#King Henry VI Part II

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

This weekend we return to The works of Mr. William Shakespear: in ten volumes with the fifth volume published in 1728 by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and Dr. George Sewell (d. 1726) for Jacob Tonson. Volume Five is made up of King Henry VI Part I, King Henry VI Part II, King Henry VI Part III, and King Richard III. The four plays create a tetralogy that covers the entire saga of the Wars of the Roses, a series of 15th century civil wars fought to determine control of the English throne.  

King Henry VI Part I enacts the loss of England’s French territories and the political momentum spurring on the Wars of the Roses. Part II delves into King Henry’s failings and the rise of the Duke of York. Part III documents the chaos and horror of war and contains one of the longest soliloquies in all of Shakespeare. The volume ends with King Richard III depicting the violent rise and short reign of King Richard III.  

Like Rowe’s earlier collection, scene divisions, stage directions, dramatis personae, and full-page engravings by either French artist Louis Du Guernier (1677-1716) or Englishman Paul Fourdrinier (1698-1758) precede each play.  

Pope’s editions of Shakespeare were the first attempted to collate all previous publications. He consulted twenty-seven early quartos restoring passages that had been out of print for almost a century while simultaneously removing about 1,560 lines of material that didn’t appeal to him. Some of those lines were degraded to the bottom of the page with his other editorial notes.  

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[mrs-starkgaryen]

Favourite Shakespeare's Histories

After my other poll, I am going to be specific. There shall be a battle of the favourites!!

For the love of Shakespeare, please reblog for a better analysis

[gwydpolls]

Shakespeare Genre Battle: Histories

I'm doing all of them. Don't worry if yours isn't in this poll.

I am including some things with disputed authorship, collaborations, and apocrypha just because.

[une-sanz-pluis]

I remember you saying that Margaret of Anjou only gained sympathy from historians in the 20th century, and even during the Tudor dynasty, they were still smearing her.

I have definitely said that, borrowing from a comment made by Katherine J. Lewis on this podcast where she talked about how efforts to canonise Henry VI and cast him as the Tudors' saintly ancestor and benefactor resulted in Margaret needing to be absorb the sins of his regime. Stories like Margaret's involvement in the plot against "Good Duke Humphrey" and her affair with the Duke of Suffolk only emerged in the Tudor era and culminated in Shakespeare's depiction of her in his Wars of the Roses plays (Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III). Shakespeare's version has long shaped the "standard" view of Margaret but the moves to discount his take on the Wars of the Roses have never resulted in a reassessment of Margaret's character. His plays remains the most obvious sources for many of Margaret's "evil deeds" despite no historical precedent for them? For example, Margaret was never at the Battle of Wakefield but she's usually depicted as jubilantly ordering the heaping of indignities on Richard, Duke of York's corpse.

In brief: Margaret has served and still serves as the sin-eater for Henry VI and the Lancastrians (and, by extensions, the Beauforts and Tudors).

[irate-iguana]

The promised sequel to my previous post:

If anyone wants to help me come up with drag names for these characters, please feel free!

[orangerosebush]

Recently, I did a re-read of the AF series, and I am working through some thoughts I have on the Fowls and what allowed them to maintain power -- especially in the sense of being landed -- in Ireland after arriving during the Norman conquest in the 12th century.

Colfer establishes that Hugo de Folé and Virgil Butler arrived in Ireland during the first Norman crusades in the 12th century (1169).

“The first record of this unusual arrangement [between the Fowls and Butlers] was when Virgil Butler had been contracted as servant, bodyguard, and cook to Lord Hugo de Folé for one of the first great Norman crusades.” From: Artemis Fowl. By Eoin Colfer.

At once, these origins of the Fowls would make them ambiguously part of the Old English, a term from the modern period (post-1600) used to describe the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman conquerors who largely inhabited the Pale (Dublin and surrounding areas) and surrounding towns. Hugo de Folé and Virgil Butler would have likely been Catholic.

