#they don’t even have an official gender because half the sources imply female and the other half imply male

[fierykitten2]

Eh, who cares how many people I ship my blorbos with *ships Falcon with Robert, Samus, Snake, Mr. Zero, Ganondorf, BS, Ryu (the one from Smash, should’ve made that clearer), Terry Bogard and the Mach Rider for some reason*

I know no one cares who I ship them with but I felt like making this post I’ll regret in half a year

[mimicofmodes]

(Not fashion. I wrote this as an answer to a question elsewhere and nobody saw it.)

Mary Tudor was the first queen regent of England. Was this noted at the time? Was there any significant reaction, positive or negative, to having a solo female ruler?

The only previous time in English history that a woman attempted to rule in her own right as her father's natural heir was Empress Matilda (1102-1167), the daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror; at this time, it hadn't even been fully established that princesses could pass inheritance rights on to their sons, so it's remarkable that Henry decided to make her his heir in the absence of other legitimate children of his own. The following summary of the situation may sound familiar to you if you read or watched The Pillars of the Earth. When Henry I died in 1135, his nephew, Stephen of Blois, was able to get crowned in London since Matilda, married to the count of Anjou, wasn't able to make the journey immediately - the idea of the heir immediately becoming ruler on their predecessor's death wasn't yet a tradition. In 1139, she did travel to England, though, and sought out the support of local barons to wage a military campaign against Stephen. She prevailed and ruled for a short time in 1141 but didn't make it to a coronation before being dethroned, and kept on being "Lady of the English" until her half-brother and chief supporter, Robert of Gloucester, died in 1147. She then left for France, giving up on her own personal claim to the English throne.

In the very small number of primary sources left about Matilda's short reign and longer campaign, there's a lot of discussion of her gender. Without any precedent for a woman ruling England (though Anglo-Saxon queens had been able to wield their own kind of power as kings' wives or mothers), she had to construct a version of female kingship that led to her taking on a lot of masculine features. Henry had had her take the same normally-masculine oaths her late brother had made as heir, and while her gaining this position required her to remarry far beneath herself in order to produce her own male heirs, instead of taking on that new title she was considered largely as her father's daughter and an empress (her first husband had been the Holy Roman Emperor) and held onto most of her dowry. Once she began her quest for the crown against Stephen, she threw off conventions of gendered behavior and acted quite openly in her own interest: she captured opponents and held them in chains, legally appealed Stephen's succession, and, well, acted as a king among her own vassals.

Although there hadn't been any explicit opposition to her claim just on the basis of her gender, opponents did use her status as e.g. the wife of the Count of Anjou as tools to delegitimize her standing. Once she had some power, though, her lack of feminine reticence and modesty became a problem even in the chronicles that otherwise supported her. It wasn't so much an issue that people said, "hey, women shouldn't rule," but that once a woman was actively exercising power on her own behalf without cloaking that in concern for her son(s) or a pretense of not wanting to do it. Most kings had queens to project softer, interceding, and more forgiving royal power by their sides, rounding off their corners while they were able to make the hard choices and do nasty, bloody things. Matilda simply didn't have the advantage of this kind of partnership, and couldn't be both the king and queen.

So, Mary. While in general Matilda is not considered a proper queen regnant because she was never crowned (let's note that nobody has this problem when it comes to Edward V, one of the princes in the Tower, just saying), there is no doubt that Mary I ruled officially. Matilda was her only pattern when it came to English queenship, and due to the above, she was more valuable as an example of what not to do - despite the centuries between them, it would still not have gone over well if Mary had flouted what was expected of a woman and simply behaved like her father as a monarch.

Mary's Catholicism was a much bigger issue than her gender as a fact on its own, in a kingdom that had recently switched to Protestantism as the state religion, with a government full of people who'd fully bought into it. Where her gender came into it was the concern about where her husband - someone she was regarded as needing in order to produce her own heirs to keep feuding cousins from starting another civil war - would stand in relationship to the throne. Married women were considered femes couverts in English law, subsumed into their husbands' legal identities, which implied that a queen's husband perhaps might automatically be in charge of the country. Edward VI's "Device for the Succession" (which outlined who would follow him to the throne, since he had no heirs) excluded both Mary and the Protestant Elizabeth out of concerns about their marrying foreign princes - as would be appropriate to their station, being born princesses, even if they'd been later declared bastards - and subjecting England to foreign rule, diverting the line instead to Jane Grey, already married to an Englishman, "and her heirs male". (Jane was, technically, of course, another precedent for Mary. She planned to make her husband a duke, rather than allowing him authority over herself.)

