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y-rhywbeth2 · 9 months

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Isn’t Baldurs Gate a multicultural city?

I physically cannot simply answer a question, I blame my teachers for teaching me to write essays.

In the sense that it has multiple minority cultures living in it, yes, but it's a human dominated city just like the remaining 99% of Toril (slight hyperbole, but still). Faerûn's population ratio is such that 9 in every 10 people on the continent are human, with the remaining 1 in that ten being any of several other races - most of whom live in their own countries (Elves in Evereska, the High Forest and Evermeet (plus a few smaller out of the way settlements). Dwarves in the Great Rift and the mountains. Halflings mostly in Luiren, etc) "...the question has been asked by some that when this race finally gets all the quirks out of its system and gets moving, will there be any room left for the other races of the Realms?" - Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (Revised)

Humans kind of just push you out, take over and build their stuff all over everything. Elves specifically refer to them as "the many handed curse", because there's just so many of them, disunited, all with so many conflicting aims and actions that they fight and bring destruction everywhere they go. The other non-humans, also kind of annoyed by humans, have adopted this name for them too.

Hell, even the words for non-humans, "humanoid" and "demihuman", are human-centric. Like-a-human, human-ish, almost human.

Baldurs gate is a city founded by humans, with a dominant human population, whose customs and laws are from human culture. Humans are/were the norm and the default.

Astarion was born in the time frame where elves and demihumans were not that common. Silverymoon is considered unusual as the most metropolitan cities in existence, and its population was still 41% human with the remaining percentage being everyone else. Waterdeep, massive cosmopolitan city and one of the most important trading cities? 64% human. In the original games you'll notice that in cities like Baldur's Gate and Athkatla non-human citizens are rare enough that they stand out when you spot them (although the latter has a significant halfling and gnome minority).

Slightly off topic to babble about the stupid elf (affectionate) some more:

By the time Astarion was born, the elves were prepared to leave on the Retreat - a summons for elves to totally abandon the world for what remained of the elven homelands (and Evermeet) which from the elven understanding of time was basically happening next week. As a people, elves are not keen to mingle with human society, which they view as dangerous, so while it is possible for his family to have integrated with human nobility I do find it odd, and would say that he was nouveau-riche at best. He makes an offhand reference to Evereska at one point, and I would assume his family is from there.

(I did say I was sceptical, not that it's impossible - Rule of thumb for high elves: moon elves putting down roots like that would be unusual because they're sort of semi-nomadic outside of elven lands, even though they could be sticking around for a human generation, they'd be new money mingling with old money; sun elves would sooner die then subject themselves to human society; star elves weren't currently on Toril due to not wanting to be invaded by human armies, and left long before Astarion was born and wouldn't be back until a while after his death).

The Szarrs I can handwave, considering there's some strongly implied human ancestry what with the Kara-turan signet ring. Cazador just has more elven genetics than human.

#the elf gets everywhere #long post #astarion #astarion ancunin #lore stuff #baldurs gate 3 #bg3

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zl181 · 2 years

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Comprehensive Biography of Liu Dai

Liu Dai, styled Gongshan (劉岱字公山; bef. 156 - Spring 192), was a minor civil administrator, serving as Inspector of Yan Province. He was also Liu Yao's elder brother and an imperial kinsman. He died in battle against the Yellow Turbans.

Biography

Ancestry

His ancestors were from Mouping County, Donglai Commandery. Liu Dai's line was traced to Liu Jianglü, the Prince of Qi.[1] Liu Jianglü was the grandson of Emperor Gaozu of Han through his eldest son, Liu Fei.[2][3] Liu Jianglü's youngest son was enfeoffed as Marquis of Mouping, which is where his descendants, and thus Liu Dai, lived.[1][3]

Liu Dai's grandfather was Liu Pi; he had two sons in order of birth: Liu Chong (not the Prince of Chen) and Liu Fang. Liu Pi and Liu Chong will be described in Liu Chong's own biography.[3] Liu Pi also had a cousin named Liu Wei (劉韙), whose tale will be recounted in Liu Yao's biography.

Liu Fang (劉方), also known as Liu Yu (劉輿), would serve as Grand Administrator of Shanyang. Liu Fang had two sons: Liu Dai and Liu Yao. Liu Yao has his own biography.[1][5]

Life

Both Liu Dai and Liu Yao were recognized for their talent.[4][5] Liu Dai, in particular, was praised as being 'filial and fraternal, benevolent and forgiving, and humble when receiving others'.[5] The brothers were held in high esteem that a Taoqiu Hong nominated them to be Flourishing in Talents (maocais). The Inspector of a province, who most likely handled such nominations, complained,

"Last year, we nominated Gongshan. Whyfor should we also nominate Zhengli (Liu Yao)?"

Taoqiu Hong replied,

"If you would enlighten yourself, sir, to use Gongshan at the front and have Zhengli at the rear, this is akin to what is called '[having] two dragons on a long journey' and 'urging legendary steeds to run a thousand li'. Why not do this?"

It is heavily implied that Liu Yao was also nominated.[6] Liu Dai would later serve as Palace Attendant.[1]

Guandong Coalition

Around 190, he presumably became Inspector of Yan Province because Zhou Bi and Wu Qiong, whom Dong Zhuo held high opinions of, advocated for Liu Dai to be appointed to office.[7] However, he soon contributed his troops to the Guandong Coalition.[8] As Inspector of Yan Province, he was nominally in command over his subordinate Grand Administrators, Zhang Miao, Yuan Yi, and Qiao Mao, as well as Bao Xin. Around this time, he also met with Zang Hong, recommended by fellow coalition member Zhang Miao, and was impressed by him.[9]

In the second lunar month, Dong Zhuo moved the capital from Luoyang to Chang'an. Liu Dai stationed himself and his army at Suanzao alongside fellow members (and also his nominal subordinates) Zhang Miao, Yuan Yi, and Qiao Mao.[10] Qiao Mao, who controlled Dong Commandery, was nominally subordinate to Liu Dai. It is likely that Qiao Mao and Liu Dai's rivalry had its roots in that; this rivalry would blow up between Qiao Mao and Liu Dai, and eventually, Liu Dai killed Qiao Mao and appointed his subordinate, Wang Gong, to replace Qiao Mao.[11] Despite this violence, Liu Dai was one of five lords to remain in the Guandong Coalition against Dong Zhuo.[12]

Supporting Yuan Shao over Gongsun Zan

Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan were locked in conflict with each other; both men were close with Liu Dai. Liu Dai was entrusted by Yuan Shao over his wife and children, while Gongsun Zan showed military support by reinforcing cavalry led by Fan Fang to him. Gongsun Zan soon demanded that Liu Dai send Yuan Shao's family with Liu Dai to him as well as sever ties to Yuan Shao. Liu Dai could not decide, even as Gongsun Zan defeated Yuan Shao's army. Soon, Gongsun Zan backed this up with a threat and told Fan Fang,

"If Dai does not send Shao's family [to me], lead your cavalry back. Once I defeat Shao, lead more troops against Dai."

Liu Dai, however, was still hesitant after several days. His subordinate, Wang Yu, told Dai that Cheng Yu, who had earlier declined to serve Liu Dai, would be able to decide who to side with. Cheng Yu told Liu Dai,

"If you abandon Shao, who is nearby with support, to ask for Zan's distant reinforcements, it is said to be using someone from Yue (south-east China) to save a drowning child [in the Central Plains]. Gongsun Zan is not Yuan Shao's equal. Now although he has defeated Shao's army, he will eventually end up captured by Shao. If you support tonight's power and not concern yourself with long-term plans, you, sir, will end up defeated."

Thus, Liu Dai remained loyal to Yuan Shao, and soon, Gongsun Zan was defeated by Yuan Shao. Liu Dai tried to thank Cheng Yu by petitioning he be made Commandant of Cavalry, but Cheng Yu declined and claimed illness.[13]

Defeats and Death

Around Late 191, over 100,000 Yellow Turbans invaded and seized Wei Commandery. They also defeated Wang Gong, who fled. Cao Cao was able to defeat them somewhat, enough for Yuan Shao to petition for him to become the new Grand Administrator of Dong Commandery.[14]

Around Spring 192, the aforementioned force of 100,000 Yellow Turbans began to encroach against Liu Dai. Liu Dai eventually decided to attack them, despite the protests of his advisor, Bao Xin. He engaged the Yellow Turbans and was killed in the fight. The ensuing vacancy had Liu Dai's former subordinates, among them Chen Gong and Bao Xin, invite Cao Cao to be the Governor of Yan Province.[15]''

Family

Liu Dai has no known children. He had a younger brother, Liu Yao, who has his own biography.

Legacy

The death of Liu Dai opened a pathway for Cao Cao to govern an entire province.