However, the origins of Fowl Manor complicate this.

The original Fowl castle had been built by Aodhán Fowl in the fifteenth century overlooking low-lying country on all sides. A tactic borrowed from the Normans. From: The Arctic Incident. By Eoin Colfer

In the 15th (c. 1401-1500) century, Aodhán Fowl acquired land for Fowl Manor in the Pale (Dublin and its surrounding areas); the estate has remained in the Fowls' possession ever since, which is important to note.

The Fowls' historical proximity to the Pale likely was what allowed them to maintain power over the centuries.

Between the 12th and 16th centuries, the Lordship of Ireland (1177-1542) placed swaths of Ireland under the control of Anglo-Norman lords loyal to the King of England.

However, by the 14th century (1300s), English rule of Ireland beyond the Pale (Dublin and its surrounding areas) was weakening. Beyond the Pale, (Catholic) Hiberno-Norman lords' fiefdoms had a degree of independence from the English, often adopting elements of Gaelic language and culture.

This changes around the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation and the Tudor conquest of Ireland. In 1536, Henry VIII of England decided to reconquer Ireland and bring it under crown control. Charles II, Henry VII's son, made the re-established Church of England even more explicitly Protestant.

Between the 16th and 17th centuries (c.1550s-1620s), Irish land was transferred to a new wave of (Protestant) settlers from Great Britain and Scotland to strengthen the Crown's weakening control over Ireland and Anglicize (and thus "civilize") the island; the land transfer was facilitated through the creation of plantations, such as the plantation of Ulster.

The Old English, which would have included descendants of de Folé and Virgil Butler, were supplanted by the New English, the Protestant landowners introduced by the Tudors in a number of ventures at plantations.

It is important to note the historical nuance that:

There was no equivalent in Ireland to the English Test Act of 1672, and there were plenty of precedents for exemptions to the Act of Supremacy. The legal position of Irish Catholics was, in many practical respects, better than that of English Catholics; many fines and penalties fell into abeyance under Charles [II], and the Catholic hierarchy co-operated openly with the Dublin administration. From James's [James VI and I] accession, the Church's position was obviously improved; priests emerged into the public eye and were allowed salaries, though they were not as yet endowed. Protestant superiority remained, in many areas, axiomatic; Catholics continued to occupy a curiously edgy position of formal inferiority combined with tacit toleration. But the ambiguities of their situation reflected the logic of local conditions just as much as the shifts in central policy. [...] But the 'Test clause in the 1704 [Popery] Act, obliging holders of public office to take sacraments according to the usage of the Church of Ireland, gradually excluded Presbyterians from town corporations even in Ulster. Despite the regium donum and the Toleration Act, their equivocal relationship with the civil power remained, and would provide a key theme in the radicalization of the Irish political world after 1780, when the threat of Catholic disaffection apparently receded. [From: Modern Ireland, 1600–1972. By R.F. Foster]

Still, the Popery Act would have had consequences for the historical Fowls and Butlers as Old English families. Beyond the Test clause in the Popery Act, it also limited Catholics' ability to buy/lease land, as well as limited inheritance from a Catholic to be by gavelkind i.e., divided equally, and thus shrinking with each generation, the estate between all sons, rather than according to Primogeniture.

It begs the question of how Fowl Manor remained in the hands of the family, rather than becoming the estate of a member of the New English.

As anti-Catholic sentiment was largely grounded in the political context of loyalty to the Crown (as opposed to the Pope), certain members of the Old English gentry could have (and did!) find ways to join the wave of the Protestant Ascendancy.

