotland and helped spread Christianity there.  in the ensuing collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the so called Dark Ages fell upon Europe and Germanic Anglo-Saxon raiders invaded and settled the south of Britain spread north and west pushing the Celtic Britons back further and established their own petty kingdoms such as Wessex, East Anglia among others.  Eventually these would coalesce into the Kingdom of England.  The Celts of Dark Age Britain were now confined to the west in the petty kingdoms that formed modern Wales, the county of southwest England known as Cornwall, to become the Cornish and the north of modern England known as Cumbria, others left for the western most peninsula of France, becoming Brittany.  Scotland was left to its own devices more or less during this time, with the Picts of Scotland fusing with Irish Gaels to form the Scottish branch of Gaelic speakers.

Ireland and Britain were both subject to Viking influence when the Scandinavian raiders came out of the north and established first many raids and then their own petty kingdoms, battling, the Scots, Irish, Welsh and English all throughout this time as well as trading with them off and on.  It really was not after William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and descendant of Viking raiders who settled in France, invaded and conquered Anglo-Saxon England in 1066 that the course of events between Britain and Ireland would be inextricably linked thereafter.  By the 12th century, William’s descendants or Anglo-Normans were called to Ireland initially as mercenaries to assist the deposed Irish King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough during a civil war amongst the local Irish petty kingdoms.  By 1170-1171, the Anglo-Norman noble Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, known to history as Strongbow lead an invasion and laid the ground work for the first continual English presence in Ireland.  The Anglo-Norman invasion, overstepped its initial mandate and began taking Irish land for its self.  This established the Lordship of Ireland, of which Henry II of England became the first Lord of Ireland.  Over the centuries, Ireland was more or less ruled in personal union with the kings of England as the Norman dynasty became less Norman French and was subsumed into the Anglo-Saxon majority of England, so to did the Anglo-Normans who settled Ireland, becoming Hiberno-Normans bringing now famous family names to Ireland such using the Norman prefix “Fitz” such as Fitzgerald.  That’s right, any “Fitz” surname in Ireland is not native Irish but actually Norman French by way of England including the Fitzgerald family.  In time they identified as Irish and absorbed many of the Irish Gaels culture as part of their own.  Becoming as some historians have said “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”

Throughout this, the local Irish majority remained predominantly Gaelic speaking with a Norman French and later English speaking minority at the political top, although some local Irish Gaels did maintain positions of wealth and power.  Things changed drastically in the 16th century as the Middle Ages had given away to the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation of the 1500′s.  Henry VIII of England, of the Tudor dynasty had for personal and political reasons joined the Protestant cause that was dividing Europe along fervent religious grounds, he founded the English brand of Protestantism known as Anglicanism or the Anglican Church of which the English monarch is the supreme leader to this day and the Church of England is official state religion of Britain.  This shift in religion was resisted in Britain and in Ireland and while England and Wales gradually gave way to majority Protestantism, Ireland remained firmly Catholic in part as a point of contention in opposition to English rule.  Forever after, Catholicism would become linked with the majority of native or Gaelic Irish and some of the Hiberno-English who now identified as solely “Irish” having intermarried and culturally taken on Gaelic culture.  This lead to a prolonged period of tension, rebellion throughout the 16th century, known as the Tudor reconquest of Ireland.  Gaelic Irish and Hiberno-English noble families such as the Fitzgeralds of Desmond coalesced into an Irish nationality and resisted English Protestant rule.  They were backed by England’s major Catholic rival of the time, Spain.  Henry VIII’s daughter and eventual successor Elizabeth I of England made Ireland of theater of war against not just rebels but a defense against Spanish aggression, since Ireland could be a back door or launching pad into reasserting Catholicism in Protestant Britain.  The Irish people were caught in the political machinations of Spain and England, in time with the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the loss of Spanish invention altogether and the crushing of the rebels Ireland’s Catholic polity was about to face a sea change that would from the 17th century onward would affect Ireland’s history.

Under Elizabeth I and carrying onto her Stuart successors from Scotland, namely James VI/I, the Plantations of Ireland were implemented.  English, Welsh and Scottish Protestant settlers were sent to colonize Ireland by the thousands, the hope was ultimately to cultivate a new class of British political elite, one that would dispossess the native Gaelic Irish Catholics of all their land and essentially their basic rights, even the practice of Roman Catholicism was outlawed though the practice of this was ban was not practicably enforced on a mass private level.  However, Catholics were stripped of political power, even old Anglo-Norman families like the Fitzgerald who were now Irish, were dethroned of their political power.  This persisted in the 17th century and no place was the source of tension and the English government’s need for the New English as the Protestant settlers were called by some to “tame” the Irish than in the north of Ireland, collectively called Ulster or the Plantation of Ulster.

However, the English flavor of Dublin and the Leinster region was ultimately not to be found in Ulster.  Ulster’s Protestant community was more diverse, taking in small amounts of Gaelic Irish Protestant converts, German Lutheran, Calvinist and French Huguenot immigrants and even greater amounts of English settlers from the north of England and finally the majority of Ulster Protestants were Scots from the Scottish Lowlands with a few Highlanders sprinkled in the mix.  The Scots own brand of Protestantism which became the Church of Scotland was a Calvinist reformed branch known as Presbyterianism.  Ulster’s mix of Scots, English, German, French and native Irish Protestants coalesced into the community known today as Ulster Scots or for those that later emigrated to America, the Scots-Irish or Scotch-Irish which was also bound to have a large impact on the cultural and political character and overall history of the United States.

As the 17th century wore on, the Stuart kings of England ruled England, Ireland and Scotland under one person albeit as three separate kingdoms in name.  In time Charles I of England found himself by mid-century at odds with the Puritan branch of the Anglican Church and the members of his Parliament who felt in part Charles was too cozy with Catholic Spain and did little support Protestant allies elsewhere in Europe.  Additionally at home, Charles though officially Anglican was appeared to be shaping the church in a direction starting to resemble the ornamentation and trappings of the Catholic Church which angered the Puritans.  Ultimately, this conflict with Parliament over the rights of the king and those of his subjects lead to the English Civil War of the 1640′s which expanded into the War of the Three Kingdoms with Royalist and Parliamentarian supporters in England, Scotland and Ireland.  The Parliamentarians won control over all of these lands. Charles I was tried and beheaded, marking the end of absolutist monarchy in Britain.  A new short lived Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, known as the Protectorate formed a brief Republic in Britain’s history under the rule of MP and Puritan turned general and military dictator, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector.  Cromwell conquered rebellious parts of Ireland which sought to either assert independence from English rule or supported the royalist cause due to the Stuarts’ supposed sympathies to Catholicism.  Cromwell’s army committed atrocities that are regarded by many in Ireland today as form of genocide.  This only furthered tensions between Protestants and Catholics.  Cromwell died shortly after less than a decade of personal rule and his son briefly ruled as his heir but was deposed in favor of a restoration of the monarchy with Charles II, son of the executed Charles I.

In the background of greater European politics the dividing issue of much of Europe was whether Protestantism or Catholicism would reign supreme in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movements.  Notably, this played out in the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 which involved all the great powers of Europe at various times, killed millions and ultimately saw the survival of Protestant and Catholic dynasties throughout Europe, the war was not exclusively religious though, it started out as a religious war but extended to a personal and political battle for independence and shaping the balance of power in Europe.  Western Europe’s biggest rivalry was not actually England and Spain though it had been largely fought between those two powers, it was actually whatever power was at odds with the Kingdom of France.  France and England had been rivals since the Middle Ages but France also had issues with their fellow Catholic powers in Spain at times as well as the German Holy Roman Empire, run by the Austrian Hapsburgs which in fact ruled Spain and Austria simultaneously though separately and in time Spain branched off from the Holy Roman Empire despite their common ruling dynasty.  By the mid 17th century, France was ruled by the man who reintroduced absolutist rule and centralized governance around the monarch, Louis XIV, the Sun King.  Louis’s ambition was to make France the dominant political power in Europe which he would do so through diplomacy and war.  One of his chief rivals, was William Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the United Seven Provinces also known as the Dutch Republic.  The Protestant Dutch Republic had only just gained its’ independence at the end of Thirty Years War from Spain which itself was an 80 year conflict, called fittingly the Eighty Years War.  William was a maternal grandson of Charles I of England and nephew of the reigning Charles II.  William went on to marry his first cousin, Mary Stuart and daughter of Charles I’s other son James, younger brother of Charles II.

James, like his elder brother Charles had sought refuge in Catholic France under Louis XIV’s rule during the Commonwealth period of England.  During this time, James converted to Catholicism with his first wife Anne of Hyde and while his brother remained nominally Anglican.  James’s daughters Mary and Anne however were to be raised as Protestants by order of his brother Charles II during the Stuart restoration.  In 1677, James allowed his daughter Mary to marry his nephew, William, Prince of Orange, the son of his own sister Mary.  James’s first wife Anne died and he remarried an Italian princess, Mary of Modena.  Mary was a devout Catholic herself and in 1685, James succeeded Charles II as King of England, Scotland and Ireland.  His succession came about because Charles had no legitimate heir of his own, though several illegitimate children.  Charles II had also converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.  For Louis XIV, the prospect of a relative and Catholic on the throne of England, his greatest potential rival was promising, it meant he could help coordinate peace between the two rival nations and direct their mutual resources against the Protestant nuisance of the Dutch Republic ruled nominally by the new King of England’s nephew and son-in law.  

