#ancestry and family wealth and power exists that *he* exists at all.

[widowshill]

VAMP ROGER AU QUESTION! how would he and barnabas interact together (if they ever interact)? :3 💜

tagging @tortoisesshells because she's my co-conspirator <3

excellent question! this family and their sharp-toothed men will be the death of ... well, several community members of Collinsport, i suppose.

to start — Barnabas gets out of the box slightly differently than in canon, which colors his relationship to Roger and the rest of the household. Roger kills Willie after his attempted assault on Carolyn and Vicki (who is, by that point, his wife); Willie's mysterious disappearance and Roger's suspected involvement makes Jason that much more panicked, desperate, and correspondingly aggressive. Liz goes searching for the lost family jewels in a last-ditch attempt to buy Jason off, and, inadvertently, lets their ancient family sin out of the tomb.

ergo she's made Barnabas' thrall instead of Willie, but this goes unnoticed for a while — even though her brother would, in theory, recognize the signs, and his suspicions are raised, but she's already acting so much unlike herself with Jason around that he doesn't suspect anyone else of doing her harm. yet.

at the start, he and Barnabas get along very well, even before they discover their shared affliction: they're both relatively sophisticated, well-traveled, intelligent people, and for all that Roger decries Liz's emphasis on the Collins name, he leans towards familial connections instinctively (Roger hasn't got much in the way of friends outside of the house even in canon, and he's even more isolated as a vampire).

after he finds out Barnabas is also a vampire, things get a little more complicated, but overall, they're still friendly. Roger doesn't have much sympathy for Barnabas' relentless self-pity and decrying his doomed fate to live as a monster, because Roger on the whole enjoys his vampirism and has made a decent un-life for himself out of it (thanks in no small part to Vicki). but having someone like him around is a comfort in ways he wouldn't have expected, he's no longer solitary or uniquely monstrous out of the Collins family, he has someone else around through the night, and someone who understands the sufferings of bloodthirst and being shut out of the sun.

furthermore, Roger's very much interested in his family history and stories of the past, the building of Collinwood, Jeremiah's ships – and Barnabas was there. there's potential for some very interesting conversations about the past, and the arc of the Collins family history to the present, not to mention literature, travel, fashion, politics and the rest. Roger's his cousin's mirror in modernity in many ways, and that's something potentially interesting to explore: the world changes around them, but Collinses do not.

as an aside, they both have a funny sort of relationship to Burke. Barnabas hates him for his resemblance to Jeremiah and envies his friendship with Vicki and thinks he's crude, and Roger ... well. it's complicated. it's closer to antagonism than not, and Burke has tried to kill him once in this au, and Roger resents his flirting with Vicki, but then there's everything else with their past. so I don't think Barnabas' treatment of him would sit particularly well with Roger, he'd take the attitude of hey, only I can be a dick to Burke >:(

the definite fracture point is Barnabas imprinting on Vicki. Roger's already jealous and possessive by nature, and it's amplified by the supernatural nature of his relationship to Vicki (being closer, bodily and mentally; being necessary to each other; being, quite literally, sustenance) so he's already a little on edge when Barnabas starts paying attention to her, giving her presents, and appreciating the scenery — Barnabas doesn't, exactly, tend to have much in the way of moral inclination to leaving women alone when they have prior engagements, but it's fair to point out the irony of everything Roger was doing with his bloodbag governess when he was still very much a married man.

anyway: Roger finds foreign bite marks on his wife's neck, and he's understandably immensely upset by this. partially out of territorial sentiment, but he also knows Vicki, and he knows that she wouldn't have invited another vampire willingly — which means that she was forced, or hypnotized, or attacked in secret, and there's only the one potential suspect. this is already enough to lose his good will, but he might have been willing to let Barnabas go with a "hands off," had this discovery not lead to finding out what he'd also been doing to Liz. the combination of the two is unforgivable, and it's Barnabas' error to have made an enemy who is very personally aware of all his vampiric weaknesses, and Burke's already carved a stake.

[goodqueenaly]

Hi again! I hope this isn’t too weird of a question, because obviously Taena and Orton Merryweather’s son is really young, but looking in the future do you think his partial Essosi heritage would heavily affect marriage prospects, because of Westerosi bigotry? Or would his (presumably) being the heir to Longtable be enough for some other noble houses to look past their xenophobia? I noticed that Taena seems to take effort to emphasize that she follows the Seven and that her son does too and

(Part 2, my apologies for two parted question!!) how Taena mentions that Russell knows all the Seven and that he’s interested in swords, I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting but I took this as Taena trying to emphasize that Russell has been raised to be culturally Westerosi, so that he might be viewed less as an other by fellow nobles. Sorry for such a long and poorly worded question! Thank you!

