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astrovian · 1 year

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Richard Armitage on playing Thorin Oakenshield for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles

The first meeting I had with Peter, Fran and Phillipa was the casting. I was given a scene to read that was actually a construct - it wasn't from the book. It was at this point that I became really excited by the idea, that the book was going to be the backbone of a much more fleshed out, well-rounded story. The scene they gave me to read was Thorin talking to Balin about who the Dwarves had once been, what they had become, why the Wizard had come to him with the map and the key, but that he didn't feel he had the strength to do this. In one scene, the writers had captured exactly what his character was all about - his dreams, his regrets, his insecurities, and his power.

Throughout the filming process, I was able to bounce my ideas around our forum. Often, ideas would spring from drafts of scenes being 'workshopped', or in progress. As we all grew to know and understand Thorin, the collaboration became easier. The way the character looked was very much in Peter, Fran and Philippa's hands; the way he moved, spoke, and delivered the ideas on the page were mine and Tolkien's. I was inspired very much by a particular pencil sketch of John Howe's, particularly the hands, eyes and nose. I felt they weren't dissimilar to my own. There was also a gentle, pensive attitude in the picture which I hadn't seen in Tolkien. It gave me a useful colour to paint with.

The most exciting part of collaboration though, isn't when one sits down to negotiate for ideas to make it into the script or film, but when they appear in the script at the very moment when they are desired. This happened a lot. This is when I felt we were all in tune. The lines never had to be learned. I suppose Peter, Fran and Philippa were hearing my voice when they wrote a scene - another great compliment - and when imagining that scene, I was in tune with the flavour of neo-classicism that I felt our writers were enjoying: the Dwarf kingdoms felt like the great Roman empires, and the literature and philosophical ideas were in line with Greek tragedy, at times Shakespearean. I felt that it was appropriate to allow myself to wander down that path, after all Thorin was heading for a kind of megalomaniacal insanity, which is a difficult thing to play without embracing that 'full throttle' style of art.

I always imagine chracters who are defined by their history. If it's not there than I will inevitably construct a detailed biography. For Thorin this was very easy as Tolkien had given so much material to us through various other sources in his literature, but I still needed to investigate a more domestic biography; 'What do Thorin and Dwalin "chew the fat about"?' or, 'What was Thorin's relationship with his sister Dís like?' I felt that might inform how Fili and Kili would feature in Thorin's life.

The difficulty with Thorin is that he enters the story on the edge of failure, but with everything to win. I remember thinking when I first read the scene for the casting, that here was a character who felt like a dying ember, yet with the energy and hope to reignite into the furnace that once powered this great warrior. But, he has all the potential to fail.

I connect personally with that last sentiment. I was never really sure if I could pull this role off; I felt secretly that many others also felt the same and it's one of the reasons I could never sit down on set (I am a pacer, apparently). I could never rest.

Thorin is the same . He hasn't slept easily in his bed since the Dragon expelled them from Erebor. Thorin's grandfather went mad and his father disappeared a year ago to the day when the Quest begins. The desire for revenge upon Smaug and also on Azog, who beheaded his grandfather, has been bequeathed to him. That's a huge burden to carry, and one that can't be shared.

The glory of returning his people to their homeland is also in the mix, along with the personal revenge on the slaughter of his family. Also, buried deep inside of Thorin is a dormant lust for gold, a lust inherited from the line of Durin, and just as the Dragon who will be woken when the King returns to the Mountain, so too that dormant illness inside of Thorin will awake. He knows this and he fears it.

So really, the 'engine' which brings Thorin to lead his fellow Dwarves to their destiny is fuelled by the past but is 'front wheel' driven, towards their future, their destiny, their prophecy. It's a great place to imagine a character because they are always in flux, pulled towards something, which they fear, springing from a rage-fuelled past.

#richard armitage #the hobbit #hobbit #thorin #thorin oakenshield

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heartofstanding · 4 months

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Tell me everything about Joan if Kent, specifically which historians I should hiss at.

Oh man, Joan of Kent is awesome. It's hard to describe her life quickly because she had such a long and varied one. It spans from the end of Edward II's reign and the upheavals of Edward III's minority throughout the glory years of Edward III's reign to the decline in his latter years to the Peasants Revolt and the fragile beginnings of Richard II's reign. She can assume a number of different shapes: romantic heroine, powerful and influential woman, fashion icon, mediator, literary patron, scandal, survivor. She makes a status-defying match, ostensibly for love, and then follows it up by marrying the heir to the throne of England, again ostensibly for love.

Of course, it was the Middle Ages so a lot of medieval chroniclers and commentators saw her as the stereotypical wanton, transgressive woman.

Her story:

Joan was the daughter of Edmund, Earl of Kent (Edward I's youngest son) and Margaret Wake, and was thus Edward I's granddaughter, Edward II's niece and Edward III's first cousin. She was born before or on 29 September 1326-1328 (the exact year is debatable). Her father was executed in 1330 in highly controversial circumstances for attempting to free the deposed and likely dead Edward II.* Joan is generally believed to have become a ward of Philippa of Hainault as a small recompense for Kent's execution (Edward III and Philippa are believed to have played no role in Kent's execution). In the winter of 1340-41, Joan was married to William Montagu, the son and heir of the Earl of Salisbury. This was an entirely conventional match: he was of similar age and status to herself, the marriage ensured she would become Countess of Salisbury upon his father's death. But about seven years later, there was a scandal: a knight, Thomas Holland, claimed that Joan had married him clandestinely and that they had consummated it before she married Montagu. He appealed to the papal authorities to return her to him.

A long, protracted dispute followed. Montagu appears to have kept Joan imprisoned in strict seclusion so she could not respond or appoint an attorney to respond on her behalf to the papal investigation. Eventually, she was able to do so and evidently supported Holland's claim: the investigation found in Holland's favour. Her marriage to Montagu was annulled and she and Holland were have their marriage solemnised publicly.

Because of the scandal and the struggle to have the marriage recognised, as well as the unusualness of the match itself, Joan and Holland's relationship has typically been seen as a romance for the ages. But Joan was, at most, 13 years old (and possibly even as young as eleven) and Holland, born c. 1315, was around 25 years old, i.e. close to, if not actually, double her age, when they married clandestinely. At around 12 years old, she was considered to be "marriageable age" and a medieval 12 year old was likely considered more mature than a modern girl of the same age. But she was, still, you know, a 12 year old girl marrying a 25 year old man. That it has been hailed as a great romance is not really surprising given the stereotypical view of the Middle Ages as a time when dirty old men married preteen girls and raped them and the fact that until very recently Lolita was published with a blurb calling it the "only convincing love story" of the 20th century.

There are a number of legends attached to Joan from around this time. Two stories refer to a Countess of Salisbury and Joan held the title for the last four years of her Montagu marriage, though her then-mother-in-law, Katherine Grandison, also held the title as the dowager. The first story records that Edward III raped the Countess of Salisbury - the details of the story make it clear that Katherine, not Joan, is who was meant, though that has not stopped some with connecting the story to Joan specifically. The story itself is unverifiable - the earliest, i.e. contemporary, recording of the story contains both factually correct and factually incorrect details, and it is French in origin, which might mean it was propaganda designed to smear Edward III (this does not prevent it from being true, however). Some have suggested that the story has been confused. We certainly have no way of proving or disproving it beyond a doubt, but the idea it was meant to refer to Joan are very slim.

A second, much lighter story involves the foundation of the Order of the Garter. In it, the Countess of Salisbury is dancing when a garter slipped from legs, producing amusement. Edward picked up the garter and returned it, admonishing, "Honi soit qui mal y pense!" ('Shame on him who thinks ill of it!'), which then became the order's motto. This tale has also been heavily doubted and whether it was Joan or Katherine who is meant is debated. In both stories, Joan is often the more prominent candidate but that likely reflects how b*etter known she is and how these stories "fit" with her reputation as a beautiful, sexually desirable woman.

From 1350 to 1361, Joan gave birth to five children: Thomas, John, Joan, Maud and Edmund (who died in infancy). In 1352, Joan's only surviving sibling**, John, died childless and she inherited the earldom of Kent. This led to a massive step up in status and wealth for her new family. Holland died on 28 December 1360 from illness.

