#king Boso

[zuko-always-lies]

Since the ATLA fandom always needs this reminder...

Characters which Azula captures over the course of the series:

1. Katara

2. Hakoda

3. Suki

4. Other Kyoshi Warriors

5. Ty Lee

6. Zuko

7. Bato

8. Tyro

9. Hui

10. Due

11. Tho

12. Mai

13. Tyro

14. The Mechanist

15. Pipsqueak

16. Iroh

17. King Kuei

18. Long Feng

19. Boso the Bear

20. Toph

Characters which Azula executes after capturing them:

None.

Maybe she’s not actually as ruthless or bloodthirsty as people make her out to be...

[wonder-worker]

The career of Bertha, daughter of Lothar II [and Waldrada], reveals that women were not simply passive bystanders in the politics of the period. As the transmitter of legitimacy through blood, she was in fact a key player. [...] She was considered a major force in Italian politics, and her political aspirations may have extended much further than the Tuscan region or even the kingdom of Italy.

-Patricia Skinner, "Women in Medieval Italian Society, 500-1200" / Daniel G. König, "Bertha of Tuscany's Correspondence with al-Muktafī bi-llāh in the Version of Ibn al-Zubayr."

[Bertha of Lotharingia was] an ambitious and politically successful female member of the Carolingian elite. The daughter of Lothair II of Lotharingia, she was born around 860 or 865. Married before 880 to count Theobald of Lorraine, she shared her husband’s exile in Arles, where he had sought refuge with Boso, the King of Provence (r. 879–887) after the latter’s brother Hugo had attempted to conquer Lorraine. She bore him four children who were to attain influential positions in a region spanning southern France and northern Italy.

When Theobald died around 887, Bertha married the margrave Adalbert II of Tuscany (r. 885–915). Adalbert’s family had much property in Provence, carried the epithet dives and led a lavish court life in Lucca. […] Theo Kölzer described Adalbert’s policy as

“characterised by a skilful manoeuvring between the individual candidates for the royal and imperial crowns, which he played off against each other for the sake of his own advantage, always taking care that the autonomy of his margraviate and his quasi-royal position did not suffer any damage in the turmoil of the time.”

Adalbert’s policy involved reacting to the ambitions of margrave Guido II of Spoleto, his son Lambert, margrave Berengar of Ivrea, duke Arnulf of Bavaria, and King Louis of Provence, all of whom aspired to the crown of Italy between the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century. Adalbert II and Bertha first sided with Guido II and his son Lambert against Berengar, thus ensuring that Guido was crowned King of Italy in 889 and emperor in 891, his son Lambert becoming royal and imperial co-regent in 891 and 892 respectively. The couple’s support for Guido and Lambert expressed itself in the fact that their two sons were christened Guido and Lambert between 891 and 894. Adalbert tried to impede Arnulf of Bavaria from interfering in Italian affairs in 894, but then turned against Lambert by cooperating with Berengar of Ivrea between 896 and 898. If we believe Liutprand of Cremona, it was around 898 that Adalbert tried to become king of Italy himself.

Around 900, Adalbert and Bertha supported the aspirations of King Louis of Provence to become emperor, possibly in the hope that Bertha’s son Hugo would thus be able to become King of Provence instead. When Hugo’s promotion failed to materialise, the couple turned against Louis, first by not impeding, then by actively supporting Berengar in his conflict with Louis. In this period, the couple already exerted enormous influence in Italy: the anti-pope Sergius III (sed. 898 and 904–911) had sought refuge with Adalbert and, according to Liutprand of Cremona, was “made pope by Adalbert” (papa per Adalbertum constituitur) in 904. In this year, the couple felt strong and independent enough to begin dating their documents according to their own regnal years. When Louis was eventually captured and blinded by Berengar in 905, he entrusted Bertha’s son Hugo—count of Vienne and Arles, duke and margrave of Provence—with the government of Provence.

[During this time, Bertha has been identified the royal woman who most likely sent a letter with an embassy in c.906 to the Caliph of Baghdad, al-Muktafi, where she described herself rather grandiosely as "queen of all the Franks". First brought to light by Muhammad Ḥamīdullāh , it has been rigorously studied and re-examined by historians. According to Daniel G. König: '...it becomes impossible to presume with Ḥamīdullāh that Bertha was a woman without political ambition who offered her hand in marriage to the caliph to escape her allegedly weak and unsuccessful husband [...] Rather, it becomes conceivable that Bertha could have developed a foreign policy strategy that looked beyond Italy and Byzantium and as far as Aġlabid North Africa. When she eventually understood that the Aġlabids were nominally subjected to the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, she looked eastwards to ʿAbbāsid Iraq. If there was a marriage proposal at all, she may have wanted to offer one of her daughters to the caliph, as François Bougard suggested [...] Bertha’s son Hugo (r. 903–947) certainly pursued a Mediterranean strategy as soon as he became king of Italy in 926. His intensive relations with Byzantium are recorded by the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, his complex relations with the “raider colony” of Fraxinetum by Liutprand of Cremona. According to Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 468/1076), he approached the caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III of Córdoba in 328/939–940 with the demand of a “security guarantee for merchants of his territory that travel back and forth between there and al- Andalus.” It does not seem far-fetched to assume that Hugo’s mother had already begun to think in the same lines of securing the Tyrrhenian Sea for Tuscany and of expanding the region’s security and economic purview.']

In 906, the year in which Bertha is said to have sent her letter to the ʿAbbāsid caliph, Louis of Provence had retired from the competition for the imperial throne, whereas Adalbert and his wife were confronted with the imperial ambitions of Berengar of Ivrea, which they opposed by blocking the Apennine pass leading him to Rome. Bertha seems to have been strongly involved in containing Berengar. That she wielded power at the side of her husband is evident from her correspondence with the archbishop of Ravenna. Germana. Gandino proposed that, in the contest with Berengar, Bertha was able and willing to present herself as a descendant of Charlemagne, as heiress of the Carolingian dynasty in Italy, and thus as a legitimate alternative candidate to the imperial throne. While this may seem unconceivable at first sight, we should consider that her husband Adalbert II did not have an equally prestigious pedigree and, by 906, had receded into the background politcally. Bertha’s quest for power also seems to have prompted contemporaries such as Liutprand of Cremona to harshly polemicize against her in particular and against women striving for power in general. Gandino believes that Berta may have even called herself “basilissa” (Βασίλισσα) in her letter to al-Muktafī bi-llāh, thus seeking imperial recognition from a foreign leader in a time, in which she—not her husband—formulated a claim to the imperial throne.

Bertha’s activities in the period after writing the letter demonstrate that she occupied an important political position in a region spanning the Provence in the west, Ivrea in the north, and Tuscany in the south. Still confronted with the imperial ambitions of Berengar when her husband died in 915, she installed her son Guido as margrave of Tuscany with herself acting as regent and married her daughter to the margrave Adalbert of Ivrea after his wife’s death. When Berengar chased Adalbert from Ivrea and arrested Bertha and Guido in Mantua between 919 and 920, she still managed to prepare the ground for her son Hugo. He was to become King of Italy in 926, shortly after Berengar’s assassination in 924 and Bertha’s death in 925."

[the-indie-owl]

Finished Reading Felix Salten's "Bambi"

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK, IF YOU ARE ONE OF THESE PEOPLE WHO HAVE ONLY SEEN DISNEY'S ADAPTATION AND NOT HAVE READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL, THIS POST MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS SO PLEASE BE WARNED.

So I have recently finished reading the Original Book of Bambi after being in such a Cervine mood when re-watching the Disney films for the Past Two Months.

I felt like that when reading a Non-Fairytale Book for the very first time felt like something that I wanted to try on something new to rely on reading some books. Even after taking a brief look at The Russian version of the Source Material, it seems like something from what I knew when watching the Two-Part Movie live action adaptations that Human Ballet Animal version felt a more accurate approach than Disney's version when visiting the book.

For starters, I am not really a big fan of the Upcoming Soulless Disney Remake nor the Upcoming Garbage Horror B Movie (nor would I even want to see it) as I have been in the Bambi Fandom Two Years ago as I've seen that "Half" of the Fandom cares more about Fetishization or Crossovers in General for that Matter (*cough*, *cough*, Stephen King's Carrie, *cough*) while the Side of the Fandom are the ones who have read the Source Material and even done their own interpretations of the Other Characters (most likely the Deer characters) that never been fully adapted and were left out in the Disney universe (with the exception of Geno, Gurri, Boso, and Lana in the Comic Adaptation of "Bambi's Children").

But I really wanna talk about the Original Book version since a lot of People don't really know much about it since whenever we tend to think about "Bambi", most people would only think of the Popular Disney Version (yes, there are others that have seen Other Adaptations as I am aware that there are possibly more Bambi movies out there than both the Soviet and Disney ones).

Without any further, here are some personal plot points in the OG Book that were completely left out or missing (again, major spoilers to anyone who has never read it before);

So the Book actually has a lot more Story Plots than the Movie itself to make it more easier, simpler, and even shorter than how the book handles the story (presumably I believe that's the reason as to why that the Midquel exists for a reason as a suggestion to a "Part 2" of the story). In the meantime, both the Book and the Movie take a huge approach through a Deer's POV of Wildlife (that being Bambi himself) since both versions do teach Kids the Lessons and the Values of Life (how it can be Beautiful in both of a Dark and in a Light way) since Life can take you through many strange places around the world as you go to blend within the feels of reality.

Aside from the fact that the Disney movies has its Supporting Animal Characters, the Book has a lot more Animal Characters that haven't been fully adapted or were just left out (in terms on how that some of them might've been replaced). There's a Hare called "Friend Hare", in the Movie, it's Thumper. There is an Owl in the Book but he's just known as "Screech Owl", yet, in the film, it's "Friend Owl".

The Other Characters from the Book that we've never seen are the Magpie, The Two Jays, The Pheasant Couple, A Squirrel, ect. Did I also mention for a fact that there are actual other Deer characters that were also completely left out with the exception of a few?

The Book however explains that the Stags that we see are actually known as "The Young Princes" with Bambi's Father (which we all know him as "The Great Prince of the Forest")'s actual title is "The Old Stag" (which is more different than what Disney changes his title in the adaptations). On the other hand of the differences of being Titular Ruler of your own Animal Kingdom, while the Movie explains that being a Prince means you'd have to watch over and protect your own People, the Book however does it quite differently that being a Prince of the Forest doesn't mean that you have to be a Watcher but rather, it's something more different as the book explains to gain more wisdom as you grow.

