#abigail/1702

[do-you-know-this-play]

[history-of-fashion]

ab. 1702 Possibly Jonathan Richardson the Elder - Abigail Bayly, Lady Elton

(Clevedon Court)

[royalpain16]

A Brief History of Princess Diana’s Fiery Family

HADLEY HALL MEARES

JUNE 29, 2021 4:04 PM

According to Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles. Indeed, the role of the aristocratic family of Diana, Princess of Wales, for centuries has been that of royal disrupter. This legacy stretches to the 14th century, with their disputed ancestor Hugh Despenser’s alleged torrid affair with King Edward II and Despenser’s eventual brutal execution. Clever, charming, and fiery, much like Diana, her ancestors learned how to play the royal game—and then ripped up the rule book.

“Nearly 300 years on, my father would talk about him with an ashamed, resigned chuckle,” Charles, Earl Spencer, writes in The Spencers: A Personal History of an English Family of the mercurial family blackguard Robert Spencer (1641-1702). While the second earl would secure the Spencers’ status as political power players for centuries, he was also “cunning, supple [and] shameless” with “a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirt.”

Sunderland’s ascendancy began in the 1670s when he orchestrated King Charles II’s secret pact with England’s traditional enemy, France. Securing large payments from the French king and court for Charles II and himself, Sunderland was rewarded when he was appointed secretary of state.

After double-crossing Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, Sunderland cleverly insinuated himself with new King James II. He converted to Catholicism to appeal to the very Catholic king, and became one of James II’s closest advisers. But the king, though he valued the brilliant man’s diplomatic skills, was fully aware of Sunderland’s duplicity.

James II finally dismissed Sunderland from service in 1688, and he was later exiled. But in December of that year, James II was deposed by the Glorious Revolution, bringing his daughter Mary and her husband, William, Prince of Orange, (with whom Sunderland had conspired) to the throne.

Again in favor, he was rewarded with the post of Lord Chamberlain before retiring from public life in 1697. “Too much cannot be said of his talents,” one historian noted. “Nor too little of his principles.”

The Boss: Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough

The daughter of Parliamentarian Richard Jennings and his scandalous wife, Frances, the passionate, brilliant Sarah (1660-1744) started out as a maid of honor in the court of James II. She became the most powerful woman in England, through her magnetic control of the future Queen Anne, a comparative dullard who worshipped her and perhaps became her lover. (You may remember their relationship from the 2018 movie The Favourite, in which Rachel Weisz played Sarah.)

For Sarah, her friendship with Anne was a way to advance her family and her liberal Whig politics, which she shared with her equally powerful husband, the military hero the Duke of Marlborough. “I hated tyranny by nature,” she wrote in one version of her memoir, according to Ophelia Field’s The Favourite: The Life of Sarah Churchill. “I thought mankind was born free, & if Princes were ordained to make their subjects happy; so I had always in me an invincible aversion to slavery, & to flattery.”

In 1700, Sarah arranged the marriage of her distant relation Charles Spencer, the future Third Earl of Sunderland, with her favorite daughter, Anne. Over the next 44 years, she would shape the family fortunes—and gift them with their famed auburn-tinted locks.

According to The Favourite: The Life of Sarah Churchill, with Anne’s accession to the throne in 1702 Sarah reached the peak of her power, racking up virtually every important post in Queen Anne’s suite, dictating cabinet appointments, and encouraging the ire of satirists.

But cracks would soon begin to appear. Queen Anne was naturally inclined to support the royalist Tories and was encouraged in these leanings by a new favorite named Abigail. A vindictive Sarah became a master propagandist, leaking insinuations about their relationship to the press, and allegedly threatening to blackmail Anne over the contents of their highly charged correspondence.

Sarah was finally forced to vacate her royal apartments in 1711, but she was not down for the count. A brilliant businesswoman, she became the richest woman in England, according to Field, controlling her Spencer grandchildren with promises of money and power. Centuries before the modern Diana and Prince Charles wed, Sarah even attempted to marry her favorite granddaughter—Lady Diana Spencer—to the broke Frederick, Prince of Wales, with a promise of 100,000-pound dowry. The plan fell through.

But not all her grandchildren were willing to be manipulated by their formidable matriarch. Sarah claimed her equally tough granddaughter Anne “[deserved] to be burnt,” and she disinherited her grandson Charles, Fifth Earl of Sunderland, which prompted him to write her:

As for putting me out of your will…I neither expected or desired to be in it. I…assure Your Grace that this is the last time I shall ever trouble you by letter or conversation. I am Your Grace’s grandson, Sunderland.

Sarah’s letter back was brutal. “You end that you are my grandson. Which is indeed a very melancholy truth…had you not been my grandson, you would have been in as bad a condition as you deserve to be.” Fitting words from a woman immortalized by Alexander Pope thusly:

Sixty years the World has been her Trade, The wisest Fool much Time has ever made. From loveless youth to unrespected age, No Passion gratify’d except her Rage.

The Star: Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

From the start there was something special about Georgiana (1757-1806), the coddled daughter of John, First Earl Spencer and his wife, Margaret. The captivating teenager married the sophisticated William, Duke of Devonshire, in 1774, and quickly became a sensation in London’s highest circles. “[The Duchess of Devonshire] effaces all,” Horace Walpole wrote, according to The Devonshires: The Story of a Family and a Nation. “Her youth, figure, flowing good nature, sense…and modest familiarity, make her a phenomenon.”

Georgiana soon found her cold, older husband was not nearly as interested in her as everyone else. Luckily, she had many talents with which to amuse herself. She set fashions of the day, developed her own haughty way of speaking, known as the “Cavendish drawl,” and became dear friends with Marie Antoinette, according to Amanda Foreman’s The Duchess. She was also a successful novelist, and an amateur scientist.

But it was Georgiana’s brilliance as a Whig operative that would turn her into a target of the press. Constantly brainstorming with her friend, George, Prince of Wales, and political soulmate Charles James Fox, she hosted countless summits at her home. Georgiana was, she later wrote, “in the midst of the action,” seeing

“partys rise and fall—friends be united and disunited—the ties of love give way to caprice, to interest, and to vanity…”

Georgiana also worked essentially as a campaign manager for Whig candidates. During the 1784 election she bravely canvassed the street for Fox, charming Londoners with her common touch. “During her canvass,” Walpole wrote, “the Duchess made no scruple of visiting some of the humblest of electors, dazzling and enchanting them by the fascination of her manner, the power of her beauty and the influence of her high rank.”

According to Foreman’s The Duchess, there were rumors Georgiana kissed men in exchange for votes, leading to scurrilous cartoons distributed by the Tory opposition. “You have almost unavoidably amassed a great deal of useless trash—gathered weeds instead of flowers,” Lady Spencer wrote Georgiana. “You live so constantly in public you cannot live for your own soul.”

Her mother was worried about more than bad press. The hard-partying Georgiana was one of a long line of Spencer gambling addicts. She also had a laudanum dependency, and a scandalous ménage à trois arrangement with her husband and the disreputable Bess Foster. Calamity struck in 1792, when Georgiana became pregnant by the future Prime Minister Charles Grey and was banished from the country for a while.

Georgiana returned to her husband and children two years later. For the remainder of her life she battled ill health, but continued her role as a political operative, aware of what she could have been. “Would I were a man,” she mused to Sir Philip Francis. “To unite my talents, my hopes, my fortune, with [Charles James Fox’s], to make common cause, and fall or rule.”

From the start, the Spencer legacy laid heavily on John Spencer’s (1924-1992)

shoulders. As a child he was constantly cowed by his genealogically obsessed, brutal father, who considered him an intellectual lightweight. “He used to dread the train journey home [from boarding school],” his son, Diana’s brother Charles, writes. “He would hide in shadows of the train carriage, hoping his father had forgotten to collect him.”

But by the 1940s, John’s heroism as a captain in the Royal Scots Greys during World War II, and his tall, good looks and simple charm made him a most eligible bachelor. According to the documentary When the Spencers Met the Monarchy, he was even once looked at by the palace as a suitor to the future Queen Elizabeth II.

Instead, in 1954, Queen Elizabeth II (whom he served as an equerry) attended his wedding to heiress Frances Roche at Westminster Abbey. The couple had four children—Sarah, Jane, Diana, and Charles (another son, John, died shortly after birth). They were a mismatched pair, he rather dull and she vivacious, but John was reportedly blindsided when he discovered Frances was cheating on him. “How many of those years were happy?” he later said of his marriage. “I thought all of them until the moment that we parted.”

After the dissolution of his marriage, John became Diana and Charles’s primary caregiver and developed what Lord Glenconner once termed “an unfortunate raw sausage look.” Although he was stiff and old-fashioned, he attempted to be an involved father, and Diana was determined to be his “comforting angel,” according to The Diana Chronicles.

In 1975, John’s fortunes turned when his curmudgeonly father died, making him the Eighth Earl Spencer. According to Andrew Morton, he also inherited a 2.25-million-pound bill for death duties as well as 80,000-pounds-a-year running costs for Althorp, the family estate in Northamptonshire. He also found a helpmate to run Althorp in the fascinating Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, whom he married in 1976 without even telling his children. “We weren’t invited. ‘Not grand enough,’” his daughter Sarah quipped to a reporter at the time.

Despite the flippant tone, John’s betrayal would cause a deep rift in the family. A severe stroke in 1978 caused him to become frail and even more distant from his children. “He was one person before and he was certainly a different person after,” Princess Diana said, according to Morton. “He’s remained estranged but adoring since. If he comes and sees me he comes and sees me, if he doesn’t he doesn’t. It’s not my problem anymore. It’s his.”

The Rebel: Frances Shand Kydd

Frances Ruth Roche (1936-2004) wasn’t from as noble stock as the Spencers, but her family was far richer. Her father Maurice, fourth Baron Fermoy, was a conservative politician and a “terrible bottom pincher,” Lady Glenconner says in The Diana Chronicles, while her wealthy mother, Ruth, was a scheming, incurable snob and great friend of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

It was Ruth who encouraged a teenage Frances to marry the much older John Spencer, despite her tender age. “When you meet someone at the age of 15 and get engaged just five months out of school at 17, you can look back and ask, ‘Was I adult?’” she asked years later. “I sure thought I was at the time.”