By spring 1361, Joan had another husband in line: Edward of Woodstock. Edward was the eldest son and heir of Edward III, Prince of Wales, war hero, chivalric icon and known famously, if anachronistically, as "the Black Prince". Joan was not the obvious choice for the Prince's wife - a conventional choice would be a royal or noble woman from the European continent (there had been a number of failed marriage negotiations for this type of marriage for the Prince), and had the Prince outlive his father, Joan would have been the first English-born queen since the Conquest. She was also the first Princess of Wales since Wales was incorporated into the English crown. It's frequently asserted that the Prince had long-loved Joan and he does appear to have referred affectionately to her, but we don't really know what Joan felt about the Prince or her marriage.

As a result of the Treaty of Bretigny, the Prince was to rule Aquitaine on Edward III's behalf. Joan and her Holland children accompanied him when he sailed to Aquitaine the following year. We don't know a lot about Joan in Aquitaine. We know her fashion sense drew fairly predictable criticism and that she gave birth to two sons while there. The first, named Edward, died in Aquitaine in 1370, aged 5 years old and the second would become Richard II. The Prince was much-criticised for his arrogance and ostentatious style in ruling Aquitaine and it's possible Joan was a part of that. A lot of work has gone reassessing his rule, however, and found it was not necessarily as bad as has been assumed.

After 1367, the Prince became seriously ill and the war with France was set to reignite. Incapable of carrying out his duties in Aquitaine effectively, Edward, Joan and their family returned to England in 1371, where his health declined further. Joan often acted in his stead during this period, and when he died in 1376, she was made guardian of their son, Richard, who was now the ailing Edward III's heir and became king himself in 1377, aged only 10.

Joan remained a infinitely influential and powerful woman in the coming years, with some historians describing her as a "quasi-queen". A large portion of pardons and grants were made at her request, and as Countess of Kent and the dowager Princess of Wales, she had large estates of her own to administer. She also enjoyed a great reputation as an mediator: she mended the quarrel between John of Gaunt, Henry Percy and the city of London and mediated between Gaunt and Richard. Interestingly, her entourage included leading members of the Lollard movement, suggesting she may have been interested in reform of the church. This was also time of Geoffrey Chaucer and literary scholars has been suggested Joan served as inspiration for a various number of figures in Chaucer's work.

During the Peasants Revolt of 1381, she was harassed en-route to London and the rebels asked for her to kiss them. Chroniclers also recorded her state of terror when the Tower of London was broken into, though it may have been more of a rhetorical device on behalf of chroniclers to show what they saw were the horrors of the rebels' behaviour.

Joan appears to have taken a step back from court. Possibly, she was increasingly incapacitated by illness (it's been suggested Joan suffered from dropsy/edema; the chronicler Thomas Walsingham claimed she was so fat she could barely move, though no other chronicle made this claim), or possibly she retired once Anne of Bohemia married Richard II so not to overshadow the new queen. Despite illness and retirement, Joan attempted to mediate between Richard and another of her sons, John Holland, when the latter murdered Ralph Stafford and Richard had determined to execute him. One chronicler claimed Richard's refusal to hear her pleas caused her to die of grief. The stress of the situation could hardly have helped if she was suffering an illness. She died 7 August 1385 and was buried in the same church as her first husband, Thomas Holland. This has generally been taken as evidence that she loved him best but the situation may have been more complicated. The plans for the Prince's burial changed dramatically, which may have led Joan choosing to be buried elsewhere or she may have made her choice to as a gesture of affection for her less royal family. Richard did pardon John after Joan's death and they were reconciled, so one might say that even in death she was a successful mediator.

In terms of her descendents, Richard died childless but most of her Holland children had issue. She had descendents on both sides of the Wars of the Roses.

*If you're unfamiliar with the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, the short summary is that Edward II ended up basically alienating everyone through his relationship with and preferential treatment of Hugh Despenser the Younger (quite possibly his lover). The queen, Isabella of France, eventually allied with Roger Mortimer, Earl of March and spearheaded a rebellion that led to Edward's deposition and the execution of Despenser. His son, Edward III, became king but as he was a minor, Isabella and Mortimer effectively ruled in his reign. Edward II was said to have been murdered on 21 September 1327 and most historians accept this. However, there are some references to Edward II surviving well past this, including the plot to free him that Edmund was involved with, and there is a coterie of historians who believe it, namely headed by Ian Mortimer and Kathryn Warner. Given Edmund's royal blood, his execution was deeply unpopular - no one could be found willing to execute him until a criminal was given a pardon in exchange. Edward III is said to have wanted to pardon Edmund but was blocked by Isabella and Mortimer by doing so. When Edward III took control of government and ousted Mortimer, he posthumously pardoned Edmund and executed Roger Mortimer. One of the charges against Mortimer was that he'd duped Edmund into believing Edward II was still alive.

** Joan had two or three siblings. Her brothers were Edmund, the eldest boy who was born had died before 5 October 1331 and John, who was born posthumously on 7 April 1330, inherited the earldom as an infant and died childless on 26 December 1352. A sister, Margaret, is sometimes identified but she seems to be attested only from an authorisation to negotiate a marriage - Penny Lawne has argued that it was more likely that Joan was the intended bride but the clerk writing out the authorisation confused her name with her mother's (Margaret). There does not seem to be any other evidence of her existence - she is not mentioned as attending the baptism of John, though her other siblings are, and she is not mentioned in the Inquisition Post Mortems for John where Joan is named as his only heir. If Margaret had existed, she must have died sometime before John's death. Her death is sometimes given as 1352 but I'm not sure what the source for this is..

Historians To Hiss At.

As you might guess, Joan's life suggests a sexual impropriety and scandal, or in a slightly less misogynist sense, a life dominated by romance. She was a bigamist. She was married for love. She married three times and only one of them to a man appropriate to her status. She's both Lady Chatterley, driven by lust into the arms of a man of lesser status, and the relentless, cold-hard social climber like Philippa Gregory's Anne Boleyn.

So of course historians through the centuries have replicated that bias. For some, like Anthony Goodman, she's a giddy romantic who follows her heart who never manages to mature. For some, she's a romantic heroine, her and Thomas Holland are the epic romance of the Middle Ages which, uh, doesn't really take into consideration Joan's youth at their marriage. For others, she's a saucy wench, hooker with a heart of gold - I've seen someone point out how young Joan was when she married Holland on Twitter and gotten the response of "well she was saucy ;)". For others still, she's just a slut and a selfish, slippery, scheming one at that. After all, all those good men wouldn't have been falling themselves over her without her seducing them, would they? Anyway, it's a Russian Roulette whenever you pick something up about Joan. Will it romanticise a guy having sex with a 12 year old? Will it call the 12 year old a giddy romantic? Will it slut-shame the 12 year old? I've only found one thing - Samantha Katz Seal's review of Anthony Goodman's biography of Joan - that actually suggested Joan was a victim of abuse without immediately offering a theory to work around it.

Two examples:

The peach that is renowned Ricardian crank and misogynist John Ashdown-Hill wrote that "the girl's [Joan was in her 30s) reputation left a good deal to be desired … she was deficient in some respects and rather too-well endowed in others".

Ian Mortimer's biography of Henry IV makes overly frequent comparisons between Henry and Richard II, who Henry deposed and had murdered, basically to the tune of "Henry was better than Richard! Henry had the biggest penis!" One repeated comparison is their mothers, where Mortimer describes Joan's legacy as "burdensome" for Richard and cast a shadow over his legitimacy, while "Henry’s mother, in contrast, was popularly regarded as one of the most lovely adornments of the English court". One's a burden, the other's a beautiful object.

But the historian that I really get my hackles up about is Kathryn Warner, probably I once thought really very highly of her. She talked a lot about going back to the original sources instead of repeating what other historians have said, not speculating without supporting evidence, and having progressive values. Notably, she called out the homophobia and misogyny that hung around depictions and discussions of Edward II and Isabella of France. She was originated (I think?) or at least got heavily involved with the Don't Defame The Dead movement with history bloggers and the histfic community on Goodreads.

Warner follows Mortimer's example, talking about how "embarrassing" Joan was for Richard II unlike the Saintly Dead Paragon Of Medieval Feminine Virtue That Was Blanche of Lancaster. She even deepens that comparison when talking about Joan being sexually harassed during the Peasants Revolt:

even the rebels in 1381 demanding kisses from her, though it may indicate that they liked her and found her considerably more approachable than other members of the royal family and the nobility, does not imply deference for a royal person and the king’s mother. It is difficult to imagine anyone demanding a kiss from Joan’s predecessors Philippa of Hainault or Isabella of France, or from Henry of Lancaster’s mother Duchess Blanche.