"The Anglo-Ireland of the day in fact encompassed sizable middle and lower classes -- a heterogeneity that Foster finds "exemplified by that quintessential Ascendancy institution, Trinity College: defined by Anglicanism but containing sons of peers, of shoemakers, of distillers, of butchers, of surgeons, and of builders" (Foster 1989, 173). And not all the "Anglo-Irish" were, strictly speaking, "Anglo." Early in Bowen's Court, Bowen's historical account of her family's Cork home, we learn that "Bowen" derives from the Welsh "ab Owen" or "ap Owen" (Bowen 1942a, 33). Other Anglo-Irish men and women traced their ancestry to the Old English and to Catholics who converted to Protestantism in order to reap the accompanying social, political and material rewards. Violet Martin (better known as Martin Ross) descended from the Old English Martins of Ross, who had owned land in Galway and had converted to Protestantism in the eighteenth century (McMahon 1968, 123). As Thomas Flanagan concludes, "there were many ways of being Anglo-Irish" (Flanagan 1966, 59). So what, then, defined Anglo-Irishness? In [R.F. ] Foster's view, it was Anglicanism. Anglicanism "defined a social elite, professional as well as landed, whose descent could be Norman, Old English, Cromwellian or even (in a very few cases) ancient Gaelic. Anglicanism conferred exclusivity, in Ireland as in contemporary England; and exclusivity defined the [Protestant] Ascendancy, not ethnic origin" From: An Anarchy in the Mind And in the Heart: Narrating Anglo-Ireland. By Ellen M. Wolff

And what do we find out in the first book of Artemis Fowl?

"Beside [Angeline] was a facsimile of [Artemis'] father, constructed from the morning suit he'd worn on that glorious day in Christchurch Cathedral fourteen years ago." From: Artemis Fowl. By Eoin Colfer

Christchurch Cathedral (in Dublin) is Anglican in denomination!

I just think it is so cool that across a few sentences from Artemis Fowl and The Arctic Incident, it is possible to situate the Fowl family within a semi-realistic history of Ireland.

[ginandoldlace]

HRH The Duke of Kent is the only surviving royal to have walked in the funeral processions for his much loved cousin, Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and amazing uncle, His Late Majesty King George VI.

The Duke of Kent, 16, joined with Prince Philip (The Duke of Edinburgh), Prince Henry (The Duke of Gloucester), The Duke of Windsor (King Edward VIII), and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, took part in the funeral procession of King George VI on February 15, 1952.

The Duke of Kent, Patron, the Dresden Trust, 89, visited the restored Church, Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany on February 13, 2025, to mark the 80th anniversary of the destruction of Dresden in the Second World War.

[aquitainequeen]

Since John Blackthorne is canonically a fan of the theatre, I decided to find out what he could realistically quote when describing the London theatrical scene to Mariko or Toranaga.

Regrettably he wouldn't be able to reference either King Lear or Macbeth, since they're dated to around 1605-06, so no Ran/Throne of Blood/Akira Kurosawa nods. Alas.

Also, no Henry V (1599), Julius Caesar (1599) or Hamlet (1600-1602) as he's been away from England for about two years. However, he could feasibly quote from Henry VI Parts I, II and III, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Richard II and maybe Henry IV Parts I and II, depending on when he left to go to sea, as they're all dated up to 1598. (Plus, as @fairy-anon-godmother noted, and most fittingly for how things currently stand between he and Mariko, Romeo and Juliet!!!)

He'd also be able to quote Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (1592-93). I bet he'd love that play, purely because the main character punches the pope.

[wonder-worker]

the two skeletons may reveal the death of the Princes? 👀

I'm not super familiar with this topic, tbh. From what I can understand, it's possible, but it's equally possible that DNA testing may not actually prove or reveal anything regarding the Princes.

Context: In 1674, workmen found two skeletons in a wooden box in the Tower of London, where they had been buried 10 feet under the staircase leading to the chapel of the White Tower. Charles II ordered the bones to be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in 1678, and a Latin inscription written at that time translates to: "Here lie the relics of Edward V, King of England, and Richard, Duke of York". 

