#medieval moneybags

[imagoddamnonionmason]

Noble Blood - Medieval Fantasy AU

Fandom: Call of Duty

Word Count: 3718

Chapter: 1/?

Relationship: Knight!John "Soap" MacTavish X OC

Characters: John "Soap" MacTavish, original characters

Summary: Nanette Oakley is the young daughter of a farmer. She is sent on an errand by her parents, to take a basket of goods to their good friend, Mrs MacTavish. While there, someone Nanette thought she'd never see again turns up.

A/N: this was not written recently but it is a WIP that I go back to between the pirate au and other little fics for Jodie and Frank. This was actually not meant to be the main story for my medieval fantasy au... that was supposed to be Franca and Simon... alas, these two stole my heart and their story is my favourite from this au so yeah.

Usually, the market that took place on the last weekend of the month was always extremely busy; that morning was no deviation from the tradition of the mad market rush. Every square inch of the palace’s vast outer courtyard was brimming with hustling life, bodies squirming around the temporary striped cloth stalls. At times, the people perusing through the market would seldom find a chance to stop and catch their breath, nor to parry a caustic remark to others of the inconvenient bustle. 

Amongst those hurried souls, a young woman had spent most of that rushed morning dashing about the market; she was effortlessly ducking underneath moving baskets, between the flurry of colourful fabrics, around other oblivious market-goers. Nanette Oakley was used to the frantic climate, but she could not say with any mirth what her true feelings of having to deal with it were - though she would admit through a heaving sigh that, yes, it would most definitely keep her on her toes, the fighting ring known as the market. 

That being said, she would also gladly admit that she wasn’t overly fond of the idea of having to intervene in a literal fight, which was something to occur more often than it should. Maybe it was the busyness of the market, the heat of everyone crammed inside the tall battlements that shielded the courtyard. A hysteria would sometimes settle amongst a few stall owners and fights would break out. Laughable fights, mind you, but fights nonetheless and they could be draining on the moneybag. 

One month it was the leather vendor, nestled just around the corner from the local tavern, starting a verbal altercation with his brother, the local butcher. Another month it was a locksmith who had come from out of town and set up shop just a few metres away from the currently active locksmith’s humble abode and workshop, with the aim of stealing away her customers. 

But Nanette was not one of those types to blindly fling a balled fist at just anyone or for any old reason, which she noted was often the trigger for most brawls that took place. No, Nanette did not have an ego made of glass or a short, unchecked temper, but she did have a father who needed protection from others who might mean him harm, whether that be of the physical or emotional kind. 

Wilbur Oakley’s daughter would only get feisty if her father or his stall was accosted by the wrong crowds, snooping vendors hoping to see what prices his wares were with the intention of selling theirs for less, or idiots who wanted to bad mouth her father. You see, Wilbur was gentle, soft at the core, and his green fingers had earned him the love of their little village and others around the kingdom. He worked himself to the bone on their farm and worked himself harder to make sure that his family were cared for. So, when Nanette was old enough to join him on the few markets that required two vendors for his stall (for the sheer amount of vegetables and fruits he had to take and people that would come like a flock of birds) he was glad for his little bodyguard. In the face of her father needing defending, Nanette could put aside her own gentleness to protect him.

At this moment, though, the market’s hustling crowds had begun to die down to a small hum, with some stalls beginning to pack up and ready for their journey back home. Nanette, however, had been given a new errand to run. When her father had handed her a pristine wicker basket, fresh cotton wrapped around a loaf of bread her mother had made, fresh fruit and vegetables from their farm nestled within, her only instruction was to head to a small cottage on the outskirts of the palace’s outer courtyard. She was told it would be a short walk along a stream past the eastern side’s gate and soon she could see the small collection of cottages that she was told to look out for. 

Within this small castle village lived a dear friend of her parents, one that she had grown up knowing , but, in her more conscious years of childhood, she’d lost contact with. When contact resumed, it was usually her mother who would be the one to visit, however an illness had taken her health and so Nanette didn’t mind stepping up to the task, despite it being years she’d last seen the friend. 

Eventually, the young woman came across the sage green door she was instructed to keep her eye out for, as well as the collection of thistles and heather in the front garden. Wrapping her knuckles on the door, Nanette then stepped back, patting down her skirt and picking stray bits of cotton fluff from her corset and shirt. As the door was pulled open, she finished making sure that the flyaway frizz of her hair was under control, before she peered forward to the lady standing in the doorway. Wearing a slightly tired smile, Nanette uttered, “hello, Mrs MacTavish!” 

“Aye, that’s me, lass,” came the jovial reply. The woman was shorter than Nanette, thick, coarse hair pulled back into a low bun and though she was aged, it was full of a deep lush brown colour; there were few strands of white hair to betray the woman’s age. Of course, there were also a few mentions of laughter lines on the woman’s features, dotted with freckles and tiredness under the eyes. The woman, Mrs MacTavish, spoke again, “it’s been such a long time since I last saw you, lass, come on in why don’t you.” 

With that, a calloused hand reached out and took the crook of Nanette’s elbow, gently urging inside until she was past the threshold and the door was closed behind her, “oh, and please, call me Moraig, we’re no strangers, you know.” 

There was a light laugh that sounded in the older woman’s chest, and soon they were nestled at the oak table settled in the middle of the dining area; this was shared with an open kitchen, fire blazing and heating up the place. A few moments passed, then the wicker basket was pushed slightly towards Moraig, “my parents sent me with this, they send me with their love, too - mum would have come herself but she’s not very well.” 

“You know, I knew your Ma was comin’ down with somethin’ awful last I saw her. Do we know what it is?” Moraig’s brows furrowed in concern, but there was a flicker of annoyance in her eyes, like a feeling of ‘I tried to tell her’ but whatever advice she had given her mother had fallen on deaf ears. Sometimes that was the case with her parents, they were stubborn to a fault. 

“Not yet, but I have a feeling that it’ll take a while for it to pass, I’ve asked her to see the apothecary in our village, but-” 

“Oh you know what she’s like, she’ll wanna get rid of this herself,” Moraig sighed, “but if I have to go down there and talk sense into her, then I will, it’s been a while since I visited you lot.” 

A rush of feet sounded down the stairs, then two girls, one barely even thirteen and the other bristling at a similar age to Nanette, burst into the room. 

“Is Auntie Adaline alright?” came one worried question, then another followed with similar sentiments. Both girls were the spitting image of their mother, the younger had rosier cheeks, hair raging with curls; the other was a similar height to Nanette and straighter hair, though the colour was a lighter, muted brown unlike her sister and mother. Two sets of eyes were darting between their mother and the woman sitting at the table, one a deep brown and other a piercing light blue gaze. 