So... we're victim blaming Joan for being sexually harassed. After all, as Warner loves to point out (repeatedly) Joan did have a "habit of dressing in the style of a freebooter’s mistress" that "did Joan’s reputation no good whatsoever". In her Philippa of Hainault biography, Warner seems to imply that Joan's style of dress was the sole complaint about the Black Prince's conduct in Aquitaine.

Edward and Joan of Kent lived in magnificent, extravagant splendour, and not everyone approved: one observer stated that the princess of Wales and Aquitaine wore great furred gowns and low-cut bodices in the style usually worn by the mistresses of freebooters: ‘I am disgusted by those women who follow such a bad example, particularly the Princess of Wales.’ Even so, not a word of condemnation came from Edward’s parents the king and queen.

There are many, many complaints about the Prince's actual conduct but Warner chooses to single out Joan's fashion sense and implies that it was worthy of condemnation from Edward III and Philippa of Hainault. Given Philippa herself was an assiduous follower of fashion and it seems doubtful that she'd think Joan following the new fashion style was worthy of complaint.

Actually, it would be very reasonable to interrogate this. Richard Barber points out this is the "French view" of English fashion and it may well be that there was underlying xenophobia in the sentiment. Additionally or instead, we could read it as another entry in the age-old misogynistic tradition of men complaining about women's fashion. In short: we should not be replicating the biases of the Middle Ages as an excuse to talk about how embarrassing or condemnatory Joan's behaviour was.

But what was, you may be asking, a freebooter's mistress? A freebooter was a effectively a pirate so Warner is effectively saying that Joan dressed like a pirate's whore.

In discussing Joan's marriage, she gives Joan's age as "only thirteen or fourteen" before correcting herself to "at most thirteen and a half" and then notes Holland was in his mid-20s. Warner then says:

Evidently, though, she found him extremely appealing, and they married clandestinely and consummated the marriage, or so they later claimed.

I feel like if a man writing in the 1970s can recognise that Joan may have been coerced in marrying Holland, as Karl P. Wentersdorf did, saying Joan may have "been placed under pressure by her suitor and had not given her full and free assent", Warner can do much, much better than "clearly 13 year old Joan of Kent found him soooooo hot". We have no idea how they married or how Joan felt about her marriage as it happened. Of course it's possible that Joan found him hot - kids have crushes on adults all the time, though they don't really want to have sex with their crush except in the theoretical sense. But maybe Joan didn't, maybe Joan was pressured, as Wentersdorf suggested in 1979, or maybe she was groomed and believed she did. But I think it is just... a really irresponsible, victim-blaming line to take in relation to a 25 year old marrying a 13 year old (if Joan was as old as 13).

While Warner does recognise the creepiness of the relationship between Holland and Joan, she discusses it like so:

Thomas Holland was twice her age, a gap which makes their supposed love-match seem less romantic and more creepy and abusive to modern sensibilities (though contemporary opinion would have held an earl’s daughter and king’s granddaughter marrying a man so far beneath her in rank as a far worse misdemeanour.

I'm so glad she threw in the reference to how Joan, contemporarily speaking, was the worse offender in the relationship. We have no idea how people who actually knew her understood the relationship, it's possible they were horrified on her behalf. We only know what chroniclers - writing when Joan was an adult - made of it and chroniclers were frequently full of misogyny. As Warner has pointed out herself, they were the gossip magazines of their day.

Warner suggests that rather than using the money Holland had gained for fighting in the Crecy campaign to finance the very expensive process of appealing to the papal authorities, he felt that finally, with all this money, he could keep Joan "in the style to which she was accustomed", making her sound like a spoilt brat who'd been like "eww poor person" at Holland. Montagu, in Warner's telling "supposedly kept her prisoner". That neither Joan nor an attorney on her behalf responded a summons and that Pope Clement VI dispatched a brief to the Archbishop of Canterbury and other prelates enjoining them to ensure Joan could appoint her own attorney suggests that Montagu was preventing Joan from responding in some way.

This is all a prelude to the theory Warner believes in which is that Joan and Holland made up the story of their earlier marriage because they met while Holland was working as Montagu's steward and fell in "love or lust" and wanted to marry. So, in that regard, Joan isn't a victim of what today we would call child sexual abuse but actually an adulteress who lied to the papal authorities because she wanted to be Mrs Thomas Holland.

Only problem is that there is absolutely no evidence of this and quite a lof of reasons why it doesn't make sense. This post is long enough already so I'll write them up in a separate post. We can't even say that Holland was Montagu's steward because the only evidence of this is in John Hardying's chronicle, written during the Wars of the Roses - over a century on from events.

Some of this might sound like nitpicking or disagreements on historical record, and maybe it is. But Warner does have a Facebook post where she complains about Joan's "fans" who depict her as "amazingly special and unique and far more important than anyone else" (where are all these fans, I wonder). In the comments, she indicates her reasoning for the theory Joan and Holland lied which basically boils down to:

it's sickening that the story is treated as a great love story when it's not love and "just disgusting"

Not speaking up about his marriage makes Holland look like a coward, which he wasn't and it makes Holland look like an abusive groomer which she sincerely hopes he wasn't

she "prefers" the version where Joan wasn't groomed and raped and it's empowering to imagine her choosing Holland

Joan's fans are annoying

To which I would say:

It is sickening! But also: how people have interpreted and represented the relationship has nothing do with the reality of it.

It's not "brave" for a grown man to admit to having sex with a 12/13 year old. And he did very much admit to having sex with a 12/13 year old Joan - eventually. Being brave in battle does not make a man more or less likely to be an abuser. Finally, wishing and hoping does not make history.

It is a historian's job to interpret the evidence, not ignore it for a fantasy scenario in which they can feel good about what happened. It is also not really empowering or feminist to erase Joan's abuse.

How do people living almost 650 years on from Joan have any impact on Joan's lived reality? Girlbossed historical women is an annoying phenomena but it has nothing to do with the real Joan or her life.

#joan of kent #asks #poppaeasabina #text posts #maybe we need to add slutshaming and abuse apologism to the list of things #we as modern historians and commentators should do better than the medievals

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une-sanz-pluis · 2 months

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What do you think of Anne Neville What I mean is, all the articles I read about her are about the men around her, her father, her two husbands... Anne's two biographies are mixed with the author's biases and feel more like novels. (When it comes to her novels, in all the works I know, Anne's role is to shape her "perfect" second husband... Her marriage with Edward was a disaster...)

The thing is there's very little that survives about the "real" Anne Neville. As far as contemporary chronicle accounts, the best comment about Anne is by Kavita Mudan Finn in The Last Plantagenet Consorts:

... about Anne herself there is little information. She remains an empty space at the center of these accounts, a definite and ultimately unexplored source of political and economic capital.

As an empty space, she can be anything anyone wants her to be. But like almost everything about the Wars of the Roses, she's become stereotyped into a collection of literary tropes and constructions that supposedly is her "real self" but try to trace them back and scrutinise them and the evidence will fall part apart or feeds a circular narrative.

In Tudor times, Anne's story was shaped by the narrative around Richard III. She is yet another of the monster's victims, the murdered wife casually disposed of by the cruel husband seeking a new bride - or else she and her son don't appear, their absence heightening Richard's alienation from humanity. The Ricardian movement has reshaped her into Richard's tragic and loyal wife who has loved him all her life. In this stories, Anne has been ailing since childhood and struggles through adversary and trauma - dragged hither and thither into danger by her uncaring, power-hungry father, married off to a vicious husband who abused her and maybe raped her (the debate on the marriage's consummation sure is... a thing that exists), endured the cruelties of Evil Queen Margaret, imprisoned by her own sister and brother-in-law - before Richard rescues her and she receives a brief few moments of married bliss before the recurring miscarriages and her frail health collapses ruin this bliss before she finally and tragically dies in a heartbroken Richard's arms.