In 1933, the bones were examined by Lawrence Tanner, William Wright and George Northcroft, who concluded that they belonged to two children around the correct ages for the Princes, and that one skull showed evidence of death by suffocation. No further scientific examination was conducted, although many believe that re-examination with improved techniques and DNA sampling could provide a more accurate analysis. However, to disinter a body from the Abbey, permission has to be granted from the reigning monarch (ew), which has not been granted as of yet.

Many members of the R3 Society hope that the bones will be proved not to be the Princes, because they feel like it will vindicate Richard due to the absence of explicit, tangible evidence of their deaths. Those who believe Richard III was guilty (he was) believe that if the bodies were the Princes, it would prove they were murdered. If examinations reveal that were the Princes, and reveal manner of death was violent, then yes, the latter seems reasonable. But we don’t know what will will show up in the results - if they are ever allowed - and it's entirely possible it won't matter to the current case.

To quote @seethemflying from this post:

“Most scholars agree it will not actually prove anything at all. If the bones are the princes, it just proves that they died in the Tower, not who murdered them. If the bones are not the princes, it just means these bones belong to someone else. The Tower of London is old, and was built on part of Londinium's Roman wall. Pre-medieval and even Roman human remains have been found on the site before, it wouldn't be a surprise if these bones dated to any point before the 17th century […] Whether the bones are or are not the princes can therefore do little to answer the central questions about who killed these little boys.”

For example, there are a few sources - both contemporary and post-contemporary - that suggest water may be involved in the Princes' "disappearance" (murder). We don't know the exact circumstances, but if the Princes were disposed off in such a manner, we cannot expect to ever find their bodies.

Ultimately, regardless of the identity of the two skeletons, the Princes were almost definitely were murdered, and Richard III was almost definitely the one who murdered them. We do not know it "for sure", the same way we do not know "for sure" if Arthur of Brittany, Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI were murdered (and how), but all of them almost definitely were and it’s simply disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It’s equally disingenuous to act as though all the above-mentioned cases were clear-cut examples of murder while the case of the Princes is somehow a more Complex and Confusing one which you have to choose your words more carefully over when it's....really, really not (see: the matter-of-fact way they talk about John and Arthur VS Richard and the Princes). Either you should analyze all these cases with the same level of assertion/uncertainty, or don't analyze them at all.

Also, contrary to the claims of Ricardians, who believe that nobody accused Richard III until the Tudors, there are a range of independent contemporary sources who firmly believed he killed his nephews. It also makes zero sense for Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York and Edward IV's supporters, who were the ones to raise Henry Tudor as an active claimant to challenge Richard III in the first place, to endorse Henry in any way if they thought that Edward V or Richwrd of Shrewsbury might still be alive. The fact that they did can only mean that they knew/believed that the Princes were dead (though I think there was considerable ambiguity on the exact circumstances behind those deaths). It's simply illogical to pretend otherwise.

[georgescitadel]

Historical figures that have served as inspiration for the women in ASOIAF - George R.R. Martin interview

Interviewer: What women through history have inspired and helped you on your way to creating these female characters that we love?

George: There are some very interesting queens in both English and French history who have, at least partially, inspired the characters in Game of Thrones. Many people have observed that Game of Thrones is based, in part, on the Wars of the Roses and that is certainly true, although I don't do a one-for-one translation. If you go and say “This character is based on that character” you're gonna be partly right, but also partly wrong, because I like to mix and match and throw a few twists, making the characters my own. Certainly, the wife of Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, was one of the most interesting queens in English history. She was the mother of the princes in the tower and married secretly. She was a Lancastrian, but she married the Yorkist claimant secretly and that produced all sorts of trouble, and she was in the middle of all that stuff with Richard III. She was fascinating! On the other side, the Lancastrian queen, Margaret of Anjou: she was pretty amazing and definitely hardcore! She was married to the idiot king, Henry VI, and she basically had to command her side after some of the leading Lancastrian supporters were killed in the early parts of the war. If you go back a hundred years before, Isabella, the wife of king Edward II, the She-Wolf of France, she was a pretty amazing one too. She basically got rid of her husband, imprisoned him, and allegedly had him killed by having a hot poker thrust up his ass while he was in captivity and then she and her lover took over and ran the kingdom until her son Edward III rose up against his own mother and imprisoned her. All of this stuff, I play with it, but I can't claim to really have invented any of it. There are some things in history that are just as violent and twisted and bizarre and amazing as anything in my books.

