#We lack evidence.

[wishesofeternity]

"Stratonike evidently retained the Akkadian royal title used for her even after [her husband] Antiochos’ death, since the astronomical diary entry identifies her as šarratu, in logograms GAŠAN, which means “queen.” In earlier centuries under previous regimes this title could not be used of a royal woman unless she also ruled. As suggestive as this is, there is no direct corroborating evidence for Stratonike exercising rulership, unless we credit her influence with her children as a form of political dominance. The trope of the domineering dowager queen mother should be familiar enough from interpretations of other royal families throughout history. But the diary, normally fairly precise in noting royal family connections, does not call her “mother [or widow] of the king,” meaning that at least some people remembered Stratonike as a queenly figure on her own, without reference to male relatives. This is an interesting hint at how these royal women could carry out their duties so as to be regarded as individual rulers in their own right."

-Gillian Ramsey, "Apama and Stratonike: The first Seleukid basilissai," "The Routledge Companion to Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World" (edited by Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller)

[dkettchen]

cursed construction core hi vis bra that came to me in a dream

In the dream I saw it in the window display of a hardware/DIY/trade shop, implying it was meant to be a practical garment designed for actual female constructions workers in a Female Armour level missed-the-brief attempt at gender inclusion

The practical support from the visible underwire combined with the hi vis implying it’s not meant to be worn as an undergarment, I just-

I blame my binge-reading ND Stevenson’s gender comics talking abt masculinity and femininity incl the one abt Victoria’s Secret lingerie yesterday for this monstrosity x’D

[juniperleafdelivery]

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville's] piety as queen seems to have been broadly conventional for a fifteenth-century royal, encompassing pilgrimages, membership of various fraternities, a particular devotion to her name saint, notable generosity to the Carthusians, and the foundation of a chantry at Westminster after her son was born there. ['On other occasions she supported planned religious foundations in London, […] made generous gifts to Eton College, and petitioned the pope to extend the circumstances in which indulgences could be acquired by observing the feast of the Visitation']. One possible indicator of a more personal, and more sophisticated, thread in her piety is a book of Hours of the Guardian Angel which Sutton and Visser-Fuchs have argued was commissioned for her, very possibly at her request."

-J.L. Laynesmith, "Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight's Widow", "Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty"

[fideidefenswhore]

the downfall and execution of a tudor queen (2023) / the boleyns: a scandalous family (2021) / the king's pearl: henry viii and his daughter mary (2017), melita thomas / anne boleyn (tv miniseries 2021) / the mirror and the light (2024) / elizabeth (1998)

[astradyke]

okay hi i'm Back Here again general thoughts of my own :3

I - i think the board game is going to be a definite thing happening, possibly alongside or in lieu of a new merch drop, but i don't think it's going to be the big project. if we're going off of dan's later and a little bit after that or whatever strange thing he said, i could see this as being one of those two, alongside something bigger. i know someone said in someone's inbox (sorry horrid memory) that Relatable took on new copyrights so i think this is near definite

II - i could see how they're gearing up for a tour in the sense that we're in the d&p renaissance but i genuinely don't think they'll even start ramping up for a tour until at least next year. dan wrapped up WAD like a few months ago and we're so new into the consistent content gig that switching into the rhythm of a tour feels weird. that being said i think most likely, 2025/6 d&p tour that is (potentially) their last collab tour.

III - i think if DINOK is going to happen it's gonna be a book and i'm pretty confident on this? in which case i would actually genuinely read it; i love d&p so bear w even though this sounds like a haterism but i actually don't love their on stage scripted comedy sometimes so it would be a win for me if DINOK was a book (also think he's maybe hinted at this?)

IV - i think the odds of them doing a film/series of some kind is HIGHLY LIKELY and personally i would annihilate this i would be ripping at it with my teeth you understand me. i could see this mostly being some kind of fictional though or maybe half fictional half biopic (you know what i mean?) but i know these guys have got Creative Ideas and i think whether it's original concept they act, or them riffing off their own lives with something (kinda DINOK-esque), it'd be something they haven't really done before and would definitely qualify as like New Project

V - bonus: it takes two #2 before the end of june. i believe this. it might be the 29th it might be the 30th but i think it'll be pre-announcement, and i'm expecting announcement early july

tldr: merch + board game, then film or series; tour in 2025 or 2026

anyway! i yap more than daniel james howell sorry (i'm always saying this) but lmk thoughts if u have them!! especially about what the film/series might be because if u can't tell i'm kinda waffling lol idk what it might be

[edmundhoward]

new jane seymour fanfic just dropped!

where are the history books that call her a ‘sweet, docile angel’? name them.