Some novelists, such as Philippa Gregory and Annie Garthwaite, make a "feminist intervention" where, despite being still the tragically ailing heroine, Anne is also more ruthless or clever than Richard in the pursuit of power. Both authors depict Anne and Cecily Neville joining forces to push noble-hearted Richard into disinheriting his nephews in order to save him. The TV series based on Gregory's novels, The White Queen, depicts Anne as willing to have the Princes killed, though of course Margaret Beaufort gets there first and Anne later has a breakdown, having heard Elizabeth Woodville has cursed the murderers of her sons and rumours that Richard is having an affair with Elizabeth of York (which he pretty well is). Garthwaite, on the other hand, depicts Anne as the only woman Cecily Neville likes (and the only other woman the narrative doesn't derive as evil, stupid, selfish or hysteric - how is feminist again?) and joins forces with Cecily to advise the kindly Richard to bring the Princes back from wherever he's sent them to prove that they're not dead. Richard, however, nobly refuses - displaying what seem to be post-Diana concerns about the right of royalty to privacy - as he insists to bring them back would expose them to the public eye, a cruelty he cannot countenance but one Anne and Cecily evidently can.

Historian Anne Crawford very recently proclaimed Anne the lone perfect queen of the Wars of the Roses - because not a hint of criticism of her behaviour survives, though I suspect this is because the brevity of her life and the sheer absence of evidence for her life, and it's easy to proclaim her the ideal when you reduce Margaret of Anjou to a shrew and Elizabeth Woodville to an invasive species as Crawford does. Some Ricardians, on the other hand, declare Anne was a "bad" wife and queen due to having only one child, thus failing to secure Richard III's dynasty, and then for dying, thus leaving him open to accusations he murdered her. I know people who love the the idea of a monstrous Anne and Richard as an evil super couple.

Are any of these interpretations of Anne likely to reflect the real, historical Anne? We know so little about Anne's life that anything could is possible. We can talk about whether there's evidence that Anne had a chronic illness or recurring miscarriages, that she was raped or mistreated, that she was the brains behind Richard III - but a lack of evidence proving these things is hardly surprising given how little evidence survives about Anne in general, and an absence of evidence is not proof that these things didn't happen. I don't say that to mean, "and therefore I think these things happened" because I don't . I think these are more literary constructions or pointless point-scoring than an attempt to draw out the real Anne or at least imagine her as a flesh-and-blood woman who could have believably lived in the 15th century and did more than act as a heroine in a tragedy or a heroine in a romance.

I've not read the biographies of Anne. The biography by Michael Hicks has not reputation for being absolutely rancid and the one by Amy Licence... well, I think Licence is a pretty bad historian (I've got to rant about her Red Roses book in my head, but I will give her props for actually saying that maybe Victorian historian who famously got a lot of things wrong wasn't right about Catherine de Valois being forced into an abbey which is more than Tudor-Beaufort historian Nathen Amin is doing.) I did read and somewhat like the chapter on Anne in Late Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts by Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs but that very much was shaped by Ricardianism.

I actually see parallels between Anne and Catherine de Valois. Both reigned as queen-consorts for such a short time that we have very little knowledge of what their queenship looked like and they can be imagined as perfect queens or useless queens (Anne Crawford labels Catherine as stupid and lacking in personality, for the record). Both are imagined today as more important not so much for their lives but for their status as romantic heroines. And when push comes to shove, they both get thrown under the Ricardian bus - Anne was a "bad" wife for suffering fertility issues and then dying and Catherine's Tudor children were all secret Beaufort bastards, which means Henry VII was a secret incest bastard who never had the right to the throne.

Both women are fascinating to us - but they remain out of reach due a lack of evidence. They must have lived very complex lives, living through the turmoil of war and civil unrest. And yet all everyone cares about is how they might shape the reputation of their second husbands and, in Catherine's case, the dynasty that ensued.

#ask #anon #anne neville #catherine de valois #since i mention her in the last couple of paragraphs #this is mainly ranting about how anne neville is depicted

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yuncifang · 1 year

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can we fuse the last game and Jaskier's newly found romance together. this is just my clown thoughts i think to amuse myself.

so, in my head Geralt is like deliberately blind to half the stuff jaskier gets up to, so, he is completely unaware of jaskier "taking a prince in a shed" that bit of time back.

so, if we merge the end of s3 volume 1 with the game and assume shit went down, then Radovid is now king, Ciri is on the run from everyone, all the characters are kind of scattered all over, and Geralt is tracking Ciri as per the game.

which brings us to Novigrad and to the "A favour for Radovid" quest

so, Radovid, the biggest military power on the continent, brings his giant ass ship to Novigrad and demands the witcher's presence.

Geralt has just been busy tracking down Junior, who was supposed to give him more info on Ciri and Jaskier, who had stirred shit up in the city a while back. Geralt gets the info, probably (if the player's so inclined) murders Junior and is filled with rage cause the dude was a total scumbag and made some untoward comments about Geralt's daughter.

and then Radovid's men show up and demand the witcher come pay their king a visit.

Geralt is like, aight, bet, haven't punched a king tonight yet.

he comes to the ship, high levels of fight or flight, agrees to leave his gear at the "entrance", walks all the way up that long ass ship. it's nighttime, dark and scary.

Radovid is a broody stern ass, all "do you like chess, witcher", political nonsense, "i hate mages", more nonsense, "bring me Philippa Eilhart", more political nonsense, some not so thinly veiled threats, and oh, and one more thing!

"the bard. bring me the bard."

and Geralt who was kinda nodding along up to this point is like

Geralt doesn't give a rat's ass about Radovid's beef with mages as long as Yen isn't in the mix, and Ciri is the priority, so he follows Junior's info trail. might as well ask Jaskier what's up with Radovid's sudden interest once he gets to him.

Ciri isn't in Novigrad. Geralt ends up having to track down Jaskier's assumed romances, while Zoltan kinda insists the bard has surprisingly mellowed out in his escapades over the last couple of years. the bard did buy this here brothel though. also, Zoltan has an owl (LOL). Geralt tracks down Jaskier, kills some people, tracks him again, rescues him from a cellar, gets all the info Jaskier has about Ciri, and then is like.

"right. also, Radovid is looking for you."

and instead of Jaskier playing his usual scared and confused tune, Jaskier's face does that thing it does when he knows he messed up big times.

"ooooh. that. uh. he is, isn't he?"

and that's how Geralt finds out Jaskier didn't stop at their break up song but actually went on and got over him via bagging himself a then-prince of the whole Redania

#and that's why he's mellowed out #he is lovesick for the king he had a brief but hot fling with before everything went sideways so jaskier had to leave his feelings shelved #and go help his family #namely ciri #radovid is big mad but isn't that proud as not to use his newly found influence to track jaskier down #while masking it with LOOK HOW MAD I AM AT PHILIPPA *checks notes* ALEHEART #get me the bard just in case i want to dance on her grave #the witcher spoilers #radskier #jaskier #radovid

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mihrsuri · 2 months

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So @boleynecklace asked what Elizabeth (1998) and The White Princess might look like in the Tudors OT3 universe and okay, THOUGHTS (please bear in mind I haven’t actually seen The White Princess or read it but I have vibes from gifs)

So the White Princess is kind of completely flipped on it’s head because I don’t know if this universes PGreggs can hate The Tudors so much here (although I don’t know, she might manage it! I think her Anne Boleyn hate might be transferred to Bessie Blount?) just because uh, yeah.

But also women in Philippa Gregory novels cannot be friends ever so unfortunately the Ultimate Evil is still Margaret Beaufort :sighs: because she manipulated and murdered when EOY/Henry VII/Richard III were in a very happy triad and she actually murdered her grandchildren! And also got Richard killed because she wanted to be the Power Behind The Throne. But it’s okay because it turns out Elizabeth Woodville and EOY saved Richard with their magic powers and so actually, Henry was a pure beautiful York Child and unfortunately Arthur died because Cursed Tudor Blood or something.

(Also Anne Neville is obviously an evil bitch as well).

Elizabeth (1998) is such a different movie though. I think it might start with Elizabeth being appointed as her brothers advisor (official) after her fathers unofficial abdication in 1556 - at this point she and Robert are married and have a four year old daughter Anne (Nanette).

Francis Walsingham, determined to make England Protestant and Mary of Guise who is determined to make sure her daughter marries Prince Thomas both agree that assassinating Princess Mihrimah is the best idea and Walsingham persuades Robert of this. (This did not happen in universe historically Robert Dudley is screaming from the afterlife at this movie).

This attempt does not work. Robert, frustrated at not having a son and feeling as though he should have more power, throws himself into an attempt to undermine Elizabeth and get her removed from the privy council (this is also wrong because Robert was also on the privy council and also I AM SUPPORTING MY WIFE he yells). It does not work and the movie ends with Elizabeth telling Robert that he will never see their children or her again when she presents him with their twin sons (we will ignore that they have two more children)

The general consensus is that the chemistry is incredible/the performances are amazing but we are ignoring the second half of the movie.