- George R.R. Martin, Supanova Expo

[goodqueenaly]

Do you think Gaemon Palehair really was Aegon II's bastard, or that at least Aegon III believed he was?

Maybe? On a purely practical level, at least, Gaemon being the son of the future King Aegon II does not seem impossible. Aegon the Elder was certainly living in King’s Landing at the time Gaemon was conceived, and if Gaemon’s mother was herself already living in King’s Landing (and there is no indication that she and Gaemon settled in King's Landing after the latter's birth), there was a possibility of the two meeting and conceiving a son. Even if Gaemon was not necessarily that “boy [Aegon fathered] on a girl whose maidenhood [Aegon] won at auction on the Street of Silk”, according to Mushroom’s gossipy report, this alleged patronage in the sex workers of King’s Landing on Aegon’s part may provide an explanation as to how Aegon the Elder could have fathered Gaemon. Gaemon’s pale hair, of course, could easily be read as an inheritance from his father or other Targaryen antecedents: while we don’t have full details on Aegon’s appearance, GRRM’s report that Aegon bore “a strong resemblance to his father” (who himself had a “silver-gold mustache”) certainly suggests that Aegon also had the pale hair common to Valyrian descendants. Too, it may be notable that unlike the would-be king Trystane Trufyre or the Shepherd, Gaemon was pardoned and made a ward of the crown - a rare act of mercy in the twilight of Aegon II’s reign which perhaps indicates some personal investment on the part of the king in Gaemon’s well-being.

At the same time, I would not say Gaemon being Aegon II’s son is a foregone conclusion. While we should certainly consider the fact that the information came under torture, Essie’s admission that Gaemon’s biological father was a Lysene oarsman is at least a possible explanation for both Gaemon’s existence and his pale hair. Likewise, we have no indication that Aegon II thought particularly fondly of the boy; indeed, unlike with Trystane (where it was Aegon himself who knighted the would-be squire king before the latter was executed), Aegon doesn’t seem to have interacted with Gaemon at all, and the passive voice used by Gyldayn to describe Gaemon’s pardon makes it impossible to tell who directed that decision. (Too, Borros Baratheon’s rough treatment of Gaemon at the time of his capture - “carried back to the Red Keep slung over the back of a horse, chained and weeping” - hardly suggests that he knew, or had been instructed to know, that he was dealing with a king’s son.) There is in fact some real-world historical precedent from which GRRM may be drawing for showing mercy on such a figure: when young Lambert Simnel, probably about 10 years old, was proclaimed “King Edward VI” as the figurehead of a failed Yorkist rebellion against King Henry VII, the first Tudor king showed the boy mercy, not only not executing him but actually giving him a position at court (first in the royal kitchens, and eventually as a court falconer). Nor do I read Aegon III’s affection for Gaemon as indicating some secret knowledge of the latter’s supposed royal lineage: not only would Aegon III himself have had no reason to know who Gaemon’s biological father was, but Gyldayn makes it pretty explicit that Aegon’s care for Gaemon came as a direct result of the young king’s sorrow over the (supposed) loss of his own younger brother, Viserys (and to that point, Gyldayn notes that after “Prince Viserys … became King Aegon’s constant companion” following his return, “Gaemon Palehair was cast aside and forgotten”).