[mekatrio]

still in disbelief over this post i saw cuz how do u play 4 whole games of ace attorney maybe more and not see the problem with the concept of "decisive evidence"........

[wishesofeternity]

"Antiochos’ and Stratonike’s activities in the eastern part of the [Seleukid] empire are largely shrouded in mystery, but, as Engels has argued, Antiochos was far from idle since he embarked on a large building programme and was active in securing the frontier. There is some evidence to suggest that his new bride accompanied him for much of this period. We can perhaps identify Stratonike’s presence with her new husband in the Upper Satrapies through the gold coinage minted in Susa and Baktria in c . 287. The two gold coin sets are of the same type, the obverse features the laureate head of Apollo facing right and the reverse features Artemis in an elephant biga facing left with the legend ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΕΛΕΥΚΟΥ in exergue.

Figure 1: Coin of Seleukos I from Baktria Depicting Apollo on the Obverse and Artemis with Elephant Biga on the Reverse (Houghton and Lorber 2002, SC I no. 163).

Figure 2: Coin of Seleukos I from Baktria Depicting Apollo on the Obverse and Artemis with Elephant Biga on the Reverse (Houghton and Lorber 2002, SC I no. 257).

The reverse image of Artemis in the elephant biga is within the same design type as a large range of other coinage issued by Seleukos I celebrating the success of his elephants and thus his eastern campaigns. The appearance of Artemis is however unique to these coin types. This suggests the emphasis on the close links between the twin gods, Artemis and Apollo, depicted on the obverse and reverse of this coinage . Since there appears to be as a close link between Apollo and Antiochos as there is between Zeus and Seleukos, the presence of Artemis could be seen as a symbol for Stratonike. This would create a series of parallels: Seleukos/Zeus, Antiochos/Apollo, and Stratonike/Artemis. The first two reflect what we see for these two kings at the list of priests of Seleukid kings in Seleukeia in Pieria . Additionally, it may be notable that the sister-wife ideology [...] appears to be evident later in the reign of Antiochos.

As all of the Apollo/Artemis cointypes were produced on high value gold coinage, this suggests that it was issued in order to commemorate a significant event. While the type was similar to other Seleukid coinage, the shift from Athena to Artemis was clearly discernible and unique. The arrival of the new joint-King and Queen in the region to take up residence would have been a suitable moment for the issuing of the new coin type. This advertisement of their new rule certainly falls in line with Seleukos’ wedding speech which confirmed their new roles."

-David Engels & Kyle Erickson, "Apama and Stratonike – Marriage and Legitimacy", "Seleukid Royal Women" (edited by Edited by Altay Coşkun and Alex McAuley). The pictures of the coins are screenshots from the book.

[bijoumikhawal]

RE: cultural appropriation primarily being about an economic state of affairs where white people make money off of other people, a related idea I've been contemplating but haven't been able to like. Finish writing about is the idea of cultural decontextualization, which is when a cultural majority (often but not always white people) engage with another culture in a manner that erases- and may simultaneously replicate- racist histories, and is more about creating false narratives than economics.

A personal example would be white people making clothes based off of Coptic Egyptian artifacts, especially while generically referring to them as "Roman" or arguing Coptic art does not exist, which denies Copts part of Coptic history while resurrecting the French Coptomania of the 1920s, and specifically Albert Gayet's actions of taking items from Coptic graves to the point where a model was dressed in a tunic and shown off (which is also terrible from an artifact preservation perspective- this tunic would've been at minimum, 1300 years old at the time).

[curseofdelos]

irritates me to no end that the only confirmation we have that Reyna is alloace is a random quote tweet that has since been deleted

[error-dream-was-found]

"okej takže rozbombardovali ste l'manhole ale bolo to vlani takže už ubehla premlčacia doba" c!sam is visibly shaking with pure unfiltered rage

Omgggg, presne 🤣

Možno by z toho bola malá pokutka za nejaké to ublíženie na zdraví ... stíhanie za exile arc sa už zastavili kvôli nedostatku dôkazov, L'manhole sa premlčí ... hej, vidím to kladne. Len s ublížením na zdraví by stále mohol mať problém ale myslím, že to sa zvládne. V podstate to nie je ublíženie na zdravý keď sa respawnli úplne ako nový no nie?

Takže suma sumorov náš klient is good to go

Predstav si čo by tu c!Quackity robil s tými novými úplne rozprávkovými premlčacími dobami na ekonomickú trestnú činnosť? 🤣 Normálne rovno do parlamentu by zapadol

Content: We are talking about this post, the police car looks a bit like those used in our country so we are wondering how c!Dream's arrest would go if he got arrested here. The limitation period is short af so he'd be fine.