Also, I wanted to say on how funny it is when people tend to ship Bambi/Ronno as crack, when in the book, Ronno was actually a lot older than Bambi as he was actually a Good Guy and hold no hated guts nor was a bully like how you once thought he always was (Aka, in akin on how the film portrays). However, as Bambi and Faline grew, he did challenge Bambi to see on which Buck would be the perfect mate for Faline (similar in nature on how Deer mate in RL) (but I'll get to that point later on). Ronno also had a Partner named "Karus", in which that both Ronno & Karus were actually the Young Princes in the Stag group, being very respectful towards the Animals in the Forest (including Bambi) until when Bambi grew older (again, gonna get to that part very soon).

Aside from the fact that we all know who Bambi's BFFs are in what terms that Disney tries to suggest us of a Bunny and a Skunk, Thumper and Flower were sadly never a thing in the Book as Bambi's friends were mostly Fawns around his age. However, while Friend Hare was turn into Thumper for a reason with Flower being an Original Character for the Film, Faline and Another Deer (who was her Brother), "Gobo" were actually long childhood friends of Bambi as their own Mothers actually have known in each other for a very long time. That's right, you heard Me, in the Original story, Faline had a Brother and that Brother was indeed a Very Friendful Deer (much to his sister's dismay of being more "childlike"). Gobo was actually the only Deer who was captured by the Hunter as a Fawn, but was brought and carefully raised by the Hunter as he grew up living with the Human (believing in the fact that not all Humans are bad since Half of the World that we all live in is filled and invested by Half of the Good/Bad of Humanity as our Neutrality is still running even to this day).

Now, for the Part about their own Mothers, needless to say is that Faline and Gobo's Mother is called "Aunt Ena" (suggesting that somewhere down the line that perhaps Bambi's Mother and Ena are Sisters, making both Bambi, Faline, and Gobo equally as Cousins). Granted, I'm not too sure about the "cousin" part as I am deeply aware of the fact if Salten was trying to do the whole "Blood Relation in Nature of Animals is not Illegal because Animals have No Laws unlike How We Humans have" thing, but I am assuming that Bambi's Mother and Ena are perhaps long-time friends, therefore, it wouldn't specifically make Bambi and Faline cousins if you're one of the few that's gonna think it's too much of nature with incest, but I believe that the relation between the Two Mothers is left completely unexplained in the Book (so I don't think that Bambi and Faline are truly cousins are not as some would suggest that).

On the topic of Bambi and Faline's romance, I will say in the least that like Simba/Nala from "The Lion King", it's sad that we don't get to see enough of Bambi's romance with his love interest (Faline) in the Disney films when technically the book version expands more on their relationship.

They started off as childhood friends (like in the film) but only when do the Two Fawns are in a Trio with Gobo, playing with other Fawns and even having some playful time in the woods. There were also Other Deer such as Old Nettla and even Marena were also part in their lives as they did play an important role in the story (Old Nettla is an elderly figure who doesn't deserve to have fawns of her own while Marena ended up becoming Gobo's Mate until his Death by the Hunter).

Eventually (like in the film), Bambi and Faline do see each other again when they're both Adults when Bambi starts to recognize his childhood friend while instantly being in love with her but unlike in the film, Faline was unaware of Bambi's blossomed crush on her. If Disney wants you to believe that Ronno is the Secondary Antagonist, you might want to re-think again because during Mating Season, Ronno and Karus were also in love with Faline as well as they even challenged Bambi for a duel for Faline's love just in the movie until Bambi eventually wins. Aside from what I believe was cut down from the original story is that (if I do remember correctly) was that Bambi and Faline were on their Mating Night during their Honeymoon.

So to speak on their behalf of their Romance, it was actually a lot more generically more "Lovely" rather than "Cute". Considering that Faline has been described as Playful and Childlike, there always has been a potential for Bambi and Faline to become Lovers given on how that their Chemistry was really sweet and innocent when Faline was like the special one to be friends with a Prince like Bambi as when they met again as adults, Bambi did grew fond of her as the Book clearly states that He loves Her "with all of his Heart". So you can say that in the least that their Dynamic does heavenly work as the "Childhood Friends to Lovers" trope like Christine and Raoul from Gaston Leroux's "The Phantom of The Opera".

Anyways, back on Track; I think that we seriously need to take about the Most Important Character of what Most of the Animals fear and see him as "The Devil" would none other be "Man" himself.

Given through the concept of the idea based on what Nature tends to portray Humanity through an Animal's POV, An Animaltaker is a Caring Angel Guardian. A Hunter is a Huge Threat. But what is that Man has in common with both in the Book and in the Film?

While we never get to see on what Man is truly like as a Character, he is only referred by Two Options;

A Regular Hunter whose just doing his own Hunting Job.

The Audience, in which this is what we are aware if our own Kind is the Main Villain of the Story.

The reason as to why I'd bring Man up is because the same thing cannot be said towards this Hunter from the Book (or at least, what he was originally referred to similar in the film).

In the book, Man was actually only referred to as "He" is what most of the Many Animals referred to him in the book. Only then, do "Man" and "He" whom most of the Animals call to is quite similar in how Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" when the Animals simply refer to "Fire" as "The Red Flower".

While Man was probably one of the few Disney Villains that scared a lot of our childhoods, the He in the book was actually describe pretty neutral. Just a regular human hunter just doing his own hunting job.

What's interesting though is that while a Hunter is still the biggest threat to all of the Wildlife, he was actually the one who raised Gobo after when he found him straitened during the Winter time (yeah, compare to the One who burnt down all of the Forest by stupidity, this one on the other hand takes up a caring approach towards an Animal after he tried to shot it), as it turns out, Gobo was actually taken care of through his new life with Man. So there's like this "Conflict" between One whose raised by Humans and the Others who are shocked but are still feared/hated by Men. There's also a part where one of He's hunting Dogs is scolded by the Animals for being one of the domesticated ones to obey their own Human Master, while catching a Fox.

I think we can all agree that this would possibly be the most accurate depiction of Reality of what Half of Nature's Animals could see the Neutral Complex in Humanity whenever we Humans hunt or care for a creature. And how life is up to you to make your own decisions.

As for the plot of the Original Story itself, it's almost the same as the Disney movie, but the Source Material does take its own Nature story in an Individual way while still exploring the Harsh Reality of Nature within how an Animal's Life deals within the Animals themselves. With its many characters and more plot points, the Story is more of a re-telling of a Child's life from both Childhood and Adulthood as half of the Book tends to explore both Bambi's Childhood and Adulthood alike as well as his relationship with his own Parents (something that Disney gave his own Childhood more screen time as we only see Bambi's Adulthood half through the movie, which cuts down the Whole Last Part of his Adulthood). As both endings due have Bambi becoming a Father with the birth of his Children from Faline (Geno & Gurri).

However, the only man difference is how on what Disney is telling you what their own version of how a Great Prince of the Forest is vs. How Salten tells you truly on how being a Ruler of the Forest is like to gain Wisdom in order to gain Power while being Protector of the Forest.

In conclusion, while so far that the Many Changes within Disney's classical film compare to the Other Bunch of Disney Movies (that most of them are drawn from the Old Century Stories that Disney popularize to this day), I would say that Disney's take on Salten's Bambi is the largest of the pop culture today with Most People not knowing the Original Story (in fact, it's sad to say in the least on how that the Popular Adaptation overshadows the Source Material. With the Disney version still taking a Dark approach with a Cutsey Animal feel to it inside of a Mashup, the Book's approach on Nature is much more Accurate and More Realistic without any Adorable "Feel" behind to it.

However, aside from the fact that both Books are Good, does that mean I'll prefer the Book over the Famous Adaptation that is more familiar with? Well...Not really, tbh, in fact, while both can be flawed in their own way, they can actually be both unique in their own way.

So for the Book's Rating, I'd give it a 8/10, because it's still a Good Story compare to the Movie (which is still a Cinematic Masterpiece) IMO.

[liminalpsych]

Every Gawain reference I could find in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136 C.E.), including Faletra's translator notes, in case that's of interest to the Gawain fans out there.

"Desiring to honor the decrees of his own father, Arthur gave Anguselus royal power over the Scots, and he gave Urian the scepter of Moray. Back in the days of Aurelius Ambrosius, Loth had married the king’s sister Anna, by whom he fathered Gawain and Mordred. Arthur now granted him the earldom of Lothian and the other neighboring lands that had once belonged to him." [152]

"So he prepared a fleet and sailed first to Norway, hoping to bestow its crown upon his brother-in-law Loth. Loth was, in fact, the nephew of Sichelm, the king of the Norwegians, and should have inherited the throne when Sichelm died. But the Norwegians refused to accept him as their king, setting up a certain Riculf in his place. They believed they could fight off Arthur from within their fortified cities. At that time, Loth’s son Gawain was only twelve years old and had been placed in the service of Pope Sulpicius, from whom he received his arms." [154]

"From the outlying islands came Gillamorius, the king of Ireland; Malvasius, the king of Iceland; Doldavius, the king of Gotland; Gunuasius, the king of the Orkneys; King Loth of Norway; and King Aschill of Denmark." [156]

(So Loth, Gawain, and Mordred weren't of Orkney originally. Where did that first happen?)

Then there's this longer passage, which I'll do in smaller font because he gets a whole battle scene:

"He also sent two of his vassals, Boso of Oxford and Gerin of Chartres, along with his nephew Gawain, as an embassy to Lucius Hiberius to explain that he should withdraw at once to the borders of Gaul or else Arthur would come to do battle to determine who had the more just claim to Gaul. The youth of Arthur’s court, rejoicing greatly, began to urge Gawain to create some type of pretext for fighting with the Romans while he was visiting the emperor’s camp.