Once she'd declared herself the queen, Mary quickly attracted support from the local gentry and nobility despite her gender: she didn't have a husband ruling over her yet and was also no longer a ward of any man, and therefore feme sole, a totally independent woman. While Mary did have to start off with a bit of military violence, unlike Matilda she had no real challengers and was therefore able to drop the masculine-coded aggression in defending her right to rule, inhabiting the office of kingship as a "normal" woman without really upsetting the overall patriarchal power structure. (It was also enshrined in law by this point that daughters could inherit from their fathers and brothers, so it simply made logical sense to most people that she was now the monarch.) She went to her coronation in cloth of gold and with her hair down, as in the famous coronation portrait of Elizabeth I, the traditional way for a king's wife being crowned to appear, and later billed this ceremony as her marriage to the realm, a marriage in which she was obviously the bride. In general, she modeled herself on her pious mother, Catherine of Aragon, rather than her powerful and somewhat arbitrary father - typically, this is presented in pop culture as just a part of her fanaticism, rather than the use of a traditional aspect of queen-consortship. She was publicly rather submissive to her advisors and ambassadors, confirming her status as an unmarried woman above her status as monarch and allowing them to believe that she was naive and trusting, as they expected her to be due to her gender. Before she wed Philip II of Spain, she talked up her desire to remain chaste and made it clear that her main reason for marriage was the succession (the ensuring of which would make her pregnant and therefore extra-womanly); she allowed it to appear that she was totally uninvolved with the negotiation process for his hand, as though the men were deciding her fate. (Despite all of this, she made it clear in her marriage paperwork that she would continue to be the ultimate authority, reducing him to the traditional female role of intercessor and soft-power-holder, and that Philip's title of "king" was only a courtesy, and she also brought no dowry at all to the match - far from the expected behavior of a royal bride, in general!) Rather than bringing herself into the masculine role of king, basically, she brought the role of kingship to herself while staying firmly in the female sphere, and while her sister's reign was longer and more successful, it's clear that Elizabeth took a certain amount of direction from the way Mary handled her gender.

Both of the two "first" queens regnant of England had a great deal of trouble in ruling (and in later biographies) as a result of the way that others perceived their gender and their ability to conform to its conventions. Their problem was the social practices surrounding their gender, that is - not just their gender in and of itself. It's difficult to get into the historical mindset that saw women considered the property of their male relatives throughout their lives (unless they were lucky enough to become rich widows) and yet also considered women not biologically unfit to rule a country. In part, this difficulty is supported by hundreds of pop cultural depictions of historical men as total chauvinists who thought women were simply stupid across the board, which ignores the reality that elite women did a lot of work in estate management and diplomacy, and which they recognized as valuable. It's a contradiction. People have a lot of contradictions, even today - we don't run on pure logic, although many think they do and use that to prop up their own internal contradictions.

You might be interested in reading The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History, by Charles Beem (2006), which is 100% about this issue and was my major source for this answer. It's great! In general, I recommend all of Palgrave Macmillan’s Queenship and Power series.

[compartmentalisinghmpf]

TLTL review, now with fewer redundancies, more coherence. 2040 words.

I just finished my second read of this, the first half of what I can only think of as the first book of the Terra Ignota duology/trilogy. (Actually it's going to be a quartet, but these first two volumes constitute one novel, and nobody can tell me otherwise.)

It's a different book on the second read. For one thing, it is infinitely more disturbing. As it's already fairly disturbing on the first read, that increase is quite an achievement...

Too Like the Lightning comes with a front page full of warnings, which somewhat understate things, even, and these are both a clever element of the worldbuilding, and to be taken absolutely seriously if you have any pre-existing issues in the listed areas. If in doubt, contact someone who has read the book and ask for specific, yet minimal spoilers. But, really, only if you think it may be necessary! Take it from someone who usually doesn't mind spoilers: you don't want them, here. Unless you really need them, that is.

I want to stress that the book's increasing creepiness is really just one aspect of the whole, though, although a fascinating one. There's more going on here than that, much more. This book made me think a lot on the first go, and it's made me think a lot on the second, and I'm still not sure I've figured out even ten percent of it, nor whether I agree with very much of what I think it may be saying. I get the distinct impression agreeing isn't the point: thinking is. Rarely have I encountered a book that trusts its readers so completely to make up their own minds. This is a book that wants you to argue with it.