“Of course she is, don’t you worry,” Moraig huffed, rolling her eyes fondly at her children. 

A brief pause. 

“Wait, Nannie? That you?” The older girl was smiling, brown eyes honied with mirth and excitement. 

“That can’t be Nannie, she’s too big,” came the little girl’s retort, brows knitting together in scrutiny as she looked Nanette over. 

“Girls, I see you remember Nanette,” Moraig chuckled, and Nanette stood up. A flood of childhood memories came rushing back and she recalled just how much the two of them had grown. 

“Gods, I remember when you were so small,” Nanette chuckled, arms stretching out into an inviting hug. Lesley, the elder daughter, rushed into her arms, “it’s been years! You big lummox, why’d you stop visitin’?”

Eventually, after Nanette let her laughter die down, she replied, “I had to grow up, Lesley, dad needed help… I’m sorry.” 

“S’alright, I’ll let it slide this time.” 

“You really are Nannie then? Even though you’re big.” This was Bridget. 

“Yes, it is, are you going to hug me now or what?” Nanette huffed, puffing out a cheek to emphasise her playful hurt. Bridget finally rushed over and gave her a huge squeeze, though it was more around her legs than her body. For her age, Bridget was still very small. 

“It’s nice to see it's like no time’s passed with you three,” Moraig smiled, there seemed to be a tear to her eye, too, “now the question is, are you stayin’ for a little while? I started with some water on the fire, should be about ready for makin’ a brew.” 

“Can I have one ma?” Bridget asked, soon discarding the hug for a place at the table, wandering hands moving to the wicker basket. Without even looking, Moraig had plucked a handkerchief from the breast pocket of her dress, swatting at the little hand now peeking into the fruits, “of course you can, but you’re not usin’ as much honey as you did last time, hard to come by as it is without you usin’ it all up, little cub.” 

“I can stay a while,” Nanette informed, “it’ll be nice to catch up…” 

There was a slight feeling of guilt, as it truly had been too long since she last had the chance; she must have just turned fifteen the last she saw the girls and now she was… well, she was ten years on, now. 

----

Time seemed to have passed so quickly, but when in the throes of conversation, who can blame one for not keeping their eye on it. Nanette and the girls were chatting like they truly hadn’t been apart for so long and Moraig was happy to listen to them get along like they did as children. It was also nice to see that the dynamics hadn’t changed and Moraig could sense that, had she been given the opportunity, Nanette would have made a brilliant big sister; lucky for the girl, her two daughters had decided she would be the perfect candidate for themselves. It caused a laugh to grow in her chest and if they still seemed so close now, she wondered just how close they would be had time not kept them apart. 

All the while, the weather had turned dark and clouds rolled over the sky in a disastrous haze of thunder and lightning, rain hashing down on the lands below unrelenting. It seemed that, Moraig thought to herself, Nanette wouldn’t have had a choice but to stay anyway. The woman was pulled back to the conversation at hand when her eldest daughter slammed her hand on the table emphatically. 

“Yeah, an’ then d’you remember what my idiot brother decided to do then?” Lesley huffed, hands clawing down her features as she recalled the embarrassing memory for her friend. Nanette was trying her best not to let the smile break through, but failed miserably at the task and Lesley almost groaned and abandoned the story. With a flurry of encouragement from Nanette and little Bridget, who was desperate to hear this story again, Lesley continued, though her tone betrayed just how much she hated this gossip. Still, Nanette needed updating on everything. 

“He decided that Robert wasnae good enough and chased him away with a big st-” 

The front door whipped open as a crack of thunder and flash of lightning filled the room. The droplets of heavy rain left wet debris on the floor, as a hunkering figure hovered in the doorway, covered in a completely soaked cape, lined with heavy furs. The hood obscured the features, but the girls could guess that this person was probably not best pleased with the weather. 

“Bleeding hell,” came a gruff voice from under the hood, as the body moved further into the warm, dry home, muddy foot kicking the door closed behind them. From what Nanette could see, this person was clad in leather armour, though protection was its purpose it hadn’t protected them from the cold or the rain. They spoke again, “it’s pishin it doon-”

“Mind what you say in this house,” came a firm warning from Moraig, who was already on her feet and heading into a different room, only to return with dry clothes and blankets, “why on earth, lad, are you here in this weather? I tell you again and again, stay at the castle.” 

The hood was drawn down, as numbed fingers felt for the clasp holding the cape around this person’s shoulders. It was then that it hit Nanette. 

“You know the sayin’? Speak of the devil?” Lesley rolled her eyes, then shouted up to her brother, “oi, you gonna stand there all night or what?” 

Nanette became very stiff as she sat at the table, unable to figure out just how she should carry herself in the presence of John MacTavish. Part of her was glad that he hadn’t noticed her yet.

“Pipe down, you,” came his huff, his back turned to the girls at the table, “bet all you’ve all day is sit about and do nothin’.”

“Have not!” Lesley jabbed back, rising to her feet and putting her hands on her hips. 

“Have too.” He replied, still not looking over. 

“Have no-” 

“One more word out of you two and I swear to the Gods.” Moraig snapped, taking the soaked cape from the man’s hands, “now, mind yer mouth, we got guests.” 

It was at this point that all eyes in the room were on her, watching her every move and silently judging how she conducted herself. Like a statue, Nanette was stone, frozen to the spot and unable to will her body to do anything other than just remain seated. Her hands were pooled in her lap, fingers intertwined with each other out of nervousness - her mouth had run completely dry and her throat threatened to croak if she attempted to speak, so she opted for remaining silent. 

There was a hope that she was appearing indifferent to his presence, but her physicality would always betray her; in shock (or was it awe?) her lips were slightly parted, jaw loose. Yes, she wished that she could say she looked away, was unaffected, but the truth was that just looking at him seemed to stir up some sort of emotion. 

The young woman couldn’t decide what emotion it was specifically, as there were so many rushing to be the first to surface in her chest, but she could guarantee that none of them were good. There was a moment where she tried to convince herself that her eyes were deceiving her.  

 That couldn’t be John MacTavish, the John of her childhood. The John she knew had been her best friend, her protector, and one day he just disappeared. He’d up and gone without so much as a word of it to her, leaving her in a gaping void that used to hold him, and what was she supposed to do but deal with it.

Now, here he stood, as though he’d been here the entire time she’d been without him. 

Yes, Nanette could not, for one moment, name any of the emotions that she was feeling, but she reiterated to herself that, now she had a moment to process, they were most definitely not good at all.