Send me a piece of Tudor Era Media (or Period Drama in general) (TV show/book/movie)) and I’ll talk about what I think it might be like in The Tudors OT3 verse

#meme #ot3: political power trio #lil and her ridiculous aus #tudors ot3 verse reference #i was like no i need to make it as bananas as the originals #so uh here we go #fic

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vecna-is-here · 2 years

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A pop of colour

Pairing: Peter Ballard x F! Reader

Note: Peter is NOT Henry Creel / Vecna in this, just a friendly orderly

Warnings: none I think?

Summary: Y/N is training as a nurse in Hawkins Laboratory, but when the new orderly comes into her life it changes everything. He’s a pop of colour in the never ending white.

You had been an orderly at Hawkins Laboratory for three years when Dr Brenner gave you the chance to train as a nurse. You had always been smart and a quick learner too, so you decided to do it. The other nurse, Philippa, was an old and mean woman and all the children hated her. The amount of work and the hours of studying you’d have to do didn’t scare you off: you were determined to make it work.

You still helped out as an orderly whenever you could because the children were rather fond of you. A little girl who went by the name ‘011’ was shyer than the others, but also more gifted - which made her unpopular. The others, especially the older kids, were often bullying her so she’d usually sit next to you in the rainbow room and you made sure the others were behaving themselves towards her.

October 17th, 1983

You sat in the rainbow room with an anatomy textbook opened on your lap. The coloured drawings and figures within were a big contrast to your white skirt, the white floor, the white walls… Everything there was white, except for a bold rainbow painted across the walls. At least white looked good on you, it was nice with your dark hair.

Papa came through the door and walked towards 003, he asked whether he was ready for another lesson. His hair had grown grey over the years but he still had his severe expression, you wondered whether he ever smiled. Another person had entered the room, but you only noticed him when he was standing in front of you. His name was Peter Ballard, the new orderly who arrived a few weeks ago. Peter was a tall man and handsome man, his eyes a bright shade of blue and his blonde hair looked so soft and it curled ever so slightly. Whenever he was near you felt your cheeks heat up, he made you feel so… shy, and lightheaded.

You looked up to meet his keen eyes and he gave you a little smile

‘Oh, hello…’ you said distractedly and scooted over to make room for him on the bench. You had been trying to contain your emotions but the mere sight of him made you burn.

He stretched out his hand, as if he wanted you to give him your book. ‘Just a moment.’ you muttered and turned back to your studies. He playfully grabbed it from your hands and sat down beside you with a grin.

‘Peter!’ you scowled.

‘What?’, he asked innocently.

‘I need to study.’

‘Do you?’, he raised his brow and looked at you with a curious expression.

‘Yes!’ you scoffed and tried take the the book back from him. He was much taller than you so there was no way you’d get it back.

‘Let’s see…’ he said and started flipping though the pages with a focused gaze. You rolled your eyes ever so slightly but of course he had seen it. He shook his head with an amused smile and cast his eyes down again, a small strand of blonde hair fell onto this forehead. You sat in silence and watched him carefully choose something to ask you. You wanted to brush that soft curl from his face so badly…

‘Can you tell me… the name of this tendon?’ he suddenly asked and showed you a drawing.

‘That’s a muscle, and it’s called the flexor carpi.’ you said, you didn’t even have to think about the answer. He seemed impressed and asked more questions, which you all answered flawlessly.

‘I think… that you secretly have powers, like them.’ he whispered and looked at the children. Your eyes grew big and you felt the corners of your mouth curl up. ‘Either that or you’re uncannily intelligent.’

‘Oh… I would have found out by now… if I had powers I mean… thank you…’ you uttered, feeling silly for him much his compliment meant to you. The bend in your voice made it all even worse.

‘You should have a little more faith in yourself.’

‘That’s what I told Eleven yesterday.’ you admitted.

‘See?’ he said and blinked slowly before looking up from the book to meet your eyes.

‘Thank you, Peter.’ you blushed.

He said nothing in return but gave you a sincere smile. He closed the book and gave it to you, his fingers brushed yours for a moment and his touch tingled your skin and left you yearning for more. A dozen thoughts crossed your mind at once: how could you ever be with him? Papa would never allow it. And besides: Peter was just being friendly, he would never feel the same about you…

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janejosieelizabeth · 3 months

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I definitely should be more active here. Anyway have some Art of one of my fursonas Lizzie!

this one is one of my proudest works ever. I am so happy even just seeing it, idk why. btw this is Lizzie cosplaying as my other (main) fursona (Philippa).

This drawing I did portrays her a bit earlier on lorewise. I mostly did it since I am gonna get my own hair cut short soon (this summer) and donate it and kinda made this drawing to represent it. Haven't shared it yet everywhere though as I am waiting for Summer for that.

this one is just a sketch for now as I need to draw the proper digital one still. But this is Lizzie if she got the super leaf from mario. I have a series going on where I draw my other fursona (Philippa) in different Mario Power Ups and upnext was the super leaf, I still need to draw that though but in the meantime, I also sketched out a version with Lizzie too!

Anyway if you wanna do fan art of her, go ahead! I encourage it even! But pls dont do any nsfw, gore, political or sensitive art of her though, thanks.

#furry art #sfw furry #ducks #anthropomorphic #artwork #digital art #super mario #super leaf #haircut #hair donation #split dye #mallard duck #silly #transgender #transgirl #asexual #sapphic #asexual lesbian #autism

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limerental · 8 months

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ficletvember 2023 - day 1

dijsktra/isengrim modern au

Arriving for a business meeting to a dance club owned by the most powerful man in the city, Dandelion is surprised to met at the door to the apartments above the club by a wanted terrorist in a borrowed silk robe.

He does not allow himself more than a moment's distraction in the bustle of the dance floor.

It's karaoke night, the tone-deaf wail of a tipsy queen in a feather boa pushing whines of feedback through the speakers as the crowd whoops and applauds.

He could have taken the stairs past the alleyway out front and bypassed all the noise and color of the club to ring the buzzer at the security grate upstairs.

But this way, no one thinks twice about seeing him there. He's in his element, a common sight in the club even when he's not here on business. No one wonders what message is being delivered to the man who lives upstairs.

Dandelion kisses the offered hand of a drag queen, apologizing profusely as he turns down a drink, and then he climbs the stairs to the shadowy VIP lounge.

It's empty, not a soul occupying the plush couch or sleek bar.

Often, he meets Sigismund Dijkstra here, where they might talk through details for hours, the immense man never showing a sign of drunkenness despite the ever-present glass of scotch gripped in one big hand.

A quiet tension hangs over the city of Novigrad, over all of Redania.

Dandelion rarely understands the full context of the messages he delivers, often in code picked up by other contacts that cannot get close to Dijkstra without arousing suspicion, but he knows that something may be put in motion soon.

Something he wants no part of, but it's too late now.

A bouncer motions upward with a jerk of his chin.

At the door beyond the lounge, he shakes off the glitter, tries to kiss the hand of the bouncer as well and earns a stern glare for his trouble.

A spiral stairwell curves upward, and at the top, Dandelion knocks at a black door. He itches to go back down the stairs and join the evening revellers. He hopes this meeting is brief and simple.

Those hopes are immediately dashed, when it's not Dijkstra who opens the door, but an elf in a patterened, silk robe.

"Ah," says Dandelion, seeing that the elf is barefoot, robe clutched closed at the front rather than tied and far too large for the slim frame, slipping off one shoulder. "Sorry to interrupt, I can come back–"

"Get in here," says the elf, his voice a cold rasp. "You were meant to arrive an hour ago."

"I thought I had a tail," Dandelion explains, "so I went a few stops beyond the usual but of course, forgot about the construction that way and–"

When he hurries inside and up the stairs into the tastefully-decorated vestibule, the light warms across the high ceilings, and for the first time, he sees the scarred horror of the elf's disfigured face.

"Oh," he breathes, recognizing him at once. From somber news bulletins of deadly terrorists. "You're–"

"Faoiltiarna," says the elf, disarming smile twisting his ugly scars.

For a moment as Dandelion follows meekly after him, he almost forgets the details that had made him assume the elf was here for something far from business.

Almost forgets.

Faoiltiarna's bare neck is bruised with love bites. His loose hair is atypical of elves, mussed as though big hands have been running through it.