Previously, France and England were allied under Charles II during the Franco-Dutch War in the 1670′s but the alliance was domestically unpopular in England especially and only brief.  That war grew out of French ambitions in the Spanish Netherlands, modern day Belgium which the Dutch also sought.  The war got some French gains but Dutch independence was overall preserved and William of Orange, set about leading an anti-French coalition that would persevere for the remainder of the 17th century and into the 18th century.  The ultimate goal was to counter France’s power and influence and both William and Louis ultimately saw England and its subordinate kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland as potential allies or rivals.

James II/VII was increasingly at odds within his own kingdom like his father Charles I and his older brother Charles II before him.  His own Catholicism irritated his Protestant majority in England, Wales and Scotland, especially among those in the nobility and Parliament.  Also his newer bride Mary of Modena was quite young and of childbearing age and the prospect of a Catholic legitimate heir frightened the Protestants of the three Kingdoms.  Catholics in Ireland rejoiced however as James seemed to be the promise to at last restore some of their rights, namely tolerance for their religion and rights to land ownership.  Parliaments in Scotland and England refused to pass tolerance acts so James simply suspended them and ruled by decree instead, granting Catholics a measure of their rights.  Though overall, the changes were minor.  The unease of the Protestants, particularly in Ireland where 75% of the overall population was Catholic save for the Ulster province which was 50% Protestant. 

Tensions were high within the three kingdoms when in 1688 seven Anglican bishops were tried for sedition and libel for failing to comply with the king’s order pushed over the last base of conservative support, James had in England.  At the invitation of seven English nobles, the Immortal Seven as history would call them, asked for William of Orange to lead an invasion of England to depose his uncle/father in law and allow him and his wife to Mary to rule instead as co-sovereigns over England.  This would put England, Scotland and Ireland in personal union with the Protestant Dutch Republic.  Using 14,000-15,000 men of the Dutch army, including elite Scottish, Swedish, German, Swiss, French and English mercenaries made up the bulk of his army, supporting Dutch regulars.  William landed in southern England in September 1688.  The English army and navy largely mutinied due to James insistence on Catholic mass in military institutions.  James left without an army fled to France, having been successfully deposed in what became the Glorious Revolution.

1689, saw William and Mary named co-rulers of England, Scotland and Ireland.  Becoming William III/II of England, Scotland and Ireland.  However, James abandonment of the throne while satisfying to most Protestants was not accepted by many Catholics of the realm, most especially in Ireland.  1689 also saw the Bill of Rights issued which was to influence the later American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights a century later.  In England it was largely favorable to the Protestant cause and helped establish rules of succession at the expense of Catholics.   William knew his rule wasn’t solid throughout the realm and with France now engaging in war and pushing for James’s restoration to the throne, the British Isles would become an inevitable theater in the upcoming Nine Years War (1688-1697) also known as the War of the Grand Alliance or War of the League of Augsburg pitting the anti-French Coalition lead by the Dutch Republic now in personal union with Protestant England and Scotland and supported by Catholic powers like the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Savoy and Portugal with some Swedish assistance too against France and Catholic supporters of James’s restoration Britain, collectively these supporters were called Jacobites after the Latin name for James (Jacobus).  In Britain Jacobite support existed in smaller degrees in England and Scotland,, the largest base of support was among the Gaelic Irish population who saw James as the best realization of their collective political hopes.

The situation on the ground Ireland had deteriorated in the wake of James deposition and flight to France.  Catholic and Protestant tension in Ireland had reached highs.  James with French support landed in Ireland in March 1689 with French regulars and English, Scottish and Irish volunteers backing him up.  James landing and consolidation of support among the Catholic populace terrified the Protestants of Ireland and alerted William that he needed to counter James in Ireland before he consolidated his rule there and then launched an invasion of England proper and probably with French support.  Protestants fled some cities and the countryside to so called Protestant strongholds un Ulster.  Namely the towns of Derry/Londonderry and Enniskillen.  They soon found themselves under prolonged sieges by Jacobite forces, the Protestants were loyal to their religion and to the new Protestant rulers William and Mary.  The Protestants regardless of their denomination Scottish Presbyterian or Anglo-Irish Anglican were unified in opposition to the Jacobites.  There was legitimate fear that Protestants would be massacred as had happened decades prior when Catholic Irish mobbed and massacred pockets of Protestants.  In Derry, the walls of the city held out against the siege but at great cost due to starvation and sickness among the Protestant populace.  Finally, a relief force of Williamite (Protestant supporters of William) ended the siege in later summer of 1689.  William for his part though was still consolidating support within England and taking the time to both finance and organize the logistics to undertake an Irish expedition to defeat James and the Jacobite forces. Ultimately, Derry and Enniskillen had proven that there was indeed support for the Williamite cause in Ireland.  The Derry call of “No Surrender” became a rallying cry to the Protestant cause.  Meanwhile skirmishes persisted and discussions and negotiations among many parties was underway, some clamored for James restoration and some Irish Catholics wanted outright independence. 

It was not until 1690 that William and his forces were underway to Ireland.  William’s goal was to confront James and fight if necessary, albeit not necessarily kill him since he was his uncle and father in law.  Nevertheless, William’s forces landed in Belfast in June carrying over 30,000 troops.  the Jacobites meanwhile were reinforced by French regulars and by July the Jacobite force reached nearly 24,000 strong at its peak.  The Jacobite composition was mostly drawn from the local Gaelic Irish populace, not a professional army overall with some additional, English and Scottish volunteers.  It was mostly local militia who were ill trained and ill equipped but who had a lot of determination and belief in their cause.  They were however supported by French regulars who were elite troops and possessed artillery and professional modern small firearms to complement the Jacobite army.  The Williamite army had swelled to 36,000 strong with the 31,000 being made up of as usual a multiethnic mostly mercenary army that combined English and Scottish Protestant volunteers, German, French Huguenot and even Danish troops on loan from Denmark, joining what William regarded as his best troops, the Dutch regulars, namely the elite Dutch Blue Guards who were the Dutch army’s best infantry.  He held his Dutch troops in the highest regard followed by along with the Danish contingent and his other mercenary forces from France and Germany.  His opinion of his English and Scottish troops was overall low, regarding them as unreliable and a potential political liability in the uncertain times they faced.  His only praise for British troops under his command were the Ulster Scots Derry and Enniskillen Volunteers from Ulster that had defended that town the year prior from the Jacobites, convinced of their toughness and belief in the cause, he deemed them as reliable as any in his force.

The two forces would meet on the River Boyne in County Meath, near the town of Oldbridge and what was July 1, 1690 in the Old Style calendar and is now recognized as July 12th, 1690.  William in surveying the narrow river was nearly killed by Jacobite artillery the day before.  Nevertheless, he survived and ordered a war camp to plan the next day’s battle.  After scouting the area, the Williamites who held the north side of the river, planned to launch an attack further down from the main concentration of the Jacobite forces who held the south side of the river and held the high ground.  The Boyne was narrow and not especially deep but its current surprisingly strong and would make navigating it mostly on foot tough under any circumstances not least while under lethal enemy fire.  Roughly a quarter of the Williamite forces attempted a diversionary attack at the ford further westward from the main attack.  James, an inexperienced general worried this was an outflanking maneuver and diverted the majority of his forces, including his best French forces to counter this move.  The Williamite forces under morning mist forded the river into a marshy ravine as part of their diversionary tactic and came under withering Jacobite artillery.  However, the infantry on both sides didn't account for this ravine and actually had to sit the battle out as the artillery on both sides of the river ineffectually fired at each other.  With the bulk of the Jacobite force now engaged in a pointless artillery duel and unable to engage the enemy or retreat due to the terrain James had made a major blunder and severely weakened his force.  The battle meanwhile took place at Oldbridge and the ford near their.  The Williamite troops advanced with the Dutch Blue Guards taking the lead as they waded across the river chest deep under enemy fire.  Only the skilled discipline and repeated volleys of the Dutch troops allowed the Williamite forces across while the Jacobites pinned them down.  William’s second in command, the Dutch born Duke of Schomberg was killed in this phase of the battle.  The French Huguenots were also badly bloodied by Jacobite suppressing fire but the arrival of Williamite cavalry gradually pushed back the Jacobite cavalry and allowed the Williamites to rise out of the river banks and up the high ground as the weight of their superior numbers started to take effect wearing down the Jacobites.  James fled the battlefield rapidly at this point and his army’s morale collapsed and only the counter attacks of their cavalry during their retreat prevented a full on rout and disordered withdrawal where more causalities were certain.  In total only 2,000 combatants died in a battle that had over 50,000 participants from both sides engaged, comparatively low given the numbers.  3/4ths of the dead were on the Jacobite side while the Williamites had a greater overall number of wounded.  William also restrained his forces from harming James’s person which in turn restricted the likelihood of a full on pursuit.  The Williamites had won the day though not definitively the war, though James fled Ireland in quick succession within days of the battle having fled first to Dublin and then southward on a ship back to France.