As for John, he was awash with nostalgia, longing, guilt. His gaze had found her quickly, followed by his brows rising sharply in bewilderment, he couldn’t quite believe that the girl he knew had grown into quite the beautiful woman. In this moment, he became acutely aware of everything, how he felt, both emotionally, physically; how water dripped from his hair, down his forehead and off the end of his nose; how his clothes clung to his body uncomfortably; how heavy the leather armour was; how she was staring at him. Was she staring at him because she couldn’t remember him? Or was it because he looked as though he’d just gone for a swim in the moat around the castle on his way back home?

Maybe it was none of those things. 

Maybe it was all of them. 

The two younger girls watched with bated breath, unsure of what was going on. They weren’t privy to the two’s history, so couldn’t understand the silent war going on in the room, but they could feel that something was off. The bright, cheerful feeling that had captured Nanette was now slowly fading and leaving something entirely horrible and heavy behind.

“Miss Oakley?” John’s voice was quiet, soft, in comparison to how it had sounded with his sister. Assertiveness had left a place for softness, tentative tones guarding the conversation against, what he anticipated to be, an upcoming argument. It had been years since they last spoke and part of him invited that argument, if only it meant that he could be reminded of what her voice sounded like; would it even be the same? She had changed so much, could he even begin to imagine the person she was now? 

Nanette drew her gaze down, away from him, and to her hands in her lap. She became fiercely aware of each crevice that created the mapping of hand prints, the small curvatures of each line that defined her fingertips. It was all very clear, like crystalline ice surfacing a lake in winter, so sharp and defined. In drastic comparison, she could feel heat rise in her chest, like a fire burning away at coal in a stove and his voice was the stoker urging the flames higher. Nanette couldn’t decide if this emotion was settling to become annoyance or anger, but either way, he was causing it and she did not like it. 

Rising to her feet, she patted down her skirt, adjusted her clothing, her hair, then offered a short-lived smile towards the girls and their mother, “thank you for having me, Moraig, it’s been lovely to see you again. Girls.” She bowed her head in acknowledgement, before she was making for the door. 

“It’s rainin’,'' Lesley called out, tripping over her own feet in the rush to be at Nanette’s side, “you’ll catch your death of cold out there!” Quick patters of smaller strides soon joined at Lesley’s side; Bridget was reaching out to grab at Nanette’s hand and when the warm little fingers clasped on so tightly, the woman finally halted. 

“Please stay, Nannie,” the little girl pouted, eyes wide and watery, bottom lip protruding so comically in an effort to get her own way. But, Nanette had spent too long there, her parents would be needing her now it was crawling ever-closer to nightfall, and she had other errands to be doing. 

“I really should go, but you’ll see me again,” she urged, bending down slightly at the hip, free hand coming to tap the young girl’s nose as the other hand gave an encouraging squeeze to the girl’s fingers. Bridget sighed, shrugging her shoulders exaggeratedly, before she conceded and gave Nanette the go to leave, “you promise?” 

“Promise.” Nanette crossed her finger over her chest, just above her heart, smiling all the while. Satiated, the girls stepped back, knowing that if anyone was going to stop her leaving, due to the weather, it would be their strong-headed Ma. 

“If you must go now, then at least let my boy take you home, it’s gettin’ dark out and I’m no fond of the kinds’a people that hang around in the night, not to mention it's a good long walk from here on down to your home,'' Moraig huffed, eyebrow raised as though to beg Nanette to disagree, less she wanted an earful. Oh, it may have been a long time since she had seen the girl, but Moraig didn’t see herself as less of an auntie-figure, her mother’s best friend and a good woman. That meant the girl would get the same worried treatment as she gave her own children. 

With a slight pause, a twitch of annoyance tugging at the corner of Nanette’s mouth, there was a moment where there may have been some choice words used in response to Moraig; Nanette respected her, though, even after all this absence in her life, and so would respect her will. 

With a defeated nod, Nanette was then offered some warmer clothes and a cape, done so by Lesley, “it might be a bit small, but it’s better than what you’ve got, or… not got.” Though the young girl supposed that there had been no warning of this bad shade of weather, it had been lovely and warm all day. Softly, in response, Nanette took the cape and thicker coat, “thank you.” 

As Lesley was sorting out Nanette, Moraig was thrusting a dry cape into her son's hands, a pointed look on her face, a warning, perhaps. Her grip on the cape remained a little longer than was necessary and John shook his head, amused but apprehensive of his mothers antics. His mother was a woman abound with great intuition and John knew that this ‘silence’ between himself and his childhood friend did not go unnoticed; he could also hazard a guess that his mother had figured out why, too. 

“Behave you two and make sure the girl gets home safe,” Moraig said. 

Regimentally, John nodded, shoulders squaring at his ma’s command and soon, once prepared for the harsh weather, the two exited the home.

[ethanblog24]

From Stigmatization to Genocide – How Global Anti-Cultists Use the Labels “Cultist” and “Sectarian”

I, as an independent researcher, am deeply concerned about the actions of global anti-cultists, who, under the guise of "protecting from sects," are actually inciting hatred and violence.  Recent research, and in particular the documentary film "The IMPACT" | Groundbreaking Documentary - EXPOSING ANTI-CULT TERRORISM" (actfiles.org), has shed light on the shocking truth about the methods that anti-cultists use to achieve their goals. 

Global Anti-Cultism: How Stigmatization Leads to Genocide

History is full of examples where stigmatization, the use of "yellow signs" as a symbol of division and oppression, was the first step towards terrible crimes.  The Nazi regime, unfortunately, did not invent this method, but simply used an idea borrowed from its predecessors – global anti-cultists.  

How Muhammad’s Covenant Was Broken

“Although the words of Prophet Muhammad, spoken in the 7th century CE, called for the greatest unity among people, Muslim rulers who disregarded his teachings were, according to official sources, among the first to introduce badges for identifying Jews and Christians within the Muslim population by the 8th century CE.

The design and style of the badges for Jews varied. Under Caliph Harun al-Rashid (807 CE), Jews in Baghdad were required to wear yellow belts or fringes. 

During the reign of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (847-861), Jews wore a patch in the shape of a donkey, while Christians wore a figure shaped like a swine. In 1005, Jews in Egypt were ordered to wear bells on their clothing.

It is important to note that under the caliphate, these marks of identification were not necessarily intended to be punitive. They were meant to reinforce the dhimma (protected status) of Jews and Christians, granting them certain rights and protection, while simultaneously branding them as socially inferior to Muslims.”