"The delegation made its way to Lucius and ordered him to withdraw from Gaul or else meet them in battle the next day. While Lucius was in the process of replying that he would by no means withdraw but had instead come to rule that country, his nephew Gaius Quintillianus interrupted, and started saying that the Britons were far better-equipped with bragging and threats than they were with courage or skill in battle. Gawain was incensed at these words; he drew his sword, attacked Gaius, and cut off his head. The delegation then took to its horses and fled. The Romans pursued them with foot-soldiers and a cavalry force, sparing no effort in trying to avenge themselves on these fleeing messengers. But just as one of the Romans was starting to gain on them, Gerin of Chartres suddenly turned his horse and cast his spear at him, piercing right through the man’s armor and body and pinning him to the ground. When Boso of Oxford saw the great feat that Gerin had performed, he turned his horse as well and threw his spear at the first Roman to approach. It pierced him through the throat and made him fall off his horse, lethally wounded. Then Marcellus Mutius, who was hoping to avenge Gaius Quintillianus, tried to attack Gawain from behind and was just beginning to lay his hands on him. But Gawain spun around and struck him with his sword right through the helm, cleaving his head all the way down to his chest. He told Mutius that, when he saw Quintillianus in Hell, he should tell him that this was why the Britons’ boasting was not idle. Gawain then regrouped with his companions and urged them each to turn and attack their pursuers in this way. They agreed, and each of them threw down one Roman. But the rest of the Romans, who had up until this point been bent only on pursuit, now answered their blows with swords and lances. Yet they still could not catch them or cast them down. They chased them at long last into the vicinity of a certain forest, from which around six thousand Britons emerged. They had been watching the delegation’s escape and had lain hidden in this wood in order to lend their aid. The Britons set spurs to their horses and the air was suddenly filled with their war-cries. Readying their shields for the attack, they rushed upon the Romans, immediately setting them to flight. The Britons followed them, unhorsing some of the Romans with their spears, while others they either captured or killed." [166]

"The rest of the army was led by the renowned earls Gerin of Chartres and Boso of Rydychen, which is called Oxford in the Saxon tongue; the third battalion was led by King Aschill of the Danes and King Loth of Norway; the fourth battalion by Hoel, leader of the Armoricans, and the king’s nephew Gawain." [168]

And another long battle scene:

"Eventually, the companies that they led were weakened beyond measure and had to retreat until they came to the battalion led by Hoel of the Armorican Britons and Gawain. These two men suddenly burned like a flame and led a charge against the enemy. Regrouping the soldiers who were retreating, they forced those Romans who had just a moment ago been in pursuit to turn and flee. Catching up with the retreating Romans, they cast them down and slew them and did not cease massacring them until they came up against the emperor’s personal battalion. The emperor, seeing the great peril of his comrades, lent his aid immediately. The Britons were greatly weakened in this battle. Cinmaroc, the Count of Tréguier, fell there, along with two thousand of his men. Three famous noblemen also fell—Richomarcus and Bloccovius and Iagwivius of Bodloan. If these three men had been princes of their own realms, future ages would have sung their fame on account of their prowess. While Hoel and Gawain made their charge, no enemy whom they attacked could escape, but had his life snatched away by either sword or spear. But when their company had come into the midst of Lucius’ men, they were completely surrounded by the Romans and they fell in battle just as their comrades had. Hoel and Gawain, however, were the greatest of all the knights of old, and when they beheld the slaughter of their companions they fought on all the more fiercely. Pushing ahead now on one side, now on the other, they harried Lucius’ personal bodyguard. Gawain, always aflame with a vigorous courage, sought to do battle with Lucius man to man. As this bold knight advanced, he would throw down and slay his enemies. Shining no less brightly, Hoel pressed the attack on the other side, urging on his companions and wounding the enemy. He received their blows most valiantly in turn, never shirking. He attacked and was attacked. It was not easy to say which of the two—Hoel or Gawain—was the mightier knight.

"As Gawain cut his way through Lucius’ bodyguard, as was mentioned before, he finally reached his goal and rushed upon the commander himself, forcing him to single combat. But Lucius was still in the prime of his youth. He possessed great courage and strength and skill in battle; he desired nothing more than to test his prowess against such a knight. When he withstood Gawain’s initial assault, he was joyous and exultant, for he had heard of Gawain’s fame. The battle between the two lasted a long time. They showered each other with mighty blows and warded off the blows with their shields, all the while struggling to kill each other. While they were fighting bitterly in this way, the Romans began to make a comeback, and they rushed upon the Armorican Britons and came to their commander’s aid, forcing Gawain and Hoel and their men back until they suddenly found themselves back among Arthur’s battalion." [173]

"Placing his trust in the enormous army he had amassed, Mordred marched out to meet Arthur as he attempted to land in Richborough. The two forces met in battle, and Mordred’s troops inflicted great slaughter on the others, who were still in the process of disembarking. King Anguselus of Alban, the king’s nephew Gawain, and countless others fell on the field of battle that day." [177, this is about the Battle of Camlann]

Translator's footnote: "The focus on Gawain partially reflects Welsh traditions like those found in Culhwch and Olwen, where the hero Gwalchmei (literally “Hawk of the Field”) also appears as Arthur’s nephew. Geoffrey was probably more directly familiar with the following account in William of Malmesbury’s The Deeds of the Kings of the English, III: “At that time, in the province of Wales which is called Rhos, the tomb of Walwen [Gawain], who was not Arthur’s degenerate nephew by his sister, was discovered. He ruled over that part of Britain which even now is called Walweitha. He was a warrior who was most renowned for his great valor, but he was slain by the brother and nephew of Hengist … but only after inflicting great damage upon them in compensation for his exile; in this he can share in the praise given to his uncle, for they both staved off the downfall of their homeland for many years…. Walwen’s tomb, which was fourteen feet long, was discovered upon the shore of the sea during the reign of King William. For this reason, some claim that he was wounded by his enemies and then shipwrecked; but others say that he was slain by his fellow-citizens..."

[dwellordream]

Interior Wound: The Rumour of Abortion in the Divorce of Lothar II and Theutberga

“Lothar I died in 855. His kingdom, flanked by those of his brothers, Charles the Bald to the west and Louis the German to the east, was split between his sons. Louis II (d. 875), the eldest, inherited Italy; Charles (d. 863), the youngest, inherited Provence; and Lothar II inherited the northernmost part, so-called Lotharingia. Like several other young Carolingian aristocrats in the mid ninth century, Lothar had already been in a sexual relationship by the time he entered marriage. In Lothar’s case, the status of his relationship with an Alsatian noblewoman, Waldrada, would be hotly contested in the years to come. 

By the time of his death in 869, the couple had had a son and three daughters together. One of these sons, Hugh, probably born in 855, points to the status of their union when Lothar inherited his father’s kingdom. Hugh was not a royal Carolingian name. In other words, the relationship with Waldrada, whatever term we use to describe it, was not initially intended to evolve into a royal marriage. Instead, in 855 Lothar married another noblewoman, Theutberga, in what was very likely a politically calculated marriage. 

Theutberga’s father, Boso, had been one of Lothar I’s counsellors and her brother, the married cleric Hubert, held strategically important land in the south of Lothar’s kingdom. Fearful of his brother Louis II’s intentions, the marriage cemented an alliance with a noble who controlled a strategically important transalpine passage between Lotharingia and Italy. Matters had changed dramatically within a couple of years. Theutberga was publicly accused of terrible offences, which she denied. (We will turn to various rumours, accusations and confessions in detail below.) 

Probably in 858 the matter was referred to an ordeal. Theutberga’s name was cleared and she was restored as Lothar’s wife. The ordeal was only the beginning, however; Lothar’s side quickly pursued a different route. Councils at Aachen in January and February 860 brought king and queen together before gatherings of bishops and nobles. In carefully choreographed presentations of oral and written confessions, Theutberga appeared to confirm that at least some rumours were true, though she would soon write (or had already written) to Pope Nicholas I warning of forced confessions.

After interrogating both king and queen, Lothar’s bishops concluded that she was not fit to be a wife, still less the wife of a king, and should enter a convent as a penitent. It appeared that Lothar was going to get a divorce on the terms he wanted. Significantly, though, the first mutterings of opposition came from within his own kingdom. Not everyone in Lothar’s kingdom was satisfied with the fait accompli. Our main source for the events summarized so far owes its existence to the concerns of anonymous dissenters in Lotharingia who referred documentation and questions on the case to bishops in neighbouring kingdoms; fatefully, Hincmar of Rheims was one of these bishops.

He had already turned down an invitation to the February council from Adventius of Metz, one of Lothar’s episcopal supporters, on grounds of ill health. By March 860, Hincmar had received the dissenters’ summary of events, including one report of the Aachen (January 860) council, together with a list of their questions about the case. He entered the debate with at least apparent reluctance. Hincmar’s lengthy responses to the dissenters’ questions including one about sexual scandal and abortion form the first part of his treatise on the case (its title, De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, is modern). 

…Already by 860 Theutberga had fled west into Charles the Bald’s kingdom. Back in Lotharingia, Lothar evidently still needed permission to take Waldrada as his queen. Further councils at Aachen in April 862 and Metz in June 863 rehearsed the legitimacy of the divorce and effectively cleared the way for a marriage with Waldrada. For our purposes the Metz council, which was attended by papal legates, marks a watershed; Nicholas I had entered the ring. 

Papal involvement prompted an important argumentative shift in the debate: away from the argument that Theutberga was not fit to be a royal wife because of the offences to which she confessed, and towards the argument that Lothar’s prior union with Waldrada had in fact been a legitimate marriage, though the memory of Lothar’s treatment of Theutberga haunted all subsequent discussion of the case. 

The accusations against Theutberga appalled her contemporaries. Or, if we follow some sources and many historians in regarding them as calculated fabrications (insidiae), they were designed to appall contemporaries. David d’Avray puts it bluntly; in terms of shock value, they were the ‘equivalent of child abuse allegations today’. As Stuart Airlie has emphasized, to grasp why they struck contemporaries so sharply, the accusations should be set against Carolingian political theology and ideas about queenship. 

Certainly from the reign of Louis the Pious, understandings of what it meant to be a queen were illuminated in the shimmering light of biblical exemplars. Queens were not only expected to emulate virtuous wives and fruitful mothers like Esther and Judith, but even the Virgin Mary. The accusations turned Theutberga into a ‘ghastly parody of Carolingian queenship … almost as an antithesis of the Virgin Mary herself’.