References

[1] - 【劉繇字正禮，東萊牟平人也。齊孝王少子封牟平侯，子孫家焉。繇伯父寵，為漢太尉。繇兄岱，字公山，歷位侍中，兗州刺史。】《三國志注•卷四九》

[2] - 【齊悼惠王劉肥者，高祖長庶男也。...後一歲，孝文帝以所封悼惠王子分齊為王，齊孝王將閭以悼惠王子楊虛侯為齊王。】《史記•齊悼惠王世家》

[3] - 【劉寵字祖榮，東萊牟平人，齊悼惠王之後也。悼惠王肥，高祖子也。悼惠王子孝王將閭，將閭少子封牟平矦，子孫家焉。父丕，博學，號為通儒。】《後漢書•卷七十六》

[4] - 【弟方，官至山陽太守。方有二子：岱字公山，繇字正禮。兄弟齊名稱。】《後漢書•卷七十六》

[5] - 【（《續漢書》曰：繇父輿，一名方，山陽太守。岱、繇皆有雋才。《英雄記》稱岱孝悌仁恕，以虛己受人。）】《三國志注•卷四九》

[6] - 【平原陶丘洪薦繇，欲令舉茂才。刺史曰：「前年舉公山，奈何復舉正禮乎？」洪曰：「若明使君用公山於前，擢正禮於後，所謂御二龍於長塗，騁騏驥於千里，不亦可乎！」】《三國志注•卷四九》

[7] - 【「初，卓信任尚書周毖、城門校尉伍瓊等，用其所舉韓馥、劉岱、孔伷、張咨、張邈等出宰州郡。】《三國志注•卷六》

[8] - 【兖州刺史劉岱…同時俱起兵，】《三國志注•卷一》

[9] - 【致之於劉兖州公山、孔豫州公緒，皆與洪親善。】《三國志注•卷七》

[10] - 【二月，卓聞兵起，乃徙天子都長安。卓留屯洛陽，遂焚宮室。是時紹屯河內，邈、岱、瑁、遺屯酸棗，術屯南陽，伷屯潁川，馥在鄴。】《三國志注•卷一》

[11] - 【劉岱與橋瑁相惡，岱殺瑁，以王肱領東郡太守。】《三國志注•卷一》

[12] - 【臣松之案：於時此盟止有劉岱等五人而已。】《三國志注•卷七》

[13] - 【初平中，兖州刺史劉岱辟昱，昱不應。是時岱與袁紹、公孫瓚和親，紹令妻子居岱所，瓚亦遣從事范方將騎助岱。後紹與瓚有隙。瓚擊破紹軍，乃遣使語岱，令遣紹妻子，使與紹絕。別勑范方：「若岱不遣紹家，將騎還。吾定紹，將加兵於岱。」岱議連日不決，別駕王彧白岱：「程昱有謀，能斷大事。」岱乃見昱，問計，昱曰：「若棄紹近援而求瓚遠助，此假人於越以救溺子之說也。夫公孫瓚，非袁紹之敵也。今雖壞紹軍，然終為紹所禽。夫趣一朝之權而不慮遠計，將軍終敗。」岱從之。范方將其騎歸，未至，瓚大為紹所破。岱表昱為騎都尉，昱辭以疾。】《三國志注•十四》

[14] - 【黑山賊于毒、白繞、眭固等十餘萬眾略魏郡、東郡，王肱不能禦，太祖引兵入東郡，擊白繞於濮陽，破之。袁紹因表太祖為東郡太守，治東武陽。】《三國志注•一》

[15] - 【青州黃巾衆百萬入兖州，殺任城相鄭遂，轉入東平。劉岱欲擊之，鮑信諫曰：「今賊衆百萬，百姓皆震恐，士卒無鬬志，不可敵也。觀賊衆羣輩相隨，軍無輜重，唯以鈔略為資，今不若畜士衆之力，先為固守。彼欲戰不得，攻又不能，其勢必離散，後選精銳，據其要害，擊之可破也。」岱不從，遂與戰，果為所殺。（《世語》曰：岱旣死，陳宮謂太祖曰：「州今無主，而王命斷絕，宮請說州中，明府尋往牧之，資之以收天下，此霸王之業也。」宮說別駕、治中曰：「今天下分裂而州無主；曹東郡，命世之才也，若迎以牧州，必寧生民。」鮑信等亦謂之然。）信乃與州吏萬潛等至東郡迎太祖領兖州牧。】《三國志注•卷一》

#bao xin #cao cao #liu dai #dong zhuo #liu yao #sanguo #cheng yu #yuan shao #gongsun zan

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ceescedasticity · 3 years

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I would love to hear more about your Findis plot bunny!!

Okay here goes. This gets increasingly off-the-rails.

Finwë is reasonably attentive with Findis, Nolofinwë, and Irimë when they're children (they're born fairly close together, with Arafinwë a while later).

Fëanáro is not happy about their existence, but he is a grown adult and he makes an effort not to be mean to literal children — he's distant but not openly hostile or disdainful. Mostly he avoids them. (He's a jerk to Indis, but none of the adults want the children to know about it, so they don't.)

All three of them start out idolizing him. Then they grow up and find out he hates them (or hates that they exist). He's not as bad with the girls as he is with the boys, because they're not direct competition, but it's not good.

Findis looks like Indis but with Finwë's coloring. As she grew up this got more obvious and Fëanáro disliked her more.

But it took Findis a while to give up on fixing things. Maybe if she seemed less Vanyarin, less like her mother? More Vanyarin, not competition? Made friends with Nerdanel? Implied solidarity against Vanyarin princes? Poked a little fun at Nolofinwë?

But, no; even if she'd turned on Nolofinwë entirely she was still the child of Indis and Fëanáro couldn't forgive it.

Fine.

But, now that her attention has shifted…

Finwë is also spending a lot of attention on placating Fëanáro.

And he spends time with Nolo and Ara, and dotes on Lalwen even after she grows up, and… Findis feels forgotten.

Okay, perfect princess, starting now.

But as we all know, Finwë is a 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' sort of parent.

Maybe… she's not Noldor enough? Should she pick up more of a craft?

She tries several. More than several. She's all-around competent, but nothing really clicks.

(Findis's skills lie in administration, policy, and logistics.)

All right — what about getting married? Having children?

Findis isn't in love. She's not really interested in love. But she does have a close friend who also isn't really interested in love, and whose father has been harassing him for years to get married, have children, and get into court politics.

He's one of the Aulenduri — makes very fine and detailed metal sculpture.

He goes by the epessë Lávarwë, for the gold flowers he makes that you can practically smell.

The name his father gave him is Aryontamo ("heir-smith") and his father's name is Aratatyo. His father claims straight patrilineal descent from Tata and Tatië, which is also attributed to Finwë but mostly as a polite fiction. His father agreed going to Valinor was a good plan, but is still sulking over not being king.

Lávarwë finds his father mortifying, most of the time, but the man makes a lousy politician and worse demagogue so he's not a threat to anything beyond his family's nerves. But he's hard on those.

On his mother's side he's Anairë's cousin.

It's not so much a marriage of convenience as a marriage of certain purpose.

They're friends. The marriage doesn't get in the way of that. They get closer, and support each other when they need it. The marriage isn't a mistake, even if it doesn't draw Finwë's lasting attention the way she hoped.

Having a child to get Finwë's attention is a mistake.

To Findis's credit she realizes this fairly quickly. Being a daughter Finwë wants is now off the board; all efforts redirected to being the mother little Laurefindel needs.

(He's a blond child of two dark-haired parents; hence the noteworthiness of his hair.)

(Lávarwë's father is horrified by the implication that he might have Minyarin ancestry.)

Findis doesn't do too badly. Laurefindel grows up below the median screwed-up-ness level for Finwë's scions (and far below the mean). He's an adult before anyone tells him his parents had him for the wrong reasons. He's not really thrilled about it when he finds out, though, and starts spending more time with Nolofinwë and Anairë's family.

Lávarwë goes back to the Halls of Aulë.

New goal: Be the daughter Indis needs.

Fëanáro has been getting more difficult, and his rivalry with Nolofinwë has become the most obvious trouble spot. There's no shortage of people taking Nolofinwë's side.

But he's not any better towards Indis than he was before. Indis needs someone who will side with her before Nolofinwë. Findis can do that.

The "daughter Indis needs" period includes the entire adult lives up through the Darkening of most of her nephews and both nieces.

But as things get bad, Indis needs things Findis can't give. Well, that's always been true, but it's getting more obvious.

Findis is in Valmar with Indis when Finwë is killed. She can do nothing.

Findis is in Valmar with Indis when the Noldor rebel.

When she hears the entire rest of the House of Finwë has left (down to the children), she goes back to Tirion alone.

Her reception is a little lukewarm. She wasn't there.

But she's there now.

Lávarwë joins her. Like most of the Aulenduri he stayed faithful.

Arafinwë comes back. The group that comes back with him is equal in size to the group that never left.

Possibly Findis should focus on getting the returners settled, but instead she leaves Lávarwë in charge and rides with Arafinwë as he goes onwards to Taniquetil to beg for pardon. She says she wants to know everything. He tells her what he knows.

Findis waits outside the Ring of Doom, prepared to go in and appeal if the Valar don't offer the pardon they implicitly promised, but they deliver.

They also declare Arafinwë king of the Noldor. Which stings a bit. All right more than a bit. But if the people who never left resent that she was away, she expects those who left and came back would be even harder to win over. And she is not about to have a fight with her baby brother over a title.

Findis and Arafinwë try to put the Noldor together again.

It's a slow process. They're really just treading water for a long time. And what do they have to look forward to?

After Arafinwë and Eärwen start exchanging letters, Findis asks Arafinwë if the two of them might consider having another child, after they're formally reconciled. Something to give the Noldor a future. Arafinwë says absolutely not.

She doesn't push him. She brings up the idea of another child with Lávarwë, instead. He doesn't agree immediately, but he comes around to the idea.

Is this the best possible reason to have a child? No. But they did okay with Laurefindel, and giving hope to the Noldor is more important than getting Finwë's attention anyway.