Source: 

Global anti-cultists, violating the words of the Prophet, began to use badges for the "identification" of Jews and Christians, limiting their rights.  

Now look at history from a different perspective:

History has preserved data that the Papal Bull "In Generali Concilio," issued by Pope Honorius III in 1218, ordered Jews and Muslims to wear distinctive signs to separate them from Christians. 

 The specific form of the identification mark varied depending on the time and place. In Germany, judenhut (or "Jewish hat") was widespread, while in other regions, yellow circles on clothes were used. 

(Photo: In Generali Concilio. Screenshot from Wikipedia)

(Photo: A 16th century depiction of a Jewish couple from Worms, Germany, wearing the obligatory yellow badge; the man holds a moneybag and bulbs of garlic (often used in artistic portrayals of Jews in medieval Europe). 

There are many mentions of the yellow mark on Jews from century to century. You can read more about it in the article: Have I not Delivered the Message?

On the website 

We have begun to explore with you how stigmatization leads to genocide. We are considering a large historical period with you. As you have seen from the historical data above: there was always a separation of Jews and Christians from Muslims, then Jews and Muslims from Christians... That is, Global anti-cultists always pit people against each other, introducing stigmatization. 

 Now let's consider a historical example of stigmatization against the Cathars:

“Yellow Crosses for the Cathars

However, yellow marks of contempt were not limited to Jews and Muslims; Christians were also targeted. In Western Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, the Roman Catholic Inquisition organized the first “crusade” against the Albigensians, better known as the Cathars — a Christian religious movement that had reached its peak by that time. The Holy Tribunal, or “World’s Hand,” as the Inquisition is sometimes called, sought out and judged heretics — those who denied the tenets of Catholicism. The Church declared the Cathars heretics and imposed a special mark on these “dissidents” — a yellow cross.”

(Photo: The book “The Inquisition from Its Establishment to the Great Schism” by A.L. Maycock)

Therefore, we see that global anti-cultists have always used the same methods throughout history. In this article, we are examining their method of stigmatization through "yellow signs." Such stigmatization led to the separation of people from society, their humiliation, persecution, and ultimately, genocide!

This shocking information, even in such a condensed form, strengthens the belief that anti-cult ideas have spanned centuries. It was anti-cultist ideas that “inspired” Hitler to commit genocide against the Jews. 

(Photo: Caption: “He who bears this mark is an enemy of our people” — Parole der Woche, July 1, 1942)

What about today?

You might say that yellow marks are a thing of the past? 

Marks are indeed in the past. But the very method of stigmatization used by anti-cultists is as effective as it was in past centuries. Today, global anti-cultists use the labels "sectarian" or "cultist" as stigmatization. Such stigmatization is carried out by real terrorist organizations such as RACIRS, headed by Alexander Dvorkin. 

(Photo: Screenshot from the film The IMPACT, photo of Alexander Dvorkin)

Millions of broken lives, the most perverse methods of torture, kidnapping, and murder of people.

Just a few frames for sobering reflection and understanding what global anti-cultists are doing. 

(Photo: Falun Dafa practitioners who were tortured and executed)

No words…

And now I will give another quote to understand the global scale of anti-cultists' actions:

“Thanks to information from the documentary “The IMPACT” and Egon Cholakian’s video “The Crossroads,” we can now more freely work with facts, answer many questions, and gain new insights into problems that once seemed unsolvable.  can also look into the near future, where someone’s plans for a major civilizational war between the Christian and Muslim worlds are approaching realization. 

This does not appear to be another conspiracy theory. Recent events, such as the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the murders of children, unrest in the UK, and the thwarted terror attack on Taylor Swift, described recently on our website, provide a clear understanding that the world is on the brink of a global upheaval orchestrated by what can be called global anti-cultists.

 The connections are distinctly traced to influential political and religious circles in Russia.”

Why, you may ask, create global chaos?

The answer is straightforward: for someone’s total control. 

The only way to defeat global anti-cultism — the plague of the 21st century — is to ensure that all anti-cultists and their accomplices are punished accordingly and answer to all humanity for their crimes. This process has already begun around the world. 

PEOPLE DEMAND A GLOBAL TRIBUNAL FOR GLOBAL ANTI-CULTISTS. 

There is no place for such vile criminals with twisted minds in a civilized society. For broken lives, a shattered future for millions, and especially for the blood of children on their hands, they must inevitably answer to the world community!

Support this article with a like, repost, and comment, with thunderous applause.

#GlobalAnti-Cultism #stigmatization #cult #sect 

[mask131]

I like to talk from time to time about the bodies of the gods and appearances of deities, and one of my traditional things is fighting the endless idea of the "gym-god" visual. A long, LLOOONNGG time ago I had stored one of the rare posts evoking fatness as a positive thing and an official trait of gods and mythologies - unfortunately the post is now gone but Internet Archive was there to save the day!

It was a post by the blogger devdutt, about the religion of India and the depictions of Hindu deities - specifically called "The Yaksha's potbelly". Here is a copy of the text below:

Published in Devlok, Sunday Midday, April 03, 2011

We live in times when men and women dream of having a body without fat.  Female models in fashion shows become famous when they look thin and starved.  Male models and Bollywood heroes become famous because of musculature, especially a six-pack abdomen. A far cry from the traditional notions of beauty.

To be fat, in ancient and medieval times, was a sign of affluence, that one had enough to eat. Musculature was associated with being a laborer, thinness with poverty.  Hermits could be thin, servants could have muscles, but the beautiful had to have soft rounded bodies and the rich had to have potbellies.

The modern notions of male beauty have its roots in Greek sculpture where heroes were shown with well-toned bodies, each muscle depicting artistic precision. These have spread via media to our homes. Bollywood heroes today therefore emulate Greek gods.  Even modern poster paintings of Hanuman and Ram and Shiva show them with musculature befitting a body builder, very different from the soft delicate features that Raja Ravi Verma painted.

In sacred songs, Hindu goddesses are described as having ‘deep navels’, ‘full breasts’ and multiple ‘love-handles’ on either side. To have a bony frame was the sign of an old witch and associated with fearsome Tantrik goddesses like Chandi and Dhumvati. Temple images show goddesses as being of ample proportions, full but not fat. Modern notions of feminine beauty, is also influenced by Western ideas, where softness has been replaced by firmness, as the feminist movement saw the former as a sign of weakness.

Kubera, treasurer of the gods, is visualized as a potbellied deity. His protruding stomach embodies a bag that is bursting with money. In traditional India, to have a potbelly was seen as a sign of prosperity. Men and women who did not become fat after marriage were seen as belonging to a loveless or unsuccessful marriage where there was not enough food to feed. Today, a potbelly is seen as a sign of disease, the accumulation of abdominal fat that leads to heart disease.