In the aftermath, James retreat from the field and from Ireland angered his supporters, they named him James the Shit for his supposed cowardice and tactical blunders.  Nevertheless, the Jacobite cause would persist for his heirs , the Stuart pretenders to the throne off and on in Ireland and later in Scotland among the Highlanders well into the 18th century finally collapsing with the Jacobite defeat to the British government at the Battle of Culloden under his grandson known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie.  James spent the rest of his life in exile abroad in France, the French would back the Jacobite cause until the very end at Culloden though it would prove ultimately ineffective at restoring Catholic or Stuart rule.  For William, the war continued with a siege of the regrouped Jacobites at Limerick in 1690 after which he left back for England.  His subordinates besieged Limerick once more in 1691, effectively ending this phase of the war for the Grand Alliance.  The Battle of the Boyne wasn’t initially seen as a major victory in Ireland since the fate of that theater of war still was uncertain but it was viewed with praise elsewhere in Europe as a check on both James ambitions and more importantly a check on French ambitions and influence in general.  Ultimately, the war would be a series of mixed results for both sides, many French gains were reversed and the French had to make peace after seeing crippling financial costs to maintain large armies the world over.  William for his part was recognized by Louis XIV as King of England, Scotland and Ireland along with his wife Mary and the Dutch Republic had territory returned and its fortified lines maintained.  French power had been curbed somewhat but not completely.  In the ensuing War of the Spanish Succession that was to dominate the first 15 years of the 18th century, the rivalry between France and England and the Dutch would only grow to larger more epic proportions.

Regionally, the battle was the first step to securing William and Mary’s reign and the rights of Protestant rule of the British throne which nominally persists to this day.  William would survive Mary and rule on his own until his own death from a pneumonia after a horse riding accident in 1702.  They had no children of their own and so succession was passed on to Mary’s sister Anne who in turn died without heir and gave rise to the House of Hanover from Germany taking over Britain, they were the nearest living Protestant relatives of Anne and Mary, their direct descendants include George III, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II ruling to this day as the House of Windsor.  During Anne’s reign England and Scotland unified their parliaments in London and the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland now unified as one Kingdom, Great Britain laying the foundation for the modern state.  In Ireland, the Battle of the Boyne solidified Protestant rule for the next two centuries plus.  It helped give rise to the new Anglo-Irish Anglican Protestant class that came to be the dominant political elite giving rise to many famous Irish politicians and artists in the coming years, ruling all of Ireland until independence of the Irish Free State and later Irish Republic in the 20th century.  It also gave voice to the Ulster Scots as a community, though in the 18th century changes to the laws excluded Scottish Presbyterians in favor of Anglicans.  Presbyterians gradually found themselves excluded from political rights and likewise in time found common cause with Irish Catholics.  Some Ulster Scots took up an Irish identity like Hiberno-Normans had years before and along with Irish Catholics and some Anglo-Irish Anglicans fought in several of Ireland’s numerous rebellions in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Hundreds of thousands emigrated to America and founded the influential Scots-Irish community within the United States and were particularly active in the American Revolution.  Boyne also cemented the divisions in Ulster that persist in modern Northern Ireland culminating in the violence of the Troubles and a tense peace that exists in the 21st century.  Hailed by Protestants as a great victory its anniversary is celebrated annually by the Orange Order which is a fraternal order in Northern Ireland mostly, to celebrate Ulster Protestant and unionist culture, though this practice is controversial with Irish Catholics.  Northern Ireland remains a somewhat segregated though more peaceful society between mostly Northern Irish Protestant Unionists that make up Ulster’s majority and mostly Northern Irish Catholic Republicans.

[mommy-and-leader]

How Henrietta Lacks’ Story Taught Me How to be a More Compassionate Leader in Healthcare

The story of Henrietta Lacks is both a story of miracles and of tragedy. The history of the HeLa cell is truly the stuff of scientific miracles. However, the story of Henrietta Lacks, the patient who unwittingly donated the cells, and whose family has suffered as a result, is heartbreaking. In reading Rebecca Skloot’s best-selling book, I admit that I read the story through the eyes of a leader in healthcare. I was ready to defend my field and my peers in the field. However, as I read both the personal story of Henrietta Lacks and the Lacks family, as well as the story of the HeLa cell, I was astonished at the amount of betrayal I felt as a warrior of science. Many criticize Skloot’s book as reminiscent of a novel, and problematic in the way that she reports it like she sees it- from sexually transmitted diseases, child abuse, abusive marriage, child molestation- Rebecca leaves no stone unturned in her ten-year mission to learn about Henrietta Lacks and her contribution to science.

Christoph Lengauer, the first scientist that was willing to speak with the Lacks children, said it best by stating, “Whenever we read books about science, it’s always HeLa this and HeLa that. Some people know those are the initials of a person, but they don’t know who that person is. That’s important history” (Skloot, 2011, p. 266). Rebecca Skloot’s book was successful in uniting the person, Henrietta, with the cells. The cells were not the only important discovery in science. The story of the person was important for healthcare and could teach us a lesson about being a compassionate caregiver in healthcare.

Critics state there are problematic elements in Skloot’s portrayal

In a poetic analysis of the book, Lantos (2016) reinforces the idea that Skloot’s book further exploits the Lacks family in its overshare of private details of their lives, namely Deborah’s abusive marriage and divorce, the imprisonment of her children and details of the crimes, and even the amount of Deborah’s social security check. Daniel Podgorski, a literature reviewer for the Gemsbok, comments on Skloot’s exploitative position relative to the Lacks family, stating that she, however, tells an important and even story (Podgorski, 2016). Podgorski (2016) states:

Skloot adopts a neutral tone throughout her book and presents the facts of the cases and lives involved evenly, and, in doing so apolitically, manages to expose the inextricable story of racial segregation operating above and with scientific progress in the twentieth century without sacrificing journalistic integrity…she presents all people in her book as part of this one grand narrative of humanity, each a character as in a novel, susceptible to moral and critical judgments by the reader, and a human being, and so representative of a faction of reality (Podgorski, 2016).

While most of the Lacks family disagrees, two Lacks men have come forward regarding their feelings of contempt toward Rebecca Skloot, and HBO, who produced the film portrayal of Skloot’s book. Bustle reports that Lawrence and Ron Lacks (Henrietta’s son and grandson) feel exploited by Rebecca in the same way that they felt exploited by Johns Hopkins. “Skloot portrayed the Lacks family as falsely uneducated and poor. ‘She made us stereotypes…people think we’re dirt poor’” (Truffaut-Wong, 2017). Lawrence Lacks even goes on to tell the Bustle reporter, “It’s bad enough Johns Hopkins took advantage of us. Now Oprah, Rebecca, and HBO are doing the same thing. They’re no better than the people they say they hate” (Truffaut-Wong, 2017). However, the article goes on to give a comment by HBO, stating that the film had overwhelming support from many Lacks family members.

In my reading of the book, I found a number of details cringe-worthy in their honest horror, and I admit that they horrified me as a woman and as a mother. First, there was Day’s character as a young husband and father. Early on in the book, in Chapter 1, Day is painted as an adulterer (Skloot, 2011, p 13) and later on, it is explained that the sexually transmitted diseases he passes on to his wife, Henrietta, are the reason why her cervical cancer is so aggressive. Later, in Chapter 15, Deborah’s physical and sexual abuse by her uncle, Galen, is another one of those details that breaks your heart and keeps you up at night. You wonder if you can do without hearing these atrocities suffered by this family. Then you keep reading on and get to the part where Day, her father, did not protect her from this incestuous monster (Skloot, 2011, p. 113) and you want to both kill Day again and embrace Deborah in all her suffering. This rollercoaster of emotion keeps you reading voraciously and really humanizes this family.

While I do agree that these details are of a very private nature, they served their intended purpose in conveying the message that Henrietta was a real person. She is not just a cell. She is a real woman who had a real family- who are still alive today- and still suffering from the aftermath of the notoriety of the HeLa cells, which were taken without Henrietta or her family’s consent, and have changed the face of medicine (and made millions since their theft). What makes a person or a family more human than the reality of their flaws?

How the story helped me in my role as a leader in healthcare

This story is not only an exposé of all of the skeletons in the Lacks family closet, but it was a discussion on racial disparity and medical mistrust in the African American community, and of informed consent, or the lack thereof, for Henrietta and the Lacks family. It was the story of any and all of the above. As an African American woman visiting a public ward in the 1950s, Henrietta had no choice when it came to research, as was the same with all the black patients at Johns’ Hopkins’ public colored ward (Skloot, 2011, p. 29). This was the era of racism, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. Black patients had no choice but to trust the word of their doctors, and not many words came from these doctors. They weren’t informed of many details of the treatment for Henrietta’s cervical cancer, nor were they informed of the cells they took from her in research, nor were they informed of the fruit of those cells- a medical revolution.