Calainë Sanastëa has her mother's coloring — Finwë's coloring — and her father's more classically Noldorin face shape. Perfect, for a future deputy and vice-king.

Findis is not thinking about this as replacing people so much as filling vacancies. But it can kinda come across as replacing people.

Arafinwë swallows his objections and his feelings. He doesn't feel like he's in a very good position to gainsay her. And she's not wrong, that the House of Finwë is very short on people right now, and someone has to look forward. He can't let go of the hope of getting his children and brother back, but really that just means they're more in need of a backup — what if he gets in trouble.

Indis does not swallow her objections. She is not willing to write off half her children and all but one of her grandchildren, and she's furious that Findis apparently is.

Findis is hurt that Indis doesn't have faith in her after all that time she spent trying to help her. She doesn't try to explain that that's not what she's doing, just the job needs to be done.

So that's the first problem.

The second problem is weirder.

Míriel Serindë is reembodied, but abides in the house of Vairë. Indis visits her there, from time to time, sometimes for long stretches.

Indis returns to Tirion with a very young girl she introduces as her ward, Elmendien Faniel.

It's a week before anyone works up the nerve to challenge her on it. Who are Elmendien's parents? Why does she look so much like Míriel Serindë? Why does she have Finwë's eye color? What is going on?

Indis explains: A miracle occurred and Míriel returned to life bearing a child. Indis has been helping with her, but the house of Vairë is no place for a child to grow up, so now she has brought her to Tirion. —Her real mother-name is "Fëawestë", but "Faniel" should attract less attention.

Findis is furious.

Is this the ideal Findis was always failing to live up to — Míriel's possible daughter?

Why should Finwë and Míriel get a miracle, when their last miracle led the Noldor to ruin and Finwë let it happen?

How could Indis introduce this confusion at a time like this? Has she no consideration for what Findis and Arafinwë are dealing with, and how much worse a child of Míriel might make it?

(Ohnonononononono, Arafinwë says. He is staying neutral in this.)

Findis invents a cover story:

"Before Finwë left with Fëanáro, Indis the Queen went to plead with him not to forsake her and their children. Finwë pledged again his love for her, and they begot a fifth child. But in the morning despite Indis's pleas Finwë left indeed for a place where she was not welcome. Grieved and fearful, Indis withdrew to her family in Valmar, hoping they might support her through her husband's neglect.

"Alone in Valmar Indis bore her daughter Faniel. She survived the birth, but the child was desperately small and weak, and Finwë would not leave Fëanáro's side. Only years later, near a hundred years after the rising of the Sun, was Faniel strong enough that Indis dared bring her to Tirion, and her remaining children."

That way, Findis says, Faniel can receive the birthright she deserves, they can avoid Míriel complications, and the primary blame for this goes where it belongs: Finwë. Indis is not pleased.

Possibly not coincidentally, Sanastëa gets nicknamed "Emerwen" for "herding people around". She likes the nickname, but Findis is less happy.

Arafinwë still refuses to pick a side.

(The kids need there to be a neutral party.)

Edit to add:

Eärwen and Anairë coming back to Tirion from Alqualondë: ...

Nerdanel when Mahtan shows her Lávarwë's letters: ...

So anyway Faniel is flighty and distractable, very much a spirit of air rather than fire, but suspicions are she'll be brilliant when she actually gets interested in something. Emerwen is excruciatingly responsible and devoted to her studies aaaaaand kinda does want to be in charge of something, she's been trained for it. She doesn't want to like Finrod when he comes back.

#writing babble #Arda etc #the findis thing #a tolkien tag

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mary-tudor · 4 years

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~HENRY TUDOR: A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.~

Today, I'll be discussing a character who left his mark in History, fathering a dynasty whose most proeminent members were his (second) son Henry VIII and his granddaughter Elizabeth I. Often overshadowed by his descendants, Henry's own deeds as a king and as an individual of his own days have been neglected until recently, when efforts from British historians have been working hard to change that.

The reason why I decided to bring him here was not only due to personal affections, though they certainly helped it, but because there are aspects overlapped in social structures that shaped him. In other words: what's Henry Tudor as a sociological individual? Can we point him out as a constant foreigner or someone whose socialization process were strongly marked by the addition of two different societies?

Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke, located in Wales, in January 28th 1457. His mother was Margaret Beaufort, a proeminent lady whose grandfather John Beaufort was the son of John of Gaunt, son in turn of King Edward III of England. The duke of Lancaster fathered four ilegitimated children (who were legitimated in posterity) by his (third marriage to his then) lover Katheryn Swynford, amongst whom John Beaufort was the oldest. Therefore, Henry was 3x grandson. to the duke and, despite what some might argue when Henry IV became king, in great deal to inherite the throne. Well, it's not my intention to deepen the discussion as to Henry's legitimacy or the Beauforts.

Though his father's ancestry, Henry's blood led him to the royal house of Valois. His paternal grandmother, Katherine de Valois, was the sister of Isabella, who had been the second wife of the ill-fated king Richard II. She was also descended of Louis IX and his spanish wife, Blanche de Castille. Henry was also a royal man from the Welsh lands, as Owain Tudor, his grandfather, was related to several princes of Wales. By all these I said, the first thing one might think (considering 15th century and it’s nobility) Henry would receive a proper education due to his status. However, this would not happen in the strict sense of the word. Let us not forget that England was collapsing by the time of Henry Tudor's birth and his childhood. Why am I using the word 'collapse' to qualify the civil war we know named as wars of the roses?

Émile Durkheim, a french sociologist, would write several centuries later, about how a society is formed: he compared it to the working of a human body. If the head, the brain of our body does not work well, what happens? The body will not work well, certainly. Neither would the head work well if other parts hurt somehow. Although if you did break a leg, you could still make use of your brain, but as a whole how limited wouldn't you be? He'd also say that when the human body, or as he called, the society was sick, it was because of the social structures which imposed the human being to the point where there would be no individuality, no matter of choice.

Such created social facts that were completely external (althoug well internalized through means of a process we call socialization) but coercitive. If they are not working, what does this mean? That soon another social facts will be replacing the former one. But between one and another, we have a "very sickly" society. Taking this understanding back to England's 15th century, it is not difficult to see what Durkheim was talking about.

The king was the head of the English body. If we have here two kings fighting over one crown, fighting over the rule of an entire body... Well, then? We have the collapse, a civil war that lasted for the next 30 years. Here, it's less about discussing who started what but why they did what they did, and the explanation for it. Power is power. It's crystal clear, and a statement that, however simple might it sound, points to the obvious. Factions that fought for power intended to dominate others, using the concept very well developed by sociologists as Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias. This domination is a large field, a concept that embrace all sorts of it. Looking back to England's latter half of the century, domination was peril. The head was about to explode. The society was ill... and dominated by it.

What were the values? What was the racionalization proccess of social action led by individuals that were not only individuals but a group? How would all of this affect Henry Tudor? It was not about merely blaming the capitalism, because such coercitive system wasn't present yet. But Henry was, directly or not, linked to the royal house of Plantagenets, whose eagerness for dominating one another and by extension the rest of the country would include him in the game.

"Game." For Durkheim, this would imply an agitation, like a wave of sea, from which no one could escape from. Let's not forget that Institutions created ideas, renewed them, shaped them to the practice whether to dominate the weaker or to defeat the stronger. Whatever the purpose, we here have the Church, not the religiosity, but the precursor of ideas would subdue individuals to share (or manipulate to their own goals anyways) values in order to keep determined mentality to it. But also, monarchy was too an institution which held control over the lives and deaths of thousands of people. A monarch, as we know, is never alone regardless of how "absolut" they could be in different times and contexts. They were not above the law, either. At least where the socialization process is concerned. For the monarch embodied the content which was the law back then. He was literally the law.

Furthermore, Henry's education would foresee this fighting, which I'm not merely referring to custody going from his mother to another, before finally staying under his uncle's responsibilities, as well as the civil war itself. (Anyone remembers Warwick executing Herbert before the boy?)

See, we all know and comprehend today what trauma are capable of doing to someone. Such experience is the main responsible for shaping ideas, values and even costumes. Now, a society which is very much sick by it's own values and moral costumes (a point here must be made: the public consciousness always preached for a warrior, strong king, but has no one thought how this "common sense", validated by a general expectation towards the head of society, was what led it to... well, for the lack of better word, suicide itself?

For it's widely accepted that weak kings do not last long. But that is when we deal with a good deal of expectations that, when turned to frustrations, bring awful results. If England's society was ill in it's very extreme sense of the word, was because the values they created turned against themselves and that would leave it's mark in a boy as Henry. And until the age of 14, he was still absorbing these concepts, these morals, values, costumes from institutions (let's not forget that a monarch shares such with the nobility that surrounds him, as was the case of House Lancaster,f.e) before he was casted out to Bretagne and, in posteriority, to France. Now, I believe you all know what was done whether in England or with our king during these 14 years spent outside his own country before he became king upon the victory settled on the battle of Bosworth field.

I am not interested in discussing historical facts. At least not now, as we are finally dealing with Henry Tudor as a social actor

----/-HENRY TUDOR: A FOREIGNER? AN EXILED? OR AN OUTCAST?--

These questions mobilized me as I came to read a text written by 19th century sociologist named Georg Simmel. He wrote an essay (pardon by any mistakes in translations done from here on) entitled "The Foreigner", in which he brings a sociological question at why foreigners are seen as strangers who are never entirely immersed in the society they attempt to be part in.