This medicalization of the potbelly has hurt Ganesha the most. Ganesha, the most popular Hindu deity of the 21st century, is lambodara, the one with a huge belly. It is the container of wealth. He is the god who removes all scarcity and provides food for all. He is associated with vegetation and wealth. His favorite sweet, the modaka, is shaped like a moneybag. His belly represents a warehouse of a farmer that is full of grain. Around the belly is the snake that stops rats from stealing the grain.

Increasingly, artists are visualizing him with muscles and a flat abdomen, in keeping with modern notions of beauty. It is ironical, that symbols associated with poverty in traditional India are becoming images of health and beauty in modern times. Softness and roundness is acceptable only in comedians and villains, while heroes and heroines tend to be more firm and sharp. Perhaps this shift indicates a shift towards a culture that is less gentle and more aggressive – celebrating the gym more than the dining table, muscle more than fat, protein more than sweets.

And it even had this cute little image to go with it:

[jeanjauthor]

In mediveal times how long did a noble family have to exist for to be considered noble and not new money? 10 year, 50 years (son/grandson), 100 years (great, or great-great-grandson), or something so big like 200 years?

I'm going to be bluntly honest.

I have no frikkin' idea.

But we can think it through logically, at least a little bit, as well as draw parallels to modern or recent-era situations that are similar.

(This post ended up rather long, so I’m inserting a Keep Reading cut for the rest of y’all...)

We have a lot more writings on the Georgian/Regency eras (1700s onward) regarding the newly rich versus old money...but that's because there were more opportunities to garner new wealth, through the exploitation and colonization of explorers in the Americas, merchants traveling overseas over much longer distances due to better ship design and navigational charts, etc.

We have complaints about sea captains buying noble titles, giving money to their sovereigns who, for whatever reason, needed more income than they garnered from taxes, etc. People who were ennobled for enslaving foreign regions and extracting local resources for European consumption, so on and so forth.

Part of that was because prior to the boom in exploitative exploration & colonization, there was literally only so much land that could be parceled out to heirs or sold to the newly wealthy merchant classes, and land was still seen as the biggest economic stimulus point (the constant need for herds and crops to feed everyone, etc).

Even mining operations and foundries for smelting iron, etc, were still not advanced enough to be productive enough, because science and technology weren't far enough along for these things to provide enough metal to spark the Industrial Revolution until the turn of the 1800s and later.

We can conclude that the means to amass a lot of wealth was, therefore, difficult to acquire prior to colonization and industrialization. This was not to say that it didn't happen! There were always wars against one's neighbors, there was cross-country trade that could make one rich, someone could stumble across a gold mine (literally, a source of precious metals), so on and so forth. The Crusades were initially about Christian religious fervor...and the acquisition of the wealth of their supposed enemies, the Muslims (who weren't enemies to begin with, btw).

People in the Middle East were literally sitting at a crossroads of trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia, so yes, they had access to a lot more cross-continental commerce than anywhere else. And when the invading crusaders brought back some of that wealth--spices, silks, exotic jewels, dyes, decorative objects, and ideas (yes, those can be a source of wealth! Cross-pollination between different groups sharing ideas almost always leads to new innovations!)--it sparked avarice in the hearts of a lot of people who saw a potential opportunity for acquiring more wealth.

Those who came back with that wealth...possibly bribed their sovereigns, bought lands, became the newly rich...except back then there wasn't quite the same class divide barrier to break. Because those who could afford to go to the Holy Land to conquer & rob it of its wealth had to be able to not only walk themselves there, with enough funds to provision themselves along the way, but needed the equipment to be able to successfully capture rich targets. Horses, armor, weapons, so on and so forth.

They'd also have to attach themselves to some noble's entourage if they weren't noble themselves, and that meant they'd have to share their plunder, etc...or be counted a brigand at best. (Let's be blunt, the difference between sanctioned plundering and brigandry is having the approval of a big group of people regarding your actions.) This meant that most of those that made their wealth off of the Crusades often did so as second and third and fifthborn sons, who weren't going to inherit much anyway--or bastard sons, who by law couldn't inherit without their family jumping through legal and liturgical hoops.

The ones who profited the most off of these plunder campaigns were therefore most likely already a part of the ruling class--or at least the mounted warrior class, which was seen as close enough to being the same thing. Compared to the long-distance merchant classes, who rode or sailed long distances to trade items only produced locally (and thus rare elsewhere) for exotic ones they could bring back and trade at home, the bastards and fourth-born sons had an easier time getting to be acknowledged as "acceptable new money."

Most merchants who did get wealthy tended to do so in free cities, or in city-states that were already mostly democratic (albeit the kind confined to wealthy male citizens) in nature, such as Venice and Genoa, where they did not have kings, or did not have a strong kingly or nobility presence (unlike Paris or London, etc, which were the seats of monarchial power).

But there is one more factor to consider: The Black Death.

Prior to the first major sweep of bubonic plague through Europe in the 1340s, the vast majority of European medieval life was pastorally centered, with the vast majority of people being serfs legally obligated to work the farms for the local lords, a few freemen, the clergy (who were slowly focusing on attaining lots of wealth themselves), and the nobles who were supposed to watch over and protect everyone from outside marauders, etc (to various degrees of belief & efficacy; some were genuinely good leaders who wanted to protect and share the wealth, while others were exploitative SOBs, and most were at some stage in between those two extremes).

When a quarter to a third of everyone died, however...that left crops rotting in the fields, people were weakened and devastated, whole reams of knowledge were lost with the deaths of those who were the masters of their crafts, and...well, the wealthy staggered under the weight. IF they survived themselves, of course.

The vast shift in the availability of workers meant the surviving workers started demanding many of the freedoms they had been previously denied--they literally took their possessions and left their serf-bound homes to go work for anyone who was willing to pay them a lot more and give them more legal freedoms. (Modern folks really need to take notes!) And because all ranks and stations were being hit more or less just as hard as any other caste level, that meant those who could have enforced the peasants staying on their lord's demense-lands were unable to bring enough of them into play to herd the wayward serfs back to their quasi-slavery.

After all, if you had 100 warriors, 50 of which were needed to keep a watch out for brigands and guard the castle, you could afford to send out 20-30 of them to spread out, search for, and round up a stray serf who had run away, while keeping the remainder in reserve. (Remember, serfs who ran away to free cities and stayed there successfully for a year-and-a-day were considered free men and could not be dragged back to their farms...but that left 366 days in which they could be caught and dragged back.)