Ultimately, I would say the answer doesn’t really matter, both because we’ll probably never get the objective truth on the matter and because the narrative does not really dwell on the question. Gyldayn merely refers to Gaemon as “supposedly a bastard of the missing King Aegon II” and later as a “bastard born of a whore” (and specifically used the last designation to explain why Gaemon “counted for little in the court”); there is, so far as we know, no investigation into Gaemon’s paternal origins, no allusions to his paternity (as compared to, say, Alyn Velaryon, where Willis Fell openly identified him as having “a snake for a sire”), no hints by anyone save his mother as to who might have fathered him. As GRRM himself once noted, “[w]ithout blood tests or DNA, establishing paternity was a lot more hit and miss”, and I think that’s probably the case with Gaemon. Young Gaemon's potential blood connection to Aegon II matters only in the sense that his mother seized upon it (or the idea of it) to present him as a king; if he might have otherwise grown up in obscurity as one of the many lowborn children of King’s Landing, Gaemon was instead, thanks to that claim, subjected to a roller coaster of pseudo-royalty, violent upheaval, courtly semi-protection, and ultimately horrific murder.

[macbooth]

i realise i never actually posted my shakespeare gay sex powerpoint here so i’m gonna share the rankings thumbsupemoji

here’s how much each shakespeare play would get improved by gay sex but WITHOUT the explanations. 

10/10 (the winners)

- love’s labour’s lost - romeo and juliet - a midsummer night’s dream - hamlet - twelfth night - troilus and cressida - coriolanus - the tempest

9/10

- henry vi part 3 - the merchant of venice - julius caesar - pericles, prince of tyre

8/10

- titus andronicus - comedy of errors  - henry iv part 1

7/10

- the taming of the shrew - richard ii (this is only because i saw a boring production once. im sure its actually great gay) - henry iv part 2 - henry v - king lear - antony and cleopatra - cymbeline

6/10

- henry vi part 2 - richard iii - king john - macbeth

5/10

- the merry wives of windsor - as you like it - henry viii

4/10 

- henry vi part 1

3/10

- the two gentlemen of verona - othello (im standing by this one <3)

1/10 (there are no 2/10s)

- measure for measure - the winter’s tale

0/10

- the two noble kinsmen

-8/10

- all’s well that ends well

and an honourable mention to the much ado about nothing rank:

i am open for questions. godspeed

[scotianostra]

On February 28th 1261 Margaret of Scotland was born at Windsor Castle, England.

Margaret was the daughter of the hapless King Alexander III, who famously fell off a cliff at Kinghorn, her mother was Margaret of England, Margaret was a popular name back then. To differentiate her from others she is known as Margaret of Norway, not to be confused with her daughter, Margaret, yes another one, who we know as Maid of Norway, confused? It's okay I'll explain it all, because there is actually not a great deal else to tell as the medieval history is a bit scant of detail!

Alexander and Margaret were married on Christmas Day 1251, he was ten years old and she was eleven, for the early part of the marriage they were kept apart and Margaret grew up feeling very homesick, she wrote to her father, Henry III of England saying she felt she was being mistreated, Henry sent representatives north and to check on her wellbeing. It wasn't until the year 1260 Alexander travelled south to visit the English royals, it's not known how long Alexander stayed, but he was back home by November that year, leaving his Queen , who it was discovered was pregnant, to give birth at Windsor Castle in February 1261.

Henry had promised to return Queen Margaret and her child to Scotland by Easter Sunday, 24 April 1261, but in the end - perhaps because of complications or an illness after childbirth or the young queen's reluctance to leave her parents and her homeland - they remained in England until the end of May.

Inevitably, little is known of her childhood. Her brother, named after their father and the heir to the Scottish throne, was born on 21st January 1264, and after a very long gap, another brother, David, was born on 20th March 1273, their mother died two years later on February 16th 1275, a fact I should have picked up on a couple of days ago, but such are the troubles of keeping on top of medieval history dates!