A smarter man would leave some mysteries lie. Though even a fool could guess what his arrival had interrupted.

It's curious.

In all the time he's known the man, even before hard times pressed him into doing this work for his old friend, Dandelion has never known Dijkstra to have casual affairs. Or serious ones, besides whatever strange and messy entanglement had gone on between him and Philippa Eilhart.

"Did you have a meeting with Dijkstra as well?" he asks, pretending at foolishness.

"You could say that," says Faoiltiarna as he lets him into a fire-warmed study. "He'll be right with you. Don't snoop."

Dandelion snoops through the cluttered mahogany bookcases and feels up every bronze statue and light fixture for hidden passageways. He finds only that a lot of Dijkstra's knickknacks are in need of a dusting and that he has a very boring collection of almanacs, probably bought just to fill the ample shelves.

"You're late," grumbles a deep voice from a hidden doorway beyond a revolving staircase, and Dandelion curses. Sigismund Dijkstra is as huge and impressive as always, seeming far too large for the room and the expensive-looking leather armchair he sinks into.

He's dressed in his usual loose linen houseclothes, open collar baring the gold chain that sits amidst the dark hair at his breastbone. He shows no sign of disgruntlement over the interruption of whatever lusty affair he'd clearly been up to with Faoiltiarna. Something impromptu, Dandelion suspects. He'd had to compose himself before answering the door. Highly out of character. Strange.

Dijkstra has his big, meaty fingers in all sorts of unseemly layers of the city's underground, but non-human liberation? Collusion with the anarchist Scoia'tael? He's never shown any inclination to care about their efforts.

A smarter man would fail to address it.

"I can come back later," says Dandelion loudly. "If you and Faoiltiarna wish to–"

"Who?" asks Dijkstra as he sits back and lights a cigar in quick puffs. A blue haze of cigar smoke hangs around him and plumes to the dark ceiling. He does not offer a cigar to Dandelion and also does not move to pour him a glass of scotch from the carafe at his elbow.

"I suppose I should be flattered," Dandelion continues. "You must trust me more than I thought. Colluding with terrorists now, Sigi? If that's what they're calling it these days. Colluding all over this apartment, I assume."

"I trust that you're an imbecile," says Dijkstra slowly. "No one would believe you. You could call the authorities the moment you left here, and there'd not be a single sign of anyone's presence but my own."

"Anyone could have opened the door and seen–"

"But no one did. To business, Dandelion."

He gets to business. The small scraps of coded information he passes on seem hardly worth the trouble, but Dijkstra looks pleased as they chat. As pleased as the large man ever does.

To Dandelion's surprise, Faoiltiarna joins them after a while, looking far more imposing dressed in black with dark hair slicked into a long plait. He has the willowy figure typical of elves, tall and lithe, and maybe would have been a beauty if not for the ruined scowl of his face.

What a strange companion he makes to the fat and oafish-seeming human whose chair he leans against. How fascinating to see the easy touch of Dijkstra's big hand resting on Faoiltiarna's waist.

Dandelion is not a fool. He knows that by no accident is he being allowed to see this. It's either some test of his loyalty, of discretion, or a quiet and looming threat.

He knows, if he were to leave this room intent on calling in a sighting of an anarchist wanted in several countries for deadly acts of terrorism, he would find his cell service unavailable.

Or worse.

The scene appears almost domestic and quaint. The gold of Faoltiarna's dangling earrings catch the light as he plays a good little housewife and pours Dijkstra's a few fingers of scotch from the brimming caraffe. Dijkstra's lips turn up a moment to brush above the folded collar of his turtleneck.

Even so, Dandelion knows what's left of him could be discovered tomorrow in a dumpster somewhere in town, body unrecognizable.

Faoiltiarna does not cross the room to offer a drink to Dandelion, a hand sneaking onto Dijkstra's broad thigh, which is as good a dismissal as any.

"Right," says Dandelion, leaping up. "I hope you fellows have a good evening. There's a lady downstairs I've promised a drink."

"I'll be in touch," says Dijkstra in a voice dark and dangerous. "One way or another."

"Understood! Understood. You can trust me implicitly."

Dijkstra's right after all. Who would believe him? If word happens to get out of this strange union, these two powerful individuals will know exactly who to pin the blame on.

Well, his debts to this man are nearly paid off. Something long-anticipated and deviously planned is about to happen in Tretogor, he suspects, and then it won't matter what he knows or doesn't know about the love life of the most powerful man in the city.

Perhaps that's wishful thinking.

He steals one last glance at the pair leaning close together in the armchair. They seem to have already forgotten his lingering presence to return to what had been interrupted, Faoiltiarna toying with the gold chain that falls across Dijkstra's breast, Dijkstra's big hand swallowing the curve of his lean waist.

The anarchist's eyes meet Dandelion's as he lingers in the doorway, even as he brushes the perpetual sneer of his scarred mouth against the human's bald skull. The look is a clear challenge. I dare you to say a word. See what happens. See how many pieces they find you in. If you are found at all.

Dandelion salutes cheerily, winking to hide his cold thrill of fear, then closes the door of the study and disappears to the noise and simplicity of the club below.

#witcher fic #my fic #isengrim x dijkstra #sigismund dijkstra #isengrim faoiltiarna #ficletvember #teeheeehe anyway #happy ficlet month!!!!

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sea-owl · 1 year

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Wait the Gothic Featheringtons and ABO? Please, tell me more.

P.S: There's no way in any ABO AU that Penelope was walking out of that carriage without Colin's bite on her neck.

The carriage? Honey, they might not make it out of the Featherington drawing room without Colin biting Penelope's neck with how into that kiss he was. Lmao. To be honest though they might have not made it back to the Featherington house in the ABO universe until much later. Alpha Colin bites her in the carriage possibly goes into a rut and then tells the driver to take them back to his home in Bloomsbury. He's going into a rut, his omega is going into a heat, and now he has to make sure she is in his bed and surrounded by him. I will accept an almost bite in the carriage in exchange for the bite mark to happend during the stay/mirror scene.

Anyway onto Gothic Featheringtons in an ABO universe.

Archibald, Prudence, and Philippa are betas while Portia, Penelope, and Felicity are omegas.

In that universe, omegas without an alpha family member to protect them are considered highly vulnerable. They are usually hidden as betas, sent away to a trusted alpha to protect them, or in rare cases, the trusted alpha is brought to the family home. The last one is rare because of the power struggle it could potentially cause between the pack leader and the alpha.

Of course, this tradition confuses Portia as her family back in Spain didn't have this problem. Unmated members were protected by every mated member in the Addams pack. Even if they didn't have the brute strength of the alphas, the betas and omegas had their tricks, too.

When Penelope started showing signs of being an omega, Lord Featherington mentioned possibly sending her to a cousin in the country, who was an alpha and also had an omega daughter. Portia told him that if he ever had that thought again, she would finally kill him.

"Our unmated daughter's protection is up to us. Not some random cousin I have never met before."

Portia did ask Penelope, though, if she wished to mask her scent for a few years. It is rather unfair that just because she presented a year early she has to debut a year early. Penelope said yes, much rather focus on her passions of writing than finding a mate.

So Penelope debuted wearing a perfume that masked her scent so she would be left alone. She didn't take suppressants, though, and she still wore the choker that all omegas wore to protect their mating gland. By all means, Penelope was still very much an omega living her life, but she just didn't advertise it.

Though without the scent, others assumed she was a beta, and the choker was just another weird fashion choice made by the creepy Featheringtons. That family is so weird. Why even bother asking?

Well, until one season, when Penelope was about 19. During a ball, a light rain had started coming down.

Portia stood by an open terrace watching the rain. Giddy as a child.

"Oh, if only we had more balls during the rain," Portia sighed. "It's such a romantic thing. Especially if you get to dance in it."

"Portia, then you would be all wet," Violet said, with Mary agreeing.

"Yes!" Portia nodded. "Your clothes sticking to you, but your passions igniting as you try harder to hold onto your partner."

Their discussion stopped with the arrival of Lady Cowper. Violet and Mary hid their frowns while Portia was too busy watching the rain.

"Lady Bridgerton, Lady Sharma . . . Lady Featherington," Lady Cowper greeted.

Violet and Mary said back their greetings. Portia just continued watching the rain.

Lady Cowper ignored Portia's eccentricities. "Such a lovely ball. I had seen Miss Eloise and Miss Edwina on the dancefloor. My Cressida has her dance card full of course. Though I don't think I've seen any of your daughters on the dance floor Lady Featherington."