The couple cultivated a farm at her family home of Park House in Norfolk, but Frances was quickly disillusioned with life in the country as a young aristocratic mother. “I’m so bloody bored with opening village fetes,” she told a friend. It was no wonder that the fiery Frances wanted more. “She was very attractive and blonde and sexy with such joie de vivre and fun about her,” a friend told Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles.

By the 1960s, Frances escaped to London more and more. She also started having an affair with a married bon vivant named Peter Shand Kydd. In 1967, she separated from John and left her two youngest children with him. “The biggest disruption was when Mummy decided to leg it. That’s the vivid memory we have—the four of us,” Princess Diana later told Andrew Morton.

Frances fought for custody of the children but lost to John, partially due to her own mother, Baroness Fermoy, who testified against her. Social outcasts, the Shand Kydds eventually moved to the coast of Scotland, and their warm household was a refuge for her children when they were allowed to visit. “Diana and I adored it for its wild beauty and the fun we had on the sea, lobster potting and mackerel-fishing,” Charles Spencer recalls.

Frances counseled against her youngest daughter’s marriage to Prince Charles, seeing too many parallels to her own first marriage—including her mother’s encouragement of the match. According to Brown, after voicing her concerns, Diana said, “Mummy, you don’t understand. I love him.” Frances replied, “Love him, or love what he is?” To which Diana asked rhetorically, “What’s the difference?”

The Grande Dames: Barbara Cartland and Raine Spencer

Perhaps no writer influenced generations of British romantics—including Princess Diana—more than Barbara Cartland (1901-2000). The author of 723 books, Cartland had, in the words of Brown, a “penchant for pink, her meringue coiffure and false eyelashes,” which betrayed a steely, snobbish character that was tough as nails.

Cartland would pass both her strength and outrageousness on to her daughter Raine (1929-2016), whom she raised to be, in Brown’s words, a “social monster baby.” Not only did she nab Gerald Legge, Ninth Earl of Dartmouth, but she also forged a career as a conservative politician, becoming the youngest person to ever serve on the Westminster City Council.

“She never took any prisoners, and never took no for an answer,” a friend recalled.

In the early 1970s, Raine set her sights on the divorced John Spencer. “She wanted to marry Daddy; that was her target and that was it,” Princess Diana recalled. According to sources, “Acid Raine” alienated the children and old friends. She also took the reins of Althorp, allegedly selling off family treasures and decorating it in her and her mother’s garish style.

During the lead-up to Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles in 1981, what to do with the clownish Cartlands became a national conversation. According to Brown:

Alexander Chancellor, the editor of The Spectator, wrote an editorial in which he called for a special Act of Parliament to ban Raine and her mother from St. Paul’s Cathedral, adding, “For it would be more than a little unfair on everybody if these two absurdly theatrical ladies were permitted to turn a moving national celebration into a pantomime.” Diana was so afraid the pantomime might indeed take place, she pressed for stratagems to blackball Cartland.

In the end Raine was invited but her mother was not. This would not be the most awkward Spencer wedding—that prize would go to Charles Spencer’s first wedding in 1989, where Diana scolded Raine for her rudeness to their mother. “If only you knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done, you’ve ruined the house, you spend Daddy’s money and what for?” she hissed.

For her part, Raine would tire of being the scapegoat for the Spencer dysfunction. “I’m absolutely sick of the ‘wicked stepmother’ lark,” she said, according to Kitty Kelley. “You’re never going to make me sound like a human being, because people like to think I’m Dracula’s mother.”

Surprisingly, Diana would come to agree. Toward the end of her life, she grew close to her stepmother, whose no-nonsense advice she came to admire. However, it appears there was no love lost between Diana and her former favorite writer, who would quip of the royal breakup, “Of course, you know where it all went wrong. She wouldn’t do oral sex.”

The Role Model: Lady Sarah McCorquodale

Born in 1955, Sarah Spencer was the oldest, and wildest of John and Frances Spencer’s brood. Reckless and salty from an early age, Brown writes that she was kicked out of boarding school and rode her horse into her grandmother’s living room. “Sarah always had to be the best at everything,” a friend recalled. “The best car, the wittiest put-down, and the best dress.”

She also had a constant shadow in her youngest sister, Diana. “I idolized my eldest sister and I used to do all her washing when she came back from school. I packed her suitcase, ran her bath, made her bed—the whole lot. I did it all and I thought it was wonderful,” Diana told Morton.

In 1977, Sarah, who had suffered from anorexia, according to Brown, met Prince Charles at Ascot. The two began dating, and it was Sarah who introduced Diana to the prince during a shooting party at Althorp (“I’m cupid,” she’d later quip). “I remember,” Diana later said, “feeling desperately sorry for him that my sister was wrapped around his neck because she’s quite a tough old thing.”

But Sarah’s romance with the prince would soon end. She made the mistake of talking to reporters. Not only did she reportedly confess to having “thousands of boyfriends,” she also disparaged Charles as a hopeless romantic. “I wouldn’t marry a man I didn’t love, whether it was a dustman or the King of England,” she said. “If he asked me I would turn him down.”

This cardinal sin would cause Sarah to be promptly frozen out, with Charles reportedly informing her, “You’ve just done something extremely stupid.” And so, only three years later Charles would begin to court the blossoming Diana. Perhaps there was a hint of jealousy in her alleged counsel to a despondent Diana to not pull out of the wedding over his relationship with Camilla: “Bad luck, ‘Duch. Your face is on the tea towels so you’re too late to chicken out.”

[super-nova5045]

AU where Sarah and Hannah are born in 1650, and so when Sarah is promising Hannah that she’ll bring them a witch, something about leaving Hannah feels wrong. So Sarah sneaks back to her pig pen and grabs an axe, sneaks back into the church and axes the handcuffs away. The pair run out of Ohio/Union, through Pennsylvania, then to New York, where they take a boat to England.

They quickly become ladies in waiting to Catherine of Braganza. Catherine is kind, and fun, and liberating. They go for picnics and go fishing and dress in men’s clothing (Catherine’s wish). But Charles II dies, and James II comes. They become ladies to Mary of Modena, but soon retire during the glorious revolution in 1688. They buy a cottage, and Sarah is a famous pig farmer, and Hannah a great cook. They adopt a little girl, only 8, found off the streets, Diana Johnson.

When Anne comes to the throne in 1702, and little Diana is now 22, Sarah and Hannah find themselves unfortunately out of luck, and decide to join Anne’s ladies-in-waiting. There’s something about Anne that’s just like Sarah and Hannah. Maybe it’s the way Anne treats Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill, which reminds Sarah and Hannah of their own relationship.

In 1713, Hannah sadly dies at 63. Sarah, grief stricken, writes a book, called Tales of Union, a dramatised story of her own experiences, featuring a shape shifting character, called a witch, who dies for her love (a female) innocently.

After Sarah’s death in 1725 at 75, Diana finds the book and publishes it under a pen name, Henry Fier. Diana writes a saga of these books, and after her death in 1760, the books get named…

Fier Street.

i need sleep i overthink too much

[trippin-over-my-fandoms]

The Beginning of Something

Part 10 of Tomorrow is a Promise (That I Cannot Keep)

Part II: Colter

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Category: M/M

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2

Relationships: Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde , Hosea Matthews & Arthur Morgan , Dutch van der Linde & Arthur Morgan

Characters: Dutch van der Linde , Hosea Matthews , Arthur Morgan

Additional Tags: AU , young arthur morgan , de-aged arthur morgan , angst , pre-canon , dutch pov , two parter , good dad dutch van der linde , over protective dad , hosea matthews , bit of a sick fic for a hot second , family angst , no beta

Language: English

Words: 1702

Chapters: 2/2

“How’s he doing back there?” Dutch calls over his shoulder to the back of the wagon, shuddering as the wind seems to impossibly pick up even more. It’s maybe the forth or fifth time he’s asked since they stopped at the boarder of Amberino and West Elizabeth for precious moments to bundle up in coats so they wouldn’t freeze to death in the late winter.

“Still warm, even in this cold,” He tries not to think too much about how hopeless Abigail’s tone sounds when she answers him. Hosea turns in the seat to look in the back, eyes clouded over and Dutch could tell the gears were turning in his head as he thought so hard about something, “Davey ain’t much better. I don’t think he’s gonna make it,” she adds. Arthur’s dying and Davey is- no, that wasn’t right, Davey was dying, Arthur would be fine. So long as they found somewhere for shelter.

“We need to get them out of this weather,” an obvious statement from Hosea. Dutch puts his hand on his partner’s shoulder to get his attention before handing him the reins so he has something to do other than worry about their boy. He seems reluctant but takes them anyway, shaking off a chill as it comes to him.

Seems like only yesterday they were celebrating the warm weathers arrival. Now it hardly seemed like May. Felt more like December on the Canadian boarder.

“I sent John ahead to look for a place,” He tells him, rubbing his hands together furiously in attempt to knock out the cold. The boy hadn’t been to worse for wear once the girls had tended to his bullet wound and could be spared for such a task. No sooner are the words out of his mouth, however, does he spy a soft glow of a lantern in the heavy storm quickly approaching. Dutch briefly lets his hopes get up as John comes into view. Hopefully he had found somewhere for them to shelter.

keep reading

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 17X1 & 17X2

MAJOR SPOILERS!!!

My mind is blown! I am shook! Never in a million years did I ever expect that we would see McDreamy again! Or that Meredith and Derek would be reunited like this. Oh my god. I literally can’t even. I think this might be the best season opener Grey’s Anatomy has ever done. Hands down. They came to play and they did not mess around. I thought something was off when they showed the opening sequence with Meredith on the beach because the pier walkway was way too long, but I never expected the surprise to be what it was.