What Llitchilitchi said is basically: Okay, so you blew up l'manhole but it's been a year ago so the limitation period is already over

[wonder-worker]

"The feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist being appointed as the day upon which the coronation of the king [Edward V] would take place without fail, all both hoped for and expected a season of prosperity for the kingdom."

-Excerpt from the Croyland Continuator / David Horspool, "Richard III: A Ruler and Reputation"

Even though Edward IV’s death was unexpected, after twelve years of peace there need not have been too much of a sense of foreboding about the succession. The great dynastic wound from which the Wars of the Roses had grown had not so much been healed as cauterized by the extinction of the House of Lancaster. There was no rush for London, as had happened in earlier, disputed successions. The royal party didn’t set out from Ludlow for ten days after hearing the news of Edward IV’s death, while Richard took his time, too. And the new king had [his mother the dowager queen and] two uncles to support him: his mother’s brother, the sophisticated, cultured, highly experienced Earl Rivers; and his father’s, the loyal and reliable Duke of Gloucester, to whom Edward IV had entrusted unprecedented power and vital military command.

... [Richard of Gloucester] had achieved his goal by a mixture of luck and ruthlessness, and if he made it appear, or even believed himself, that destiny played a part, this only made him a man in step with his times. Modern historians have no time for destiny, but sometimes the more ‘structuralist’ interpretations of the events surrounding the usurpation can come close to it. When we read that ‘the chances of preserving an unchallenged succession were . . . weakened by the estrangement of many of the rank-and-file nobility from . . . high politics, which was partly a consequence of the Wars of the Roses and partly of Edward IV’s own policies’, it is hard not to conclude that an unforeseeable turn of events is being recast as a predictable one. But without one overriding factor – the actions of Richard, Duke of Gloucester after he took the decision to make himself King Richard III – none of this could have happened. That is, when the same author concedes ‘Nor can we discount Richard’s own forceful character’, he is pitching it rather low*.

Edward IV had not left behind a factional fault line waiting to be shaken apart. Richard of Gloucester’s decision to usurp was a political earthquake that could not have been forecast on 9 April, when Edward died. After all, Simon Stallworth did not even anticipate it on 21 June, the day before Richard went public. We should be wary of allowing hindsight to give us more clairvoyance than the well-informed contemporary who had no idea ‘what schall happyne’. This is not to argue that Richard’s will alone allowed him to take the Crown. Clearly, the circumstances of a minority, the existence of powerful magnates with access to private forces, and the reasonably recent examples of resorts to violence and deposition of kings, made Richard’s path a more conceivable one. But Richard’s own tactics, his arrest of Rivers, Vaughan and Grey, the rounding up of Hastings and the bishops, relied on surprise. If men as close as these to the workings of high politics at a delicate juncture had no inkling of what might happen, the least historians can do is to reflect that uncertainty [...].

(*The author who Horspool is referencing and disagreeing with is Charles Ross)

[fideidefenswhore]

His 'merciful inclination and princely heart' meant he was always ready to 'take pity and compassion on all offenders repentantly crying'. In the case of his daughter, since she was, 'frail, inconstant and easy to be persuaded,' he would be glad to remit some of his displeasure.

The King’s Pearl: Henry VIII & His Daughter Mary, Melita Thomas

[unproduciblesmackdown]

haven't read through it start to finish word by word but this Available For Perusal pdf from 2021 seems to include the full script for bat boy the musical & a bunch of further details, scene by scene props lists, vocal ranges, sheet music! bat boy the musical our beloved....

(underwhelmingly [no title displayed] by virtue of its being a pdf but it's there! in 164 pages no less)

[ojirocardigansniper]

oh i needed this so bad right now forreal. im now two in a row for 'terra ignota acknowledgements that made me cry' (perhaps the stars got me so bad). like.

five and a half years after first encountering the series that would become most formative to you, and a year and change after finishing it, you come back to the first book, and the author who gave you so much, stranger to stranger, tells you that for years she wanted to build it for you so desperately it hurt, it drew tears. and you're reading this 24 hours after a good cry about your own crisis of creative faith and it's like oh. creativity is just like that. we are all experiencing pain in pursuit of our dearest makings and it does not preclude the making. it is the experience.

and of course many people have said this before, over millennia, it's a human commonality. But you needed to hear this specifically from someone whose work you've spent a lot of time with. you needed to be able to connect the joy and the depth of feeling with that work, to the struggle it took to exist and come to you. your love comes easily to finished products and you struggle to love your own work while it is still a process. but all work was once a process, and from its creator's viewpoint even the most polished piece is still just a step of the capital-p Process of living as a person who tries to make things. and you need to hear that. you need it more often than you get it. so you're glad every rare time you get it.