These cells crossed the world. In 1952, they were the first living cells shipped via postal mail. They helped develop the polio vaccine, the cervical cancer vaccine, and many drugs. They were the first cells ever cloned and were also the first cells ever hybridized with the cells of an animal- a human-mouse hybrid. The discoveries were endless and are still being made. The fruit of the research of the HeLa cell was ample, and the financial gain was enormous. However, this was all unbeknownst to the Lacks family. In fact, they were unaware of the existence of these cells until 1973- more than 20 years later! It wasn’t until 1975 that the Lacks family knew of the immense contribution to science and the commercialization of the cells after a reporter for Rolling Stone interviewed them and published a story about Henrietta Lacks. Their mother’s cells now had a name, and a family, and her medical history was out for the world to read about.

This is what pulled on my heartstrings. As a medical professional, I am a bleeding heart. I regularly encounter some of the most vulnerable sick people who just need someone to take care of them and often to advocate for them. Here was this woman- a poor and educated minority who just wanted to trust her caregivers- who died at the age of 31. She left behind a family of many small children, one of whom was disabled. That family defined struggle. They were uneducated, poor, and struggled into adulthood. Henrietta needed a caregiver, an advocate. Her children needed this, too. When they learned of their mother’s cells and notoriety, they felt deceived and rightfully so. Here they were struggling from health issues of their own and could barely get medical insurance- yet their mother’s cells created much of what we think of when we think of modern-day healthcare. Where were the Lacks’ caregivers? Why did no one in the medical field feel that they needed to be taken care of, in their vulnerability?

 With this lesson of bioethics and medical mistrust: How do we prevent this from happening again?

Though Henrietta’s contribution to science was immense, it was done without her consent or the consent of her family. When Henrietta was identified and her family was made aware of the enormity of this situation, the Lacks family was still kept in the dark. The scientific and medical community continued to take advantage of the Lacks’ by deceiving them into giving blood to further their research into Henrietta’s genome and disguised this as “cancer testing” (Skloot, 2001, pp. 183-189). There were so many opportunities for the medical community to make this right, but no one stepped up to bat.

So how do we make sure that this never happens again? First, we need to remember why we went into this field- to help others, to save lives. Some of those that I have worked with in healthcare are caregivers in every sense of the word- they are bleeding hearts and some of the most moral and ethical people that I have ever met. Physicians down to nurse’s aides, almost everyone I have worked with have come into this field to make this world a better place by helping those that we can. As a leader in the field, this is an important trait that I look for in all members and prospective members of my team. In order to prevent this from ever happening again, we must convey a culture of ethics and compassion. By selecting and hiring ethical employees and fostering ethical decisions by acting ethically and helping your employees act ethically, you instill a compassionate and compliant environment (“How Managers”, nd). Talking through decision-making and being seen as a moral authority are important to convey an ethical and compliant culture in your organization.

As a caregiver in healthcare, it is always important to put yourself into the patient’s shoes. What if this were you? What if this were your mother? Always treat the patient as you would like for your family to be treated- or like you would like to be treated, yourself. Always be an advocate- just because you understand doesn’t mean they do. Informed consent was a big deal in this book, and it is a big part of the mistake that we do not want to be duplicated. It is important to talk through every diagnosis, every treatment, every procedure, until they understand. It is good practice to make sure that they can reiterate and explain it back to you. Informed consent is not only a form to be signed- it is peace of mind for both the caregiver and the patient.

Conclusion

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot goes into detail regarding Henrietta and her family’s life in order to tell a story apart from the story that was currently understood as conveyed by science- the story of the HeLa cell. By separating the story of the HeLa cell from the story of the Lacks family, Skloot effectively conveys the ramifications of the HeLa cells’ scientific contributions and commercialization on the Lacks family. Rebecca Skloot’s portrayal of Henrietta Lacks and her family may have been intense, but that intensity was key in conveying the central idea of the abhorrent treatment of the Lacks family by the medical and scientific community. This book was meant as a lesson, and I hope that the whole field hears it loud and clear.

    References

How Managers Can Encourage Ethical Behavior. (nd). Lumen Learning: Principles of Management. Retrieved March 8, 2020 from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-principlesofmanagement/chapter/how-managers-can-encourage-ethical-behavior/

Lantos, J. D. (2016). Thirteen Ways of Looking at Henrietta Lacks. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 59(2), 228-233. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/docview/1876059666?accountid=35812

Podgorski, D. (2016). Creative Journalism: American Race Politics, Perspective, and Shifting Culture in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The Gemsbok. Retrieved from: https://thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/tuesday-tome-immortal-life-henrietta-lacks-rebecca-skloot/

Skloot, R (2011.) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York, NY: Broadway Books

Truffaut-Wong, O. (2017). What Does the Lacks Family Think Of 'The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks'? The Movie Portrays Their Heartbreaking Story. Bustle. Retrieved from: https://www.bustle.com/p/what-does-the-lacks-family-think-of-the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-the-movie-portrays-their-heartbreaking-story-51712

[jewish-privilege]

This weekend, self-identifying white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis marched on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville and violently protested in the town, ending with the death of at least one person and leaving dozens more injured. People across the country condemned the events. In addition to the horror of watching those hateful humans march in broad daylight without fearing any consequences, I found it disturbing that many people, including liberals and progressives, didn’t acknowledge the hateful anti-Semitic comments made by these Nazis. In some cases, they tried to argue that they didn’t happen.

Think of those who believe the protesters from Unite the Right weren’t saying “Jew will not replace us,” but “You will not replace us.” Actress Olivia Wilde posted an Instagram on behalf of her mother, a candidate for the House of Representatives, that talked about Nazism and Nazi language, but made no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism. Bernie Sanders mentioned neo-Nazisin a tweet but didn’t talk of Jews or anti-Semitism.

This strange in-between of calling out Nazis without directly acknowledging their hate towards Jews made me heave a very, very long sigh.

As a Jew who grew up in the South, I’m all too familiar with how little is known about Jewish culture and faith, not to mention Jewish history. Most people know that Nazis tortured and murdered millions of Jews in the Holocaust, and we are told to never forget those events. That includes not forgetting the nuances as well: Jews weren’t specifically targeted just for their religion, but also because Nazis believed they were a different and inferior race that needed to be ethnically cleansed.

While narratives try to say otherwise, America also has a long, violent, and discriminatory history with Jews. Ever heard of the lynching of Jewish-American engineer Leo Frank? The glaring anti-Semitism of celebrated American industrialist Henry Ford? The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 that used geographic targeting to keep Jews from immigrating to the U.S.? In recent months we’ve seen over 100 Jewish schools and centers receive bomb threats and numerous Jewish cemeteries vandalized in targeted attacks.

While many people identify Jewish Americans as simply “white” these days, some may be surprised to learn that this is a relatively new mainstream notion that has surfaced in the past half century. Before that, many Americans bought into the belief that Jews were ethnically inferior white people and treated them as such for centuries. The discrimination towards Jews hasn’t just come from blatant white supremacists, either; when future president Ulysses S. Grant was a general in the Union Army during the Civil War, he singled out Jews “as a class” and expelled them from the territory he was commanding from Mississippi to Illinois over accusations that they smuggled goods between the Union and the Confederacy.

I’m not saying that the ongoing plights surrounding Jewish identity are more important than issues facing other oppressed groups in the U.S., nor am I ignoring that the fact that many Jews do benefit from white privilege and have long-standing tensions with other movements. I’m aware that the context of Europe in the 1930s-’40s and that of the American South in 2017 are very different; after all, many of the self-proclaimed Nazis in Charlottesville, VA also marched with Confederate flags, showing support for the enslavement of Black people in this country. They have always found kinship with other hateful causes.

However, Nazism and Jewish history are inextricably and eternally linked, and it also can’t be overlooked that many of the phrases these Nazis in Charlottesville were chanting were in fact rooted in remarks directly created to incite hatred against Jews. “Jew will not replace us” and “Sieg heil,” the Nazi victory salute, are pretty damn explicit. “Blood and soil,” which many outlets reported the white nationalists chanting, actually comes from a German phrase Adolf Hitler used (“blut und boden”) to rally citizens behind “rural” and “pure” Aryan people and denounce those whom he saw as greedy, corrupt Jews. Omitting this context also means ignoring yet another violent, ugly part of American history that many people don’t even know about to begin with.

This weekend, many liberally-minded people from Insecure’s Yvonne Orji to former president Bill Clinton (as well as a few conservatively-minded people, like Orrin Hatch and Ted Cruz) are urging us to call what happened in Charlottesville what it actually was: an act of domestic terrorism by people who identify as white nationalists, white supremacists, and Nazis. We also need to go a step further and be explicit about the types of ethnic cleansing to which these people allude. Waving Confederate flags is about promoting slavery and anti-Blackness, and waving swastika-laden flags is about getting rid of “undesirable” populations — like Jews. Hell, there were people doing the Nazi salute and walking around in T-shirts with Adolf Hitler quotes on them. If that’s not a direct condemnation of Jews, I don’t know what is. So why are people not saying that?