The implication at the end of the episode is that Meredith has contracted COVID-19, is currently unresponsive, and will be battling this for the foreseeable future. I’m interested to see if that is in fact the case or if it’s something else. I did not believe that she was going to be the character that got it so I am super shocked and surprised. As some eagle eyed fans noticed over the summer the IMDB page for Grey’s Anatomy was updated recently with the appearance dates of many of the original cast members being updated to 2020.

I have to admit when I first saw that I didn’t think much of it because Season 16 overlapped between the years 2019 and 2020 and since they mentioned and used archival footage of past characters during seasons 15 and 16 my initial thought was that the actor’s profiles were updated to reflect this for contract reasons. But now that the McDreamy Derek Shephard himself has reappeared anything is possible my friends!

Literally anything and I am so glad. It looks like there are more dream sequences and possible afterlife sequences to come. My guess is that more of Meredith’s deceased loved ones will appear on that beach. I’d love to see George, Mark, Lexie, Ellis Grey, Doc the dog the list goes on. I’d also love to see Cristina, Alex, Izzie, Callie, Arizona, and April all make appearances either through dream sequences or over Zoom.

I’m also wondering if they’re going to have Meredith code and then do a reprise of the elevator hallway sequence where the elevator doors open and Meredith’s dead loved ones and important people in her life greet her and tell her it’s only temporary and she’ll back in the land of the living soon. Oh gosh. What if they have Ellis tell her she’s extraordinary?!?! Now I’m crying! She so deserves to hear that! Oh my gosh. The possibilities are endless.

The Station 19 episode wasn’t much of a cross over to be honest and I’m okay with that. My best friend and I watched it for context, but you could have totally gotten everything you needed to know just by watching Grey’s and those are the cross overs I prefer. In the Station 19 episode we got some additional Bailey and Ben content (always nice) and we learned how the kids who wound up with third degree burns became injured. That’s it really.

Richard had some snaps in this episode! He had all the best lines in my opinion! He was hilarious. His exchanges with Bailey and Catherine were hilarious. It’s great to see him back on his feet and throwing zingers. Bailey was a boss ass bitch in this episode. I loved it! She laid down the law and I thought they did a really good job of showing subtly how the COVID situation is impacting her because of her OCD. I really liked that they wrapped up DeLuca’s storyline because as long time readers will know I was not a fan of his mental health storyline and the last two seasons have really made me hate his character.

I thought they did a good job wrapping that up giving the confines of COVID, both real and fictional, and that we got closure there. At this point they’ve wrapped up his storyline to the point that DeLuca is back to being a side character and just another doctor who works in the hospital and for that I am glad. A fun little aside, when DeLuca asks Meredith if there is a specific patient she wants him to check on she tells him to check on the patient in room 1702 which is the episode number.

I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get as many Meredith and Hayes scenes as I would have liked. Hayes wasn’t in the first half of the premiere at all and his scenes with Meredith in the second half were briefer than I would have liked. However, that might be because they weren’t able to film scenes with the actor before COVID shut everything down so I am hoping that we will see more scenes between him and Meredith, especially him at her bedside, going forward now that both actors are full time regular cast members.

I really loved the scenes that we did get. They felt authentic and natural. That natural comradery that the actors have was there in full force. We got to learn more about both characters quarantine situations with regards to their kids and we got to learn a bit more about Hayes’ past and their developing relationship which was nice. Also I really want to hear that story he alluded to about hoping an electric fence as a teenager to see his girlfriend. I loved the aside where Meredith commented that his mask was falling apart and he told her that he gave his new one to a nurse who needed it more than he did. He’s so caring and compassionate and kind I just want to reach through the screen and hug him.

Meredith deserves someone in her life who is kind like that and who thinks of others the way she does. Who puts the job and her patients and her kids first over everything else. Who gets it and thinks nothing of showing that kind of compassion. She’s never really been with anyone like that before. No one who was a doctor anyway. I also thought it was very significant that Hayes invited Meredith to have a drink with him in his office after work and then was the one that found her in the parking lot at the end of the episode.

This appears to be a call back to the fact that he asked her out for a drink at the end of last season and she accepted, but asked that they do a rain check because she was so exhausted and the fact that they are growing closer and he wanted to check in with her and see how she was doing. The fact that he was the one to discover her I think is also very significant because at the end there I felt liked he looked towards her car to see if she was there to talk to her or to see if she’d gone home and I love that he was looking out for her in that way.

Also, the fact that he was the one to find her and call for help and that led into a dream sequence where she was reunited with Derek the love of her life feels very significant. The fact that Hayes calls out to Meredith and tells her to stay with him, in the present and in the land of the living, and then that transitions into the dream sequence where Derek is calling out to her on the beach feels significant to me. 

My best friend that I watch with commented that she could see them doing a scene where Derek tells Meredith it’s okay to move on and fall in love again the way Abigail did with Cormac in the flashbacks we saw in the Conference episode last season. And that based on that Meredith makes the decision to formally move on and actively pursue something with Hayes now that she knows she has Derek’s blessing and that her ex DeLuca is doing okay and is back to work.

I think both of those things could free her to truly give Hayes a chance and build a life with him. He’s really the only post-Derek love interest for me who really checks all the boxes and who I could see her building a life with in a way that would respectfully honour what her and Derek had. It also just occurred to me that because they established that both Meredith and Hayes are quarantining at hotels because of their COVID work and are away from their kids there’s a potential storyline there in that once Meredith is better they could quarantine together and spend some sexy time alone without breaking any of the necessary restrictions. I’d love to see them quarantine together.

Something else that I realized after watching is that the episode establishes that Amelia and Link are quarantining at Meredith’s house with Scout, Zola, Bailey, and Ellis and that Maggie has been coming by to watch and visit with the kids from a safe distance while Meredith has been quarantining at a hotel because she’s working COVID command. The fact that they set this up early on in the episode becomes important later when you realize that something is wrong with Meredith and she’ll be hospitalized for a while and could die so it sets it up that her kids are okay because they’ve got Amelia, Link, and Maggie, people that Meredith trusts, looking after them.

Also we find out that Meredith’s house has a backyard for the first time! So that’s neat. Maggie and Winston are officially the cutest! I love them! I’m calling it now they’re endgame. They’re soulmates. I thought at first the long distance thing was going to be super boring and dull, but they found a way to make it really sexy and fun and I love that! We finally found out what Amelia and Link named their baby! As many had predicted they named the baby Scout! His full name is Scout Derek Shepherd Lincoln! My heart! Derek would be so so proud of Amelia. She’s come so far. I loved the scene with Meredith, Amelia, Link, and Scout. I really felt like that was missing from the Season 16 finale so I’m glad we got to see it in flashback.

About the only thing we didn’t get to see in this episode that I would have liked to have seen is a scene with Richard and Meredith catching up and either operating or treating a patient together. They haven’t had as much time together recently and I’ve missed that. Although considering that Meredith is about to hospitalized I’m guessing were about to see a whole lot of that. We did get to see Jackson spending lots of quality time with Richard and we got to see Maggie stand up for him with Catherine this episode so that was nice. This episode changed my mind about Catherine and Richard. 

At the end of last season I really wanted them to separate and go their separate ways because I felt like they were bringing out the worse in each other and that was the only way they could find peace. But this episode we saw Catherine apologize really apologize and she made Richard Chief of Chiefs to make up for what she did and I thought there reconciliation was really quite sweet. Teddy and Owen wowza. Teddy was god awful and a terrible human being this episode. I was completely on her side last season, but this episode changed that for me. I hate Owen as a character most of the time, but damn if this episode didn’t make me feel for him. Oh boy. Teddy lied straight to his face multiple times when given the opportunity to tell the truth.

I don’t think there’s any way that they can come back from that personally. Which is a shame because for the first time in the show’s run Owen is single and is not hung up on someone else. Cristina is in Switzerland living her best life. She’s happy. That’s long over. Amelia is with Link. They have a child together. Her and Owen are happily co-parenting Leo and there’s no way that Owen, horrible as he can be, would do anything at this point to split Amelia and Link up or come between them because that would mean separating Scout from his father and having lost his Dad at a young age Owen would never knowingly do that to someone else’s child. At least I don’t think he would.

Plus, he got what he wanted in that he did get to parent Betty and Leo with Amelia and they still share in the parenting of Leo. I also thought there was a good call back there to when Owen cheated on Cristina. I hated that plot, but it’s nice to see them acknowledge his relationship with Cristina because it was so instrumental to the show in those early seasons. I’m glad that we got a reference to Amelia and Owen co-parenting Leo because I feel like that’s been missing lately. I get that Teddy is scared of being happy, but the way she treated Owen was just horrible. She was so awful to him in this episode I actually felt sorry for the guy and that is truly a miraculous feat because I rarely do because of how horribly he treats all of the women in his life.

Side note: His line where he told his Mom to tell Leo that the broccoli and carrots needed to be reunited in his stomach was both hilarious and horrifying! I loved Owen’s lines and how he kind of played Teddy while giving her opportunities to tell him the truth. I thought that was hilarious in a funny not funny kind of way. I’m curious to see what Teddy, Owen, and Tom’s storylines will be going forward. We didn’t see a lot of Tom in this episode and at the end he was fired and demoted to being a Neurosurgeon. There’s no indication of him and Teddy getting back together so I’m curious to see what they do with him.

Owen seems 100% done with Teddy and her nonsense and at this point I can’t blame him. I would be too. I’m interested to see where this goes. Will Owen end up with someone else? Will he stay single and continue on as a single parent? What will happen to Teddy? I’m starting to really like Levi as a character I have to say. Nico not so much. He treats Levi horribly and the guy deserves so much better. I loved seeing the intern from Pac North who called Bailey an icon last season checking temperatures. Amazing.

Richard’s idea on how to sanitize the masks with the purple light was really cool. I loved the moments between him and Bailey. I get why she’s worried about him, but as Richard says Grey Sloan is his life. It’s his longest and most successful relationship and as he says he will find no peace without it. Bailey and Ben have my whole heart. They are so cute. They’re the best. I loved the small moment that they had at the beginning of the episode where Ben did the “going through the motions” count with her because he knows it helps her. It was also a great call back to Jo teaching that to Bailey after she got out of treatment.