Here's an excerpt translated by me in which he explains it:

"Fixed within a determined social space, where it's constancy cross-border could be considered similar to the space, their position [the foreigner's] in it is largely determined by the fact of not belonging entirely to it, and their qualities cannot originate from it or come from it, nor even going in it." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1.)

Furthermore, he adds:

“The foreigner, however, is also an element of the group, no more different than the others and, at the same time, distincted from what we consider as the 'internal enemy'. They are an element in whose position imanent and of member comprehend, at the same time, one outsider and the other insider." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1).

Here's why Henry, as Earl of Richmond, was not well seen by the Britons and the French, in spite of being "accepted" by them. Never forget that he would still be seen as an outsider by his own fellows. As Richard III would call Henry a bastard, one could understand this accusation with sociological implications. English back then detested these foreigners and by the concept brought here by me from Simmel we can understand why. But we could also see being called a bastard as a way to point out Henry's localization. Where can the Earl of Richmond & soon-to-be king be located?

I have pointed this far the structures which were raised and caused a collapsed society to live broken in many, many ways and how this affected Henry this far. Seeing how foreigner he was, nonetheless, he did not belong neither to England (at first) nor to the Continent.

On that sense of word, says Simmel (2005: 3):

"A foreigner is seen and felt, then, from one side, as someone absolutely mobiled, a wanderer. As a subject who comes up every now and then through specific contacts and yet, singularly, does not find vinculated organically to anything or anyone, nominally, in regards to the established family, locals and profissionals”

Even though we find a dominant group of foreigners in France, as we are talking about of nobles displeased with the Yorkist cause and supporters of the Lancastrian House, they were not majority. Where can we locate Henry, then? We don't, because he was not a French and however well he could speak the language, it was not his birth language. The French culture was not passed nor naturalized by him through the teachings of a family or the church by the institutions: monarchy, church, family, parliament, etc; he would have been defeated a long time. But that he did manage to, using this popular expression, put things together and become the first king to die peacefully since Henry V, it tells us a lot. Not rarely an immigrant is accepted by a society whose demands are forced upon him, most of the times in aggressive ways. But it's not often either that we see a king occupying such place in society.

Indeed, one might say that kings as Henry II and the conquerors before him were too foreigners, but not in the sociological way I'm explaining. Because the social structures were different. Henry's government were settled in a more centralized ruling, far more just and peaceful, more economic and less concerned with waging wars than his antecessors. The need to migrate was not 'forced', neither 'imposed' and even back to the 11th and 12th centuries were motivated by different reasons. That's to accentuate how English society evolved throughout the centuries. And I used again and again Georg Simmel to prove my point about casting a sociological light towards Henry VII not as a historical character so distant of us and who remains an object of controversial discussions, but a man of his times who was forced to deal with expectations that placed him in social positions nearly opposed to one another to fulfill each role whether as king or as a man. For some reason, the broken society shaped Henry as an immigrant, but as history shows us, it was this immigrant who helped shape medieval society, directing it towards the age of Renaissance and in posteriority to Modern Age.

Finally, to close this thread I leave here another quote (translated to English by me) found in the text written by Simmel:

"The foreigner, strange to the group [he is in], is considered and seen as a non-belonging being, even if this individual is an organic member of the group whose uniform life comprehends every particular conditioning of this social [mean]. (...) [the foreigner] earns in certain groups of masses a proximity and distance that distinguishes quantities in each relationship, even in smaller portions. Where each marked relationship nduced to a mutual tension in specific relationships, strenghtening more formal relations out of respect to what's considered 'foreigner' of which are resulted." (SIMMEL, p 7).

Bibliography:

AMIN, Nathen. https://henrytudorsociety.com/

DURKHEIM, Émile. "The Division of Labor in Society”.

KANTOROWICZ, Ernst H.”The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieavel Political Theology.”

PENN, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England.

SIMMEL, Georg. The Foreigner. In: Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Berlin. 1908.

#Henry VII #King Henry VII #Henry VII of England #sociology #socio-history #historical sociology #immigration #sociology of immigration #Henry Tudor #Tudor dynasty

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dillydedalus · 4 years

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january reading

why does january always feel like it’s 3 months long. anyway here’s what i read in january, feat. poison experts with ocd, ants in your brain, old bolsheviks getting purged, and mountweazels.

city of lies, sam hawke (poison wars #1) this is a perfectly nice fantasy novel about jovan, who serves as essentially a secret guard against poisoning for his city state’s heir and is forced to step up when his uncle (also a secret poison guard) and the ruler are both killed by an unknown poison AND also the city is suddenly under a very creepy siege (are these events related? who knows!) this is all very fine & entertaining & there are some fun ideas, but also... the main character has ocd and SAME HAT SAME HAT. also like the idea of having a very important, secret and potentially fatal job that requires you to painstakingly test everything the ruler/heir is consuming WHILE HAVING OCD is like... such a deliciously sadistic concept. amazing. 3/5

my heart hemmed in, marie ndiaye (translated from french by jordan stump) a strange horror-ish tale in which two married teachers, bastions of upper-middle-class respectability and taste, suddenly find themselves utterly despised by everyone around them, escalating until the husband is seriously injured. through several very unexpected twists, it becomes clear that the couple’s own contempt for anyone not fitting into their world and especially nadia’s hostility and shame about her (implied to be northern african) ancestry is the reason for their pariah status. disturbing, surprising, FUCKED UP IF TRUE (looking back, i no longer really know what i mean by that). 4/5

xenogenesis trilogy (dawn/adulthood rites/imago), octavia e. butler octavia butler is incapable of writing anything uninteresting and while i don’t always completely vibe with her stuff, it’s always fascinating & thought-provoking. this series combines some of her favourite topics (genetic manipulation, alien/human reproduction, what is humanity) into a tale of an alien species, the oankali, saving some human survivors from the apocalypse and beginning a gene-trading project with them, integrating them into their reproductive system and creating mixed/’construct’ generations with traits from both species. and like, to me, this was uncomfortably into the biology = destiny thing & didn’t really question the oankali assertion that humans were genetically doomed to hierarchical behaviour & aggression (& also weirdly straight for a book about an alien species with 3 genders that engages in 5-partner-reproduction with humans), so that angle fell flat for me for the most part, altho i suppose i do agree that embracing change, even change that comes at a cost, is better than clinging to an unsustainable (& potentially destructive) purity. where i think the series is most interesting is in its exploration of consent and in how far consent is possible in extremely one-sided power dynamics (curiously, while the oankali condemn and seem to lack the human drive for hierarchy, they find it very easy to abuse their position of power & violate boundaries & never question the morality of this. in this, the first book, focusing on a human survivor first encountering the oankali and learning of their project, is the most interesting, as lilith as a human most explicitly struggles with her position - would her consent be meaningful? can she even consent when there is a kind of biochemical dependence between humans and their alien mates? the other two books, told from the perspectives of lilith’s constructed/mixed children, continue discussing themes of consent, autonomy and power dynamics, but i found them less interesting the further they moved from human perspectives. on the whole: 2.5/5

love & other thought experiments, sophie ward man, we love a pierre menard reference. anyway. this is a novel in stories, each based (loosely) on a thought experiment, about (loosely) a lesbian couple and their son arthur, illness and grief, parenthood, love, consciousness and perception, alternative universes, and having an ant in your brain. it is thoroughly delightful & clever, but goes for warmth and humanity (or ant-ity) over intellectual games (surprising given that it is all about thought experiments - but while they are a nice structuring device i don’t think they add all that much). i haven’t entirely worked out my feelings about the ending and it’s hard to discuss anyway given the twists and turns this takes, but it's a whole lot of fun. 4/5

a general theory of oblivion, josé eduardo agualusa (tr. from portuguese by daniel hahn) interesting little novel(la) set in angola during and after the struggle for independence, in which a portuguese woman, ludo, with extreme agoraphobia walls herself into her apartment to avoid the violence and chaos (but also just... bc she has agoraphobia) with a involving a bunch of much more active characters and how they are connected to her to various degrees. i didn’t like the sideplot quite as much as ludo’s isolation in her walled-in flat with her dog, catching pigeons on the balcony and writing on the walls. 3/5

cassandra at the wedding, dorothy baker phd student cassandra returns home attend (sabotage) her twin sister judith’s wedding to a young doctor whose name she refuses to remember, believing that her sister secretly wants out. cass is a mess, and as a shift to judith’s perspective reveals, definitely wrong about what judith wants and maybe a little delusional, but also a ridiculously compelling narrator, the brilliant but troubled contrast to judith’s safer conventionality. on the whole, cassandra’s narrative voice is the strongest feature of a book i otherwise found a bit slow & a bit heavy on the quirky family. fav line is when cass, post-character-development, plans to “take a quick look at [her] dumb thesis and see if it might lead to something less smooth and more revolting, or at least satisfying more than the requirements of the University”. 3/5

the office of historical corrections, danielle evans a very solid collection of realist short stories (+ the titular novella), mainly dealing with racism, (black) womanhood, relationships between women, and anticolonial/antiracist historiography. while i thought all the stories were well-done and none stood out as weak or an unnecessary inclusion, there also weren’t any that really stood out to me. 3/5