Too Like the Lightning is set in the 25th century – a 25th century in which humankind is still mostly Earthbound, only taking slow steps towards terraforming Mars. Earth, made small by incredibly fast global transit, has seen three hundred years of peace. It is politically unrecognisable, ruled by seven great “Hives“, which people can join or leave voluntarily, independent of geography. The “nuclear family“ of our day no longer exists. Work takes up a very small amount of most people's time.

For reasons that become clearer eventually, our narrator, Mycroft (this is, by future-historical coincidence, a common name in his time; a nice, subtle touch of worldbuilding), chooses an 18th century style for his narrative - complete with constant 4th-wall-breaking of the “gentle reader“ variety. Also, complete with old-fashioned pronouns like “thee“ and “thou“ -- and “he“ and “she“, for which the narrator apologises frequently, because gender, in Mycroft's 25th century, is as taboo as openly practiced religion. The books are in large part about how both of these ideas return to disrupt a world that seems in many ways utopian.

Mycroft, we soon find out, is a convict, and in his world that means, by and large, a slave, albeit a somewhat humanely treated one. Despite or because of this, our narrator is in high demand with the world's mighty and powerful, and thus gets a front-row seat at the beginning disruption – or rather, would get a front-row seat, if he were ever allowed to sit down for more than a minute. He works hard for his pre-packaged sandwich – variously as a spy, as a statistical analyst, as a translator (he speaks seven languages, which is apparently borderline illegal), or even simply serving drinks while the mighty conspire. How he happens to know and matter to all the powerful becomes both more understandable, and much, much more bizarre to contemplate as we find out more about him.

(Beyond a certain point you realise that pretty much every single relationship in these books is deeply strange, and that together they all form a mind-bogglingly complex cat's cradle of dependencies, rivalries, attractions, animosities, alliances.... Yet nobody, but nobody has stranger relationships than Mycroft, who shifts social roles a dozen times a day, or even a dozen times in the same conversation, from slave to trusted specialist/advisor to … things I cannot mention here, because this is a book where surprise really is vital. It is a social rol(l)ercoaster ride, and sort of exhilarating, if you enjoy that kind of thing. (I do. A lot.))

There is another claim on Mycroft's time, however - an even more important one – and this is where things gets strange[r]: Mycroft has, for eight years, been raising a foundling child, in greatest secrecy. This child can bring inanimate objects to life.

And this is – perhaps, probably – not the only divine influence in Mycroft's life.

So, all of a sudden we're contemplating questions that hardly anyone, outside of Gene Wolfe, would think to put into SF.

Rather like Wolfe's Solar Cycle, Terra Ignota feels like a complex clockwork machine made out of interlocking and interacting bits of philosophy and metaphysics – a smidgen heavier on the philosophy, perhaps, and rather a lot more heretical than your average Wolfe. Unlike most philosophy-themed sf, the sources here are 18th century Enlightenment ones, as well as older ones, seen through an imaginary 25th century's view of the 18th century's view of the even more distant past (are you dizzy yet?) And, of course, seen also through the lens of our very particular and unusual narrator's point of view...

Let's focus on that narrator for a moment, even though I can't talk about him here, not properly, not without spoiling things. Mycroft addresses the reader directly, from the very first sentence, and even has recurring arguments with them, explaining why he makes certain narrative or word choices, defending them or, sometimes, caving to his imaginary reader's objections. Almost without noticing, you are pulled into a close embrace by the text, by its narrator. It quickly begins to feel intensely personal. What Palmer is doing here, with our relationship with Mycroft (again, I can't be more specific without serious, serious SPOILERS), must be deliberate and instrumental to the book's/series' workings. (Or rather: it better be...) Two books in, I can see some of the moving parts and how they interconnect, but I'm still not sure what the final shape will be.