Portia rolled her eyes, finally being forced to look away from the rain. "If any of my daughters had any sense, they be dancing in the rain rather than on a dance floor."

Before anymore could be said an omega scent of pomegranate and lotus drifted into the air.

"Mama, it is such a lovely night. You must join us!"

Penelope stood at the entrance to the terrace, her clothes soaked, and her hair dripping.

Portia laughed. "Oh Penelope, you look like you're having fun. We'll have to reapply your perfume later, though."

"Penelope is an omega?"

Mother and daughter wore marching confused expressions.

"Yes, my daughter is an omega? How did you not know?" Portia questioned. "It's not like I have her on suppressants, and she wears the choker your English alphas seem to obsess over."

Lady Cowper began to stutter and Portia found herself getting annoyed.

Portia turned to Penelope. "Darling, go find your sisters. I'm sure Felicity would like a dance partner at home, and this ball is getting as repetitive as the others."

Penelope nodded and ran back towards the rain.

Portia quickly said her goodbyes and then walked out into the rain herself.

#bridgerton #gothic abo featheringtons #gothic featheringtons #portia featherington #penelope featherington #alpha/beta/omega au #abo dynamics #alpha beta omega

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checkoutmybookshelf · 1 month

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Rereading The Fellowship of the Ring for the First Time in Fifteen Years

Ok, NGL, I was not entirely sure what to do with this chapter. Like...Tom Bombadil is cool and all, but like...this chapter literally grounds the plot to a screeching halt and while there is thematic nuance and foreshadowing here, it's...it's a weird little chapter, y'all. It would absolutely get cut from a book being published today, and frankly I can see why. But let's just jump on in and talk about "In the House of Tom Bombadil."

So one thing writers Philippa Boynes, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh were absolutely clear on is that their film adaptation is the story of Frodo taking the ring to Mordor. And in that context, it makes absolute sense to lose Tom Bombadil from the story. He is important (in my read) for two key reasons:

First, he is here to clearly show that there are greater powers in the world than those of Mordor, Men, Elves, and Wizards. Tom is so OP that literally none of that matters to him, and the One Ring is just...kinda there. It has zero effect on him, it doesn't factor into his life in any meaningful way, and he has zero skin in the "yeet the jewelry into the volcano" game. The fact is, he's worldbuilding and a reminder to readers that no matter how grand or life-and-death their struggles are, there are greater powers and the natural world has been here long before you and will be here long after you. It's a way to contextualize and comfort when the world seems on the brink of ending. ...I would be lying if I said I found that personally terribly comforting, because if you zoom out to that scale, literally nothing matters, but then I live in 2024 and I'm not carrying any rings around. I think there's a better balance point between "the world exists and you don't matter on that scale" and "this ring is the only thing in existence that matters" but I haven't written a three-book epic fantasy to sort it out yet, so I'm just spitballing.

Second, and this might just be a crack theory on my part, Tom is to the hobbits after their first real encounter with evil what Tetris is to soldiers trying to avoid PTSD. Tom literally hijacks the hobbits' brains, offers them comfort, and addresses any potential fears and triggers that almost getting murdered to death by a tree might spark in the hobbits. They are safe, they are secure, they have the things that make hobbits happy, and Tom literally does not give them an environment in which any fears or trauma can fester into PTSD (that's for LATER in the trilogy, I guess). He is a distraction in a safe space, and he gives them context and information that should help them navigate the next little leg of their journey.

That second reason might have been enough to keep Tom in the film adaptation if they kept Old Man Willow, but frankly something had to go and this is pretty easy to lift out, because the next thing that is overarching plot relevant is the Prancing Pony. So we have to leave Merry, Pippin, and Frodo not getting PTSD this early in the trip on the cutting room floor.

Sam was fine though. Literally he slept like a log and did not dream. No trauma for Sam "I will take this tree down with my teeth if I have to" Gamgee.

This is probably a good moment to talk about the dreams though. I find it interesting that while Frodo was the one Old Man Willow tried to drown, Merry is the one who gets the dream of drowning, not Frodo. Pippin is over here flashing back to being inside Old Man Willow. Both of these dreams absolutely suck, and I empathize with them. I also point out the sensory grounding they get before Tom's repeated words of comfort in their ears, because the body needs to feel safe before the mind will believe reassurances.

Frodo's dream though, is less a trauma dream from attempted tree homicide, and more a vision that tells us what is happening with Gandalf. This is kind of cool, so I'm just going to let Tolkien tell it:

In the dead night, Frodo lay in a dream without light. There he saw the young moon rising; under its thin light there loomed before him a black wall of rock, pierced by a dark arch like a great gate. It seemed to Frodo that he was lifted up, and passing over her say that the rock-wall was a circle of hills, and that within in was a plain, and in the midst of the plain stood a pinnacle of stone, like a vast tower but not made by hands. On its top stood the figure of a man. The moon as it rose seemed to hang for a moment above his head and glistened in his white hair as the wind stirred it. Up from the dark plain below came the crying of fell voices, and the howling of many wolves. Suddenly a shadow, like the shape of great wings, passed across the moon. The figure lifted his arm and a light flashed from the staff that he wielded. A mighty eagle swept down and bore him away.

So yeah, Frodo is having dream visions again, and he NOTABLY does not get comforted by Tom's words as Merry and Pippin do, which seems like a hell of a raw deal. Frodo literally wakes up questioning whether he will be brave enough to leave Tom's house, and I feel like a little comforting wouldn't go amiss here. But at least us readers in the know get a Gandalf update, I guess?

The chapter closes out with Tom offering some advice about crossing the Barrow Downs that feels like it should be important:

Keep to the green grass. Don't you go a-meddling with old stone or cold Wights or prying in their houses, unless you be strong folk with hearts that never falter!

I feel like the "unless" did more harm than good, but Tom also gives them a rescue rhyme so they can call him if they get really into trouble. As a former theatre major, I am unspeakably grateful that Tolkien skipped over the memorizing session, because I was taught how to learn a monologue by ear with a partner, and while it is DAMN effective, it's not a fast process and it is tedious as all hell. So thank you Tolkien, for just handwaving the memorization homework the hobbits got.

We're going to leave it there for now, and pick up next time with what I'm calling now is Pippin staying off the green grass, fucking around and finding out with old stone and cold Wights, and poking his nose into a barrow after being explicitly told not to.

#reread #the fellowship of the ring #lord of the rings #lotr #chapter 7 #books and reading #books #books and novels

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goodqueenaly · 1 year

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Hi! I was reading some of your previous posts and saw a brief comparison between Alyssa Velaryon and Isabella of France. Could you elaborate a little more on the parallels between them? I've always had a fascination for Isabella's story, and I think Alyssa is a character who doesn't get nearly as much credit as she deserves for her support of the Targaryen dynasty.

I do think that GRRM was partly inspired by Isabella of France, queen to King Edward II and mother of King Edward III of England, when creating Alyssa Velaryon. Specifically, though, I think GRRM was heavily, perhaps even primarily drawing on Isabella of France as she is depicted in The Accursed Kings novels by Maurice Druon (I know, I know, it me) - and unfortunately (especially given the, let's say problematic nature of that series), not to the benefit of Alyssa.