If the allegation of abortion was unique, the treatment of Theutberga was not. She stands in a line of Carolingian queens after Judith (d. 843), wife of Louis the Pious, subjected to lurid accusations of adultery and other sexual offences. Given the place of queens in Carolingian political culture, such accusations were experienced as nothing less than pollutions which threatened to ‘corrupt the entire social and cosmic order’.

We may well feel that the ‘malignly inventive humiliation Lothar and his advisors devised for Theutberga was so extreme that it is hard not to be pleased at its failure’. But what exactly was Theutberga accused of? What did she confess to? And are the answers to both of these questions identical? Modern historians typically refer to three distinct but connected offences when summarizing or narrating the divorce: incest with Hubert; unnatural intercourse, specified as anal intercourse or sodomy in a fair amount of recent historiography; and abortion.

The assumption is that these were the accusations which ‘uncoiled at Aachen’ in 860, where Theutberga’s confession supplied Lothar’s team with the requisite grounds for dissolving the marriage. (As if generalizing from a royal divorce was not treacherous enough, our only surviving abortion accusation sounds disappointingly absurd: abortion after incestuous sodomy?). Reference to all three offences can be found in the sources. Detective work, however, raises questions about the role played by abortion in the defamation of Theutberga. The accusation of abortion evaporated from the sources well before the argumentative shift in 863.

If the allusion to abortion is our missing person, we must start where our missing person was last seen. Early on in De divortio Hincmar quoted the brief sent to him in the early months of 860 by dissenters in Lothar’s kingdom. The brief included a potted narrative to bring him up to speed with events: 

They [the Lotharingian dissenters] say in the first chapter: The wife [Theutberga] of the lord and king Lothar was initially accused of stuprum, that her brother [Hubert] had committed with her the crime of masculine intercourse between the thighs, just as men are accustomed to commit shamefulness with men [Rom. 1. 27], and from this she conceived; and that because of this, she took a drink and aborted the offspring so that the disgrace would be hidden.

Quoted by Hincmar, the dissenters were writing in 860, but at this point their narrative was still in 857/8. Theutberga denied the charges and, in the absence of witnesses, proof was sought in an ordeal: by the judgment of lay nobles, by the advice of bishops and with the consent of the king, a proxy for that woman went to the judgment of boiling water [the ordeal], and after he was found uncooked, the same woman was restored to the marriage bed and decreed royal union from which she had been suspended.

Only then did the brief turn to more recent events: ‘after a space of time, the booklet [the first report of the Aachen (January 860) council], just as we sent to you, was written by some bishops, [but] we do not know whether about the same matter or about something committed after the beginning of the union’. The Lotharingian dissenters were not entirely certain whether what Theutberga had recently confessed to in 860 was identical to what she had been accused of in the run-up to the ordeal in 858.

 As it happens, those advancing the case against Theutberga did connect her confession to the ordeal, though the connection appeared in an account of the February council which Hincmar subsequently obtained from elsewhere. But when we turn to the reports of the councils at Aachen in 860 – two versions of the January council and one of the February council – at which Theutberga’s confession was extracted and publicized, a subtle shift becomes clear. Incest and unnatural fornication were still there; abortion was absent. 

Admittedly, the two reports of the January council reproduced by Hincmar in De divortio were vague on Theutberga’s actual offence. In the first report, which the dissenters had sent to Hincmar, Theutberga swore (in direct speech) that she was not fit to remain in the royal union and referred the bishops to their colleague, Gunther of Cologne, to whom she had confessed. The other two reports had not been sent by the dissenters but were inserted into De divortio after Hincmar had started writing.

The second report for Aachen (January 860) gave slightly more detail on the substance of the confession, publicized through Gunther’s testimony as confessor: ‘[Theutberga] confessed to God and to us that she had an interior wound within her, not by her own will, but violently inflicted upon her’. The report of the February council was more direct. 

A document containing Theutberga’s confession (cartula confessionis) was read aloud, including the revelation that ‘my brother, the cleric Hubert, corrupted me as an adolescent, and practised and perpetrated upon my body fornication against natural use’. The bishops cross-examined Lothar in case – here the report risked protesting too much – ‘this much discussed woman was lying out of any deception or fear of anyone’.

So, unlike the dissenting bishops who wrote to Hincmar, the Aachen (February 860) report did connect Theutberga’s confession to the 858 ordeal, but it did not allude to abortion. Lothar revealed that he had ‘accepted the false judgment [the 858 ordeal] as a truthful examination, while knowing [the truth], and tolerated it so that, if it could be possible, such an unbelievable disgrace could appear and then disappear from the world’. 

But he could no longer sustain the lie after journeys to Italy and Burgundy revealed just how far rumours had spread. Although they were quoted and critically dissected by Hincmar, the reports of the Aachen councils probably originated with Lothar’s side. They were attempts at information control. 

An entry for 860 in the Annales Bertiniani may provide a glimpse of the limits of information control among contemporaries, though we cannot be absolutely certain that this was one of the last entries written by Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) rather than a later revision by Hincmar, who took over the annals at some point between 861 and 866.

The entry reported that ‘Lothar hated his queen, Theutberga, with irreconcilable loathing, and after wearing her down with many acts of hostility, he finally forced her to confess before bishops that she had had sodomitical intercourse with her brother Hubert’. Lotharingian control of the narrative was far from total. Nonetheless, in the Annales Bertiniani, as in the accounts of the Aachen council, Theutberga confessed (albeit under duress) to incest and unnatural intercourse – but not to abortion.”

- Zubin Mistry, Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500-900

[shymerseysider]

I've been reading Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks. Great read, with fascinating characters like the evil king Chilperic and his even more evil Queen Fredegund, also the roguish Guntram Boso.

As ever with Chronicles though, some things just make you chuckle.

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[medievalart]

Boso, king of Provence  (841-887)

* Member of Bosonid Family and related to Carolingian dynasty

* brother-in-law of Charles the Bald, king of West Francia

* 872: Regent of Kingdom of Aquitania on behalf of Lous the Stammerer (Charles’ son)  

* 876: Missus dominicus (= palace inspector) of Italy. Married Emengard of Italy, the only surviving daughter of late emperor Louis II

* 877: Count of Provence and viceroy of Italy

* 879: Louis the Stammerer died. Boso renounced his allegiance to new Frankish kings and declared Provence an independent kingdom

* 12th century fresco depicting Boso (left) at  Charlieu Abbey, Burgundy)

  Source: Wikimedia commons

Photo: Odejea (own work)

Licencing: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

[queenfredegund]

MEROVINGIAN REGINAE | Sichildis Regina (c. 620/640s)

Second principal wife of Chlothacar II Rex, to whom she bore at least one son, Charibert II Rex. Her dates of birth and death are unknown. According to the Gesta Dagoberti, she took the lead of the royal household after the death of Beretrudis Regina, mother of Dagobert I Rex, who died in 619. 

“Post cuius obitum Chlotharius rex aliam accepit uxorem nomine Sichildem, de qua habuit filium nomine Hairbetum.

Following her death, Chlothar took an other wife, named Sichilde, whose gave him a son named Charibert.”

Gesta Dagob., c. 5. De morte matris Dagoberti

She was the sister of Brodulf, a military chef leader and of Gomatrudis Regina, who later became the wife of her septson, Dagobert I Rex in 625, meaning she could have been from an aristocratic origin.

“Anno XLII regni Chlothariae Dagobertus cultu regio et iusso patris honeste cum leudibus Clippiaco nec procul Parisius, uenit, ibique germanam Sichieldae regina, nomen Gomatrudae, in coniugium accepit.

In the forty-second year of Clothar’s reign, Dagobert, in royal procession and on the orders of his father, went solemnly with the leudes to Clichy, not far from Paris. There he received in marriage the sister of Queen Sichilde, named Gomatrude.”

Chron, IV, 53. De Dagobertum, quod riginam accipit, eiusdem regnum augitur

According to the sources, she rapidly exercized a strong influence at the court, to the point that the chronicler Fredegar even complained how her husband, Chlothacar II Rex, cared too much about the opinions of the women of his entourage. 

“[...]  posttremum mulierum et puellarum suggestionibus nimium annuens. Ob hoc quidem blasphematur a leudibus.

He also willingly surrendered to the opinions of women, old and young. For that at least, he is criticized by the leudes.”

Chron, IV, 42. De quod Chlotarius regnum Burgundiae et Auster recipit et filius Teuderici occisit

She also built a political faction around her son, using her brother as a protector. Perhaps in order to control or defeat her, a certain number of measures seem to have been taken through her time as the principal wife, such as her son’s remoteness from any political function meanwhile his brother, Dagobert I Rex, had been installed as rex over Austrasia since a young age.

In 626, she was also accused of adultery with a certain Boso, son of Audolenus a member of the court. While Boso was executed, Sichildis did not seem to have face a trial in order to prove her innocence and she was still Chlothacar II’s principal wife to his death, in 629, as she was reccorded weeping at his deathbed.

“Boso, filius Audoleno de pago Stampinse iusso Chlothario ab Arneberto duci interficetur, repotans ei estobrum cum regina Sighilde.

Boso, son of Audolenus, of the district of Etampes, is killed on Clotaire's order by Duke Arnebert, who accused him of having slept with Queen Sichilde.”

Chron, IV, 54. De obetum Varnachario maiorem domus et interetum filii sui Godini

Following Chlothacar’s death, she and her brother took the lead at the court and fight for her son’s sake, to the point that they tried to ambush and kill Dagobert I Rex, in order to make Charibert the sole rex over the Gauls.

“Dagobertus cernens genitorem suum fuisse defunctum, uniuersis leudibus quos regebat in Auster iobet in exercito promouere. [...] Airibertus frater suos nitibatur, si potuisset, regnum adsumere, sed eius uoluntas pro simplicitate parum sortiter effectum. Brodulfus uellens nepotem estabilire in regnum, aduersus Dagoberto muscipulare coeperat ; sed huius rei uicissitudinem probauit aeuentus.

Dagobert, hearing that his father has passed away, orders all the leudes he ruled in Austrasia to join him with their armies. [...] His brother Charibert was trying, as best he could, to take the throne, but his attempt, due to his debility, had little effect. Brodulf wanted to establish his nephew on the throne and set out to knock Dagobert into a mousetrap. But what followed showed it was doomed to fail.”