sonnenfinsternis, arthur koestler (english title: darkness at noon) (audio) you know what’s cool about this book? when i added it to my goodreads tbr in 2012, i would have had to read it in translation as the german original was lost during koestler’s escape from the nazis, but since then, the original has been rediscovered and republished. yet another proof that leaving books on your tbr for ages is a good thing actually. anyway. this is a story about the stalinist purges, told thru old bolshevik rubashov, who, after serving the Party loyally for years & doing his fair share of selling people out for the Party, is arrested for ~oppositional activities. in jail and during his interrogations, rubashov reflects on the course the Party has taken and his own part (and guilt) in that, and the way totalitarianism has eaten up and poisoned even the most commendable ideals the Party once held (and still holds?), the course of history and at what point the end no longer justifies the means. it’s brilliant, rubashov is brilliant and despicable, i’m very happy it was rediscovered. 5/5

heads of the colored people, nafissa thompson-spires another really solid short story collection, also focused on the experiences of black people in america (particularly the black upper-middle class), black womanhood and black relationships, altho with a somewhat more satirical tone than danielle evans’s collection. standouts for me were the story in letters between the mothers of the only black girls at a private school, a story about a family of fruitarians, and a story about a girl who fetishises her disabled boyfriend(s). 3.5/5

pedro páramo, juan rulfo (gernan transl. by dagmar ploetz) mexican classic about a rich and abusive landowner (the titular pedro paramo) and the ghost town he leaves behind - quite literally, as, when his son tries to find his father, the town is full of people, quite ready to talk shit about pedro, but they are all dead. it’s an interesting setting with occasionally vivid writing, but the skips in time and character were kind of confusing and i lost my place a lot. i’d be interested in reading rulfo’s other major work, el llano en llamas. 2.5/5

verse f��r zeitgenossen, mascha kaléko short collection of the poems kaléko, a jewish german poet, wrote while in exile in the united states in the 30-40s, as well as some poems written after the end of ww2. kaléko’s voice is witty, but at turns also melancholy or satirical. as expected i preferred the pieces that directly addressed the experience of exile (”sozusagen ein mailied” is one of my favourite exillyrik pieces). 3/5

the harpy, megan hunter yeah this was boooooooring. the cover is really cool & the premise sounded intriguing (women gets cheated on, makes deal with husband that she is allowed to hurt him three times in revenge, women is also obsessed with harpies: female revenge & female monsters is my jam) but it’s literally so dull & trying so hard to be deep. 1.5/5

the liar’s dictionary, eley williams this is such a delightful book, from the design (those marbled endpapers? yes) to the preface (all about what a dictionary is/could be), to the chapter headings (A-Z words, mostly relating to lies, dishonesty, etc in some way or another, containing at least one fictitious entry), to the dual plots (intern at new edition of a dictionary in contemporary england checking the incomplete old dictionary for mountweazels vs 1899 london with the guy putting the mountweazels in), to williams’s clear joy about words and playing with them. there were so many lines that made me think about how to translate them, which is always a fun exercise. 3.5/5

catherine the great & the small, olja knežević (tr. from montenegrin by ellen elias-bursać, paula gordon) coming-of-age-ish novel about katarina from montenegro, who grows up in titograd/podgorica and belgrad in the 70s/80s, eventually moving to london as an adult. to be honest while there are some interesting aspects in how this portrays yugoslavia and conflicts between the different parts of yugoslavia, i mostly found this a pretty sloggy slog of misery without much to emotionally connect to, which is sad bc i was p excited for it :(. 2/5

the decameron project: 29 new stories from the pandemic, anthology a collection of short stories written during covid lockdown (and mostly about covid/lockdown in some way). they got a bunch of cool authors, including margaret atwood, edwidge danticat, rachel kushner ... it’s an interesting project and the stories are mostly pretty good, but there wasn’t one that really stood out to me as amazing. i also kinda wish more of the stories had diverged more from covid/lockdown thematically bc it got a lil repetitive tbh. 2/5

#the books i read #long post #sonnenfinsternis is so good the audiobook nearly made me cry in the supermarket

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canyouhearthelight · 6 years

Text

The Miys, Ch. 21

This chapter starts out as a bit of fluff, but I have an actual plot *gasp* that starts toward the end of this chapter.

The only warnings I would say apply to this chapter are fluff, anxiety, and crowds.

As always, please read, review, and comment. I really do love feedback. Also, this chapter is the first to be cross-posted to my Wattpad account the same day it is posted here, so you can go there and review as well!

Edit: Added the break, which was there when I drafted it but poofed when I went ahead and posted it.

Arantxa had borrowed my kitchen to make a pseudo-chicken stew with chili paste on the side for those of us who liked our food in the nuclear range of the Scoville scale – Noah had evacuated my quarters when she started making it, because apparently just the fumes started to give them chemical burns. Miys are allergic to capsaicin. Good to know. Also, they were completely horrified to find out we intended to ingest it.

“What’s a Hufflepuff?” Antoine asked as we all sat down to our next family dinner.

I choked slightly as my sister smothered a chuckle. “One, how do you not know that? And two, where did that question even come from?”

“I overheard Sam calling Derek a Hufflepuff and laughing. Derek did not appear amused, at all.”

“Oh, Derek’s totally a Gryffindor. Sam’s the Hufflepuff,” Arantxa laughed as she spooned chili paste into her stew.

“Does everyone know what that means except me?” the Frenchman asked with no heat behind it.

As he glanced over at Tyche, she nodded enthusiastically with an innocent expression on her face. “It’s from a book series published at the very end of the twentieth century, later a series of movies made in the first decade of the twenty-first century. I managed to choke down four out of seven books, but I think I stopped after two movies. Soph was obsessed with them when she was in her twenties, so I learned by proxy.”

I nodded enthusiastically before launching into an excited chatter. “The main setting is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the students are sorted into four houses: You might belong in Gryffindor, where dwell the brave of heart. Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart. You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal. Those Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil. Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you’ve a ready mind, where those of wit and learning will always find their kind. Or perhaps in Slytherin, you’ll make your real friend. Those cunning folks use any means to achieve their ends!”

“She needs to sort out her priorities,” Conor stage-whispered to Arantxa as he pointed his fork at me.

“Clearly a Ravenclaw,” Arantxa nodded seriously, only a small smirk breaking her façade.

“Nope, total ‘Puff,” I announced proudly, stuffing a mouthful of now-orange food in my mouth.

“None of these houses sound bad, so why would Derek be offended by being called one over the other?”

“Well, there’s another version of the song, mate,” Conor explained. “See, the Houses were named after the founders of the school, who chose the attributes that their students had to have: Said Slytherin, ‘We’ll teach just those whose ancestry’s purest.’ Said Ravenclaw, ‘We’ll teach those whose intelligence is surest.’ Said Gryffindor, ‘We’ll teach all those with brave deeds to their name’. Said Hufflepuff, ‘I’ll teach the lot and treat them just the same’.” It kind of implies that to be a Hufflepuff is to be whatever is left over when the purest, most intelligent, and bravest are taken out of the mix.”

“Well, I would be offended by that, too,” Antoine nodded

“I don’t hold with that, though.” I may have gushed a little bit, I admit. “One of the boldest, best warriors in the book series was a Hufflepuff. And the original Champion of Hogwarts was a Hufflepuff, don’t forget.”

He smiled a little at that. “And it is considered normal to actually figure out which of these houses you actually belong in?”

“Mmmm, kinda?” my sister answered, tilting her head. “It’s certainly fun.”

“Then what are you?”

“Oh, Slytherin, all the way. Cunning, resourceful, determined, prideful, intelligent,” she ticked off.

“Same here,” Arantxa nodded. “But I still say Sophia is a Ravenclaw.”

“Seriously, I’m a Hufflepuff. Think of it like this: if I was given a million dollars, would I buy books or would I feed hungry children?”

“Hungry children, hands down,” Conor smacked the table gently. “Total ‘Puff. I can’t see you sleeping at night if you didn’t feed hungry children.”

“Annnnnd that is exactly how Tyche explained it to me,” I laughed. “I love knowledge, but I am compelled to help people. I will burn a book to keep people warm, and I have, and it didn’t even hurt.”

“Pleased to meet a housemate,” he grinned cheekily.

“Oh nonononono. You’re such a Gryffindork. Nice try.” I glanced around to see Tyche nod enthusiastically while Arantxa was a little more sheepish with her agreement. “Brave, loyal, adventurous, and chivalrous. Total Gryffindor, sorry sweetie.”

“I’m too nice to be a Gryffindor!”

“Two words,” my sister laughed, counting them off. “Neville. Longbottom.”

“I can accept that,” Conor agreed grudgingly. “But how are you a Slytherin, Arantxa? You always say you spent your entire life studying!”

“Ravenclaws study for the sake of learning,” she shrugged. “That’s why I thought Sophia was one. I studied as a means to an end. ‘Any means necessary’ is actually part of my house motto.”

“What would I be?” Antoine asked curiously, spooning more stew in his bowl.

“Hufflepuff,” we all four responded in unison. “They always make the best healers and most calming presences,” Tyche clarified.

“Ooo, what about the rest of the Council?” Arantxa asked playfully.

I took a sip of wine and tilted by head, thinking. “Well, Grey is clearly a Ravenclaw.”

“But Grey is so – out there,” Conor pointed out. “Not in a bad way, just so different.”

“Luna Lovegood, most Ravenclaw person next to Rowena herself,” I argued. He put up his hands, conceding defeat. “Xiomara is harder.”

My sister let out an indelicate snort. “No, she isn’t. I’ve worked with her before. She’s Nymphadora Tonks all over again. Loyal, patient, hard-working, and dedicated. She’s the last person to do something recklessly. She had to be forced onto the Council, so no ambition, and she is only cunning enough to spot it when it happens. She’s intelligent for the sake of using it to benefit others. Hufflepuff, all the way.”