Anyway back to the subject and enter the Scandinavians. King Magnus VI of Norway, whose father Haakon IV Alexander III had defeated at the battle of Largs in 1263, died on 9 May 1280, and within weeks Alexander had opened negotiations for Magnus's grandson and heir Erik II to marry Margaret. Erik was born sometime in 1268, so was at least seven years younger than Margaret and at the time of the wedding negotiations only eleven or twelve to her nineteen; despite his striking nickname of 'Priest-Hater', he seems to have grown up to be a rather mild and ineffectual young man.

A wee look at the "newspaper" of the day the Lanercost chronicle reports the negotiations:

"At this time the king of Norway died, leaving as successor his son called Magnus; who hearing that the king of Scotland had an amiable, beautiful and attractive daughter, a virgin, of suitable age for himself (being a handsome youth of about eighteen years) could not rest until a formal mission, divines as well as nobles, had been sent twice to obtain her as his spouse and consort on the throne." Margaret's feelings about marrying a boy a few years her junior are a matter for speculation, though she did send a letter (in French) to her "very dear uncle" Edward I sometime in 1280 - whether before or after the marriage negotiations is hard to say, as she didn't date the letter - telling him that she was "healthy and cheerful" (saine et haite) by God's mercy. She ended by wishing Edward "a thousand greetings," , and requested that he constantly inform her of his own health and his wishes towards her.

Yes I know the ages are a bit mixed up, but I'm doing my best here, and some of these Chroniclers sometimes got it wrong, it is generally accepted to be true in this case. Oh Margaret's brother, I should say, was Edward, "Longshanks", bogeyman to us Scots for a period of our history.

The wedding negotiations were completed on 25th July 1281, and Margaret sailed from Leith on 11 August with a huge dowry of 14,000 marks, arriving in Bergen on 15 August; among those accompanying her were the earl and countess of Menteith and the abbot of Balmerino. She was greeted in her new land with "demonstrations of great joy." Her wedding to thirteen-year-old Erik, and her coronation as queen of Norway, both took place in Bergen in August. A wedding hymn in Latin has fortuitously survived, the first stanza of which Marion Campbell translates as:

"From you has risen, o gentle Scotland, a light which gleaming Norway truly acknowledges, at whose transit you sigh deeply because your king's daughter is taken from you."

Little can be said about Margaret's rather brief tenure as queen of Norway, though she appears to have been very popular, and was said in her new country to be "she who made our king a man." She became pregnant in the summer of 1282, many speculate it would have been around Erik's fourteenth birthday, when he would have been of age to take his wife into the marital bed.

Tragedy struck in early 1283: Margaret of Scotland, queen of Norway, died on 9th April (or 28th February, her birthday, according to Lanercost), aged twenty-two, shortly after giving birth to a daughter. King Erik II was now a father and a widower at the age of only fourteen or fifteen. Their daughter was named Margaret after Margaret herself and her mother the queen of Scotland.

The Lanercost chronicler, who for some reason really had it in for poor Alexander III - who has always struck me as a very pleasant and likeable man, as well as a strong and excellent king - blames Margaret's death on her father and says that it came about "in order that God's long-suffering should by many afflictions soften to a proper degree of penitence the heart of the father through whose wrong-doing these things came to pass." He also blames the early deaths of Alexander's queen and his sons on Alexander's "sin."

The other early deaths are David, who died June 1281 aged just 9, and Alexander, Prince of Scotland, who died on 28th January 1284, aged around 20.

With King Alexander's fall over the cliff his granddaughter, Margaret, Maid of Norway became "Queen" of Scotland, although she was uncrowned.

There aren't many depictions of Margaret of Scotland, I did manage to find this 14th century manuscript illumination of King Edward I of England presiding over his Parliament. On his right is Alexander III, maybe Margaret is in the pic somewhere, but unnamed, or maybe not, it's the closest I could get. She is was buried in Christ Church in Bergen.