Also oh my god Jo and Jackson! Wow! I have to say when I saw fans speculating about that online before the show came back I thought it was the dumbest idea ever. One, because those two characters rarely have scenes together and aren’t that close. And two, Jackson has Harriet and is a single parent. Jo has been decidedly luke warm on the idea of having kids. She only considered it because of her relationship with Alex. That being said, after this episode I could go for it. I liked the twist that she went to Jackson and asked him for a favour and they were going to hook up and have a one night stand and then Jo got drunk on the way over and wound up crying because she wasn’t ready.

I have a feeling that they’re going to have them go back to being friends for the time being and then pick that storyline up later when Jo’s had a chance to heal possibly in the second half of the season. I also like that they wrapped up the storyline between Jackson and Vic and that we got to see Harriet for the first time in forever! Yeah! Vic isn’t ready or wiling to be a step parent and I liked that they established that Jackson needs to be with someone long term that is. Jo isn’t at that stage yet, but at least she’s open to the idea and has been married and had a successful adult relationship with someone in the past. Jackson’s been married, divorced, lost a child, and is raising a child.

With time and proper communication I think they could actually be a great pairing. Never thought I’d say that. Not wanting to be a parent is part of what broke Jackson and Vic up in the first place. They never addressed the issue with Maggie, but in retrospect that was never going to work out because Maggie is so involved with Meredith’s kids. They’re her main focus kid wise. We should have known that they weren’t going to work out when they failed to address that.

With April what broke them up was her devote faith and his complete lack of belief coupled with the different ways they dealt with the death of Samuel. While I did like April and Jackson as a couple I was happy with April’s write off in the sense that she got to be with someone who shares her faith and dealt with the trauma of losing someone close to them in a similar way. Her and Jackson never had that. Jackson found God in the wake of almost losing April, but by that point it was too late.

The damage was down. There was nothing either of them could do to repair what had been broken. With Jo he has the opportunity to start anew and lay all of that out on the table and vice versa. Although I imagine that the conversation Meredith would have with Alex about that would be pretty weird. I thought they did a really good job of showing the realities of COVID in hospitals right now. What the disease does, how deadly it can be, and how hard it is on all the health care workers and first responders. 

I have family members and friends who work in health care and it’s a scary time. Levi’s comment that they had lost 100 people in one day and that he’d had to tell 100 people’s family members that their loved one had died was chilling. It’s also real. This is not something they are sensationalizing for the sake of television. This is really happening to real people everywhere and it is heartbreaking.

In this episode we saw Meredith have her first breakdown in quite some time. The last one I can remember was after Derek died and that was a while ago. She was upset that so many of her patients had died and I’m sure that reality is something that a lot of healthcare workers are going through right now. This episode felt raw in a lot of ways because of that and I’m glad that a show that has worked so hard to reflect the realities of our time is taking the time to honour and showcase that.

Also I think having Meredith Grey the show’s titular character and star for over 16 seasons potentially contract COVID and collapse from working too hard and not taking her own advice is the ultimate example of it can happen to anyone and anyone can get it. The show did not have to go as hard as it did, but they did and they delivered and I respect the hell out of that. The tagline for this season is “Sometimes we all need saving.” Apparently they were being literal about that as that includes Meredith freaking Grey. What a twist!

I honestly believe that this will be the show’s last season. Because when I look at the storylines and the ways in which they’ve set up the characters starting with last season I can see where they could go with it and how they would wrap everyone’s storylines up in a satisfactory way. Plus I don’t think they’ll ever be able to top this season and it’s opener. Also we’ve got main cast members coming back because those actors are normally so busy they’ll probably never get another opportunity like this to bring them back and they’d be foolish not to take it.

The promo for next week teases more scenes with McDreamy (!!!), Meredith battling COVID literally, and Hayes visiting her in her hospital room. I’m excited!

Until next time!

[spurgie-cousin]

WHW Royals Edition 👑 Part 1: Anne, Queen of Great Britain

Born: February 6th, 1665 at St James's Palace, Westminster, Middlesex, England Died: August 1st, 1714 (age 49) at Kensington Palace, Middlesex Reign: March 8th, 1702 - August 1st, 1714

I thought I’d give you guys a little intro to Anne, Queen of Great Britain as a start for my series on weirdo royals. I got big into her after seeing the Yorgos Lanthimos film The Favourite (can’t recommend enough) and that resulted in endless hours of internet wormholes about her bizarre and interesting life. I’ve read about a lot of fucked up royals in my life (truly there’s many) but it was only when I was reading about Anne that I kind of had an ‘a-ha’ moment about how really drastically the monarchial system can fuck a person up. 

Queen Anne fits this bill for me for a lot of reason; she was a surprise Queen who was woefully underprepared for ruling, which led to people pushing their political agendas on her under the guise of genuine affection. It’s hard to know if the relationships that define her legacy and life in popular culture were genuine, or if they would’ve existed at all had she not been a royal. Her legacy is muddied by the traditional, patriarchal writers of history of course and it sometimes is hard to get a clear picture of who she really was, but here are a few tidbits about her life and rule:

Anne’s signature

1. Queen Anne was born Anne Stuart, daughter of James II and Anne Hyde and raised in the traditional way for aristocratic girls, with an education that emphasized on arts, language, and music. This eventually proved to suck dick for her big time later on in life when she became queen. Traditionally, girls were purposefully taught nothing useful about politics or history because it was assumed they would never rule (cough) and this left Anne very much lacking in the political discourse department as a monarch; all of her future speeches and even remarks made around political figures would have to be scripted by advisors. If she found herself off script and not knowing what to say, it’s said that she’d sometimes “move only her lips and make as if she said something when in truth no words were uttered.”

2. 8 year old Anne first met friend Sarah Jennings (Churchill) when she was a lady in waiting at just 5 years old. As you’ll see later on, Sarah goes on to be one of the (if not the most) influential person in the Queen’s life, becoming a trusted friend and political advisor.

3. Anne was what we would probably refer to today as a ‘hot mess express’. The poor gal had a myriad of health issues, both mentally and physically, all of which only got worse as she aged. She suffered from gout and an undefined auto-immune disorder (we think) as well as a bizarre eye-watering disorder and poor vision. It’s also pretty evident that she didn’t have the best relationship with alcohol or food and most likely developed a binge eating disorder later in her life (she was very large at the time of her death and there are a few accounts of her eating to the point of puking in front of other people).

4. Besides her relationships with Sarah and Abigail Masham, Queen Anne is also known mostly known for the tragic loss of her 17 pregnancies. Of all her births she had only 5 live babies, only one of which survived beyond infancy. Her son William was also afflicted with various illnesses all of his life and died at the age of 11.

Prince William, Anne’s longest surviving child

5. Anne became queen by accident, after her Catholic father was ousted as king by her protestant brother in-law. He and her sister ruled for a short time before dying of pneumonia and smallpox respectively with no heir in place, so Anne, who supported the protestant reformation, was crowned Queen.

6. Over the years Anne and Sarah Churchill became extremely close friends, and most accounts agree that Sarah had an incredible amount of influence over Anne’s political decisions. Sarah is said to have had a more natural affinity for politics, and to have had a completely opposite disposition than Anne. Some think that Sarah may have maintained the relationship only to keep her political control.

7. A lot of people that believe that Anne and Sarah were so close because they were lovers. The pair at one time wrote each other 4 letters a day, that included things like “I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of the world without you,” “Oh come to me as soon as you can that I may cleave myself to you,” one of Queen Anne’s “I can’t go to bed without seeing you… If you knew in what condition you have made me, I am sure you would pity.” I don’t think I necessarily share that opinion, for reasons you’ll see below.

8. Sarah was the only person under Anne that was allowed to speak to her without using a title. The two often used their nicknames for each other: Mrs. Morley (Anne) and Mrs. Freeman (Sarah).

Sarah Churchill, 1702

9. A lot of scholars disagree with the notion that Anne had any gay affairs with anyone, including Sarah, for a few reasons; first because, at the time, it was just apparently normal to act hella gay with your friends, particularly for royals, so excessive touching or writing wouldn’t have raised any alarms. Most historians attribute this to the extreme separation of the sexes, particularly in upper class households. Most people spent 90% of their time exclusively with people of their own gender, so it was a means to have your emotional needs met within the confines of your station. If an aristocrat started ‘friend flirting’ with you, it was also seen as rude to not reciprocate. 

10. A few other reasons Anne was probably not lesbian: she had a pretty good relationship with her husband (Prince George of Denmark), and the 17 pregnancies thing suggests that they weren’t having any problems in the bedroom department. Also, when Anne later became close friends with Sarah’s cousin Abigail, Sarah became jealous and began to spread rumors that the two were gay lovers (more on that below). This rumor probably stuck and carried over into other areas of her life. Or maybe Anne was bi and both things were true, who knows.

Anne circa 1685. All physical descriptions of Anne, especially in her later years, don’t describe her in the most glowing terms, which is insane to think about when I see portraits like this.

11. Anne began to grow distant from Sarah after her husband’s death in 1708, which all sources agree flung the queen into a huge depression. She was said to have sat by and kissed his dead body long after his death. Sarah took a tough love approach to try and snap the queen out of it, which backfired. This was when Anne began to get close to Abigail Masham, which infuriated Sarah.

12. Sarah was so mad at Anne for this that she literally wrote a song about her and Abigail being gay together, printed it out on a pamphlet, and passed it around court Mean Girls-style. The pamphlet read: “When as Queen Anne of great renown / Great Britain’s sceptre swayed / Beside the Church she dearly loved / A dirty chambermaid O Abigail that was her name / She starched and stitched full well / But how she pierced this royal heart / No mortal man can tell However for sweet service done / And causes of great weight / Her royal mistress made her, Oh! / A minister of state Her secretary she was not / Because she could not write / But had the conduct and the care / Of some dark deeds at night.” 