“I have to agree,” my assistant seconded. “I don’t doubt her bravery, but more than anything she is looking out for the safety of everyone on board. Hufflepuff.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” I agreed with a nod. “Huynh?”

“Ugh. He’s good at his job, don’t get me wrong, but I would definitely say he’s a Squib,” Conor spoke up surprisingly. It was the least nice thing I had ever heard him say. He shook his head and his customary smile was back on his face. “What about Simon and Zachary? Since we’re sorting everyone we all know,” he teased gently. “Personally, I think Simon’s a Gryffindor. I mean, he went along with a group of aliens with intentions to save the world. Yeah, he cocked it up, but it was very brave and reckless thing to do.”

After nodding at each other, Arantxa, Tyche, and I agreed.

“I think Zach’s a Ravenclaw, too,” Arantxa mused. “Think about it. He’s smart for the sake of being smart. He isn’t cunning or ambitious, or reckless. And he is pretty loyal once you earn it, but the one thing everyone remembers about him is how fucking smart he is. He just gushes about anything he knows about, even more than you do, Sophia.”

We all laughed at that, even Antoine. Just as I was about to get another glass of wine, our laughter was cut short by dimmed lights and deep-toned klaxons. My stomach sank. I didn’t know what caused them, but they were clearly alarms and that was never a good sign.

“Attention, Residents of the Ark,” Simon’s clear voice rang through the speaker. “I repeat: Attention, Residents of the Ark. Due to unexpected sensor damage we have dropped out of FTL. I repeat: Due to unexpected sensor damage we have dropped out of FTL. All personnel with pilot certifications please report to Level One. All personnel with pilot certifications please report to Level One.”

Just as the announcement ended, my Council pendant started to chime gently. It wasn’t the normal, clear tone that indicated I had a meeting, but instead a low repeating sound that reminded me of an ocean buoy. “Simon,” I looked sharply at the ceiling. “What is this signal?”

“It’s a locator beacon, Councillor Reid,” he answered in a tone far more confident and firmer than what I was used to hearing. “We need the Council to report to Level One as well, along with all administrators. The chime will notify everyone on board to let your group through.”

“I have Arantxa Bidarte and Tyche Reid with me. Will Antoine Costa be allowed through as well in his official capacity as Administrator Reid’s support personnel?”

“Temporarily. The Miys are bringing additional bodies out of hibernation to attend any injuries and assist with crowd control, but if we need him to lend a hand with those who panic, he may be asked to leave. We’re rather short-handed on licensed therapists.”

“I’m good with that, as long as he can get me through the crowds,” my sister stated, a determined set to her jaw.

“Do you want me to drop Mac with Derek, Tych?” Conor asked. “The poor puss looks upset, and Sam and Derek need someone with them, besides.”

“Yeah, that works,” she nodded, shoving the distressed animal into his waiting arms and ushering them out the door, the four of us exiting immediately after and heading the opposite direction.

Contrary to Simon’s word, we were stopped on several occasions by people who flooded the corridors in panic and wanted information on what happened. After numerous apologies and explanations from myself, Arantxa, and even Antoine that we knew as much as they did, my sister finally broke. “Stay behind me and whatever you do, don’t stop,” she ordered the other two as she placed an iron grip on my wrist. With that, she walked with a determination that spoke an ill fate of whoever she was headed to face, glaring down anyone who so much as looked like they may try to ask us a question. To absolutely no one’s surprise, we had no further interruptions on our way to Level One.

Knowing she was at her limit for dealing with large groups of people, I shoved Antoine over to her as I addressed Xiomara. “We need to do more safety drills. I was stopped entirely too many times on my way here, despite being assured by Simon that that my pendant would alert everyone to let me through unimpeded. My sister had to basically play breaker for us to make it.”

“Agreed, but I will deal with that when we figure out what is going on,” she nodded sharply.

Taking a deep breath, I glanced around the room. Several men and women I did not know were grouped together at one end, talking amongst themselves. I assumed they were the pilots. Grey stood to one side of the Council, speaking with the Miys. While the body was familiar, it wasn’t Noah. Instead, it was one that usually worked in the Medical bays.

“Greetings, Sophia,” Grey did not look up from their data screen as I approached.

“Wisdom,” the Miys buzzed. Before I could voice a request for additional information, it started to explain. “As you know, there has been damage to ship sensors. To avoid going dramatically off course while travelling, I have reduced ship speed to sub-light. However, until the sensors are repaired, I am unable to identify where we are located. Additionally, we do not have the resources on board to repair the sensors, so we will need to locate at least the materials necessary to fabricate anything that needs to be replaced.”

“How are there no replacement materials on board the ship? Surely something like this has happened before?”

“Your assumption is correct: when the Yjg departed for Earth on the second occasion, replacement sensors were on board. As we discussed when you first arrived, races with the ability to perceive photonic radiation are very rare, and so the sensors are essential to navigation. Redundant systems and multiple replacement parts are as much a standard requirement on the ship as a crew is.”

“Then how are there no replacement parts now? Have they already been used?”

The Miys shifted, and had it been human I would have said it was uncomfortable. Instead of it replying, Grey spoke up. “The replacements sensors were found destroyed. Physically.”

“WHAT!?” I shouted, drawing looks. With a deep breath and a firm pinch on the bridge of my nose, I lowered my tone. “What do you mean, physically.”

“I mean it appears to be a deliberate act, Sophia. Before you arrived, I was discussing with our host how common it is for both sensor systems to malfunction or sustain damage at the same time. While it does happen, it requires significant ship damage that would impact other systems. There are currently no reports of any other ships systems malfunctioning, however. Add to this the fact that all replacement parts were methodically destroyed, and it begins to look like someone is acting with intention.”

“How sure are we that the replacement parts weren’t damaged by accident?”

“Completely,” Grey replied before looking over my shoulder. “Giang, may I please borrow you for a moment? We’re discussing what you saw earlier.”

“You saw the damaged parts?” I asked as the Vietnamese man trotted over.

“They were completely destroyed, yes.”

“Please detail the nature of the damage for Sophia. She wants to be completely certain that the damage could not have happened accidentally.”

“There’s no way, Councillor Reid. Some parts were smashed, some were burned or melted, others had been cut to pieces.”

Shit.

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#the miys #original fiction #humans are weird #science fiction #humans are space orcs #earth is space australia #aliens #apocalypse #chapter 21

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cornyregans · 5 years

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Since this headcanon is depressing and requires a lot of background information that I may or may not have touched upon in the past, I’m going to be adding a read more so I don’t throw a giant wall of text at you all.

Here’s a little headcanon about why Contessa and Cordelia’s urns are in the master bedroom, as opposed to out in the cemetery with the rest of the ghosts.

Placing Contessa and Cordelia Capp urns in the master bedroom were Consort’s doing, not only because he misses both of them dearly, but also to punish himself since he blames himself for both of their deaths.

Even though there’s nothing in the game’s programming that implies Consort is keeping the urns in there to punish himself, I have added some things in previous essays that led me to interpret things this way.

Cordelia’s Death

Let’s start with Cordelia since the bulk of this revolves more around her than Contessa (who will only get a cursory mention at the very end). I brought up her canon cause of death being due to fire in my “Six Veronaville Tragedies” essay.

In the theory part of that essay, I had this to say about her death:

“…While most of the patrons left the restaurant in a panic [when the fire started], Cordelia, always the kind of person to help others, instead ran off to the kitchen to make sure the staff was okay.

By the time Caliban got outside, he realized his wife was nowhere to be found, and rather than secure his safety, he ran back into the burning restaurant to look for her, despite pleas from Goneril and Regan to wait for help to arrive. After not seeing her in either the dining room or the bathroom, Caliban knew there was only one place he had yet to check, the kitchen. Upon walking into the kitchen, however, he found Cordelia on the floor not too far from the fiery inferno that emerged from the stove. When he saw death’s visage looming above her, his worst fears were realized, and it wasn’t much longer until he too died of smoke inhalation.”

Look at the words I used to describe Cordelia and Caliban’s deaths, “smoke inhalation.” Now, you’re probably wondering just what this has to do with Consort, and I’ll get to that; however, I first want to make a distinction between Cordelia’s death and her husband’s.

The distinction between the deaths two lies the words used to describe the fire. The restaurant was described as “burning” when Caliban realized Cordelia was nowhere to be found; however, when he finds Cordelia in the kitchen, the room was described as a “fiery inferno,” meaning the fire was stronger when he died than when she died.

“And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!” —King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

The choice to interpret Cordelia’s death in TS2 being due more to the smoke from the fire than the fire itself was not an accident. The reason for this interpretation makes much more sense when taking Shakespeare into account. As for why this is the case, here’s another quote from that same essay, this time about the fate of the Shakespeare character she was named after:

“…[Lear and Cordelia] are sentenced to death for treason. While Lear is able to escape his sentence by killing the executioner, the pardon that would have saved Cordelia arrives too late to stop her death by hanging.”

“If that her breath will mist or stain the stone” —King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

“And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!” —King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

Both deaths involve suffocation in some way, shape, or form. However, to tie these two deaths together, I spent quite a bit of time researching a specific, well-known medical condition that impacts one’s breathing: asthma.

When it comes to the correlation between smoke inhalation and asthma, New York’s State website states:

“Individuals with cardiovascular or respiratory conditions (e.g., asthma), fetuses, infants, young children, and the elderly may be more vulnerable to the health effects of smoke exposure.”