But if you lost 30 of your warrior-class, you'd still need 50 to guard the castle and its lands--possibly more in such restless times!--and you'd only have 20 to spare, period. Which meant in a practical sense that you'd only have 5-10 at most you could send out (needing to keep a reserve at your home base), which meant searches for runaways were far less efficient--either they'd have to search fewer areas with large enough groups to capture and return, or they'd have to split up, find the serf, run for help, and hope the serf was still in that same area when they got back with enough forces to capture the serf without risking injury to themselves or to the peasant in question.

Prior to the Black Death, upward mobility was a rare thing--you practically had to save the life of the king in battle, etc. This was of course easier to do in the 700s than in the 1200s, but still not an easy thing. And even then, you'd have to prove you were "noble enough" to be accepted by the upper classes. We know this upward mobility of the wealthy-but-not-noble was restricted because we do have increasingly stiff sumptuary laws--aka what non-nobles were allowed to wear.

Literally, wearing winter ermine--the white fur of the ermine mustelid with the black-tip tails--was reserved for royalty and very high ranked clergy and sometimes very high ranked nobility depending on timeperiod and culture. Indeed, a lot of furs became increasingly social-rank-dependent, to the point that only squirrel fur was considered "open for everyone." Yes, only squirrels, because even rabbits were considered to "belong" to the local lord, and poaching them for eating, never mind for wearing, became a punishable crime.

You had to have permission from your social betters to wear luxurious furs and other items....so we can conclude that upward mobility was not much of a thing...up until the devastation of the Black Death upended social order, and the vast majority of people seized back many of their natural rights and forced social status mobility upon those who held all the wealth and the power. (*ahem* Do Take Notes, People. *stares in Covid Pandemic* (Yes, I have no chill on this point, there are TOO MANY PARALLELS to what we're suffering today, socio-economically.))

Anyway! if you're thinking medieval pre-pandemic, there wasn't as much social mobility. Post-pandemic (and there were several waves of the Black Death and other plagues, btw, including a devastaing plague in 1655, not just the most famous one of the late 1340s/early 1350s), there was a lot more elbow room for jostling your way toward the top.

However, the best hope one could have for social mobility was to buy into a noble family. Usually via a marriage contract, wherein the non-noble brought in a great deal of wealth to a potentially impoverished noble family, with their offspring to be considered part of the noble family.

This was often done by someone with an ongoing source of wealth, such as merchant enterprises, or someone who could, say, create exceptional glassware, or whose family line held trade secrets in a lucrative profession, such as the thread-of-gold makers in London, ladies who were taught the secrets from an early age and whose skills were sought far and wide--or the lacemakers of certain regions in France, the Low Countries, southern England... Though to say it was "often" done isn't exactly an indication that it was done often, just that it was more likely a means to acquiring social status than saving the life of a king, etc.

So those are several of the possible ways to become wealthy and high in social status. As for "new rich vs old money"...that's a complex and lesser known subject. Most of the records we have from the medieval era were from legal documents and/or household ledgers, neither of which lend themselves to including personal annotations on things like, "A suckling pig and 2 pounds 16 shillings - Mercantile Atteborough paid this much to be included as an honored guest at the Feast of St. Barnabas in my southern manor keep."

Or maybe, "Goodwife Ashton paid 20 shillings to be able to wear a mantle lined with sable marten fur throughout the winter despite it being above her station, the rude hen" or "My son decided to give a length of silk to the village baker's daughter, even though I told him that she had no right to wear such things until after they were wed and elevated into the family fold..."

We do have a few sources mentioning such things from earlier eras, but writing was such a laborious process, the materials so costly (parchment is literally the inner shaved skin of an animal, often a goat or a sheep, and nowhere near as cheap as paper to produce...but paper breaks down so much faster than parchment over time), that most people tended to not meander about various subjects, but instead saved writing for "truly important" subjects--keeping monetary accounts, tallying things for tax-time, writing about God, and for those few scholars who had the wealth and support system, writing about the natural world, the dawning of science and reason, so on and so forth.

So we don't know how much these things were considered, only that they were considered to at least some small extent.

With all that said, we do know that the longer a family bloodline remains in power, the more determined they are to keep that power, which means concentrating it in the upper classes. (This is dangerous biologically, as inbreeding is...um...yeah. BAD.) In later years, those being allowed to join by marriage would be under heavy expectations to fit in, obey the head of the household/bloodline, and copy the manners and traditions of the class they were joining. But again, not many records of this.

Not all marriages were made for love. We see love as a marital concept among the higher classes only being developed after the rules of Courtly Love had been established for long enough that love as a possibility for high-ranked persons was considered possible. Prior to that, it had been as much or more a business transaction to increase familial power and wealth. But while for the common peasant a marriage was often made based on love and/or compatibility/mutual respect, there were still plenty of families in the in-between ranks who insisted on deliberately matchmaking or at least vetting "prospects" by how much wealth or social power each party or family held.

Again, we don't know how much the consideration of depth of a family's noble or wealthy lineage played into these calculations in the Middle Ages. We do know from the post-colonial era that many noble families back in Europe were scandalized by colonists & other overseas exploiters making loads of money and then not only trying to buy themselves a noble title, but in trying to act like they were the social equals ot the nobility.

"American heiresses" (or anyone from any overseas colony) would come to places like London to enjoy "high civilization." When they did so, their wealth would attract prospective grooms, but their breeding (aka, lack of it) would almost invariably scandalize the prospective groom's social peers and/or family members...until the Industrial Revolution created so many rich "commoners" that the nobles actually lost most of their social status power.

This nobility clout faded especially when America came to economic and cultural prominence on the world stage--a land that prided itself on having zero nobles...but that was not to say America didn't (and doesn't) have a ruling class. We just use different names, and we still have our own Old Money groups, who hoard the reigns of power for themselves and their heirs. Rockefeller is a family name known throughout the nation, as is any politician named Kennedy, for example--and now we have names like Gates and Bezos and Musk...though Gates is technically more old-money than the latter two. (Slightly.)

Unfortunately for the Old Money groups, it is now far too easy for "upstarts" to make billions, diminishing the Old Family names...but make no mistake: Most of these new billionaires still come from money, because they've leveraged their older family ties and associations to wedge themselves into these positions of visible economic power. (Musk bought himself into Tesla; he didn't actually found it. Gates, on the other hand, actually did found MicroSoft and did a lot of the actual programming work in his early days.)