13. Besides Sarah, a lot of people took Anne’s relative political ignorance as an invitation to push their own political agendas. It didn’t help that her reign coincided with a rapid development of a 2 party parliamentary system, as the gap between the protestant Whigs and the Catholic Tories began to widen.

14. One of Anne’s crowning political achievements was the 1707 Act of Union uniting England and Scotland under the banner of Great Britain (she had good ideas sometimes, although it’s hard to tell if they came from her or her many influential advisors). Consequently, she was the first ruler to ever rule over united Great Britain.

15. After a series of pretty horrible strokes, poor Anne died at the age of 49 in August of 1714 with no heirs and without reconciling with Sarah Churchill. To her credit, it’s said that despite her failing health she continued to attend cabinet meetings as often as possible until her death. She is buried beside her husband and children in the Henry VII Chapel on the South Aisle of Westminster Abbey.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

The Favourite

If you like your period pieces stuffy and strait-laced, The Favourite is not for you. Or maybe it is and you can start to like more interesting period pieces. You’ve probably heard the name of this Oscar-favorite and you may have even seen the trailer, but somehow it feels like there’s still a lot of mystery about what this one is ABOUT. Is it being overly cryptic in order to perform a bait and switch? Or is it simply one of those art movies where not a lot happens, but in wigs and corsets? Well...

More the former than the latter. What appears to be a send-up of courtly life during the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1707) turns into, essentially, a love triangle drama, complete with backstabbing, cheating, manipulating, power playing, and the use of my new favorite phrase, “cunt-struck.”

Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is in ill health, and trusts her advisor and secret lover, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) to help keep the country running in her stead. But when Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives at the palace and endears herself to the Queen, Sarah realizes a usurper is attempting to upend her relationship with the Queen. From there, the film is a series of power plays of these two ambitious and cutthroat women, with the mercurial Queen watching from the sidelines.

Some thoughts:

The three women circling each other like wolves snapping and bickering to be the alpha are the focus, and rightly so. After so many dry, dreadful political thrillers all about men sitting at board room tables or wearing powdered wigs and sending troops to war, it’s refreshing to see the girls as the focus for a change.

Plus, all three actresses are powerhouses. This is probably the most interesting I’ve ever seen Emma Stone, and Olivia Colman plays Anne perfectly. She’s fickle, she’s emotional, she faints to get out of obligations - she’s basically the equivalent of a shitposting Twitter millenial except she’s actually in charge of things. But there’s a deep sadness within her, mostly due to her loss of 17 children. She longs for true human connection and companionship, but can never trust those around her to truly love her. It’s an old story, but one that’s well told and flawlessly executed by Colman here.

The ending is so weird as to be almost unpleasant. But I think the flames crackling in the background are meant to be the clue. Neither Abigail nor the Queen are getting precisely the arrangement they would like - and both realize what they have been forced to lose in the process. Abigail’s autonomy, and the Queen’s one faithful and honest human connection.

I am so gay for Rachel Weisz and the incredible lesbian year she’s having in 2018. Her shooting/riding outfit alone is enough to make my knees weak. Between this and Disobedience, she can be the grand marshal of next year’s Pride.

The music is so incredible. Each piece adds a richness not only to the absurd over-the-top wealth of court, but to each character’s inner thoughts and feelings. 

Yorgos Lanthimos is probably a pretty weird dude, but his direction here is breathtaking. He vacillates between intimate closeups and wide, fish-eye angles, all to portray a sense of unreality and unease around court and the machinations of Abigail and Sarah. It’s undeniably effective, and creates a sort of parallel universe for us commoners to watch the rich and powerful fight and fuck. I am very eager to watch his previous films as a result of this experience.

If you can handle a little weird and a little vulgar, DEFINITELY check out The Favourite. It’s darkly funny while also retaining a core of unfulfilled sadness, and that’s just the kind of tone I wish more historical pieces would take because life is pretty damn funny, weird, and sad.

[alnwickcastleofficial]

Elizabeth Percy Seymour - The other Favourite

With today’s news that Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Favourite, about the life of ambitious women in the court of Queen Anne, has received 10 Academy Award nominations, we thought we would look at the life of a woman who doesn’t feature in the film, but was just as influential on the Queen: Elizabeth Percy Seymour, heiress to Alnwick Castle.

Elizabeth was born in 1667, and when her father Josceline, the 11th Earl of Northumberland, died in 1670, she was his only surviving child. While she was able to call herself Baroness Percy, the young Elizabeth was not legally able to inherit the earldom in her own right; she had to marry a husband willing to take her name and titles. She ended up being married three times by the age of 16, with her third and final husband being Charles Seymour, the 6th Duke of Somerset.

When Elizabeth reached the age of 21, she released Charles from his obligation to become a Percy, and she took the surname ‘Seymour’ and the title ‘Duchess of Somerset’ instead of those from her own ancestry.

Elizabeth, like Sarah Churchill (played by Rachel Weisz in The Favourite), was a great friend of Princess Anne (played in the film by Olivia Colman) before she became Queen. In 1692, Sarah and her husband John Churchill were dismissed from the court - King William III suspected John of being in contact with Anne’s father, the deposed King James VII and II - and to leave Anne’s apartments in the Palace of Whitehall where they lived.

 Below: Sarah Churchill and Anne in The Favourite, photo source Yorgos Lanthimos

Anne was furious at the way her friends the Churchills had been treated, and, withdrawing from court herself, was offered accommodation by Elizabeth Percy Seymour and her husband at Syon House, the Percys’ home on the River Thames. It was there that Anne gave birth to her short-lived son George (represented, as with all Anne’s children, by rabbits in The Favourite).

In 1702, Anne became Queen. Sarah Churchill and Elizabeth were both given positions in her household.

Anne’s reign, and the influence of Sarah, challenged the traditionally male-dominated world of politics, as Lanthimos depicts in the film, but Elizabeth (along with Abigail Masham - played in The Favourite by Emma Stone - and Lady Elizabeth Hervey) contributed to this too.

In fact, the Duchess of Somerset’s closeness to the Queen led to detractors believing her a harmful influence. She was undoubtedly a powerful player at court, and used her political power to deny the writer Jonathan Swift a bishopric. Swift retaliated, warning people that “a most insinuating woman” was behind her well-mannered public face.

She is considered to have been among those who contributed to the downfall of the Churchills (by now the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough), which forms a major part of the plot in The Favourite, and while Abigail Masham rose in power and influence just as she does in Lanthimos’ film, Elizabeth Percy Seymour was the woman who replaced Sarah as ‘groom of the stole’, a key position close to the Queen.

Elizabeth and Anne were probably at their closest in the four years before Anne’s death in 1714; years in which Elizabeth was also Lady of the Bedchamber and Mistress of the Robes. She was certainly more influential than the Duke of Somerset, who was so self-important he was known as ‘the Proud Duke’. It may be that other political lords only tolerated him because of his wife’s closeness to the Queen!

In 1711, Swift launched a scathing poetic attack on Elizabeth and her influence over Queen Anne, writing in ‘The Windsor Prophecy’:

“Beware of Carrots from Northumberland.

(here, ‘Carrots’ refers to Elizabeth’s red hair, and ‘Northumberland’ her Percy ancestry)

Carrots sown Thyn a deep root may get

(’Thyn’ refers to Elizabeth’s second husband Thomas Thynne, who was assassinated soon after their marriage. The ‘deep root’ probably refers to Elizabeth’s position at court)

If so they are in Sommer set

(’Sommer set’ is a play on ‘summer’, to fit the references to ‘carrots’, but also refers to the Duke of ‘Somerset’)

Their Conyngs mark them, for I have been told 

(’Conyngs mark’ refers to ‘Koningsmarck’, the Swedish man who undertook Thynne’s assassination)

They assassine when young and poison when old”

(Finally, Swift suggests the teenage Elizabeth was behind her second husband’s murder - ‘they assassine when young’, and is now ‘poisoning’ Queen Anne with her views and political motivations.)

Happily, Anne remained loyal to her friend, and the Queen even intended for half her jewels to be left to Elizabeth on her death, calling her “the fittest person to wear them after [me]”. Unfortunately for the Duchess of Somerset, Anne had failed to make a will and so the jewels never came to her.

Despite Swift and her other detractors, Elizabeth appears to have been well-liked and well-respected at the time. One contemporary called her “the best bred as well as the best born woman in England”, and another considered her “in all respects a credit and ornament to the court”.

Elizabeth died in 1722, and following her death the ‘Proud Duke’ destroyed all her correspondence with Queen Anne. 

Sadly for us, this means we may never know the true extent of Elizabeth and Anne’s friendship, or to what extent she was a ‘favourite’ like Sarah Churchill or Abigail Masham... but we’ll still be rooting for The Favourite on Oscar night!

[yourmaninthestalls]

The Favourite (2018)

At last a break from Brexit! I have always enjoyed the high campery of the series Versailles but I imagine the writers were held back from creating many a tempting excess by the historic fact that running France – and staying alive in the process - was ultimately a pretty serious business. No such problem with our own Queen Anne (1702 -1707) whose Wiki entry reads like the synopsis for a film which would stretch credibility to breaking point.  Opinion remains divided on how effective she was and how much she was dominated by advisers and lovers of both genders but this was a time when the power of the monarch was on the wane and it is fascinating to watch this parade of intrigue in and out of the royal bedchamber. Opinions are also divided on the extent of her lesbian adventures but here they are pretty front and central.   I was put off Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer by the trailers alone, but shall now watch them. This film is a delight. Sometimes you just have to let go and allow yourself to be led to joys by the director. Anchored by four great performances from Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz as her favourite, Lady Sarah, Emma Stone (I loved her in La La Land) as the potential usurper Abigail and Nicholas Hoult as the much powdered opposition leader Harley. He puts in a star turn as he did in both About The Boy and A Single Man. From child actor to adult actor and excellent as both. The casting is perfect. We spend our two hours at the court of Queen Anne, who is at once alarming, eccentric and agreeably dotty. The film is full of great set pieces and surprises – there are some great one liners, of which Nicholas Hoult seems to have more than his fair share. He also has the most excessive wig. Yorgos Lanthimos directs with gusto and I was delighted to see does not resist a very wide almost distorting lens when it does the job. The whole gives a giddying insight into the way a c. absolute monarch ruled and is a great argument for radically curtailing their power. It is very funny, with sequences including duck racing, the Queen’s 17 pet rabbits, (compensation for her 17 miscarriages)  much treachery, gluttony, fawning sycophancy at a whole new level and all this in a community where uninhibited sex is just another tool in the courtiers arsenal. This is one version of Anne, the bitchy treatment she got in Lady Sarah’s autobiography has been countered since by historians such as Edward Gregg who wrote in 1980 of “a period of significant progress for the country: Britain became a major military power on land, the union of England and Scotland created a united kingdom of Great Britain, and the economic and political base for the golden age of the 18th century was established. However, the Queen herself has received little credit for these achievements and has long been depicted as a weak and ineffectual monarch, dominated by her advisers.”We shall never know which is the real Queen Anne but this one is certainly the most entertaining – if tragically so. To crown it all (no pun intended) the end credits play under that great song Skyline Pigeon, sung by its composer Elton John, which tells of a pigeon seeking freedom from its cage. Your correspondent sat through the whole roller. As a break from the woes of the world The Favourite is a helter skelter of fighting, scheming, lying, corruption, surviving, triumphing and going under. Just like Brexit – whoops!