If you haven’t already guessed, one of my headcanons about Cordelia is that she had mild asthma. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the smoke from the fire triggered her symptoms before she had a full-on asthma attack, which was not helped by her dropping her inhaler in the dining room during the chaos (which Caliban later found when he was trying to find her).

Ancestry and Asthma

Back when I was working on my “Beginning of the Feud” essay and theory, I realized that I put myself into a bit of a corner when discussing some of the supporting players: the parents of Contessa, Patrizio, and Consort. The reason for this ties into how two of these sims, Scribonia and Octavius Capp, died due to old age despite being adults, and eventually I came to this conclusion:

“…I tend to look at these two and classify their deaths as being due to natural causes. While this might sound similar to death by disease, I believe there is a distinction between the two. In TS2, the diseases that cause death tend to be contagious or acquired from external forces; however, the conditions that I believe could be in play for determining Scribonia and Octavius’ deaths would have been internal and non-communicable, like heart disease or cancer.”

The examples I provided for the non-communicable conditions were the ones I ended up going with when touching upon Scribonia and Octavius’ deaths, the former dying due to cancer, and the latter dying from a heart attack (or a defibrillator malfunction since Octavius’ cause of death is electrocution in TS3).

Scribonia and Octavius are the only sims in this group with canon causes of death, meaning that the player has more room to play around with when interpreting the deaths of Consort’s and Patrizio’s parents. However, for this headcanon, we only need to look at how I previously interpreted the death of Consort’s mother, Andromache, whose death by old age in Greek Mythology is contradictory to how she died as an adult here. As a result, I instead came to this conclusion about her death:

“Andromache also did not live much longer after her husband’s death, as she ended up dying of respiratory failure.”

I will admit that, at the time, I just picked her cause of death out of a metaphorical hat, so there’s not a basis for it anywhere. However, as I thought about it more, I looked up some conditions that fell under that umbrella (asthma being one of them), and things suddenly came together.

The Thebe Family

Part of why Consort blames himself for the deaths of his wife and daughter ties into the reason the Thebe family became extinct in the female line in the first place. Personally speaking, Andromache and Hector only having a son who was unable to carry on the former’s family name is something that always made me raise a few eyebrows. While this probably has more to do with how the family trees tend to be structured among the premade families; however, that doesn’t help things in a narrative sense, so I came up with this instead.

I think Andromache and Hector not having a daughter to carry on the Thebe name wasn’t exactly their choice. Instead, I think they probably considered it a necessity to stop once Consort was born out of fear for Andromache’s health since she, like Cordelia, had issues breathing.

While researching things that could potentially cause asthma, one of the causes that stuck out to me was hormonal changes, specifically that one can develop asthma while pregnant. This is what happened in Andromache’s case. She developed asthma while pregnant with Consort, and the severity of her symptoms combined with the lack of medical assistance she had available to her back then, ended up causing her death before she could see her son get married.

Why Consort Blames Himself

Like Andromache, Cordelia’s asthma came about during one of her pregnancies (her third, to be precise). This, combined with being more susceptible to asthma if the condition ran in the family, is why Consort blames himself for her death. His feelings of guilt were not helped by one of the firefighters finding the inhaler next to Caliban once they found the bodies.

The reason he blames himself for Contessa’s death is pretty self-explanatory since I believe that her death, like King Lear’s, was in large part due to a broken heart.

Even though I covered Contessa’s death in the past, I want to highlight what I said regarding Consort’s reaction to the event in a prior essay:

“Contessa’s widower, Consort, was absolutely beside himself. According to him, Contessa had never been the same after Cordelia died, and no matter how much he tried to console her, she would always talk about wanting to be with her daughter again. Though he knew Contessa was deeply saddened by their daughter’s death, he never in his worst nightmares imagined that the resulting despair would end up claiming her life.”

Final Thoughts

This is a headcanon that I’ve had for a while now, but never really had much of a chance to touch upon before. Part of this is because there are all these little interwoven parts that I needed to get in order, but also because I wanted to put out some shorter, fun headcanons before I began tackling some of my more serious and long-winded ones.

Most of my headcanons have some basis in outside sources, mostly Shakespeare, but there’s some history and mythology when it comes to some of the ones I have for certain ancestors. One of the many reasons why I find Veronaville so fascinating and why I write about it here is because of the variety of sources one can use in interpreting things. Sure, it can be convoluted sometimes, but it also helps in things like character and world-building, two things I greatly enjoy.

I hope to cover more of these bigger headcanons in the future with all of you. They’re not all this depressing, I promise.

#consort capp #veronaville #capp family #sims 2 #sims #cordelia capp #contessa capp #veronaville headcanons #headcanon humpday

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shesgottawatchit · 5 years

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Eve’s Bayou (1997), dir. Kasi Lemmons

The 1990’s saw a transition in African American filmmaking when Black Female Directors started to emerge in the industry. One Director in particular, Kasi Lemmons, rose to critical acclaim with her directorial debut Eve’s Bayou (1997) which met to extremely positive reviews and remains an important and influential text concerning themes of race and black feminist ideologies.

When examining feminist texts within African American Cinema, it is crucial to study the representations of Black Womanhood throughout the history of Black filmmaking, especially texts derived from female directors. Early representations portray the black female through the use of stereotypes (discussed previously) in the form of the Mammy, the Mulatto, the Jezebel or Sapphire. The black female identity is often linked to the body, presented as exotically intriguing or erotic; she is hyper-sexualised which contrasts the more passive white female character. Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou manages to connect these ideologies of Black Womanhood, while simultaneously subverting them to approach such concepts on a feminist level, discussing the mistreatment and misrepresentations of Black Womanhood on the big screen.

Born February 24, 1961 in St. Louis, Missouri US, Kasi Lemmons made her acting debut in television movie 11th victim (1979). She went on to star in Hollywood hits such as Spike Lee’s School Daze (1988) and Academy Award winning The Silence of the Lambs(1991). In 1997, she emerged in the industry when she wrote and directed her first feature length film Eve’s Bayou, starring renowned actor Samuel L. Jackson and upcoming actresses Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Meagan Good. Eve’s Bayou centralised on Black family life, narrated through the main character Eve, the youngest daughter of the Batiste family. Bayou delivers themes of adultery, sensual eroticism, supernaturalism and witch craft, all of which are tied together in black ancestry and history; depicting the more social and family oriented problems faced by middle class Blacks, situated in 1960’s Louisiana.

Eve’s Bayou

Lemmons’s opening party scene immediately sets up an idealised Black middle class life and emphasises the centrality of Bayou’s female led cast. Matty Mereaux is dancing with her husband Lenny Mereaux, close up shots of him groping her buttocks are shown; her body parts are immediately fetishized. Moments later she dances seductively with Roz’s husband Louis Batiste; she pulls up her dress to reveal her stockings and places her head around Louis’s groin area. This sultry depiction of Matty’s character becomes problematic when applying Laura Mulvey’s work: Visual and Other Pleasures of ‘The Male Gaze’ to the text. Here, Matty is seemingly objectified by the male viewer to be offered as none other than a placement of sexual desire for the male viewer. However, Bell hooks, a pioneer of her work on Black spectatorship, in particular Black female spectatorship, challenges and attempts to deconstruct Mulvey’s theory of ‘the gaze’ stating Black audiences can “both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see”. Black female spectators have thus since been able to adopt anoppositional gaze, placing white womanhood in the eye of the phallocentric gaze, enabling them to not “identify with either the victim or the perpetrator” (hooks, 1992)

Not only does this opening scene construct themes of erotica and woman as objectified beings. Lemmons’s overall set up, choreography and mise-en-scene is a huge movement away from previous African American depictions, seen in early 20th century texts. Here, the Batiste family, are portrayed as a well-mannered, well-spoken middle class family, with lavish clothing and a large country home. A huge contrast to the savage and uncivilised representations of tribal African Americans portrayed in early Black Cinema. As the majority of the cast is formed of Black actors and actresses, this idyllic family unit provides the ability for white audiences to identify more closely with Lemmons’s characters.

“the representation of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego of the male hero stands in stark opposition to the distorted image of the passive and powerless female character”

Laura Mulvey, 1975/1989, p. 354

Mulvey theorises that male characters play a dominant, powerful role within the narration, while the female characters must submit to a more passive, powerless position in cinema. Mulvey argues that the audience adopt ‘the gaze’ as we constantly view texts through the dominated male lens of the industry, although “the power of the gaze is not invested in all men, but in White men, and the object of the gaze is not all women, but White women” (Hollinger, 2012, p. 194).

Roz comforts her three children after Mozelle’s vision of a child being hit

One way Lemmons subverts this idea is to centralise her female characters. Eve, the youngest daughter of the Batiste family and her adolescent sister Cicely play a vital role in the progression of the narrative and it is they who hold the power over there adulterous Father Louis. Alongside their Mother Roz and Aunt Mozelle, together provide a primary example of female solidarity. Mother Roz is shown to empower the family unit, unlike Louis, whose Fatherly absence only heightens Roz’s empowered status. hooks states that “once black folk had gained greater access to jobs, revolutionary feminism was dismissed by mainstream reformist feminism when women, primarily well-educated white women with class privilege, began to achieve equal access to class power with their male counterparts” (2000, p. 101). Black women and black feminist ideologies were pushed aside once White females started to benefit from feminist movements – “working class white females were more visible than black females of all class in feminist movement”. However Black women were the voice of experience, “they knew what it was like to move from the bottom up” (hooks, 2000, pp. 103-104).