You don’t have to denounce anti-Semitism over other forms of hate; you just need to make sure you include it. Speaking out against anti-Semitism and discussing the plight of Jews in America doesn’t exclude the hateful and violent histories experienced by other oppressed groups in the U.S. We don’t need to sweep one atrocity under the rug to make room for others; there’s plenty of space, as well as a dire need, to discuss every single one of them. They were all born from a similar place of hate and ignorance, and there’s no place for even the tiniest crumb of it in the United States of America.

[foxofthedesert]

RQ OUaT FF | OGA: Ch. 10

Chapter 10 – Despair (Ao3 Link)

When Regina regains consciousness, it is the dead of night. The fire stoked in the hearth does nothing to dispel the chill that has settled into her muscles and bones. Other than the crackling of wood surrendering to the insatiable appetite of the flame, eerie silence reigns within her chambers. The curtains lining her extravagant and enormous windows are not drawn, and outside she can make out half of a pale crescent moon hanging high in the sky.

She groans when she tries to move, feeling achy and lethargic from having expended so much of her energy during the fight with Zelena. The discomfort is worth it, though, if only for the sweet memory of the witch's tangible disbelief and dismay. The broccoli colored bitch had not anticipated being defeated by the little sister she had dismissed as an inept non-threat.

"Don't get up too quickly," a familiar male voice instructs from her left.

Directing her attention to the source, Regina finds her father slumped in a chair against the far wall, partially shrouded by shadows. The creases around his mouth and his haggard complexion make him appear more old and weary than he has since the end of the Dark Days. He had not fared well while his only child was busy building a reputation for herself as a bloodthirsty tyrant. Dark circles are also prominent around his eyes and his lips are pressed into a tight line that is uncharacteristic of late. He presently resembles the days after Cora's coup and subsequent reign of terror temporarily wrested control of the throne from their daughter. Unforgivable atrocities were committed against the kingdom's subjects and his beloved daughter-in-law, both of which weighed heavily upon his tender heart.

Prince Henry, seventh son of Xavier, never forgave himself for his youthful inability to recognize Cora's manipulations for what they were. Given free reign to practice her dark magicks, she slowly succumbed to an insidious influence that gradually transformed her into a hideous monstrosity who repeatedly abused their only child. His guilt only deepened after Cora returned from exile in Wonderland and thereafter put his daughter and daughter-in-law through the proverbial wringer. Even so, until the very end he harbored a soft spot for the miller's daughter whose audaciousness won her the hand of a prince and a title to go along with him.

Some infinitesimally small part of Regina sympathizes with her father's plight. No matter how much hurt she endured, she still cared about the heartless witch she called mother and always would. Unlike her father, however, that did not stop her from doing what was necessary. Executing her mother was the hardest thing she ever did. It was also the most righteous. The unerringly selfish woman more than deserved to die. For far too long Cora had escaped her just dues, the universe itself had demanded satisfaction for her many atrocities. Furthermore, Regina wasn't about to let her get away with all she had done to Red. Hell, even Cora's ludicrously merciful husband grudgingly recognized the justice in crushing that coal black heart into so much dust.

Perhaps the strangest part about the whole sordid episode was that rather than cause strife between herself and her father, it drew them closer together. Once, the sight of him was a nuisance she often wished she could rid herself of. In many ways, he was her second shadow, only with a voice and a conscience and an annoying penchant for exercising both at the least convenient moments. Back then, she simply could not tolerate unwelcome reminders of a time when she was full of optimism and kindness. Yet even at her worst, she never forgot that he was the only person who ever openly showed her any form of affection in her youth, which is why she could never scrounge up the strength to banish him from her presence once she was crowned. It is only now that the soulless winter season of her life has so dramatically shifted into vibrant spring that she has developed an appreciation for his immutable devotion. He has always been a man of insufficient will who let his imperious wife run roughshod over him, but he was – is – a good father.

It is because of that affection that Regina permitted his constant interference and insufferable moralizing once she became Queen and, later on, the Evil Queen. For all of his sanctimonious preaching, he lacked the constitution to openly oppose her, so she never heeded his warnings about how her violent behavior would forever stain her soul. She was aware of how it pained him to watch her commit crime after crime, to hear about her most recent lapse of self-control that almost always resulted in mass casualties and exorbitant destruction of property. He held his peace for the most part because she was his little girl, having loved her in spite of her wickedness just as she loved him in spite of his weakness.

Regina could not – or would not – acknowledge the parallels between herself and her mother, however many times her father tried to get her to. It was only after Red reawakened her slumbering heart that she began to question the way she was conducting her life. With each tale related concerning her many vile acts, Red deftly and respectfully helped her to see how frightfully similar she became to the heartless monster she called mother. It was no wonder that her father quickly became Red's biggest fan when he had been trying to tell Regina the exact same thing for years without success.

Having fallen under the sway of Red's easy-going manner and simplistic charm like every one else, Henry quickly grew attached to his daughter's new paramour. Mostly Regina chalked that fondness up to how happy Red made his only child. Via Red's influence, the Evil Queen was slowly receding in favor of the daughter he had lovingly raised and doted upon at every available opportunity. The reemergence of her softer side pretty much sealed the deal on Red's sainthood insofar as her father was concerned.

Beyond that reference to their mutual love for Regina, there was also genuine affection between the two borne of interests she probably should have guessed they would have in common. Many times while she was taking care of urgent state business, they would sneak off to go hunting or fishing. Both of those were activities the former prince had always cherished but never got to indulge in while married to Cora, nor had he been permitted to teach Regina such undignified skills. Because he was so distant from the throne, his father extended him plenty of latitude to pursue his interests, and he took advantage of it as often as he could. When she was a girl, he used regale her with stories of how he used to go on month long hunting trips, living off the land and what he caught, learning how to respect nature and to fear it. He was a talented archer and fisherman in his day, preeminent among his peers in his ability to track game with only the most minuscule clues. He had lived his entire youth on up into his adulthood out of doors, and Regina could distinctly remember how sad he seemed to reminisce knowing that the days of his wilderness adventures were long behind him.

Red, on the other hand, was born without a silver spoon in her mouth. As a child, she had to scrounge and fight along with her grandmother for every scrap and morsel she could wrench from the stingy grip of the earth. She had learned her skills out of necessity, but along the way she also learned to appreciate the freedom that can only found beneath a sprawling blue sky, and to genuinely enjoy such activities inextricably associated with surviving natures constant quest to kill the living. She is a forager able to outpace the most veteran apothecary assistant or herbalist and a hunter without peer who utilizes her vastly superior senses to track prey far beyond the range of a normal person. Her expertise with a bow is also becoming legendary, especially since she beat Robin in a fair and square archery contest. Once zeroed in on her quarry, whether it be deer or pheasant or turkey or boar, Red can strike a fatal blow with a single arrow from two hundred yards away, even if the animal is on the move at a full sprint. Regina had witnessed this ability personally, else she would have scoffed at the notion of such a feat. And not only was Red an incredible huntress, she would also lug her score back to the castle without aid, where she would then gut it, skin it, clean it, and then quarter it with the precision of butcher. Her grandmother had taught her that wastefulness was disrespectful of the life that had been sacrificed so that they could live another day or week or month. It was a lesson that Red took to heart, which is why she utilizes every scrap of the slain animal that she can.

There was one particularly harsh winter that Red and Regina's father had teamed up to pick up the slack when food stores began running low. Being that her father was old, he could not do as much as he wished, so he helped where he could by hunting or fishing while Red foraged deep within the foreboding recesses of the surrounding forests. Once Red came back from her gathering excursion, Henry would retire for the day, and upon sorting out their gains to their proper places, Red would venture back out again not return until the sunrise. After an hour or two of sleep in the wee hours of the morning, she would be back at it, and it was in large part thanks to their diligent efforts that half the staff of the castle did not starve.

This mutual affinity for nature created a bond between Henry and Red that was unique and endearing, and which Regina sometimes envied. It was almost like Red was the daughter he wished he could have raised her to be, and she had to admit that her life would have been much easier had he been allowed his druthers in her rearing. She would have preferred hunting and fishing to the boredom and drudgery of court life. But even though her upbringing was not easy, things worked out for the best, so she tamped down on her envy. How could she be anything less than thrilled that the two most important people in the world to her were so deeply fond of one another.

Her father's clear concern at Red's state, then, is understandable. He has to be feeling as if he is on the verge of losing an adopted daughter. It couldn't have helped that his biological one passed out from over-exertion in a magical fight with the perpetrator of this unreal fiasco. All of the stress has to be taking a terrible toll at his advancing age.

Regina would offer whatever consolation she could were she not too wrapped up in her own anguish. Any sympathy from her right now would sound empty and meaningless when her wife has been cursed by the sister she didn't even know she had until this afternoon.

At the thought of Red and that damnable apple, Regina springs up, eyes widening as panic sets in. "Where is she, Daddy? Where is Red?"

"Calm down, Regina," her father says, standing to make his way over to the bedside. Once there, he clasps one of her hands tightly. "I had her moved into the guest chambers opposite yours. She is safe."