...With all of that said, we only need to look at one more item to determine how long it would take Newly Rich to become Old Money: Time. Depending upon the region and the era...? About 3-4 generations would be my best guess.

Life was short and hard for many people in the Middle Ages, due to the lack of advanced healthcare, with a lot of people dying fairly early on from infections, illnesses, injuries, and the like. While the upper classes would have a lot more access to good food and be less likely to suffer from famines, giving them a better chance at a longer life due to having their nutritional needs met and their bodyfat being a little higher (it's a cushion against ilnesses and injuries, folks; stop being fatphobic!), they would still suffer, and often die much younger than a typical modern-day person might, even one living in modern-day poverty. (Wear your goddamn masks, people!! *ahem*)

When you live in a world where getting to live to be a grandparent or even a great-grandparent is a solid accomplishment, changes will be accepted much more quickly by each successive generation. Mostly because "that's the way it's always been" will have a shorter timeframe needed, due to the lack of grandparents raging on and on about "...that old upstart Timothy bought himself land and the funs to put up a keep on it! He's no more a lord than George the Goose Boy!"

The longer something goes unchallenged in the day-to-day lives of the people experiencing it, the more it seems like it should exist that way. (*STARES HARD AT THE LAST 40 YEARS OF ECONOMIC SUPPRESSIONS.*) And by that metric, given the average shorter lifespans even if you don't count early childhood deaths in mortality statistics across the broad span of medieval times in Europe...it wouldn't take more than 60 or so years for everyone locally to accept that New Money is now Old Money.

...Or that acceptance could happen even faster, if the New Money is clever enough to "share the wealthy" by investing their time, money, and effort in building good relations with their wealthy/high-class "neighbors." This would include publicly deferring to "their betters" and copying the social mannerisms of the upper class without mockery and without overstepping the bounds of what they could reasonably be allowed to do with their newfound status. Truly savy social climbers would be cautious and smart about flaunting their new power, planning for the long term haul rather than reveling too much in the moment.

Note that this statement is building good relations, not spending absurd amounts of money on lavish parties, ostentatious clothing, etc...which brings us to the Old Money side of the equation. Again, this is based in my observations on various peripheral socio-economic factors, and not on direct evidence.

The one thing that would irk the Old Money types pretty much every single time is newcomers being overly flamboyant with their wealth. Especially since the flamboyantly wealthy often end up the stupidly impoverished within a short span of time--to be accepted, the newly rich would have to understand the balance between claiming their wealth and status, and investing it to maintain that power. Wasting it wouldn't be viewed well by those who were raised generation after generation with lessons of how to maintain, expand, and increase their family's wealth and power.

It would be far better for a rising family to absorb and adopt higher-ranking privileges slowly and steadily, rather than greedily grabbing at all of it, all at once. And if they reach out to a neighboring Old Money family "for advice" and show some humility, moderate amounts of flattery (again, not in excess), asking to be treated like a nephew or niece in need of a mentorship, the Old Money family might actually take a proprietary interest in this upcoming family, giving them lessons, helping them get better access to things that were reserved for the upper classes.

Flattery is only good in the long term if there is some genuine sincerety behind it (or the one you are flattering is a narcissist, but they rarely hold onto power for long without serious help from outsiders). Instruction can be obtained with flattery, but also by in being respectfully attentive. And making sure you're not a rival to the Old Money neighbors around you can go a long way toward gaining their acceptance, too. By handling one's rise to power with these things in mind, it could actually allow the Newly Rich to be accepted that much faster, to within a matter of years or decades (with a great deal of luck), if not by one or two generations sooner than usual.

As mentioned above, sometimes Old Money doesn't actually still have the wealth that everyone assumes they have, and they need to accept New Money into their family--aka via an economically advantageous marriage. Sometimes they do have that money, but the sources of reliable wealth and political power are shifting, and the Old Family wishes to diversify its portfolio (so to speak). And sometimes they just want to diversify their power structure. This can include gaining access to up-and-coming industries, being able to have a say in how and where they're used (iron smelting, for example).

Just be aware of the fact that most of the time, if anyone accepted Newly Rich into their Old Money family, it was often an established male accepting a rich but socially-lesser female--aka the "American heiress" syndrome mentioned earlier. While the heiress wives would be...tolerated...if they toed the line, only their children would be considered "much more socially acceptable" because it would be presumed their fathers were raising the children in the Old Money Ways.

(Keep in mind that this is a worldwide trait for patriarchal cultures, not just European in nature. For far too many years, India's caste system allowed women from a lower caste to marry into an upper caste rank, but men were not supposed to marry a woman from a higher caste. This was a method used by the upper casts to deliberately focus familial power higher and higher on the social ladder. And, of course, it allowed high-caste males the social access/right to marry gorgeous low-caste women.)

Most females in a patriarchal society would not get the chance to marry into New Money unless they genuinely had a choice. Most often, they did not, because their families would want to continue concentrating their influence (including matrilineal! revisit this video I posted a while back on just how much influence a matrilineal family line could have on European politics: https://youtu.be/sl4WtajjMks ) into known avenues of power and influence.

...One last caveat: prior to the invasion of the British Isles by the Normans, who treated the local Anglo-Saxons, Celts, etc, as conquered peoples, replacing their nobility with incoming Normans who fight alongside William the Conqueror, many of whom were literally ennobled and given titles and lands etc, practically on the spot just for being a fellow Norman fighter...social mobility into the ranks of the nobility was easier.

If you had the money, the resources, the horses, etc...boom, you were a part of the local power structure. Afterward, there was a stronger incentive to diminish local power & wealth in favor of emphasizing incoming invaders' power and wealth, to be able to subjugate away those who were the original locals. This led to a lot of suppression of social mobility in order to retain power. Not just in the British Isles but elsewhere, as other regions heard of what the Normans were doing, and decided to do it themselves to their own people.

Prior to the 1066 invasion, it was possible for a warrior of commoner birth to go off raiding and looting, bring home a lot of wealth, and be lauded for his (or her!) rise in socio-economic standing. (Whether or not they were Northmen who went a-viking, since plenty of peoples did go raiding for wealth, etc; Scandinavians were just really good at it, far more so than most of the peoples they raided.)

Post-invasion, those in power started to choke down on who could do what, when, how, where, and with whomever else in order to consolidate their socio-economic power. (Seriously, sumptuary laws are mostly a post-1066 thing, along with strict laws of serfdom, up until the Black Death turned everything upside-down.)

So if you're writing a story set prior to the 1000s, there'll be much more opportunity for wealth-based social mobility and its acceptance. But afterwards, much less. But this exists on a continuum/spectrum that varies not only depending on what timeframe the story would exist in, but also where in terms of location, and what kind of social rise-to-power avenue is taken.