White women primarily benefited economically from the reformist feminist gains in the workforce, “it simply reaffirmed that feminism was a white woman thing”

bell hooks, 2000, p. 107

Although she is subject to notions of patriarchy, (she stays home while Louis works to keep their home) this is quickly dismissed by the audience due to Louis’s controversial actions of adultery against his wife. His affair with Matty (stereotyped as the Jezebel) interwoven in the plot, highlights mistreated stereotypes of Black Woman.

Cicely is slapped by her Father after she attempt to kiss him

Although these women initially appear empowered in Bayou,it is needless to say that Lemmons still intersects themes and ideas already imposed on black women in film. Firstly Eve adopts the role of the maid, who does the family chores and cleans the house; several of her costumes reflect this and she is even seen with a feather duster cleaning. Alongside this, Matty is presented as the whore, who endeavours in a relationship with Louis. Despite the period setting, for such a contemporary text, these representations still manage to surface in contemporary Black Cinema as a constant reminder of the painful history of Black colonisation and slavery in early 20th century America. Another character devise that Lemmons utilises to explore Black history and the mistreatment of female slaves is through character Cicely, who we believe is abused by her Father. It is not until the end of the film that we are told it is her who instigated an incestuous relationship with her Father. “The elusive qualities of truth are given attention in the film… Lemmons provides two sequences of the same event, each bearing the narration by a different character… both Eve and the audience have to deal with two versions of a truth that each character professes” (Donalson, 2003, p. 190) From her actions, she is muted throughout the film; powerless and unable to reveal what really happened. Cicely’s powerless state can be seen as symbolic of the mass rape that occurred on plantations to multiple slaves across America. In narrative form, this becomes complex due to Cicely’s initial confession and the film’s final twist. Either way, the audience is still partial to the implied rape of an adolescent by her Father. The final shot we see of her as she leaves the Batiste family home is her signalling to Eve to keep quiet. This can be seen to parallel the voiceless African American Slaves, especially the abused woman who could not fight for their rights as slaves, let alone their civil rights amongst a prominent patriarchal society.

#subjects #creators

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lightoftruth · 4 years

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The same folks to bring you "Abrahamism"—the idea that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are intricately connected—have narrowed their sights on promoting Mary, the mother of Christ, as "a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman," in the words of Catholic priest Fr. Gian Matteo of the Pontifical International Marian Academy. In a ten-week webinar series titled "Mary, a model for faith and life for Christianity and Islam," the academy will seek to present Mary as a bridge between the two religions.This may be easier said than done — at least for those still interested in facts. For starters, the claim that Mary was a "Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman" is only two-thirds true: yes, she was a Jew by race and background; and yes, she was a Christian in that she literally birthed Christ(ianity); but she was most certainly not a Muslim — a term and religion that came into being 600 years after Mary died.Worse, far from being the Eternal Virgin, as she is for 1.5 billion Christians of the Catholic and Orthodox variety, Islam presents Mary, the Mother of Christ, as "married" to and "copulating" with Muhammad in paradise — a depiction that would seem to sever rather than build "bridges."In a hadith that was deemed reliable enough to be included in the renowned Ibn Kathir's corpus, Muhammad declared that "Allah will wed me in paradise to Mary, Daughter of Imran," whom Muslims identify with Jesus's mother. (Note: The Arabic word for "marriage" (نكاح, or nikah) denotes "legal sexual relations," connotes the "F" word, and is wholly devoid of Western, "romantic," or Platonic connotations.)Nor is this just some random, obscure hadith. None other than Dr. Salem Abdul Galil — previously deputy minister of Egypt's religious endowments for preaching — affirmed its canonicity in 2017 during a live televised Arabic-language program. Among other biblical women (Moses's sister and Pharaoh's wife), "our prophet Muhammad — prayers and be upon him — will be married to Mary in paradise," Galil said.If few Christians today know about this Islamic claim, medieval Christians living in Muslim-occupied nations were certainly aware of it. There, Muslims regularly threw this fantasy in the face of Catholic and Orthodox Christians who venerated Mary as the "Eternal Virgin." Thus, Eulogius of Cordoba, an indigenous Christian of Muslim-occupied Spain, once wrote, "I will not repeat the sacrilege which that impure dog [Muhammad] dared proffer about the Blessed Virgin, Queen of the World, holy mother of our venerable Lord and Savior. He claimed that in the next world he would deflower her."As usual, it was Eulogius's offensive words about Muhammad — and not the latter's offensive words about Mary and any number of other things — that had dire consequences: he, as well as many other Spanish Christians vociferously critical of Muhammad, were found guilty of speaking against Islam and publicly tortured and executed in "Golden Age" Cordoba in 859.One expects that all of these "inconvenient" facts will be quietly passed over during the Pontifical International Marian Academy's webinars. And if they are raised, no doubt Christians will somehow take the blame, as almost always happens in academic settings. As one example, after quoting Eulogius's aforementioned lament against Muhammad's claim of being married to Mary, John V. Tolan, a professor and member of Academia Europaea, denounced it as an "outrageous claim" of Eulogius's own "invention." He then railed against the martyr — not against his murderers or their prophet:Eulogius fabricates lies designed to shock his Christian reader. This way, even those elements of Islam that resemble Christianity (such as reverence of Jesus and his virgin mother) are deformed and blackened, so as to prevent the Christian from admiring anything about the Muslim other. The goal is to inspire hatred for the "oppressors[.]" ... Eulogius sets out to show that the Muslim is not a friend but a potential rapist of Christ's virgins. (Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, p.93)As already seen, however, it is Muhammad himself — not any "Christian polemicist" — who "fabricates lies designed to shock," namely that Mary will be his eternal concubine.This, incidentally, is the main problem the purveyors of Abrahamism fail to acknowledge: Islam does not treat biblical characters the way Christianity does.Christians accept the text of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, as it is. They do not add, take away, or distort the accounts of the patriarchs that Jews also rely on. Conversely, while also relying on the figures of the Old and New Testaments — primarily for the weight of antiquity and authority attached to their names — Islam completely recasts them with different attributes that reaffirm Muhammad's religion as the one true and final "revelation," as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, whose biblical accounts on these figures are then seen as "distorted" because they are different from Islam's later revisions.Far from creating "commonalities," it should be clear that such appropriation creates conflict. By way of analogy, imagine that you have a grandfather whom you are particularly fond of, and out of the blue, a stranger who never even met your grandfather says: "Hey, that's my grandfather!" Then — lest you think this stranger is somehow trying to become your friend — he adds: "And everything you thought you knew about grandpa is wrong! Only I have his true life story."Would that create a "bridge" between you and this stranger who is trying to appropriate and recast the image of your grandfather?

It is common knowledge that the genealogies contained in Matthew and Luke differ. Most conservative Bible commentators explain the difference by holding that Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1:1–16 is traced through Joseph’s line to show Jesus’ royal right to the Davidic throne; correspondingly, the genealogy in Luke 3:23–38 traces Jesus’ ancestry through Mary’s line. This means that Mary’s lineage is recorded in the Gospel of Luke. Mary’s lineage, as recorded by Luke, does not mention Mary, but that’s to be expected—including women’s names in genealogies was not standard practice. It begins this way: “[Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli” (Luke 3:23). This comment affirms the truth of Jesus’ virgin birth (see Luke 1:29–38). Joseph was a “son” of Heli by virtue of his marriage to Mary, who would have been the daughter of Heli (Matthew 1:16 lists Joseph’s biological father as Jacob). Some notable points in Mary’s lineage are that she was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Luke 3:34); she was specifically of the tribe of Judah (verse 33). She was also a descendant of Boaz (verse 32) and David (verse 31). Significantly, Luke traces Mary’s lineage all the way back to Adam (verse 38). This fits with Luke’s purpose as he wrote to Gentiles and emphasized that Jesus is the Son of God who came to save all people (cf. Luke 2:10–11). Another issue relating to Mary’s lineage is her relation to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Luke says that Mary was related to Elizabeth, who was in the tribe of Levi (Luke 1:5, 36). An argument sometimes put forward by those who deny the credentials of Christ is that, if Mary was Elizabeth’s “cousin,” then Mary must also have been a Levite. Some translations, such as the KJV, do state that Mary was the “cousin” of Elizabeth (Luke 1:36). However, the English word cousin does not have to imply a close relation, and other versions of the Bible translate the word as “relative” (NKJV, ESV, CSB, BSB). Even if Elizabeth and Mary were close relatives, it was still possible for them to be of different tribes, as women were identified with their father’s tribe, not their mother’s. Elizabeth’s father was a Levite, making her a Levite by birth, but her mother may have been of Judah. Conversely, Mary’s mother may have been a Levite and kin to Elizabeth’s family, while Mary’s father was of Judah. Luke’s genealogy shows that Heli, whom we assume to be Mary’s father, was a direct descendant of Judah, not Levi. In addition, the angel Gabriel affirmed Jesus’ Judean lineage, telling Mary that “he will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David” (Luke 1:32, NLT). David was of the tribe of Judah. Regardless of Mary’s specific lineage, that Jesus is a descendant of David and Judah is beyond doubt. Other Bible verses also point to the fact of Judah being the tribe of Jesus’ heritage, as the rightful Messiah and Savior of all (Hebrews 7:14; Revelation 5:5).

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