Regina's eyes began to swim with unshed tears as all that had happened with Zelena storms back into the forefront of her mind. "But she's not safe, Daddy. Not at all. The witch that killed Robin did something to her, cursed her so that even True Love's kiss did not wake her as it should have."

Her father's gapes at her for a moment. "True Love's kiss?"

Regina nods as she grips her sheets with her free hand, straining her fingers against the luxurious fabric as she struggles with her overwrought emotions. "When Zelena confirmed that she had cursed Red, I knew I had to try. And it worked, Daddy, much to my shock. I saw the magic burst from our bodies when I kissed her." As she looks up at her father, a tear escapes her lids and slides forlornly down her cheek. "Red is my True Love, yet she did not wake up."

"Regina, that's wonderful!" he exclaims, latching on to the positive just as he is so prone to do. He had missed the most important part.

"Yes, the first part of it is," she agrees, but her tone is anything but happy, and her father finally notices that.

He gives her hand a squeeze. "That's what I meant, of course. But I am confused as well. If True Loves kiss worked, why does Red still sleep?"

"Zelena did something to the curse," she explains. "It's not like the one I put Snow under. She somehow altered it so that no magic can break it, and she has also designed it to slowly drain its victim. If I don't find a cure, Red will wither away and die."

Dropping her father's hand, Regina slides out of bed, careful not to tilt over when she puts her weight onto her legs. Her father is there to steady her, but she brushes off his attempt to help. After running a hand through her errant hair to smooth it down, she shuffles over to the door only to be stopped short by her father's voice.

"Can you do it?" When she turns, he is staring at her with tears of his own gathering at his lids. "Can you find a cure?"

The gravity of the situation has finally hit him in earnest, it seems. A pang of sympathy tugs at Regina's heart for her elderly father. He looks so very frail. Losing Red would likely strain him precariously near to a tumble over the crested edge of a deep depression from which there might be no escape. But however much she hurts for him, she cannot afford to let concern for anyone else distract her. Selfishly, her main priority is Red – and herself by proxy, as her own survival hinges upon Red's.

A sharp stab of pain lances through her chest. Red cannot die. Not now. The seven years they have spent building a happy life together have accumulated a net value exceeding any computation. In that span they have won the admiration of a kingdom through concerted efforts to improve the lives of all citizens. And they have made so many memories of love and laughter, of nasty quarrels and unforgettable apologies, of lazy morning cuddles and nighttime passion, more memories worth treasuring than the rest of Regina's thirty-seven years combined. To be sundered from her True Love now, having accomplished the previously unthinkable, would break Regina beyond repair. The delicate shards that Red so patiently and lovingly reconstructed will simply shatter all over again, this time into a million jagged shards that can never be put back together. Whatever distorted form emerges from the wreckage, whatever sad reflection of humanity she can salvage from the destruction, it is guaranteed to be grotesque. If the Evil Queen was born out of Daniel's death, what monstrosity will arise from the molten ashes of Red's? Regina does not want to find out. Frankly, the thought petrifies her. She does not ever want to be that woman again.

At the same time, she also knows she has to be honest, if not with her father, than with herself. Managing expectations is the only way she will survive the coming crisis without driving herself straight through the amorphous threshold of insanity.

"I don't know," she tells him frankly. "I wish I could say otherwise, but I simply have no answers right now. All I do know is that I will do whatever I have to do to save her. That much I can promise you. Beg, plead, steal, kill, break hearts or minds or bodies, or burn the world to cinders...I will do what is necessary to save her. And if that means I die in the trying, so be it."

"Please don't talk that way," her father says, his legs momentarily faltering. If possible, his already thin, waxy skin looses even more color. "Losing Red is bad enough. I can't lose you, too."

"She's not dead yet, Daddy. Neither am I. And I don't intend for either of those facts to change." Drawing in a shaky breath, she shakes her head. She has wasted too much time already. Her heart is crying out for Red and she must obey. "Stay here or go elsewhere as you please, but I need to see my wife now. Alone." Her father nods sadly at the dismissal, and with that, Regina throws open the door, heedless of her disheveled state of undress, and strides out into the hallway.

Garbed in only her favorite black and royal blue lace nightgown, she ignores the gawking eyes of the servants as she makes her way across the hall to stand before the door of the royal guest chambers. She doesn't bother knocking. Upon barging into the room, her eyes immediately fall upon the bed. And there lies Red, looking for all the world like she is merely sleeping. If her own memory of what befell her wife were not enough to break that idyllic – and infinitely preferable – illusion, the rumpled form of Victor Frankenstein scrunched up in a chair next to the bed does. All but comatose from exhaustion, Regina has never seen the man more bedraggled.

She does not say a word to the Head Physician as she crosses over to the far side of the bed. As carefully as she can, she nestles upon the edge next to Red's hip. Her heart ramps up pace until it is pounding erratically against her breastbone, and as she leans over Red's inert form, she brushes a lock of dark brown hair away from a fevered forehead. Her fight against the sob bubbling up within her chest is increasingly a losing prospect when all she wants to do is claw at her eyes and tear at her hair as she rages and weeps uncontrollably at the cruelty of fate. How perverse is it that Red is paying the price for Cora's chronic inability to be a decent human being? The callous abandonment of Regina's half-sister was the first domino to fall, sparking a chain reaction of ruined lives that culminated in this detestable catastrophe.

Emotionally reeling, Regina ignores Victor's abnormally unassuming presence as she leans in to press a loving kiss to her wife's sweat-dampened forehead. Red's skin, normally warm to the touch, is on fire, burning within from the unnatural malady coursing through her veins. Perhaps this symptom, Regina laments to herself, might even be a physical manifestation of the inescapable torture of the Burning Room to which Red is currently being subjected. The idea of her wife suffering in that horrible place wrenches a choked sob from Regina's throat, and she dully notes that the bitter tears she'd tried so valiantly to suppress are now steadily dripping from her chin onto Red's face.

Despair, thick and palpable descends upon her, and for a lung-crushing moment, she suffocates on it. Red is cursed, dying, and she no fucking idea what to do. How is supposed to fix this? Or how can she ever live with herself if she fails to deliver a cure? How is she supposed to ever sleep again without Red's familiar weight next to her or slung half atop her or rest for a single second without that preternatural warmth engulfing her and providing her with an essential sense of satisfaction that seeps down into her very marrow? How is she supposed face another moment without Red's smile to illuminate the darkness of night and put the sun to shame during the day? And how is she meant to survive without the half of her heart, of her essential being, that makes life worth living? She honestly does not think she can, which is why she said what she did to her father.

Her wedding vows ring in her mind, an echo of the past unexpectedly shedding light upon her future. She can see now that they were so much more than perfunctory words merely part of an elaborate ceremony. She had meant every word as she spoke them, of course, but it is only just now she realizes how profound and prescient they were. Her life is now tied to Red's, for better or worse, and that is not a metaphor or some flowery declaration of devotion. It is the literal truth. If Red dies, so will she. Maybe it won't be by natural causes or the severing of some supernatural cord that has tied their life forces together. If not of a grief Niobe could not fathom then it will surely come purposefully by her own hand. Either way the result will be the same. Red will be dead and so will she. There is only one other possible outcome and it is totally unacceptable. Death would be far preferable than descending one again into madness.

Overwhelmed by an agonizing misery she cannot contain, a strangled sob pries free of past her lips. They are audible expressions of her untenable emotional distress, harbingers of a collapse that seems so horrifyingly imminent. Her earlier resolve to resist the despondence clamped around her entire body dissolves into so much vapor. In the background ambiance of her mind, she hears the darkness calling out to her and can feel it wrapping its seductive tendrils around her heart.

It would be so easy to give in, to surrender to the path of least resistance like she'd done once before. The road has already been paved long ago, and it lies before her an unending avenue of onyx bricks rolling ominously toward a horizon alight with raging hellfire. It is a manifestation of the apocalyptic path terminating within her innermost malignant depravity and it's familiarity brings a comfort she now knows to be hollow. Capitulating to evil the first time gained her only a cold throne and won her an ultimately unfulfilling power. The pervasive loneliness and a constant misery that followed was interspersed with brief flashes of ecstatic debauchery that nearly extinguished the faltering flame of her humanity forever.

With great effort she pushes back temptation, for Red's sake more than her own. It had been Red who rescued her from the ignoble fate she is now sure awaited her should she have remained steadfast in her single-minded obsession for revenge on Snow White. Red had shown her a route to escape the clamoring horde of her personal demons and then encouraged her to rejoin the wider world in a constructive capacity, all without losing in the process who she fundamentally is as a person. With Red, she can be loving and decent without the shameful naivete and spinelessness that characterized her youth. She can be soft and hard at the same time without sinking into the oxymoronic. And maybe the gray existence she has settled so fluidly into isn't what heroes like Snow would define as acceptable, but it's one that suits her just fine.

Temporarily de-fanged, the slavering beast within subsides into the fringes of Regina's psyche. It will leave her alone for a while, at least, though the stalemate won't last should she fail to save Red and somehow persist after burying her better angel. Should the unthinkable come to pass, there will be no halting her meteoric descent into a new level of malevolence that will eclipse anything that ever came before. She'll become a true monster then, one that even the Evil Queen would cower before.