Chron, IV, 56. De obetum Chlothariae, et quod regnum eius Dacobertus adsumpsit

However, thanks to his powerful allies, Dagobert eventually overpowered his opponents at the right time: he seized and murdered Brodulf, before repudiating Gomatrudis and thus officially dismanteling Sichildis’ faction. 

“Eodem die quo de Latona ad Cabillonno deliberare properabat priusquam lucisceret, balneo ingrediens, Brodulfo avunculo fratri suo Chairiberto interficere iussit ; qui ab Amalgario et Arneberto ducibus et Willibado patricio interfectus est […] ibique Gomatrudem reginam Romiliaco uilla ubi ipsa matrimunium acceperat relinquens .

The very day he hastened to leave Losne to sit at Chalon, before dawn, entering his bath, he ordered to kill Brodulf, his brother Charibert’s uncle, who was killed by Dukes Amalgarius and Arnebert and by the patrice Willebad. […] There he left Queen Gomatrude in the villa of Reuilly, where he married her.”

Chron, IV, 58. De introactum Dagoberti in Burgundia et bonitatem eius

Sichildis’ fate after these events is unknown, but we know that Dagobert treated his brother rather fairly and allowed him a proper regnum around Tolosa (Toulouse), where he ruled until his own suspicious death c. 631/632, perhaps ordered by Dagobert himself...

“Anno nono regni Dagoberti Charibertus rex moretur, relinquens filium paruolum nomini Chilpericum, qui nec post moram defunctus est. Fertur faccione Dagoberti fuisset interfectus.

In the ninth year of Dagobert’s reign, King Charibert dies, leaving a very young son, named Chilperic, who perishes shortly after. It is reported that he was killed as a result of Dagobert’s maneuvers.”

Chron, IV, 67. De obitum Gariberti et filii sui, et regnum eius Dacobertus ambavit

[qqueenofhades]

the tangled web of fate we weave: xvi

who has two thumbs and no self-control? there’s just gonna be... so much garcy fic this week, you guys. so much.

part xv/AO3.

April 15, 2013

It’s Monday, it’s tax day, and it’s the week that midterms start. If it was possible for a group of people’s collective moods to actually be little black stormclouds over their heads, the entire history department would be drenched, but they have mostly confined themselves to double doses of coffee and bitching about the IRS, as well as various passive-aggressive email chains to the idiots who thought it was a great idea to schedule three faculty-search-committee meetings this week. Lucy is sitting on two of those, was up until three AM last night reading the various CV submissions (besides, it’s hard for her to sleep for other reasons these days) and trying to draw up her shortlist of candidates for the new Assistant Professor of East Asian History that Stanford is preparing to hire. She is all for more diversity in the workplace and the academic realm, but as timing goes, this could be. . . greatly improved.

Still, she supposes, she can’t complain too much, and she’s about to be away from it for several months anyway. Her leave starts at the end of next week, and she won’t be returning until the start of the fall quarter, so there’s plenty of stuff that needs to be finished up before that. Her in-tray has been apparently cursed with a magical charm to never go down no matter how much Lucy works on it, but aside from one of said committee meetings in an hour, she is free to hack at it for the rest of the day. Flynn said he’d bring lunch over, too.

A faint smile curls up the corner of her mouth, and she decides that coffee (decaf, unavoidably) sounds like a good idea, even if she’ll have to fight through the zombified departmental hordes to get it. She submitted her taxes three weeks ago, so at least she doesn’t have to mess around with that last-minute headache, though she is sure that any number of replacement headaches will pop up in its place. She does feel bad for her colleagues, even if they did bring this upon themselves. You’d think academics would be more organized, but honestly, they really aren’t.

Lucy hauls herself to her feet, picks up her mug, and heads out of her office, down the hall to the staff kitchen. Her friend Eleanor and Paul from Late Antique and Byzantine History are leaning by the coffeemaker, having an involved argument about someone amusingly named King Boso, but while this is potentially a fascinating subject, Lucy definitely needs them to move. She clears her throat. “Hate to interrupt, but I have a need.”

“Good timing, you just missed the stampede.” Eleanor empties the grounds out of the percolator and reaches for a new pack. “Decaf, I assume?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I haven’t been properly awake in weeks.”

“I thought your leave started on Friday.” Eleanor puts in the capsule and presses the button to start the cycle. “Or is it this Friday?”

“This Friday. I have no idea how I’ll finish everything.”

Paul, as if sensing that the conversation might devolve into girl talk (he’s a dazzling genius, but the kind with absolutely zero people skills who should just stay happily shut in a library learning dead languages), makes his excuses and scuttles out. Eleanor digs in the fridge. “The Huns just took the last of the half-and-half, but we have powdered creamer.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m drinking it black these days, anyway. Garcia’s rubbing off on me.”

Eleanor raises a slightly impish eyebrow. “Clearly.”

Lucy blushes, but can’t exactly deny it. She waits until the coffee has brewed, then tips it out into her mug. God, she can’t wait to drink the real stuff again (and see her feet, and walk without feeling like a lumbering juggernaut, and not have to pee every five minutes, and be woken up with auditions for the  Olympic gymnastics team, and all the rest, even if she will obviously then have different problems). She and Flynn were not exactly planning for her to get pregnant after six months of dating, but it happened, in the way that life tends to do, and they’re ready to make it work, as much as anyone can possibly be. Flynn is clearly beside himself with excitement and apprehension at the idea of becoming a father, and Lucy – well, she’s obviously had ambivalent feelings about kids in the past, to say the least. Felt it was something to do more to please her mom, rather than anything deeply desired. But dammit, something has changed. She’s thirty, she’s in a stable and loving relationship with a man who worships the ground she walks on, she has a good job, they’re financially stable (though again, better not to ask how exactly Flynn has chipped in), they’ve just bought a cute little bungalow/fixer-upper of a starter house, and there is the unspoken understanding that this summer, after the baby is born, they will probably get married. Lucy has grown up, or at least grown older. She’s ready for this. Their family. Them.

“You’re due the second week of May, right?” Eleanor asks, sitting down at the table across from her. “Picked out names yet?”

“We’re kind of waiting to see what feels right.” Lucy raises an eyebrow, as if to acknowledge that this is a very San Francisco thing to say, but while they know that the baby is a girl and that her middle name will be Maria, for Flynn’s mother, they still haven’t settled on a first name. “We have a couple ideas, but nothing’s stuck quite yet. Item number one on things not to screw up for your kid, huh?”

“You’ll be fine,” Eleanor says. “Garcia’s a little. . . rough around the edges, but anyone can see that he adores you. And he’s gorgeous, and a medieval history nut. Clear sign of good taste.”

Lucy snorts. “Hey now. He’s definitely taken.”

“Trust me, I know.” Eleanor raises both hands in mock surrender. “Honestly, though, you two are one of the best couples I know. Lucy Junior is going to be so lucky to have you as parents. But – ” She pauses, well aware it’s a delicate topic. “Your mom come around yet?”

Lucy grimaces. Amy is absolutely thrilled at the prospect of becoming a cool young aunt who can spoil the kid rotten, but her mother, well. . . let’s just say that Carol Preston looked at Flynn like he was a dead slug the first time she met him, and her reaction hasn’t gotten much warmer since. Flynn also clearly doesn’t like her; he’s coolly cordial to her for the sake of familial civility, but that’s it. Carol thinks that Noah was a far superior choice, that Lucy callously threw him away to get knocked up by some idiot ex-lawbreaking hooligan (Lucy loves him, but has to admit this is not an inaccurate description) and that while she’s prepared to have a relationship with her granddaughter, Flynn should definitely not think that applies to him. Lucy gets the feeling that Carol will just pretend Flynn does not exist, as if she closes her eyes and blinks hard, he might happily vanish. For his part, Flynn thinks it’s rich of Carol to assume that she gets to have a relationship with their daughter at all, given what she did to her own. As Lucy’s pregnancy has progressed, they seem to be getting farther apart, rather than closer. They haven’t been in the same room since Flynn and Lucy broke the news.

Eleanor can see the answer on her face, and winces in sympathy. “Shit,” she says. “I’m sorry, Lucy. Forget I asked. That sucks.”

“It’s what it is.” Lucy tries to keep her tone light. “Sometimes people don’t like each other. I’m sure Mom and Flynn will work it out.” She pauses. “Eventually.”

“They’re both very stubborn, bossy people with strong opinions,” Eleanor says. “Usually doesn’t mix well. But hey, sure, maybe they bury the hatchet when the kid arrives, let’s think positive. Anything else I can help you with?”

“No, Eleanor, thanks. I really need to get my stuff ready for this committee meeting. Then I can come back and tackle the In-Tray of Death.” Lucy finishes her fake coffee in a few more swallows, puts the mug in the sink (cheerily ignoring the “Wash Your Own Dishes Please!” sign taped above it) and waddles back to her office. She gets her dossier of papers together, winces as sharp heels trod her spleen, and gives her side a poke. Then, feeling like a barge needing a tugboat to reverse, she heads for the meeting. Since she’s a small woman, it feels like her belly precedes her everywhere by about two feet. Maybe they can tie on a flasher.

Once that’s done with, and they’ve narrowed the overall shortlist of candidates from twelve names to ten (so, a productive use of everyone’s time, then), Lucy chats with the department chair, accepts his congratulations on her impending arrival, and then makes her escape before Debbie from student services can bustle over with her latest round of well-meant advice about what Lucy should be doing at this stage. Once the morning sickness stopped, Lucy hasn’t minded it too much, but she is not a fan of the (in her opinion, frankly creepy) Mommy Culture that surrounds it. No, she is not going to eat her placenta, or take tasteful black-and-white bump pictures. You will not catch her dead at a gender reveal party, she accepted a baby shower but only a small one with a few women, and the “my labor was TEN HOURS with NO PAINKILLERS!” kind of talk makes her run for the hills. This is 2013. Lucy will have all the drugs, thank you, she doesn’t think a natural water birth is the only proper and fulfilling way for her child to enter the world, she isn’t going to start a blog detailing their toilet training milestones, and the breastfeeding wars make her wonder if these people have real hobbies. Not to bag on women who do it that way, of course, and there have been a few times (thanks to hormones) that Lucy has found herself genuinely weepy over the Miracle of Life. But still. She is, at heart, just too practical.