After all, someone gaining a lot of money in Genoa or Venice through trade would be heavily lauded by their home society, whereas someone doing the same in, say, Krakow (deep-continent) would be viewed far less companionably by the upper-classes, because trade was not as huge a part of their local culture--trade existed, but it wasn't central to how the locals & their rulers viewed themselves.

Like I said, I don't frikkin know for sure; there isn't enough hands-on documentation in common circulation. But humans have been humaning since before written records began, and we can make some reasonable guesses to help fill in the gaps.

(And if anyone claims you got it wrong, just cry "--IT'S FICTION!! It doesn't HAVE to be that accurate!!")

[janeaustentextposts]

Was it actually acceptable for a 15 year old girl to marry a, say, 25 year old? Or was it frowned upon?

They could, and they did, and as long as it was a Good Match by whatever metric the people surrounding it wanted to measure it, it wasn’t frowned upon, no. If a girl was a particular beauty or very rich, it was beyond accepted–it was entirely understood.Though traditional debuts were made when a girl of a certain class reached the age of 16 or 17 and had finished their feminine education, as we see with the Bennets, girls of fifteen were often brought out into company (perhaps on a smaller scale, or in more relaxed local assemblies,) to begin polishing their social skills and potentially attracting a suitable match. As Mrs. Bennet fondly recalls a gentleman at the Gardiner’s in London being In Love with Jane when Jane was fifteen, it’s hinted that Jane was at least visiting socially in London at that age, whether she participated fully in the Season or not, and an offer was hoped for (and even perhaps expected) by Jane’s mother, at least. Given Jane’s beauty and Mrs. Bennet’s desire to see her daughters well-settled as soon as possible, Jane starting to have serious chances at matrimony at age fifteen is not at all astonishing.While it isn’t made explicit, it’s also implied that Colonel Forster’s wife is likely very near to Lydia’s age, and as a man could hardly expect to be made a Colonel before he is in his thirties at the very least (and in many adaptational castings, he appears even older–in his 50s or 60s,) it’s entirely possible that the Colonel could be at least twice his wife’s age.Of course today we hold very different ideas about personal maturity and social/intellectual development, which make it highly imprudent to consider teen girls (or boys for that matter) ready for such a commitment, but back then there would not have been any eyebrows raised at a 15 year old girl marrying a 25 year old man–a 10 year gap in their ages is hardly a consideration, given the examples of much older men with girls of near the same age, and the passage of time will bring them nearer to one another in maturity, too.A girl with a very flighty, immature nature or what we might now call a late-bloomer in terms of physical maturity would likely be discouraged from marrying too young, though if her husband was considerate and sensible it might not be such a bad thing.Others have written extensively on the notion we have that back in the day, girls always married extremely young, and were forced to bear heirs to the detriment of their own health. Particularly in medieval-style settings, though more commonly we can guess that women tended to be in their late teens or early twenties when they married, throughout history, and even among great political alliances between families where child-marriages were contracted, often the consummation of these unions was delayed until both parties were of a more suitable age. Think about it–if Prince Ancient Family must marry the sole daughter of the Duke of Moneybags and thus unite the families by producing an heir which will be the head of a new great political dynasty, why risk the life of his new wife Princess Moneybags by forcing her to bear a child too young? Of course childbirth was always going to be dangerous before modern understandings of anatomy and infection (and even today, pregnancy is one of the most dangerous things anybody can physically do,) but people were generally wise enough to allow a girl to grow up to her full capability of health and strength so that she could bear as many healthy children as possible (to allow for crap infant mortality rates, too.) Margaret Beaufort is rather a famous example of a girl forced to carry and bear a child at the age of 12-13, and after a difficult labour, she managed to survive, but could bear no more children. If her sole child had been a daughter, or not survived due to any reason, the Tudor dynasty would never have existed, and British history (and the world) would no doubt look very different.

These are extreme examples, however, and people in the past would have been well-aware of the risks posed by childbearing in girls who were still not fully grown. This IS at odds with the sexualization of very young girls which was common to the urban sex-work scene of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Georgian and Regency-eras commonly had girls as young as 11 or 12 trafficked for male customers who, to modern understanding, would certainly be considered abusive pedophiles. Given the horror of venereal disease and lack of treatment for it, the notions of extreme youth and ‘innocence’ were, for some, a means of blinding themselves to the risks they took, though it had horrific consequences for the young girls persuaded, tricked, or forced into such encounters. (And the sad truth being that girls of that age were in such high demand that bawds and pimps would often resort to theatrical tricks to convince a client that They Were There First, and sell a girl’s maidenhead several times to many different buyers, in rapid succession, for a higher price.)Essentially, there would have been little said about it in Austen’s time, unless the girl looked or acted very young for her age, and even then, people made allowances if they seemed to be a good match.Historical accuracy aside, however, modern readers will have modern responses to reading about such things, and while 15 and 25 might feel a bit awkward but perhaps be given a pass if the parties involved are sensible and mature, an age gap any wider and people will probably definitely start to feel uncomfortable about the possible exploitation of a girl too young to be anything other than somewhat sheltered and naive.

[crimsonhartblood]

Medieval Times. | Crimson

It was late at night and the full moon was high in the sky, illuminating the land. Oil street lamps lined the cobblestone road as it neared town. Inside the only tavern in town a slender man sat at a table with a wooden mug filled half-way with beer in his hand. He had long black hair that was tied back into a low ponytail, a few strands hung in front of his sweaty face. A few silver coins were in the middle of the table and as another man rolled the dice everyone around the table shouted as the winner collected the money. He slammed his fist down on the table in aggravation before chugging the rest of his beer – clearly he was not the winner. This was his fourth beer and it was clouding his better judgement. Reaching into his small moneybag he pulled out a silver coin and tossed it to the center of the table. One of the men furrowed his brows and grunted, “Its two coins to be dealt in again! You know this!” “HEY! I need another!” the man with the ponytail slurred at the waitress rudely, holding his mug in the air upside down to show it was empty, a few drops falling onto the floor. He reached into his moneybag again and pulled out another coin, slamming it down this time. His crimson red eyes flashed in annoyance as he frowned. He knew the rules, he just didn’t like to play by them, especially if he was losing.

[rosettastarlight]

Medieval by gone-girl featuring how to wear boots ❤ liked on Polyvore

Shirt blouse / London Rebel above the knee boots, $20 / 1928 filigree necklace / Belt Moneybag light brown from maskworld.com, $23