[packedwithpackards]

Family tree chart for reference

This is the 2nd in a series of articles which serializes my family history, which I wrote in November 2017, titled "From Samuel to Cyrus: A fresh look at the History of the Packard Family." This has been updated thanks to helpful comments from Dale Cook.

Below is the "family tree chart for reference (progenitors underlined)" section from that history:

Generation 1 (in England): Richard Packard and Katherine who reportedly had four children: Thomas, Jane, Margaret and John, all with the last name of Packard.

Generation 2 (in England): John who (as claimed by family lore) married Joan Bryde and had one son named Moses (with the last name of Packard).

Generation 3 (in England): Moses who married Joan and had 1 son, named

George P. Packard. No other information is known.

Generation 4 (in England): George P. who married Mary Whither and had 7 children: Frances, John, George, Margaret, Samuel, Nathan, and Mary.

Generation 5 (started in England, came to English America in 1638): Samuel Packard (d. 1684) (also spelled Packer, Packerde, Packeard, and varied other spellings) married Elizabeth (died aft. 1702) [maiden name is not Stream] and had 14 children (with the last name of Packard): Mary (d. 1697) Samuel (d. 1697), Israel (d. 1699), Hannah (d. 1727), Deborah (d. 1725), Zaccheus (d. 1723), Deliverance (d. 1708), John (d. 1741), Nathaniel (d. 1726), and Elizabeth (d. 1729). As Dale Cook noted, there were three other daughters of Samuel and Elizabeth: Jael, Jane, and Abigail.

Generation 6 (in Bridgewater, MA, within English America): Zaccheus Packard (d. 1723) married Sarah Howard (d. 1703) and had 9 children (with the last name of Packard): Israel (d. 1725), Sarah (d. 1754), Jonathan (1684-1746), David (d. 1755), Solomon (d. 1782), James (d. 1765), Zaccheus II (d. 1775), John (1695-1738), and Abiel (1699-1774)

Generation 7 (in Bridgewater, MA, within English America): John Packard (1695-1738) married Lydia Thompson (1703-1789) and had 6 children (all with the last name of Packard): Lydia (d. 1762), Abel (1729-1804), Abigail (b. 1733), John (1725-1807), Barnabas I (1738-1824), and Abiah (birth and death dates not

known).

Generation 8 (in Bridgewater and Cummington, MA, within English America): Barnabas Packard I (1738-1824) married Sarah Ford (1739-1813) and had 7 children (all with the last name of Packard): Barnabas II (1764-1847), Polly (1766-1846), Pollicarpus “Carpus” (1768-1836), Bartimeas (1769-1854), Cyrus (1771-1825), John Ford (1776-1849), and Philander (1778-1861)

Generation 9 (in Bridgewater, Cummington, and Plainfield, MA, within English America, then the US):

Barnabas Packard II (1764-1847) married Mary Nash (1767-1837) and had 8 children (all with the last name of Packard): Achsah (1790-1791), Sally (1792-1868),

Barnabas III (1795-1871), Patty (d. 1797), Ruby (1799-1871), Norton (1802-1898), Milton (1805-1875), and Roswell (b. 1808)

Generation 10 (in Cummington, Windsor, and Plainfield, MA):

Barnabas Packard III (1795-1871) who married Ruth Snow (1799-1879) and 10 children (all with the last name of Packard): Polly Neth (1819-1868), Cynthia Cordelia (1820-1863), William Henry (1822-1896), Patty Martha (1824-1903), Irene (b. 1826), Mary Jane (b. 1828), Roswell Clifford (1831-1919), Ossmus (1834-1907), Charles Edwin (1838-1933), and Harrison Clark (1840-1899).

Generation 11 (in Plainfield, Windsor, and Cummington, MA):

William Henry Packard (1822-1896) married Rachel Bartlett Tillson (1825-1881) and had 10 children (all with the last name of Packard): Alice Cornelia (b. 1850), Welcome Tillson (1850-1888), Cyrus Winfield (1852-1924), William Luther (1854-1941),

Joseph A. (b. 1855), Benjamin Franklin “Frank” (b. 1858), Fred R. (1860-1884), Mary M. (1862-1887), Charles (1866-1924), and Henry Clark (1866-1924). William Henry later married a woman named Mary Ann Dyer in 1887, six years after Rachel’s death.

Generation 12 (in Plainfield, Windsor, and Cummington, MA): Cyrus Winfield Packard (1852-1924) who first married Nellie Mason (1861-1881) who died in childbirth, married Dorothy “Dora” Ann Mills (1849-1895) and had 7 children (all with the last name of Packard): John Henry (1882-1950), Margaret Alice (1885-1976), Joseph Winfield (1885-1910), Charles Edward (1887-1960), Marion Estelle (1889-1965), Robert Barnabas (1891-1956), and Mabel Hattie (1892-1961).

After her death, Cyrus would marry a third time to Clemenina Cheney (1874-1926) and would have 5 children (all with the last name of Packard): Olive Martha (1896-1969), Herbert Miles (1898-1966), Rachel May (1900-1933), Thomas “Tom” Theodore (1902-1974), and Harold Cyrus (1907-1975).

There are other generations beyond this, which are noted in specific chapters, but this is a good guide to the rest of this book. [2] Take note: the first three generations listed are based on family lore and sketchy records. Their conclusions could be incorrect. As one Packard descendant, Richard Packard, told me on Find A Grave, “anything beyond George is pure speculation as many have searched and found no original proof records.” He also sent me a narrative involving Samuel Packard and other Packards.

Notes

[2] The Packard family file at the Cummington Historical Museum notes the following: Cummington sent 11 to fight in revolutionary war; they had an original land deed involving John Packard; lands were bought and sold in Cummington by Abel Packard (1772, 1773); Adam Packard (1795, 1811); the Adam Packard tavern reportedly started in 1803 reportedly, became legislative rep. on state level; people wrote about Packard family lineage in letters to the Cummington Historical Society in 1982, 1983, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, and 2005; Hope Packard was part of Ashfield Historical Society in 1974; the Old Bridgewater Historical Society has Packard family index which was compiled by Alan D. Packard in Kansas (Sep. 1982); Barnabas Packard's house was still standing in 1987; Abel Packard wills and land records within file; R.R. Packard had relationship with Bisbee family; and probate of Abel Packard within the file.

Note: This was originally posted on June 29, 2018 on the main Packed with Packards WordPress blog (it can also be found on the Wayback Machine here). My research is still ongoing, so some conclusions in this piece may change in the future.

© 2018-2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[monochromeagent]

I'm making spooky bird feets for some props for the Theatre. We'll be doing Abigail 1702. Bird feets in jars. Lots of jars of weird pickled things. So much spooky. #clay #sculpting #polymerclay #prop #theatre #thespian #birds #talons #spooky #spoopy #Halloween #decoration #witch https://www.instagram.com/p/BpYtU_4HGg2/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1dwnomxbmz99f

[beautimode]

西洋版宮廷劇也大玩心機！艾瑪史東蛻變陰險女侍 《真寵》求上位

【���／BeautiMode ※原文刊載於BeautiMode創意生活風格網】

作為戲劇題材，宮鬥劇情總是牽引著觀眾的心，讓人沒日沒夜的追下去，先不論戲裡演的是中國哪個朝代，你肯定聽過「後宮不得干政」這句話，然而在西洋歷史上，雖然沒有後宮的存在，卻曾發生過「閨蜜干政」的真實事件。

這事件發生在英國安妮女王（Queen Anne）的任內，在歷史上她是出了名的悲情女王，除了患有痛風不良於行，長年久坐使得身材逐漸臃腫肥胖，更令人同情的是，她一共生了17個孩子，卻沒有一個活到成年，對於她的打擊有多大可想而知。

安妮在16歲時認識了莎拉詹寧斯（Sarah Jenyns），這位莎拉夫人自此成為安妮女王身邊不可或缺的貼身密友，更在安妮與丹麥喬治王子（Prince George of Denmark and Norway）結婚時成了她的首席侍女。後來牽涉到宮廷的政治利益問題，安妮也選擇護著莎拉夫人，與姊姊女王瑪麗二世（Mary II）鬧翻。在1702年即位後，安妮女王旋即任命莎拉夫人的丈夫為第一海軍大臣，並擁有公爵頭銜，莎拉夫人則成為女王身邊的第一女官。 

在當時的年代，兩人的交情好到令人質疑，安妮女王是女同志的消息也成為當時的八卦流傳。但隨著莎拉夫人及其夫婿的職權無限擴大，以及政治權力的延續鬥爭，安妮女王對這位長期的閨蜜開始感到厭惡，主僕間的情感逐漸破裂���此時，宮廷內另一名女官阿比蓋爾希爾（Abigail Hill）逐漸取代了莎拉夫人的地位。