She rounds the corner into the department reception area, stops, and grins at the sight of Garcia Flynn holding a large and greasy bag from her favorite sandwich shop and looking too tall for the room. (Which, to be fair, is most rooms.) There is paint in his hair, so he’s probably been working on the house again. It’s livable, but they’re still trying to get the finishing touches out of the way before their time becomes unavoidably caught up in caring for a newborn. The nursery is mostly done, decorated in tasteful, gender-neutral colors (Lucy has nothing against pink, but she’s also not slapping it everywhere), and she clears her throat. “Hey, you.”

Flynn starts, nearly drops the sandwich bag, then comes over for a kiss, which is even more of a cumbersome business than usual. The other nice thing about this is that Lucy has not had to lift a finger at home for months; Flynn waits on her hand and foot. He hasn’t been patronizing about it, just that he seems to know what she will need before she does, and makes it available as swiftly and conveniently as possible. He does his best not to hover, fully aware that she is a grown woman and can handle this herself, and that he is decidedly of secondary importance in whose opinion matters the most. Still, he almost never is more than three feet from her side, is usually touching her even with just a finger or the back of his hand, and gets jumpy if she’s out of sight for too long and he doesn’t know why. It must be really hard to adjust from “permanent outlaw on the run from international terrorist organization” to “suburban dad-to-be in loving relationship and DIY home refurbisher,” so Lucy tries to be understanding.

“Hey,” Flynn says, when he’s straightened up. “Free for lunch?”

“Yeah.” Lucy links her arm in his, and they walk out to the foyer, down the stairs, and out into the sunny midmorning. Campus is busy with its usual commerce, and they walk until they find a shady spot under a tree. Sitting, especially on the ground, is a production, so Lucy takes Flynn’s hand and does so with care. Once he’s joined her, he opens the sandwich bag and offers hers, as she leans against the trunk with a groan. “Yep. Ready for this to be over.”

“Only what? Three more weeks?” Flynn says that as if he hasn’t been watching the calendar as anxiously as her, and Lucy gives him a tolerant my-husband-is-an-idiot look. Well, basically her husband. He’s had a bag packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice since month seven. “Your sister was over to drop off the last things from the shower. Helped with a bit of the painting. Oh, and she says your mother isn’t feeling as well again. Watch her announce that the cancer is returned on the very day you go into the hospital.”

Lucy glances at him sidelong. Flynn doesn’t make much of a secret that he can’t stand Carol, but for Lucy’s sake, he rarely speaks this angrily about her. “Garcia, if – if it does come back, she can’t control that. I know things between you two aren’t the best, but – ”

Flynn snorts, taking a bite of his sandwich and doing that head-turn thing he always does in crowded public places, scanning for threats. He still carries a gun, even if only a small one, and he has definitely terrified people he thinks are following them too carefully or staring too long. It’s that fine line between remaining vigilant for Rittenhouse, and turning into a full-on paranoid lunatic who rants at rosebushes. He’s mostly managing it, though as her due date gets closer, he seems to be more on edge. But they’ve bought a house under their real names, they’ve been a normal couple, they’ve opened bank accounts and phone plans and whatever else. There have been plenty of opportunities for Flynn to ping in the system, to draw the attention of the omniscient electronic overlords, but nothing. Smooth sailing.

Flynn himself is suspicious of this, thinks it’s too good to be true, but Lucy (if perhaps naively) is holding onto the hope that he just disguised his tracks well enough with all his false identities that nothing has managed to stick to his real one. It has been over a year of domestic bliss. They’re expecting a baby. Surely if Rittenhouse was going to strike by now, they would have done it. Wouldn’t they? They need to be smart about this, of course, and Lucy has battled the ever-present anxiety that they are doing a child a tremendous disservice by bringing it into the world with no sure guarantee of safety, but then, no parent can give that to any child. There could be a car accident, or some pedo at the playground, or falling out of a tree, or. . .or. . . (yes, Lucy has spent too much time aware of all the various things that could happen). How does anyone ever have children, to give them this world and let them go? Who knows. She still doesn’t.

“Hey,” Flynn says gruffly, drawn out of his anger at Carol by sensing her melancholy. He reaches out and takes her hand, squeezing it with both of his. “Lucy? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Lucy musters a smile. “I just hope you’re wrong. She’s still my mother, I’m her daughter. I don’t want the day I have ours to be mixed up with losing her somehow.”

Flynn coughs, as if knowing that badmouthing your mother-in-law to your wife’s face never goes well, and changes the subject. Finally he says, “I should walk you back. You have a lot to finish. So do I.”

“Oh?” Lucy takes both his hands and allows him to winch her to her feet. “More than just the house?”

Flynn glances both ways and lowers his voice. “I promised Wyatt a name,” he says. “I still haven’t given it to him yet. And I’m quite sure we both remember that.”

Lucy starts to say something, then stops. Yes, she supposes, they do. Wyatt fulfilled his part of the bargain to the letter, took the fall for them, even if he got out of jail quickly. He’s stayed in the Bay Area, in fact – has become roommates with Rufus Carlin, the techie at Mason Industries who Flynn threatened for information. (Lucy does judge her beloved’s life choices, like most people, but there you have it.) He’s done this because there still has been no news whatsoever on his wife. Jessica Logan has been missing over a year, it’s clear she either ran off to start a new life in Rio or she’s dead in some drainage ditch, but either way, she’s not coming home. But without a body, without any firm closure, there must still be that awful, tiny itch of hope in the back of Wyatt’s mind. Maybe she is trapped somewhere, held in some lunatic’s basement. Maybe she’ll escape and come home.

Lucy isn’t sure if she should try to visit or not, drop in for casual catch-ups or what have you. Wyatt did them a major favor, she can understand why Flynn still feels obliged to come up with his end of the bargain. Still, the whole point is that they weren’t seen together, and. . . well. She isn’t sure if Wyatt wants to see her pink-cheeked, doe-eyed, and bulgingly pregnant, in the middle of the domestic life he himself has lost, with the guy he likewise still isn’t very fond of. It just seems like it might be insult to injury.

She and Flynn don’t talk much on the way back to her office, as Lucy eyes the stairs but decides that since she gets winded on flat surfaces, she can wait a little longer to be an exercise hero. But as he’s kissing her at her door, she grabs hold of his arm. “Whatever you’re digging up for Wyatt, however you’re going about it – you’re being careful?”

This is always a relative question with Flynn, and she is well aware that he’s not collecting evidence like a Boy Scout earning merit badges. Knows that he might be kicking tires and turning rocks, nicely or otherwise. She isn’t even asking for the full truth of what he’s doing. Just enough to put her mind at ease.

Flynn’s brow creases briefly, but he brushes a thumb across her chin in a quick, tender gesture. “Of course. I’ll see you later, hey?”

Lucy nods, bites her lip, then pulls his head down for one more kiss, just because. He lets go and blows her one last extra over his shoulder, because it turns out that this terrifying murder machine in love is the softest imaginable thing in the universe. Lucy watches him go, then takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. Marches back into her office, and gets to work.

She manages to make at least some sort of dent in her in-tray, and is just wondering if she wants to go to a conference at the University of Virginia in August (it sounds really interesting, but Charlottesville in August is going to be unbearably hot, and the last time she stayed on the Lawn, there was no air conditioning) when there’s a rap on her door. Then, before she has answered – it’s  not her office hour, she wasn’t expecting anyone – it opens. “Lucy?”

It takes a moment for her brain to process this. Then it connects, it burns through her, and she leaps awkwardly to her feet, almost knocking over her office chair and looking around in search of something she can grab. Her heart is racing, pounding in her mouth, which is half-open as if to scream, and her chest seizes up. She backs away. “You!”

“Lucy, please.” Benjamin Cahill holds out both hands as if to pacify a wild animal. He’s casually dressed in jeans and blazer and plaid shirt, looks like he has just strolled down from another department for a professional chat. “Don’t be alarmed.”

“Don’t be alarmed?” Lucy eyes her phone, on the desk, and wonders if she can call Flynn in time, if he’s anywhere near here and can come racing back. If he discovers Cahill in here, it’s going to get messy, and she almost doesn’t care. “How dare you show your face.”

“Lucy.” Cahill looks pained. Almost genuinely. “I haven’t come to hurt you.”

“So you’ve come to deliver more veiled threats about Rittenhouse, or – or tell me that your offer stands, or – ” Lucy’s grip tightens on the back of her chair. “You have to understand there is absolutely no way in the world I am pleased to see you. Leave, or I’m calling campus security.”

“I’m sorry for causing you stress,” Cahill says. “I’m sure you don’t need it right now. I’ve heard about your happy news, on the grapevine.” He nods at her, as Lucy crosses her arms protectively over her swollen stomach. “I just wanted to let you know once and for all that you’re safe. I know things were. . . mismanaged, before. But that’s all been called off. A little present for my grandchild. Rittenhouse may do some things you don’t understand, but it’s about family. We’ve always believed that. A time for a fresh start, and mending fences.”

Grandchild. Lucy hates hearing that word in his mouth, a word to which he has no right. “So what? You have been spying on me this whole time, but you’ll stop because – what, only now that I’m procreating I have value as a woman to you people? The way men only care about rape because ‘I have a wife and daughter?’ Is that it?”

“No, no.” Cahill manages to keep smiling. It’s not at all comforting. “Honestly. I wanted to ease your mind. You’re in the clear. You’ve probably been wondering. If you really can’t forgive me, I’ll understand, but there you have it. Your whole life.”

Lucy keeps staring at him tensely, heart hammering in her mouth. “What do you really want from me?”

“Nothing. I don’t want anything. I just wanted to see how you were doing, if you were well. As I said.” Cahill shrugs. “It’s just a time for new beginnings all around. I’ll let you get on with your day, Lucy. Bye now.”

With that, he smiles and steps out of the room, leaving Lucy shaky-kneed, dry-mouthed, and still tempted to call campus security and order them not to let Cahill anywhere near the history department again. Was that supposed to be a warning, a veiled insinuation that he could return the surveillance or whatever else? Do she and Flynn owe their happy life thus far purely to the fact that Rittenhouse is letting them have it, was that the takeaway? Is there going to be a second part of this conversation later, where Cahill returns and lets her know what the price is, if she wants to keep this sweet little deal? Turning over new leaves, her ass. If that was supposed to reassure her, it has comprehensively done the opposite.