[thecharlestonroyalfamily]

So do you remember the royal consorts portraits going around royal simblr? Well inspired by @funkyllama, @warwickroyals, @thegrimalldis and @trentonsimblr I did my version of it but instead of it being just consorts this gallery also features some of Charleston's most notable rulers! Have a calming drink cause it's a long post!

King Henri & Queen Astrid [ruled from 1382 to 1401]. Founders and the first King and Queen of Charleston.

King Erik ‘the Bloodfist’ & Queen Sigrid [ruled from 1435 to 1448]. Successful war leaders who united the warring Northern Tribes and conquered parts of Nord and Rionnag. They were also both spellcasters.

Queen Sofia [ruled from 1448 to 1549]. The first female ruler of Charleston and also the youngest monarch to ever rule. Changed the succession law to equal. Had 3 husbands during her reign. Was a spellcaster like her parents. She also currently has the longest reign.

Queen Märtha [ruled from 1562 to 1576]. Second wife of King Fredrik. She was a Nordian princess that married Fredrik for political reasons, but the couple ended up actually falling in love. During her reign she convinced Fredrik to return taken territories back to Rionnag and Nord and established Nord as a minority language.

Queen Henrietta [ruled from 1662 to 1677]. First consort with a university education. Established laws for women's equality as well as criminalized marriages for anyone under the age of 15. She was also an excellent spymaster.

Queen Sylvia [ruled from 1732 to 1753]. A known patron of arts she helped funding the construction of Charleston's Opera House. Took over the crown after the death of her husband, King Gustav III and reigned until her death.

Queen Victoria I & Prince Consort Harald. [Ruled from 1834 to 1870]. Victoria I wrote several laws protecting children's rights into action, including work laws and the age of equal consent. Harald was one of the founding members of the Nordic Alliance and served as a representative there during it's first 3 years.

Queen Inga & Sir Arthur Johnson [Ruled from 1887 to 1935]. Queen Inga is the only ruler to have used a veto for their marriage. She took the crown after the death of her first husband King Gustav VI; who famously ordered the Spellcaster Purge. Sir Arthur was the last active duty royal knight, and an important character in stabilizing the nation after the purge and it's resulted conflicts.

King Carl-Gustav IV & Queen Arianne (pictured here as Crown Prince and Princess) [Ruled from 1935 to 1960]. First royal couple to have their wedding televised. Both were well known children's rights advocates and build multiple safe homes for kids around the world. Queen Arianne also founded the Children's Royal Library, a charity organization focusing on giving books to children and raising literacy rates.

King Daniel [Ruled from 1992 to 2004] & Queen Marissa [Ruled from 2004 to 2026]. During his rule Daniel added a third gender option to law and hosted multiple LGBT+ charity events. His wife Marissa continued his work after his passing and was a very vocal supporter of her grandson Henrik's relationship with Michael.

Queen Victoria II & Prince Consort Benjamin [Ruled from 2026 - 2036]. Victoria II abolished the law preventing heirs from marrying foreigners in 2034. She also was an accomplished military general and diplomat. Benjamin was a human rights advocate and an exceptional diplomat who's efforts in the field gained him several medals of recognition, the highest being the Nordic Union Cross of diplomacy.

King Henrik & Prince Consort Michael [Ruled from 2036 - ]. First same sex ruling couple. Henrik legalized spellcasters and set them protection laws. He's also the first spellcaster ruler since The Spellcaster Purge. Michael is a former competitive swimmer and nowadays a patron of Charleston's national swimming team. He served in the military during the Charleston-Salix war and earned the "Heart of Lion" -medal of courage for his actions.

[lovesjustachemical]

Amalgamations that pulled material from one or more plays can count toward seeing a production; use your judgement. If you've only seen one of these, vote for that. If you've seen multiple, but they're tied... I dunno, did you see a production twice, or does throwing in a taped version change things? There are already enough poll options here.