日前在威尼斯影展（Venice Film Festival）一舉拿下最佳女演員與評審團大獎的《真寵》（The Favourite），正是以18世紀安妮女王與前後任閨蜜的故事做為主題，電影劇情如同西洋版宮鬥片，以極盡揶揄、諷刺及大膽的風格呈現英國女王不為人知的女女戀。

由《單身動物園》（The Lobster）鬼才導演尤格藍西莫（Yorgos Lanthimos）執導的《真寵》，找來以《樂來越愛你》（La La Land）在奧斯卡（The Academy Awards）封后的艾瑪史東（Emma Stone）、《神鬼傳奇》（The Mummy）系列女星瑞秋懷茲（Rachel Weisz）、以本片奪下威尼斯影展最佳女演員的奧莉薇亞柯爾曼（Olivia Colman）上演宮廷鬧劇，用盡手段只為求上位。 

另一部同樣以女性為主題的電影《寡婦》（Widows），日前在多倫多國際影展（Toronto International Film Festival）舉辦首映會，由好萊塢名導史提夫麥昆（Steve McQueen）與《控制》（Gone Girl）原著編劇共同打造，找來包括薇拉戴維斯（Viola Davis）、連恩尼遜（Liam Neeson）、勞勃杜瓦（Robert Duvall）、柯林法洛（Colin Farrell）、蜜雪兒羅德里奎茲（Michelle Rodriguez）等一票硬底子演員投入飆戲。

《寡婦》故事背景設立在當代的芝加哥；四個寡婦維若妮卡、愛麗絲、琳達以及貝兒，這四個原本毫無交集的女人，唯一的共通點就是她們死去的無能丈夫，都因犯罪行為而欠下一屁股債給她們。現在，她們決定必須拿回人生主導權，打造一個自己能夠主宰的未來。《寡婦》於12月7日在台上映。

Text、Photo：福斯影片

【延伸閱讀】威尼斯、金球雙料影后 艾瑪史東：「名導和名製片的名氣，並不是能拍出好電影的關鍵。」

【延伸閱讀】 【時尚，原來如此】女王帽飾出自他們之手！８位用創意守護戴帽傳統的英國設計師

[vincentdelaplage]

CINÉ CINÉMA #cinécinéma #cineserie LA FAVORITE SYNOPSIS Début du XVIIIème siècle. L’Angleterre et la France sont en guerre. Toutefois, à la cour, la mode est aux courses de canards et à la dégustation d’ananas. La reine Anne, à la santé fragile et au caractère instable, occupe le trône tandis que son amie Lady Sarah gouverne le pays à sa place. Lorsqu’une nouvelle servante, Abigail Hill, arrive à la cour, Lady Sarah la prend sous son aile, pensant qu’elle pourrait être une alliée. Abigail va y voir l’opportunité de renouer avec ses racines aristocratiques. Alors que les enjeux politiques de la guerre absorbent Sarah, Abigail quant à elle parvient à gagner la confiance de la reine et devient sa nouvelle confidente. Cette amitié naissante donne à la jeune femme l’occasion de satisfaire ses ambitions, et elle ne laissera ni homme, ni femme, ni politique, ni même un lapin se mettre en travers de son chemin. BANDE ANNONCE https://youtu.be/E0N-CIlqVOM DÉTAILS 6 février 2019 en salle / 2h 00min / Historique, Drame De Yórgos Lánthimos Par Deborah Dean Davis, Tony McNamara Avec Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone Titre original The Favourite CRITIQUE On aurait pu craindre qu’un film historique en costumes vienne amoindrir ce caractère nihiliste et le sens de la dérision dont le cinéaste l’accompagne. On sait, après avoir vu La Favorite, qu’il en eut fallu bien plus, à Yorgos Lanthimos, que la cour du Royaume-Uni, au XVIIIe siècle, pour l’intimider et l’assagir. Nul doute, à l’inverse, qu’il ait éprouvé un malin plaisir à repousser les limites du genre et à dynamiter les figures qui ordinairement l’animent, trouvant dans les fastes d’un royaume nouvelle matière à ses impertinences. Au château de la reine Anne (prodigieusement interprétée par Olivia Colman), dernière héritière de la lignée des Stuart, qui régna de 1702 à 1714, ce sont les femmes qui se livrent bataille. Des femmes à qui Yorgos Lanthimos ne fait pas de cadeau, les montrant entièrement occupées à satisfaire leurs plaisirs et leurs ambitions. A commencer par la souveraine elle-même, enfant gâtée, capricieuse et instable, que de violentes crises de goutte mettent à plat, et que n’intéressent guèr https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca2InYwszzV/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nie7027]

I posted 51,293 times in 2021

50 posts created (0%)

51243 posts reblogged (100%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1024.9 posts.

I added 22,851 tags in 2021

#persona 5 - 10813 posts

#boku no hero academia - 2959 posts

#the owl house - 1853 posts

#mob psycho 100 - 1702 posts

#arcane - 1273 posts

#haikyuu!! - 1135 posts

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Longest Tag: 139 characters

#but as soon as shinsou says something provocative bakugou just smirks and signs ‘that’s not what your mom was moaning in my ear last night’

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

So it seems i fell for my own Fake dating/ Pretend relationship...

4 notes • Posted 2021-02-20 05:23:21 GMT

#4

I began shipping Ryukita just because they were the only ones left after i settle on all my other ships for the PT(shuake annshiho makoharu and sumitaba) and because they were a ship on my favorite p5 fic (Several people are typing)

But daaaaaaamn

Why did nobody told me they fit together so well in canon?!

Now that im playing i see so much good stuff

not only they complement each other so well (due to me sucking at resources management i ended using all of my sp in the middle of the infiltration and discovered i could clear Madares palace like 3 times with just the two of them and Mona for healing ofc)

BUT ALSO THOSE TWO SPENT A DAY TOGETHER MAKING MADARAMES CARD....

AKA IT WAS RYUJI WHO WAS WITH YUSUKE AT ARGUABLY ONE OF HIS LOWEST MOMENTS (writing yor fathers figures card where you denounce the crimes he had commited and then selling it must be very hard)

So yeah...ryukita is good

5 notes • Posted 2021-03-27 07:37:35 GMT

#3

Now that i finished watching the Fear Street movies on Netflix i cant help but noticing how except for Sam/Hannah who breaks the cycle (yeah lesbian rights!) all those who died in 1666 survived in the future while those who lived died in their correponding times.

Like Sarah, Constance, Henry and the widow Mary where the only ones who died in 1661 while Deena, Ziggy, Josh and Nurse Lane were the only survivors once everything was over.

Be it Kate/Lizzi, Simone/Isaac, Cindy/Abigail or even Nick/Solomon and Tommy/Thomas the cycle stays.

Except for Sam/Hannah.

Sam/Hannah who Deena/Sarah loved so much they were willing to die just to protec them.

Aka Fear Street is a movie about how lesbian love is so powerful it breaks a 300 years long cycle of violence set my an actual curse.

6 notes • Posted 2021-09-07 06:44:16 GMT

#2

YO! HERES THE THIRD OF MY HALLOWEEN ONE SHOTS AND ANOTHER ONE IM REALLY FOND OF !

High Flyers (Part of my Halloween p5 au #1)

Fandom: Persona 5

Summary:

AO3 link

At first glance Sumire couldn’t shake the feeling there was something off about him and being unable to pinpoint exactly what it was was beginning to bother her. Until it dawned on her.

And now it was Sumire’s turn to scream.

The man was floating.

And in front of him, holding the almost empty bag of blood….

BOOOY HERE I COME WITH MY SUMIRE AGENDA!

Have i told you i love her? No? WELP HERES A SUMI FANFIC (with a sweet touch of sumitaba for the people with fine taste)

So yeah heres another of my halloween shots this time focused on Sumi because there was now y couldnt include her in my au

In fact this one shot, unlike he previous one , takes place in my first p5 halloween au where all the Pt are some sort of creature... waht is Sumi gonna be? Youll have to read it ;)

Basically this fic is the introduction of p5 royal into my halloween au.(so beware of the royal spoilers because they start from the beggining)

And like the others one shots this will also have notes for the au in the final chapter which is chapter 3 BECAUSE THERE ALSO A BONUS CHAPTER(aka chapter 2) FEATURING THE ROYAL TRIO MEETING IN MY AU

So with nothing else to say go read it and hope you enjoy it

And if you do please let me know! (comments & reblogs >>>likes)

7 notes • Posted 2021-11-09 21:53:11 GMT

#1

YO! HERES ANOTHER ONE OF MY HALLOWEEN ONE SHOTS!

Blood oaths (Or Halloween p5 au #2)

Fandom: Persona 5

Summary:

AO3 link

And in front of him, holding the almost empty bag of blood....

A pair of gray eyes he had come to recognize so well.

Akira's face was as stoic as ever. The purple bruises, cuts and swollen lip doing nothing to diminish the severity of his gaze. Yet, meeting Goro's own eyes was the only thing needed to soften those eyes.

Akira was there and all things considered (both Akira's injuries and Goro's... new condition) Goro couldn't help but feel a surge of relief among all this mess.

His sacrifice hadn't been on vain.

Him betraying Shido and his organization of hunters had been worth it.

so yep, heres another of my halloween themed oneshots and LOL I almost forgot to post here.

Its another vampire au for p5 and as any vammpire au it was written with the express purpose to be as dramatic and cliche possible.

I know i know... no thoughts head empty theres just over the top vampires aus here.

As a fun fact i had this written since November and i posted in ao3 like 2? 3? weeks ago

This is a differen au than the previous one shot and i posted some notes about that world to use as future references in case i want to write more for it or you want to know more at the end of the chapter.

Theres nothing much to say except i hope you enjoy my angsty suake vampire bfs!