Both Isabella (again, as depicted by Maurice Druon) and Alyssa are initially married to kings the narrative clearly wants to portray as weak. Just as GRRM described Aenys physically as "[a] weakling" who was "[a]s tall as his father Aegon, but softer looking", "[s]lender, weedy, [and] dreamy", so Druon notes that while Edward II was "a fine-looking man, muscular, lithe and alert", Edward's "forehead was utterly unlined, as if the anxieties of power had failed to mark him", his "long chin" was "merely too big and too elongated ... whose weakness the silky beard could not conceal", his hand "was flaccid ... flutter[ing] aimlessly and then tugg[ing] at a pearl sewn to the embroidery of his tunic", "[h]is voice ... merely suggested lack of control", and "[h]is back ... curved unpleasantly from the neck to the waist, as if the spine lacked substance". (Druon does not precisely emphasize this point, but I think it's probable that GRRM was also thinking of the contrast between Druon's weak and unimposing Edward II and his indomitable conqueror father, Edward I, when trying to underline the contrast between the "weakling" Aenys and his warrior and conqueror father, Aegon I.) Too, just as Aenys came to the throne only to face, almost immediately, a slew of rebellions - Lodos, Harren the Red, the Vulture King, and Jonos Arryn - so Edward II ( in the fifth novel of Druon's series, The She-Wolf of France) complained about rebellions again him, past and current: "The Scots are always threatening and invading my frontiers", he moaned, while "my barons of the Marches raise troops against me on the principle that they hold their lands by their swords" and Roger Mortimer, former magnate of the Marches, had so recently escaped imprisonment and fled to France. Although GRRM substitutes a much more condensed reign for Aenys I for the timeskip Druon gave the English court in his novels (as Druon focused little on Edward II until the opening of The She-Wolf of France), both kings are eventually deposed in the midst of rebellions against their respective rules (formally in the case of Edward II, while somewhat less formally in the case of Aenys I). If Alyssa Velaryon is perhaps less a leader in the rebellion which puts her son on the throne than Isabella is in hers - Alyssa flees to Storm's End with her two youngest surviving children and supporters of Jaehaerys thereafter gather there to acclaim him, while Isabella was at the front of the invasion force, dressed in armor and backed by Hainaut soldiers she had gained thanks to the betrothal she had arranged between her son Edward and the Count's daughter Philippa - both nevertheless see their sons assume royal power at the age of 14.

Too, although the circumstances of those rebellions are quite different (and in fact, GRRM may have shifted some of the antagonism against Edward II, and generally Edward II's own position as a villain in Druon's narrative, to Aenys' brother and successor Maegor, also de facto deposed), both Isabella and Alyssa then become romantically/sexually involved with leaders of these rebellions. Indeed, I find it not at all coincidental that GRRM shifted from the name "Robar Baratheon" to "Rogar Baratheon", because of the strikingly similarity between "Rogar" and "Roger" - that is, Roger Mortimer, Queen Isabella's chief ally and lover. Nor do the similarities end at their respective names. Just as Rogar Baratheon was the grandson of Orys Baratheon and a powerful magnate in his own right as Lord of Storm's End, so Roger Mortimer was both "a descendant of a companion of William the Conqueror" (whom Mortimer's uncle, also named Roger Mortimer, described to his nephew as "our kinsman") as well as a powerful aristocrat before his relationship with the queen (as "eighth Baron of Wigmore, Lord of the Welsh Marches ... the King’s ex-Lieutenant of Ireland" and "the Justiciar of Wales"); likewise, both are proud, ambitious men, eager and even desperate to seize and hold onto supreme royal power (with Rogar trying first to integrate his Baratheon relatives by marriage into the royal family and then openly conspiring to overthrow Jaehaerys in favor of a puppet-queen in the person of Aerea Targaryen, and with Druon describing Roger Mortimer as one "born with the soul of a king" who "had been obsessed by an impatient longing for power").

Unfortunately, this is where the influence of The Accursed Kings results in a distinctly (well, perhaps more distinctly) negative character experience for Alyssa Velaryon. In keeping with the rampant misogyny observable throughout The Accursed Kings, Druon depicts Isabella as virtually entirely ruled by Roger Mortimer once the two of them begin their relationship. Druon blithely informs the audience (in The She-Wolf of France) of his view that "[t]hough a woman may be a queen, her lover is always her master" (ugh) and thereafter has Isabella continually defer to Mortimer. Worse, in this vein, Isabella is shown multiple times as having to put up with or give in to Mortimer's petty jealousy, selfishness, and rage. When Isabella gives an innocuous sign of thanks to one of their Hainaut allies during the landing in England, Mortimer is so incensed at what he perceives as a flirtation that Isabella the has to overtly acknowledge thereafter that "it was thanks to Lord Mortimer that she had been able to return so strongly supported", while "pras[ing] his services highly and order[ing] that Lord Mortimer’s opinion should prevail in all things; when Isabella shows a "hysterical gratitude" during sex with Mortimer (I know, I hate it too) following the execution of Edward II's lover Hugh Despenser, Mortimer immediately assumes that Isabella's passion and fury against Despenser means that she "must surely once have loved Edward"; and when Isabella refuses to order her husband murdered, Mortimer stalks out, threatening to leave forever, until Isabella, weeping and clinging to him, begs Mortimer to stay and agrees to order whatever he wants done with Edward.

In turn, Alyssa Velaryon shows little in the way of her own voice and agency, and indeed sometimes finds herself at the mercy of her own rebel-lover's bullying leadership. When Alyssa decides to go to Dragonstone to beg Jaehaerys and Alysanne to return, Rogar "angrily" forbids her from doing so, dismissively referring to Jaehaerys as "the boy" for good measure. When Alyssa finally acknowledges that the regency government has to accept Jaehaerys' marriage to Alysanne, Rogar declares that to Alyssa that she is "weak ... as weak as your first husband was, as weak as your son". Worse, when Alyssa refuses to accept Rogar's actively treasonous plan to depose Jaehaerys in favor of Aerea, Rogar insults her as "[w]oman" (emphasis in original) and mockingly asks "[y]ou think you can dismiss me"? Moreover, just as Isabella had been reduced (by Druon) to tears by Mortimer's temper tantrum over her refusal to murder Edward II, so GRRM has Alyssa start crying when Rogar throws a fit over the acknowledgement of Jaehaerys' marriage to Alysanne (with the supremely frustrating additional note that the tears came "as if to prove that he [i.e. Rogar] had spoken truly" - that is, by calling her weak).

And, just as unfortunately, both Isabella and Alyssa "die" - the former narratively, the latter first narratively and then literally - in ways related to pregnancies caused by their respective second husbands/lovers. Toward the end of the sixth novel, The Lily and the Lion, Isabella becomes pregnant by Roger Mortimer, a condition that fills her son Edward with disgust and alarm. Fearful that, as young Edward puts it, "Mortimer is perfectly capable of killing us all, marrying my mother so as to get himself recognized as Regent and then claiming the throne for his bastard", Edward sets out to depose and arrest Roger Mortimer - an event that, so the novel implies, causes Isabella to suffer a miscarriage of her child by Mortimer. After this miscarriage, Isabella all but disappears from the story: Robert of Artois muses in The Lily and the Lion that "[h]e would have liked to see Queen Isabella, who was really the only person in England with whom he had memories in common", while Druon then adds that Isabella "no longer appeared at Court" and "[s]ince Mortimer’s execution ... no longer took any interest in anything" and flatly comments in his "Historical Notes" that "Queen Isabella still had another twenty years to live, but she took no further part in affairs". (This, in case you were wondering, is not true at all.) Even in the seventh novel, The King Without a Kingdom, the in-universe narrator Cardinal Talleyrand barely acknowledges Isabella, merely noting that "she is still alive" as of 1356, in "a huge and sad castle where, twenty-eight years ago, her son locked her up after he had had her lover, Lord Mortimer, executed", because "[f]ree, she would have caused him far too much trouble"

GRRM, for his part (and bafflingly, if you ask me), not only emotionally crushes Alyssa in a similar manner - recall Barth's conclusion that Alyssa "could not survive" Rogar's fury at being dismissed as Hand, which instead apparently "shattered her" - but decides that he needs to physically eliminate Alyssa from the narrative in ways even beyond what Druon had done to Isabella. If Alyssa is given the barest amount more presence in the story following the end of the regency (and the effective end of her relationship with her husband) than Isabella is following the end of Edward's regency (and the definite end of her relationship with her lover), it is nevertheless a sham of representation in the spirit, if not the letter, of Druon's narrative. Alyssa Velaryon's reunion with her son is summarized a brief third-hand account, and she participates in no public (much less private or familial) events or activities at either the Red Keep or Storm's End following her departure from the capital (even Druon allowed, in passing mentions, that Edward III would annually spend Christmas with his mother); indeed, Alyssa's only further involvement in the story is in conceiving, carrying, and giving birth to Boremund and Jocelyn Baratheon. Worse, while not entirely shying away from Rogar's guilt in forcing his wife to undergo a dangerous (much less drastically unnecessary) second pregnancy - indeed, Rhaena's vehement denunciation of Rogar following her mother's death is one of the (very) few truly bright spots in F&B for me - GRRM nevertheless indulges in a gruesome and lurid depiction of Alyssa Velaryon's final hours that itself provides Alyssa no opportunity to voice her own thoughts and feelings.

Did I mention I really, really don't care for the way Alyssa Velaryon is depicted in F&B?

#asoiaf meta #alyssa velaryon #fire and blood volume 1 #the accursed kings

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