Heedless of the audience, with hope warring with pessimism over the future, forlorn and angst-ridden over her wife's fate, she slumps onto Red's barely moving chest and finally surrenders to her sorrow.

[enchantingtigerbarbarian-blog]

Chapter 14 - SITUATION ROOM

SITUATION ROOM

Just before seven o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, April 4, the seventy-fourth day of the Trump presidency, Syrian government forces attacked the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun with chemical weapons. Scores of children were killed. It was the first time a major outside event had intruded into the Trump presidency.

Most presidencies are shaped by external crises. The presidency, in its most critical role, is a reactive job. Much of the alarm about Donald Trump came from the widespread conviction that he could not be counted on to be cool or deliberate in the face of a storm. He had been lucky so far: ten weeks in, and he had not been seriously tested. In part this might have been because the crises generated from inside the White House had overshadowed all outside contenders.

Even a gruesome attack, even one on children in an already long war, might not yet be a presidential game changer of the kind that everyone knew would surely come. Still, these were chemical weapons launched by a repeat offender, Bashar al-Assad. In any other presidency, such an atrocity would command a considered and, ideally, skillful response. Obama’s consideration had in fact been less than skillful in proclaiming the use of chemical weapons as a red line—and then allowing it to be crossed.

Almost nobody in the Trump administration was willing to predict how the president might react—or even whether he would react. Did he think the chemical attack important or unimportant? No one could say.

If the Trump White House was as unsettling as any in American history, the president’s views of foreign policy and the world at large were among its most random, uninformed, and seemingly capricious aspects. His advisers didn’t know whether he was an isolationist or a militarist, or whether he could distinguish between the two. He was enamored with generals and determined that people with military command experience take the lead in foreign policy, but he hated to be told what to do. He was against nation building, but he believed there were few situations that he couldn’t personally make better. He had little to no experience in foreign policy, but he had no respect for the experts, either.

Suddenly, the question of how the president might respond to the attack in Khan Sheikhoun was a litmus test for normality and those who hoped to represent it in Trump’s White House. Here was the kind of dramatic juxtaposition that might make for a vivid and efficient piece of theater: people working in the Trump White House who were trying to behave normally.

* * *

Surprisingly, perhaps, there were quite a few such people.

Acting normal, embodying normality—doing things the way a striving, achieving, rational person would do them—was how Dina Powell saw her job in the White House. At forty-three, Powell had made a career at the intersection of the corporate world and public policy; she did well (very, very well) by doing good. She had made great strides in George W. Bush’s White House and then later at Goldman Sachs. Returning to the White House at a penultimate level, with at least a chance of rising to one of the country’s highest unelected positions, would potentially be worth enormous sums when she returned to the corporate world.

In Trumpland, however, the exact opposite could happen. Powell’s carefully cultivated reputation, her brand (and she was one of those people who thought intently about their personal brand), could become inextricably tied to the Trump brand. Worse, she could become part of what might easily turn into historical calamity. Already, for many people who knew Dina Powell—and everybody who was anybody knew Dina Powell—the fact that she had taken a position in the Trump White House indicated either recklessness or seriously bad judgment.

“How,” wondered one of her longtime friends, “does she rationalize this?” Friends, family, and neighbors asked, silently or openly, Do you know what you’re doing? And how could you? And why would you?

Here was the line dividing those whose reason for being in the White House was a professed loyalty to the president from the professionals they had needed to hire. Bannon, Conway, and Hicks—along with an assortment of more or less peculiar ideologues that had attached themselves to Trump and, of course, his family, all people without clearly monetizable reputations before their association with Trump—were, for better or worse, hitched to him. (Even among dedicated Trumpers there was always a certain amount of holding their breath and constant reexamination of their options.) But those within the larger circle of White House influence, those with some stature or at least an imagined stature, had to work through significantly more complicated contortions of personal and career justification.

Often they wore their qualms on their sleeves. Mick Mulvaney, the OMB director, made a point of stressing the fact that he worked in the Executive Office Building, not the West Wing. Michael Anton, holding down Ben Rhodes’s former job at the NSC, had perfected a deft eye roll (referred to as the Anton eye roll). H. R. McMaster seemed to wear a constant grimace and have perpetual steam rising from his bald head. (“What’s wrong with him?” the president often asked.)

There was, of course, a higher rationale: the White House needed normal, sane, logical, adult professionals. To a person, these pros saw themselves bringing positive attributes—rational minds, analytic powers, significant professional experience—to a situation sorely lacking those things. They were doing their bit to make things more normal and, therefore, more stable. They were bulwarks, or saw themselves that way, against chaos, impulsiveness, and stupidity. They were less Trump supporters than an antidote to Trump.

“If it all starts going south—more south than it is already going—I have no doubt that Joe Hagin would himself take personal responsibility, and do what needed to be done,” said a senior Republican figure in Washington, in an effort at self-reassurance, about the former Bush staffer who now served as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations.

But this sense of duty and virtue involved a complicated calculation about your positive effect on the White House versus its negative effect on you. In April, an email originally copied to more than a dozen people went into far wider circulation when it was forwarded and reforwarded. Purporting to represent the views of Gary Cohn and quite succinctly summarizing the appalled sense in much of the White House, the email read:

It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family. I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror.

Still, the mess that might do serious damage to the nation, and, by association, to your own brand, might be transcended if you were seen as the person, by dint of competence and professional behavior, taking control of it.

Powell, who had come into the White House as an adviser to Ivanka Trump, rose, in weeks, to a position on the National Security Council, and was then, suddenly, along with Cohn, her Goldman colleague, a contender for some of the highest posts in the administration.

At the same time, both she and Cohn were spending a good deal of time with their ad hoc outside advisers on which way they might jump out of the White House. Powell could eye seven-figure comms jobs at various Fortune 100 companies, or a C-suite future at a tech company—Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, after all, had a background in corporate philanthropy and in the Obama administration. Cohn, on his part, already a centamillionaire, was thinking about the World Bank or the Fed.

Ivanka Trump—dealing with some of the same personal and career considerations as Powell, except without a viable escape strategy—was quite in her own corner. Inexpressive and even botlike in public but, among friends, discursive and strategic, Ivanka had become both more defensive about her father and more alarmed by where his White House was heading. She and her husband blamed this on Bannon and his let-Trump-be-Trump philosophy (often interpreted as let Trump be Bannon). The couple had come to regard him as more diabolical than Rasputin. Hence it was their job to keep Bannon and the ideologues from the president, who, they believed, was, in his heart, a practical-minded person (at least in his better moods), swayed only by people preying on his short attention span.

In mutually codependent fashion, Ivanka relied on Dina to suggest management tactics that would help her handle her father and the White House, while Dina relied on Ivanka to offer regular assurances that not everyone named Trump was completely crazy. This link meant that within the greater West Wing population, Powell was seen as part of the much tighter family circle, which, while it conferred influence, also made her the target of ever sharper attacks. “She will expose herself as being totally incompetent,” said a bitter Katie Walsh, seeing Powell as less a normalizing influence than another aspect of the abnormal Trump family power play.

And indeed, both Powell and Cohn had privately concluded that the job they both had their eye on—chief of staff, that singularly necessary White House management position—would always be impossible to perform if the president’s daughter and son-in-law, no matter how much they were allied to them, were in de facto command whenever they wanted to exert it.

Dina and Ivanka were themselves spearheading an initiative that, otherwise, would have been a fundamental responsibility of the chief of staff: controlling the president’s information flow.

* * *

The unique problem here was partly how to get information to someone who did not (or could not or would not) read, and who at best listened only selectively. But the other part of the problem was how best to qualify the information that he liked to get. Hope Hicks, after more than a year at this side, had honed her instincts for the kind of information—the clips—that would please him. Bannon, in his intense and confiding voice, could insinuate himself into the president’s mind. Kellyanne Conway brought him the latest outrages against him. There were his after-dinner calls—the billionaire chorus. And then cable, itself programmed to reach him—to court him or enrage him.

The information he did not get was formal information. The data. The details. The options. The analysis. He didn’t do PowerPoint. For anything that smacked of a classroom or of being lectured to—“professor” was one of his bad words, and he was proud of never going to class, never buying a textbook, never taking a note—he got up and left the room.

This was a problem in multiple respects—indeed, in almost all the prescribed functions of the presidency. But perhaps most of all, it was a problem in the evaluation of strategic military options.

The president liked generals. The more fruit salad they wore, the better. The president was very pleased with the compliments he got for appointing generals who commanded the respect that Mattis and Kelly and McMaster were accorded (pay no attention to Michael Flynn). What the president did not like was listening to generals, who, for the most part, were skilled in the new army jargon of PowerPoint, data dumps, and McKinsey-like presentations. One of the things that endeared Flynn to the president was that Flynn, quite the conspiracist and drama queen, had a vivid storytelling sense.