This is an unsettling book in many respects. Some things are troublingly absent in it, or present in a troubling way. For instance: the book's world is very Eurocentric, despite perfunctory nods to Asian cultures. Africa – excepting Alexandria and Casablanca – is only present in the form of the rarely mentioned “Great African Reservation”. In context, it is clear that this is not just a nature reserve, but rather a space in which older forms of cultural/political/social/religious organisation are preserved - other reservations mentioned are Tibet, the Vatican, and a Pennsylvania Mennonite one. In 2016, this relegation of Africa to, essentially, the past feels so out of step with current debates that I suspect it must be deliberate, and part of a Point About to Be Made sometime later in the projected series – a comment on our collective blind spots rather than the author's own blind spot in action. (Though, of course, I may be extending too much credit here. Time, and the sequels, will tell.)

Gender is the most obvious thing to be disturbed by here, though, and inevitably the most discussed, because it's constantly front and centre.  Gender, in Mycroft's 25th century, is not a Done Thing anymore – literally. Gender – officially - isn't being performed any longer, or rather: people consciously perform gender-neutrality. The default pronoun is “they”. Our narrator, however – a self-described pervert - insists on gendering (nearly) every character we encounter. Mycroft assigns gender partly due to archetypical ideas of what is “feminine” and “masculine” - roughly: caring/nurturing denotes femininity, physical dominance denotes masculinity. Yet unlike most people would in our day, he applies these simplistic standards across sexes. In addition to this, he also uses gender situationally. For instance: he genders a young, physiologically female character male because they are the apprentice/assistant of a powerful, physiologically male character - but later, when they are interacting with their mother, he genders them female for one paragraph...

What is disturbing about Too Like the Lightning's approach to gender is not so much what Mycroft does with it, though – that is mostly destabilising in a productive way. And Mycroft's opinions on many things, as he himself admits, are easy to discount; he is, as he says, “easy to call mad”. The book as a whole – the larger structure of meaning being built here - seems to imply some uncomfortable things about gender, too, however, which aren't quite so easily ascribed to a somewhat deranged point of view. I say “seems”, because at this point I'm really not sure what the final tally on any of the themes introduced here will be. It is entirely possible that the first two volumes of the series take such great care to set up elaborate ideological structures so they can then proceed to knock them down, further down the road.

Another area in which I suspect I may be disagreeing with what the book(s) is/are saying so far is ideas of violence and war, and their role in human nature and human history, but that is not something I can touch on very much without spoiling things in a serious way. I suspect that here as in other areas Palmer doesn't so much want to convince us of a particular proposition but rather give us a fully realised image of a particular worldview, not to endorse nor to denounce it, but rather to demonstrate the sheer alienness of another historical period. The future is every bit as strange a country as the past.

Ada Palmer does not grant us the relief of even a single character we can fully understand, whose opinions we can comfortably agree with, to contrast with her 25th century's mores and ideas, and to guide our sympathies and opinions in reacting to the book's world. Instead, she fully immerses us in the worldview of another culture, and it is very easy to (mis)read that as the book endorsing that worldview. This makes for uncomfortable, but also, I think, mentally stimulating reading. We are expected to read critically, to always be aware of the distortions of perspective; we are supposed to read like historians.

I'm actually not sure these books are entirely successful in every aspect of what they attempt – though it's always hard to judge an unfinished work. There are some pacing issues, and large (really: LARGE) parts of the plot are either nearly impenetrable on the first read (and still pretty obscure on the second), and/or feel kind of implausible. For that matter, a fair bit of the worldbuilding is... implausible is too strong a word. It feels convincing while you're in the story (or rather, the lacunae feel like the sort you inevitably experience when you get to see a world through the filter of just one particular point of view), but when you stop to think about it for too long, some of the holes feel very hard to fill.

And then there's the miracles... Those require a different kind of suspension of disbelief, which, I think, not every reader of SF will be willing to extend the book.

There is also a sense of the books' world being built entirely to accommodate a number of interlocking philosophical thought experiments. In a recent post, Ada Palmer herself described Too Like the Lightning as setting up a Rube Goldberg machine. This gives the whole proceedings an overarching feel of artificiality, which is only increased by the fact that these thought experiments are mostly based in 18th century thought, and feel somewhat removed from many present-day concerns, if not always in subject then at least in their approach.

Despite all quibbles and reservations, however, this is not just an impressive debut but one of the best – one of the most alien, one of the most thought-provoking – science fiction novels I have read. It's also, despite all the philosophy, the theology, despite the artificiality, and despite the fact that large parts of the plot consist of people having long, involved conversations about the theft of, essentially, some notes for an unpublished newspaper article, an unexpectedly gripping one.

Read this book. Then argue with it.