Lucy’s concentration is shot, she can’t focus for the rest of the day, and she locks up her office and jumps a foot when she sees the janitor at the end of the hall. She drives home in distraction, goes inside, and Flynn, who has been stirring something on the stove, drops the spoon with a clatter at the sight of her face. He almost rushes over and grabs both her hands. “Lucy? Lucy!”

“I’m all right,” Lucy says faintly, even as it is relatively apparent that she is not. “It’s – I’m just – ”

“Do we need to go to the hospital?” Flynn starts looking around for his bag. “Should I call the midwife?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s – ” Lucy inhales a rattling breath, and allows him to sit her down on the couch. “Benjamin Cahill came by campus this afternoon. After you left.”

Flynn’s face goes blank, then thunderous. “He what?”

Lucy explains, feeling like she’s making a bad job of it, stumbling over her words. Flynn’s expression goes darker and darker, and she doesn’t need to ask to see that his conclusions over it are the same as hers. He gets to his feet and starts pacing as restlessly as a caged tiger, running both hands over his face and swearing. “It was a threat,” he says. “It was definitely a threat. He knew you were expecting a baby, someone told him, or they’ve been keeping an eye on us. They’re obsessed with bloodlines, they believe Rittenhouse has a right to pass on its superior genes, like any other creepy cult eugenics fanatics. Probably think you’re having some – some mongrel half-breed, and they have to – ”

“Garcia, stop.” Lucy reaches for his hand, trying to tow him back to the couch and next to her, but he doesn’t appear to notice. “Garcia, stop.”

She doesn’t know what she’s saying – stop with the pacing, stop with the paranoia, don’t stop because it’s not paranoia, stop and come back here and hold me – but it cuts through some of his mania. He halts in his tracks, looking at her with rumpled hair and anguished eyes, the thought vibrating in the air around him that he cannot protect her or their daughter, and this is exactly their worst fear coming true. There’s a long pause, and then he whirls on his heel. “I need to go out. Ask a few questions. See what I can turn up.”

“Now?” Lucy stands up with a grimace. “You’re really going to rush out and – look, I think it was a trick just as much as you do, but if you take the bait, if they can frame it as they’ve changed but you haven’t, they give you a fresh chance and you throw it away – ”

“They’re not really giving us a chance, now, are they?” Flynn doesn’t look at her as he answers, because he’s already halfway across the room, clearly heading upstairs to get his gun out of the safe. “It’s a carnival shell game, any way they set it up, we lose! And I’m not sitting and waiting for that to happen!”

“Garcia!” Lucy starts heaving herself up the stairs. She should have guessed he’d react like this, and she almost wonders if she should have told him, but obviously she never could (or would have) lied. “Garcia, please!”

She reaches their bedroom, which he is already tearing apart, pulling his gun and its holster out of the safe, slamming extra clips into his belt, looking wild-eyed and frightening. She grabs at his arms, wrestling him to a halt like a runaway bus, as she ends up with her back against the wall from the sheer force of his momentum. She grips his face in her hands, pulling him down to look at her. “Don’t,” she says, scared and small. “Don’t.”

He closes his eyes, shuddering out a deeply pained breath. He passes a hand over his face, trying to control himself, realizing that he’s scared her and clearly ashamed of it. “I’m sorry,” he says, struggling to modulate his tone. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I just – I have to go, I can’t just sit here and pretend it’ll be better in the morning. I’ve spent two years chasing these people, I know what they can do. I’m not – I’m not – letting that happen. Call Amy to come over and stay with you, turn on the house alarm, don’t let anyone in. I’ll be back in the morning.”

Lucy doesn’t answer at once. Her hands tighten on his face, even as she slowly forces them to let go. Then she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him, and he wraps his arm around her, pulling her as close as he can. “Please,” she says shakily. “Please be back in the morning.”

He nods, then lets go of her, striding down the hall to the stairs as if knowing it’ll be too hard for both of them if he looks back one more time. She stands at the top, watching him. Hears the door open, and shut, and hears his car start. Tires crunch in the driveway, headlights swing across the front foyer as he reverses, and then he’s gone.

Lucy presses her knuckles to her mouth, holding back a sob. Just for a moment. Then she shakes herself – I’m fine, I’m fine – and goes to get her phone.

Flynn’s head is a roaring, whirling maelstrom for at least the first twenty minutes out. He feels like he’s been electrified, he can’t stop or slow, he drives well past the speed limit, and he’s lucky not to be pulled over. He has a personal black site where he keeps his Rittenhouse materials, well away from the house, as he’s obviously not going to take any chances with that being raided. It’s north, up in the woods, and it has all the files he’s kept, the intel he’s collected – he’s not letting those two years go to waste, and he still adds to it where he can. He’s going to go up there and check all the things that might have pinged, run all the diagnostics and pull anything he can off whatever server he can think of. There has to be chatter, there has to be traffic. Some kind of reference to whatever covert surveillance operation that Rittenhouse has to have been running. He’s looked for everything, he’s never really stopped – how could they have fooled him?

The urge to drive to another location in Marin County – the Rittenhouse mansion in the woods where Cahill took Lucy the first time – and just go in guns blazing, try to take out anyone who’s up there for an evil retreat, is considerable. Flynn knows he can’t, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to. Every anxiety, every lurking terror from every time he’s woken up and looked at Lucy sleeping, the covers sloped over her stomach, has been triggered at once, and it’s a battle to keep his head clear enough as it is. He’s going to ask her to marry him. Should probably have done it before, but – well, one thing at a time. He knows he loves her with his entire mind and heart and soul, and if she came back to him from the future, well. Something must have happened there.

(But what if it doesn’t?)

(What if Rittenhouse takes his wife – well, soon, anyway – and his daughter away from him? What if he loves two people more than anything else on earth, and he loses them? After all this, after everything?)

(He’s not brave enough, he’s not strong enough, to stand that without going mad.)

Flynn’s hands are almost vibrating on the wheel, and he accelerates again. He’s on the Bayshore Freeway, as it happens, the stretch that runs right alongside the Bay between South San Fran and Little Hollywood. He saved Lucy not twenty miles from here, just over ten years ago. Strange that that was the moment that connected them so inextricably, that wound them up where they are, and –

He sees headlights too late. Just out of the corner of his eye.

Hears the screech, and the swerve. Then the crash.

Then there’s nothing but black water below him, and the car is falling.

[akolabuzi]

Super Labo (スーパーラボ) est l’une de mes maisons d’éditions de livres de photographies préférées. Super Labo is a Kamakura (Japan) based independent publishing house focused on contemporary photograph. On y retrouve des artistes tels que : Jacob Aue Sobol, JH Engström & Margot Wallard, Boris Mikhailov, Hajime Sawatari, Daido Moriyama, Ed Templeton, Keizo Kitajima, Antoine d’Agata, Joel Meyerowitz, Mark Cohen, Jim Goldberg, Bruce Gilden… https://www.superlabo.com/ Quelques livres : Koji Onaka | Matatabi | 2012 Keizo Kitajima | CAMP 1979 | 2015 Seiji Kurata | 都市の造景 (Toshi no Zokei) | 2015 Issei Suda | 房総風土記 (Boso Fudoki) | 2015 Daido Moriyama | Fukei | 2015 Hajime Sawatari | NAGISA HOTEL | 2015 Keiichi Tahara | 1973 | 2016 Jacob Aue Sobol | By the River of Kings | 2016 Jacob Aue Sobol | With And Without You | 2016 #superlabo #jacobauesobol #photobooks #photobookjousting #10x10photobooks https://www.instagram.com/p/B9YtHEkqgFx/?igshid=1pl7fc51suxtj

[fairhairedkings]

i’m going to name any children i have (if i have them) after people that appear in geoffrey of monmouth’s history of the kings of britain. 

possible contenders:

boso

donaut

worloit

cadwallo long-arm

[lookleft-blog]

Do you believe in Vampires?⠀ ~~~~~⠀ Well, I don't! I've been to #Romania and came back with my neck untouched, sadly...⠀ ⠀ This is #Peleș #castle, the royal castle to be more precise. Even though it shouts "palace" all over it, by designation it is a castle. Since late 1940's that Romania is not a monarchy, the king was forced to abdicate and all the royal estates were seized by the by then government. But in 2007 this estate was returned to the royal family after a long judicial case. Nowadays it is leased to the state by the royal family, and it is considered as a heritage site.⠀ ⠀ And no, there was no sign of garlic nor vampires. Absolutely safe and gorgeous site.via Instagram

[what-is-sibling-test]

from 'RittenhouseTL' for all things Timeless https://ift.tt/2r5Hzyv via Istudy world

the tangled web of fate we weave: xvi

who has two thumbs and no self-control? there’s just gonna be… so much garcy fic this week, you guys. so much.

part xv/AO3.

April 15, 2013

It’s Monday, it’s tax day, and it’s the week that midterms start. If it was possible for a group of people’s collective moods to actually be little black stormclouds over their heads, the entire history department would be drenched, but they have mostly confined themselves to double doses of coffee and bitching about the IRS, as well as various passive-aggressive email chains to the idiots who thought it was a great idea to schedule three faculty-search-committee meetings this week. Lucy is sitting on two of those, was up until three AM last night reading the various CV submissions (besides, it’s hard for her to sleep for other reasons these days) and trying to draw up her shortlist of candidates for the new Assistant Professor of East Asian History that Stanford is preparing to hire. She is all for more diversity in the workplace and the academic realm, but as timing goes, this could be… greatly improved.

Still, she supposes, she can’t complain too much, and she’s about to be away from it for several months anyway. Her leave starts at the end of next week, and she won’t be returning until the start of the fall quarter, so there’s plenty of stuff that needs to be finished up before that. Her in-tray has been apparently cursed with a magical charm to never go down no matter how much Lucy works on it, but aside from one of said committee meetings in an hour, she is free to hack at it for the rest of the day. Flynn said he’d bring lunch over, too.

A faint smile curls up the corner of her mouth, and she decides that coffee (decaf, unavoidably) sounds like a good idea, even if she’ll have to fight through the zombified departmental hordes to get it. She submitted her taxes three weeks ago, so at least she doesn’t have to mess around with that last-minute headache, though she is sure that any number of replacement headaches will pop up in its place. She does feel bad for her colleagues, even if they did bring this upon themselves. You’d think academics would be more organized, but honestly, they really aren’t.