By the time of the Syrian attack on Khan Sheikhoun, McMaster had been Trump’s National Security Advisor for only about six weeks. Yet his efforts to inform the president had already become an exercise in trying to tutor a recalcitrant and resentful student. Recently Trump’s meetings with McMaster had ended up in near acrimony, and now the president was telling several friends that his new National Security Advisor was too boring and that he was going to fire him.

McMaster had been the default choice, a fact that Trump kept returning to: Why had he hired him? He blamed his son-in-law.

After the president fired Flynn in February, he had spent two days at Mar-a-Lago interviewing replacements, badly taxing his patience.

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Bannon’s consistent choice, made his aggressive light-up-the-world, go-to-war pitch.

Then Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, presented himself with what Trump viewed positively as old-fashioned military decorum. Yes, sir. No, sir. That’s correct, sir. Well, I think we know China has some problems, sir. And in short order it seemed that Trump was selling Caslen on the job.

“That’s the guy I want,” said Trump. “He’s got the look.”

But Caslen demurred. He had never really had a staff job. Kushner thought he might not be ready.

“Yeah, but I liked that guy,” pressed Trump.

Then McMaster, wearing a uniform with his silver star, came in and immediately launched into a wide-ranging lecture on global strategy. Trump was soon, and obviously, distracted, and as the lecture continued he began sulking.

“That guy bores the shit out of me,” announced Trump after McMaster left the room. But Kushner pushed him to take another meeting with McMaster, who the next day showed up without his uniform and in a baggy suit.

“He looks like a beer salesman,” Trump said, announcing that he would hire McMaster but didn’t want to have another meeting with him.

Shortly after his appointment, McMaster appeared on Morning Joe. Trump saw the show and noted admiringly, “The guy sure gets good press.”

The president decided he had made a good hire.

* * *

By midmorning on April 4, a full briefing had been assembled at the White House for the president about the chemical attacks. Along with his daughter and Powell, most members of the president’s inner national security circle saw the bombing of Khan Sheikhoun as a straightforward opportunity to register an absolute moral objection. The circumstance was unequivocal: Bashar al-Assad’s government, once again defying international law, had used chemical weapons. There was video documenting the attack and substantial agreement among intelligence agencies about Assad’s responsibility. The politics were right: Barack Obama failed to act when confronted with a Syrian chemical attack, and now Trump could. The downside was small; it would be a contained response. And it had the added advantage of seeming to stand up to the Russians, Assad’s effective partners in Syria, which would score a political point at home.

Bannon, at perhaps his lowest moment of influence in the White House—many still felt that his departure was imminent—was the only voice arguing against a military response. It was a purist’s rationale: keep the United States out of intractable problems, and certainly don’t increase our involvement in them. He was holding the line against the rising business-as-usual faction, making decisions based on the same set of assumptions, Bannon believed, that had resulted in the Middle East quagmire. It was time to break the standard-response pattern of behavior, represented by the Jarvanka-Powell-Cohn-McMaster alliance. Forget normal—in fact, to Bannon, normal was precisely the problem.

The president had already agreed to McMaster’s demand that Bannon be removed from the National Security Council, though the change wouldn’t be announced until the following day. But Trump was also drawn to Bannon’s strategic view: Why do anything, if you don’t have to? Or, why would you do something that doesn’t actually get you anything? Since taking office, the president had been developing an intuitive national security view: keep as many despots who might otherwise screw you as happy as possible. A self-styled strongman, he was also a fundamental appeaser. In this instance, then, why cross the Russians?

By the afternoon, the national security team was experiencing a sense of rising panic: the president, in their view, didn’t seem to be quite registering the situation. Bannon wasn’t helping. His hyperrationalist approach obviously appealed to the not-always-rational president. A chemical attack didn’t change the circumstances on the ground, Bannon argued; besides, there had been far worse attacks with far more casualties than this one. If you were looking for broken children, you could find them anywhere. Why these broken children?

The president was not a debater—well, not in any Socratic sense. Nor was he in any conventional sense a decision maker. And certainly he was not a student of foreign policy views and options. But this was nevertheless turning into a genuine philosophical face-off.

“Do nothing” had long been viewed as an unacceptable position of helplessness by American foreign policy experts. The instinct to do something was driven by the desire to prove you were not limited to nothing. You couldn’t do nothing and show strength. But Bannon’s approach was very much “A pox on all your houses,” it was not our mess, and judging by all recent evidence, no good would come of trying to help clean it up. That effort would cost military lives with no military reward. Bannon, believing in the need for a radical shift in foreign policy, was proposing a new doctrine: Fuck ’em. This iron-fisted isolationism appealed to the president’s transactional self: What was in it for us (or for him)?

Hence the urgency to get Bannon off the National Security Council. The curious thing is that in the beginning he was thought to be much more reasonable than Michael Flynn, with his fixation on Iran as the source of all evil. Bannon was supposed to babysit Flynn. But Bannon, quite to Kushner’s shock, had not just an isolationist worldview but an apocalyptic one. Much of the world would burn and there was nothing you could do about it.

The announcement of Bannon’s removal was made the day after the attack. That in itself was a rather remarkable accomplishment on the part of the moderates. In little more than two months, Trump’s radical, if not screwball, national security leadership had been replaced by so-called reasonable people.

The job was now to bring the president into this circle of reason.

* * *

As the day wore on, both Ivanka Trump and Dina Powell were united in their determination to persuade the president to react . . . normally. At the very minimum, an absolute condemnation of the use of chemical weapons, a set of sanctions, and, ideally, a military response—although not a big one. None of this was in any way exceptional. Which was sort of the point: it was critical not to respond in a radical, destabilizing way—including a radical nonresponse.

Kushner was by now complaining to his wife that her father just didn’t get it. It had even been difficult to get a consensus on releasing a firm statement about the unacceptability of the use of chemical weapons at the noon press briefing. To both Kushner and McMaster it seemed obvious that the president was more annoyed about having to think about the attack than by the attack itself.

Finally, Ivanka told Dina they needed to show the president a different kind of presentation. Ivanka had long ago figured out how to make successful pitches to her father. You had to push his enthusiasm buttons. He may be a businessman, but numbers didn’t do it for him. He was not a spreadsheet jockey—his numbers guys dealt with spreadsheets. He liked big names. He liked the big picture—he liked literal big pictures. He liked to see it. He liked “impact.”

But in one sense, the military, the intelligence community, and the White House’s national security team remained behind the times. Theirs was a data world rather than a picture world. As it happened, the attack on Khan Sheikhoun had produced a wealth of visual evidence. Bannon might be right that this attack was no more mortal than countless others, but by focusing on this one and curating the visual proof, this atrocity became singular.

Late that afternoon, Ivanka and Dina created a presentation that Bannon, in disgust, characterized as pictures of kids foaming at the mouth. When the two women showed the presentation to the president, he went through it several times. He seemed mesmerized.

Watching the president’s response, Bannon saw Trumpism melting before his eyes. Trump—despite his visceral resistance to the establishment ass-covering and standard-issue foreign policy expertise that had pulled the country into hopeless wars—was suddenly putty. After seeing all the horrifying photos, he immediately adopted a completely conventional point of view: it seemed inconceivable to him that we couldn’t do something.

That evening, the president described the pictures in a call to a friend—the foam, all that foam. These are just kids. He usually displayed a consistent contempt for anything but overwhelming military response; now he expressed a sudden, wide-eyed interest in all kinds of other military options.

On Wednesday, April 5, Trump received a briefing that outlined multiple options for how to respond. But again McMaster burdened him with detail. He quickly became frustrated, feeling that he was being manipulated.

The following day, the president and several of his top aides flew to Florida for a meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping—a meeting organized by Kushner with the help of Henry Kissinger. While aboard Air Force One, he held a tightly choreographed meeting of the National Security Council, tying into the staff on the ground. By this point, the decision about how to respond to the chemical attack had already been made: the military would launch a Tomahawk cruise missile strike at Al Shayrat airfield. After a final round of discussion, while on board, the president, almost ceremonially, ordered the strike for the next day.

With the meeting over and the decision made, Trump, in a buoyant mood, came back to chat with reporters traveling with him on Air Force One. In a teasing fashion, he declined to say what he planned to do about Syria. An hour later, Air Force One landed and the president was hustled to Mar-a-Lago.

The Chinese president and his wife arrived for dinner shortly after five o’clock and were greeted by a military guard on the Mar-a-Lago driveway. With Ivanka supervising arrangements, virtually the entire White House senior staff attended.

During a dinner of Dover sole, haricots verts, and thumbelina carrots—Kushner seated with the Chinese first couple, Bannon at the end of the table—the attack on Al Shayrat airfield was launched.

Shortly before ten, the president, reading straight off the teleprompter, announced that the mission had been completed. Dina Powell arranged a for-posterity photo of the president with his advisers and national security team in the makeshift situation room at Mar-a-Lago. She was the only woman in the room. Steve Bannon glowered from his seat at the table, revolted by the stagecraft and the “phoniness of the fucking thing.”

It was a cheerful and relieved Trump who mingled with his guests among the palm trees and mangroves. “That was a big one,” he confided to a friend. His national security staff were even more relieved. The unpredictable president seemed almost predictable. The unmanageable president, manageable.