And if you do please let me know! (comments & reblogs >>>likes)

18 notes • Posted 2021-04-17 01:02:27 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[qqueenofhades]

You're going to think I'm such a weirdo because you're my go-to person for whether particular British monarchs were gay, but I have another question along those lines. Was Queen Anne in a lesbian relationship with Sarah Churchill? And if not, was she gay? I read one book that explained she wasn't "because she hadn't heard of it." Needless to say, I didn't finish it.

Ahaha. We’ve all gotta be known for something, right?

Short answers to both your questions: No and no, but also in both cases sorta, and which reflects a really fascinating entry point into a discussion of the female side of seventeenth/eighteenth-century LGBT culture. (Seriously, guys, the eighteenth century was HELLA GAY. I’ve written about the male side of it, but there is just as much or more to look at from the female. It’s also why you should continue to laugh at Certain Unnamed Persons telling you gay people did not exist before the 1960s.)

Anyway, so, Anne. As girls, both she and her sister Mary (the future Queen Mary II) had a passionate attachment to an older woman, Frances Apsley, and wrote letters to her that reflect this romantic imagining. (p.1648-49). The thirteen-year-old Mary addressed the twenty-two-year-old Frances as “my dearest dear husband” and called herself “your faithful wife, loyal to your bed […] how I dote on you, oh I am in raptures of sweet amaze, when I think of you I am in ecstasy.” In fact, when Anne began her own correspondence with Frances, Mary was jealous of her/seemed to have viewed her sister as a romantic rival for Frances’ affections. In their letters, Anne cast herself and Frances as star-crossed lovers from the play Mithridates, and there was an atmosphere of unabashed hedonism and sexual liberty at the Restoration court of Charles II. The girls were mostly kept away from this, but there were plenty of plays, novels, etc that centered around themes of female same-sex desire. Eighteenth-century English literature (see p. 261-62) had all kinds of exploration of it, and indeed reflects a vernacular for LGBT relationships arguably more detailed than what we have today (if by nature pejorative): “sodomite” and “molly” were the terms for the active and passive partner in a male homosexual relationship, and “sapphic” and “tommy” were the equivalents for a female homosexual relationship. (But of course, I forgot, we didn’t have LGBT people before the 1960s.) 

What Valerie Traub calls “the renaissance of lesbianism in early modern England” wasn’t just a literary phenomenon either. The habit of women sharing beds at all level of society, from working class to noblewomen, and the usually all-female social circle of young women offered a convenient environment for practical explorations of the kind of passionate desire seen above. At least one contemporary commentator had no problem with it (see p. 54) and viewed it in pragmatic terms:

Calling himself “neither their censor nor their husband,” Brantôme maintains that “unmarried girls and widows may be excused for liking such frivolous and vain pleasures and preferring to give themselves to each other thus and so get rid of their heat than to resort to men and be put in the family way and dishonored by them, or to have to get rid of their fruit.” As for the homoerotic exploits of married women: “the men are not cuckolded by it.”

In other words, female same-sex activity might not be optimal, but it’s essentially harmless, preferable to unwanted pregnancies, illicit abortions, or the spoiling of marriage prospects. And since everyone knows (according to bountiful eighteenth-century medical wisdom) that women are “hot” and need to relieve their humors with sex, lesbianism (though it wasn’t yet called that) was fine as an option. This of course was not the only view on it, but it does absolutely make it the case that yes, Anne (and other women of her class and era) would have heard of it. (Seriously, do these Str8 Historians just… assume that nobody ever mentioned same-sex relations/desire/literature, because gay people are “so modern” or… what? I’m baffled. On that note, Emma Donoghue’s “Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801″ is also a recommended read.)

Anyway, back to Anne and Mary themselves. It’s highly unlikely that their ardor toward Frances Apsley ever went beyond letters, and Mary did not have another relationship with a woman of the same intensity; after a very rocky start to her 1677 marriage to William of Orange, she fell quickly in love with him and devoted herself to him. However, Anne continued to have the same sort of passionate attachments to women, including that to Sarah Jennings, later Lady Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough. Sarah is a fascinating historical lady for many reasons, and through her relationship with Anne over several decades, was able to exert considerable influence and prestige. She was a strong-willed, well educated, politically ambitious, and formidable woman, and I think the assessment of her relationship with Anne in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (login needed for full text) is essentially correct:

Anne wasemotionally vulnerable and always depended very much upon her near circle offriends; Sarah wasthe closest of these. Anne wasromantically, but platonically, in love with Sarah, who, for her part, understood very well theimmense value of her relationship with the princess. So close did Anne feel to Sarah that from about 1691 she insisted thatthe aliases Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman be used between them, to overcomeany undue feeling of formality when in private. Although Sarah eventually found the princess’sattentions irritating in their childlike ardour, she responded with genuineaffection, but not with love. She later wrote that she had little in commonwith Anne; she usedher periods of exclusion from the court to widen her reading, including Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, Montaigne, and Seneca, whereas Anne remained stubbornly non-intellectual. Nonethe less, their political interdependence and genuine affection kept theirpersonal relationship alive.

I would say in my view this is about right. Anne was definitely in love with her, while Sarah liked her, but saw the overall value in being attached to the princess (later queen). They fell out over differing political opinions (Sarah was a Whig, Anne was a Tory) and both had devoted relationships with their husbands. Sarah’s was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the statesman, political player, and hero of the War of Spanish Succession, and Anne’s was Prince George of Denmark. Sarah and Churchill had seven children, while Anne had at least seventeen pregnancies by George, but only one living son (William, Duke of Gloucester, who died at the age of eleven).

George has generally gotten a bad rap as a total unambitious dullard, and there has been some attempt to portray Anne and Sarah as lovers while Anne was unavoidably saddled with George and only kept having sex with him in hopes of a Stuart heir, which I think is both inaccurate and unfair to George. He had almost no political ambition at all and was absolutely happy to let his wife rule and be queen and to support her decisions, which was the reverse of Anne’s sister Mary and her husband William (Anne’s immediate predecessors). William refused to let Mary be crowned as sole queen, even though Mary and Anne were both daughters of James II and the hereditary right was Mary’s (for her part, Mary refused to countenance rulership without William and never wanted it much, but accepted it in the name of the Protestant cause/saving England from Catholic monarchy under her father). So by the time of Anne’s reign (1702-1714) it was still not at all negotiated how exactly a new (female) constitutional monarch, post-1689 and Bill of Rights, would rule by herself, but Anne did pretty much that. She didn’t have constitutional strife, she took England from the chaos and civil/religious wars/Commonwealth/etc of the seventeenth to its emergence as a major world power in the eighteenth, and George was a-okay with all of this. He declared that “I am her Majesty’s subject, I will do naught but what she commands me,” and they adored each other. George’s death in 1708 absolutely devastated Anne and was one of the reasons that snapped her fraught relationship with Sarah, as one observer wrote:

[George’s death] has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief.She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very momenthis breath went out of his body, and ‘twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailedupon her to leave him.

Sarah and Anne’s relationship had been steadily deteriorating over political differences, Sarah’s domineering personality, and Anne’s affection for a new female favorite, Abigail Masham. Indeed, Anne’s Whig opponents (and Sarah herself) fanned rumors that Anne and Abigail’s relationship was that of lovers, including by scandalous poetry (see pp. 157-8):

Whenas Queen Anne of great RenownGreat Britain’s Sceptre sway’dBesides the Church, she dearly lov’dA Dirty Chamber-Maid….

As Traub points out, Sarah’s accusations are more likely motivated by jealousy at losing her position as favorite to Abigail, and Anne herself never forgave Sarah for insinuating lesbianism (as in the physical act of it, rather than romantic feelings) in their relationship. Again as Traub comments: “It was the result of a transformation in discourse, whereas intimate female friends, including matronly monarchs with seventeen pregnancies behind them, could be interpreted as purveyors of sexual vice.” In other words, the accusations flung at Elizabeth I, the woman ruling alone in the late 16th-early 17th century, had been that she had inappropriate male lovers; now the charges against Anne, a century later, were of inappropriate female lovers, and reflected, as discussed above, the emergence of this entire construction and visibility of same-sex female desire. Accusations or intimations of homosexuality were nothing new to the Stuarts; both William and Mary (especially William) had been painted as having inappropriately intimate same-gender relationships, and William’s Jacobite enemies had likewise gotten considerable mileage out of pamphlets portraying him as a “sodomite.” (Which, again, they had political reasons to do, so there is that, but it’s fascinating, if unfortunate, that this had now become the preferred currency of political slander, as that was not necessarily the case before).

Overall, Anne certainly had strong emotional relationships to women for her entire life, and in some cases, those relationships were accused of being explicitly sexual (reflecting a culture that was, as noted, really hella gay for both women and men, and this gayness was both accepted and reviled in turn) but for the benefit of her enemies (Sarah’s unflattering depiction of Anne was basically accepted as fact until the late 20th century). So in one sense, Anne and Sarah were in a long relationship that ended badly, and Anne was absolutely biromantic. Sex (or the lack of it) is not the only defining marker of a relationship, but if we mean a lesbian relationship in the modern sense of the word (where they are both romantic and sexual partners) then no. Anne and George were known for being devoted and faithful to each other (as noted, not at all the norm in the Stuart court) and Anne’s seventeen pregnancies make it clear they had sex throughout their marriage. Anne herself took the accusation of physical lesbianism with Abigail Masham as an unforgivable slight on Sarah’s part; i.e. the feelings or the rhetoric were acceptable to her, but the action was not. We have no reason to think she was being a hypocrite about this, or willfully concealing/ignoring it. Because, surprise! People’s attitudes and identities toward sexuality are complicated and shifting and partial and evolving, and conditioned by class, time, place, religion, society, etc.

Anyway, since this is another novel: we could definitely classify Anne as queer in the modern definition (having romantic feelings/romantic-if chaste-involvements with women, but lovingly and faithfully married to her husband who was her sexual partner), but probably not actively and certainly not exclusively lesbian. She was traditional in her views and devoted to the Protestant church (and to George), so yes. I would classify her as biromantic with a preference for/sexual activity with men, but whose long relationships with women were both politically and personally influential and absolutely deserve attention within the context of eighteenth-century LGBT history and literature.