Lucy hauls herself to her feet, picks up her mug, and heads out of her office, down the hall to the staff kitchen. Her friend Eleanor and Paul from Late Antique and Byzantine History are leaning by the coffeemaker, having an involved argument about someone amusingly named King Boso, but while this is potentially a fascinating subject, Lucy definitely needs them to move. She clears her throat. “Hate to interrupt, but I have a need.”

“Good timing, you just missed the stampede.” Eleanor empties the grounds out of the percolator and reaches for a new pack. “Decaf, I assume?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I haven’t been properly awake in weeks.”

“I thought your leave started on Friday.” Eleanor puts in the capsule and presses the button to start the cycle. “Or is it this Friday?”

“This Friday. I have no idea how I’ll finish everything.”

Paul, as if sensing that the conversation might devolve into girl talk (he’s a dazzling genius, but the kind with absolutely zero people skills who should just stay happily shut in a library learning dead languages), makes his excuses and scuttles out. Eleanor digs in the fridge. “The Huns just took the last of the half-and-half, but we have powdered creamer.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m drinking it black these days, anyway. Garcia’s rubbing off on me.”

Eleanor raises a slightly impish eyebrow. “Clearly.”

Keep reading

[zainalarifin]

Bismillah... Tabayyun Yuk... Alhamdulillah para mantan bnyak yg tabayyun langsung ke pak asnawi dan akhirnya sadar tentang kebohongan" besar, Dusta2 Nur Hasan Madigol Takbir SAKSI HIDUP DALAM SEJARAH NUR HASAN MADIGOL "PAK NUR ASNAWI" PAK ASNAWI>>>siapa yang ga’ kenal dengan nama beliau, nama beliau selalu disebut-sebut sebagai konco dekat Mbah Nh. Maka ada saksi hidup dan mereka LANGSUNG bertanya kepada Mbah Asnawi tentang peranan Nh semasa di Makkah… Pemuda-pemuda ini mempersaksikan dengan bersumpah DEMI ALLAH, dengan diskusi mereka sama Pak Asnawi sebelum Mbah Asnawi meninggal dunia. Dalam dialog ini dihadiri langsung oleh mereka dan menjadi saksi-saksi adalah: Henry Gunawan Ardhi – 081320527727 -02270005354. Fery Nayoan Ardy – 081374706995 – 0818231851. Abu Abdurrohman – 085717848282. Kejadian ini terjadi pada tanggal 20 Maret 2003 Jamnya Ba’da dzuhur sampai ‘asar,di kediaman beliau pondok Balung Jeruk-Pare Kediri. Pertama : Apa benar Pak Nh itu pernah mengimami di Masjidil Harom? Jawab beliau: “Oh ya, tapi mengimami aku sholat keri (sholat yang ketinggalan). Jadi Abah kuwi ngimami aku sholate wong keri alias imam kedua”. Jadi ga’ benar Pak Nh itu mengimami di masjidil harom.” Kedua : Apa benar Pak Nh itu pernah mau dijadikan juru hukum/qodhi di Makkah? Jawab beliau: “Ora bener kuwi, sebape wong kono wis ono generuse dewe tur pinter-pinter, nggak koyo Indonesia pada waktu itu goblok-goblok.” (“Tidak benar itu, sebab orang sana sudah ada generasi penerusnya sendiri bahkan pintar-pintar, tidak seperti Indonesia pada waktu itu bodoh-bodoh.”). Ketiga : Apa benar Pak Nh itu pernah mau dijadikan orang kerajaan? Jawabnya: “Iku luwih ora bener maneh, merga’ne aku ambe’ Abah lan konco-konco liyane ning kamar dikunci ko njero, la awa’e dewe guyonan, guyoni Abah, dilo’ne King-King King,kuwi boso inggris sing artine rojo, lah sing wong jobo kamar kuwi kerungu diarani Abah arep dadi wong kerajaan Saudi.” (“Itu lebih tidak benar lagi, karena aku dan Abah (Nh) dan teman-teman lainnya di dalam kamar dikunci dari dalam, lha kami bergurau, mencandai Abah, disebut King-King King, itu bahasa Inggris yang artinya raja, lah yang orang di luar kamar itu dengar, dianggap Abah akan jadi orang kerajaan Saudi.”). Ke empat : Apa benar Pak Nh itu masuk sumur zam zam utk mengambil timba yang banyak ketinggalan di dalam sumur. Jawabnya: “Ora bener kuwi,sebape sejarahe sumur zam zam kuwi ora ene’ sing leboni wong,merga’no sempit, dadi piye le arep njuku’, wong sumure sempit ora iso dileboni wong”. (“Tidak benar itu, karena sejarahnya sumur zam zam itu tidak ada orang yang memasukinya, karena sempit, jadi bagaimana mau mengambil, orang sumurnya sempit tidak bisa dimasuki orang.” Ke lima : Apa bener Abah kuwi lulusan terbaik Darul Hadits,Khatam qiro'atus sab'ah,Menguasai 49 hadist? Jawab beliau: “Ora bener, merga’ne Abah ningkono dodolan liwet. Jarang ngajine akeh dodolane (lebih banyak waktunya utk jualan daripada mengaji). (“Tidak benar, karena Abah di sana jualan nasi liwet. Jarang mengaji, banyak jualannya.”). 1.Apa betul pak nhbelajar di darul hadist??? 2.Apa ada ulama mekah madinah yg kenal dg pak nh??? 3.Apakah sama pemahaman pak nh dg ulama mekah madinah??? 4.Apa ada ulama mekah madinah yg membenarkan ajarannya pak nh??? Dan KALAU BENER KATA PAK NH TAHUN 41 GAK ADA IMAM GAK ADA JAMA'AH seharusnya kan kata NABI ujlah Apa yang anda perintahkan kepada kami YAA ROSULULLOH ketika kami menemui hari-hari seperti itu? NABI menjawab; Hendaklah kamu selalu bersama jamaah muslimin dan imam mereka! Aku bertanya; kalau TIDAK ADA JAMA'AH muslimin dan IMAM bagaimana? NABI menjawab; hendaklah kau UJLAH TINGGALKAN SELURUH FIRQOH-2 (kelompok-kelompok/ashobiyyah)golongan-golongan itu Sekalipun kau gigit akar-akar pohon hingga KEMATIAN merenggutmu kamu harus tetap seperti itu..... Bukhari 7084 ( kitabu Imarah hal 66-67 ) PESAN JOKAM 354 YG SEDANG BERMUKIM DI SAUDI ARABIA Mudah2 kita semua bisa cepat umroh atau haji bisa pergi ke tanah suci Dan di sana kita bisa menyampaikan atau menanyakan SEMUA pendapat-pendapat kita atau argumen-argumen kita tentang yg kita yaqini di jm pak nh selama ini.yg kita anggap jm pak nh sudah benar.yg kita anggap jm pak nh sudah pas dg dalil-dalil QH...yg kita perjuangkan selama ini.yg kita tetapi selama ini... KALAU MEMANG BENAR PAK NH DAPAT ILMU DARI MEKAH KENAPA BAB MANQUL INI HANYA DI KENAL DI JOKAM 354 SAJA??? SEMENTARA YG LAIN TIDAK ADA YG MEMBAHAS YG NAMANYA MANQUL. 1. Secara logika saja Jika bener pak NH pernah berguru di Darul Hadits Al Khoiriyyah, PASTINYA dia punya -BANYAK TEMAN Dan tentu teman-temannya jg pasti mengajarkan tentang wajibnya mangkul Dan mereka -PUNYA MURID》 PUNYA MURID PUNYA MURID dan murid-muridnya jg akan mengajarkan tentang wajibnya mangkul dst, dst... Mk secara logika shrsnya pasti byk orang yg -TAHU,KENAL,FAHAM,NGERTI,MEMBAHAS,MENGAJARKAN... tentang wajibnya mangkul -SEBUTAN MANGKUL -NAMA MANGKUL -ISTILAH MANGKUL Tpi knp tdk dijumpai satu orangpun/satu golongan manapun yg membahas YG NAMANYA MANGKUL Termasuk ulama mekah madinah Kecuali hnya di jama'ahnya pak nh saja Ada nggak ulama mekah madinah yg membahas tentang namanya mangkul??? Menggembor2kan tentang mangkul? Dari sekian buanyak ulama??? 2. Jika mmg manqul yg dipahami jm nh itu sbg syarat sah-nya amal,kenapa tdk ada satu ulama mekah madinah pun yg membahas tentang wajibnya mangkul kenapa pemahaman pak nh tdk sama dg pemahaman ulama mekah madinah??? 1.Apa betul pak nh belajar di darul hadist??? 2.Apa ada ulama mekah madinah yg kenal dg pak nh??? 3.Apakah sama pemahaman pak nh dg ulama mekah madinah??? 4.Apa ada ulama mekah madinah yg membenarkan ajarannya pak nh??? Ulama mekah madinah kan buanyak... Murid-muridnya juga buanyak Temen belajarnya pak nh juga pasti BUANYAK Coba sebutkan SATU SAJA ulama mekah madinah yg membenarkan ajarannya pak nh??? Gak usah banyak-banyak SATU SAJA semoga jadi rujukan ilmiah dan semoga Allah memberi kalian petunjuk dan hidayah untuk kembali kepada qur'an hadist dengan pemahaman salafussholih bukan pemahama nur hasan madigol

[medievalart]

Today in history: Richilde of Provence, empress and queen of Western Francia dies (845- June 2, 910)

* member of Bosonid family (king Boso’s sister)

* 870: Married Charles the Bald

* 870-877: Queen consort of Western Francia

* 875-877: Empress of the Holy Roman Empire

* 877-879: “Regent” on the behalf of his son Louis the Stammerer (d. 879)

* 879: Tried to put his brother Boso on throne instead of Louis III and Carloman II but failed. Backed also Boso’s plans for independent Kingdom of Provence.

* 884: Attempted a political comeback after Louis and Carloman had died. Retired to Provence where she died a few years later.

( Grandes Chroniques de France , 14th / 15th cenury)

source: Wikimedia Commons