Good question. That there is - or at least can be - Westerosi xenophobia against Essosi individuals, or even Westerosi natives with (recent) Essosi ancestry, is certainly true. Indeed, Taena herself has not been exempt from such othering based on her Myrish background: both Cersei and Sansa associate Taena's foreign birth with exoticism (and eroticism), with Sansa referring to Taena as a "sultry black-eyed Myrish beauty" who "spun so provocatively that every man in the hall was soon watching her" during her own wedding and Cersei, for example, assuming "[y]ou are all whores in the Free Cities, aren't you" when Taena discusses her sexual history (and this of course barely scratches the surface of Cersei's views on Taena being influenced by Westerosi xenophobia). That this prejudice can extend to the children of such marriages, and their own potential spouses, is likewise true, as we see with the Westerlings: despite Jeyne and her siblings having unquestionably Westerosi blue blood on their father's side, Kevan Lannister refused a marriage between Jeyne and one of his twins on the grounds of the "doubtful blood" inherited from their mother, Sybell Spicer, herself the granddaughter of an Essosi woman. (It will be interesting to see, as I have speculated, whether doubts about Larra Rogare's Essosi origins, already the source of tension as related in Fire and Blood Volume 1, will motivate Prince Viserys Targaryen to marry his Aegon to Naerys to reaffirm their Targaryen-ness via an incestuous union.)

So it is possible, I think, that young Russell Merryweather would be subject to xenophobia-related prejudices regarding his future marriage options. Whether he currently experiences any such xenophobia is impossible to say, given that we have never met him or experienced anything of his life at Longtable/the Reach (nor has anyone besides Taena even mentioned her son's existence). Likewise, given our lack of insight into House Merryweather as a family and dynastic power in the Reach, it is similarly impossible to say whether the promise of his lordship would sway otherwise (potentially) prejudiced aristocrats into marriage with him; while the geopolitical situation of Longtable appears potentially advantageous (given the confluence of two rivers there, with all the potential related access to riverrine trade and travel), we have no insight into House Merryweather's strength, wealth, or power. (Indeed, we can't even say how old House Merryweather is - after all, the Merryweathers do not appear in Westerosi history until the reign of Maeor the Cruel.)

Of course, all of this is without guessing what might happen to Russell Merryweather more immediately in the story (considering Russell, at six, is still at least a decade if not more from even the younger side of typical Westerosi (male) aristocratic marriage). Befitting their surname as fairweather friends of Cersei, Taena and Orton have as of the end of AFFC fled the capital - but that move may not guarantee their or their son's safety, given the apocalyptic ambitions of Euron in Oldtown and the raids of ironmen up the Mander (which is to say, perhaps even as far as Longtable) as well as any potential future troop movements in the area (if, say, the new King Aegon VI were to dispatch his likely ally Randyll Tarly to Highgarden to force the Tyrells to surrender to him) ... oh, and you know, the coming invasion of the Others (which I don't think will get as far south as Longtable, but may nevertheless negatively affect southern seats). Russell Merryweather may not even survive another decade to be the subject of Westerosi aristocratic xenophobia regarding his marriage, and if he does, he may find himself becoming an adult in a world massively shaken up, supernaturally and politically, from that of his boyhood - which is to say, one where the old rules of aristocratic Westerosi marriage may no longer be entirely relevant.

[drumlincountry]

My great(×4) grandfather was born into that same type of evil landlord wealth but it honestly matters so little. 1/64th of my ancestry coming from wealth means nothing when compared to the 63 other great grandparents of that generation who definitely didn't. And considering how very disowned he was it probably didn't even matter to his children - who inherited none of that and likely never even met their grandparents. That I'm descended by blood from them has effected my life 0% - there's nothing to feel bad about. He cut himself out of that family, why on earth would i consider them part of mine. My heritage is farmers and fishermen, that's it.

Thank you for your ask & your reassurances! It's weird to know these things, isn't it?? Even while I try to tell myself it doesn't matter, I feel the need to explain why it doesn't matter. Is this how rich kids feel?

I think it's really hard not to feel some way or other about our genetic forebearers! For good or bad, it feels Important to know u share chromosomes with someone. Even here on the found family website.

That said, I'd like to get to a position where I don't care about my blood ancestors at all. I'd like to offer equal respect to the people who shaped me into who I am today, even tho most of them weren't related to me.

'Family' is such a thorny idea. Community matters. Culture matters. A lot of culture is transmitted thru the family. Can't deny that.

...But that's only because the family CAN BE a space of like. Love & nurturing & shared experiences (alternatively violence & neglect & trauma - which also shapes people!). U can experience love & nurturing & shared experiences (and/or violence etc) in other places too. You can choose to disown the values given to u by, say, landlord ancestors* & abusive family & choose better values to live by.

The idea that Blood to tells you how you should be and where you belong can lead u down some dodgy fucking paths. Like "go back to where you came from" paths.

---

*the thing we're dancing around a bit here is how genetics are used to perpetuate power & oppression. U know, white supremacy. Eugenics. All that fun time.

Probably a lot of my thinking here is informed by being queer, & therefore sharing both oppressions & cultural experiences with ppl who are not related to me, which I don't share with ppl related to me. I live in a cultural and ideological world I did not pick up from my grandmother, and in many ways the local queers who propogate & maintain that culture are my ancestors more than she is.

However, I am white! That is a thing I have from my genetics. More accurately, from how my genetics are understood in our culture. It hugely shapes how I am allowed to exist in this world.

The fact that evil british landlords existed, and while alive, perpetuated white supremacy & feudalism ... gives me material advantages today! Those are my cultural ancestors, whether or not I am blood related to them!

So yeah. Gotta be a race traitor. Gotta disown our shitty cultural ancestors ... but in a thoughtful way that doesn't involve denying our priviledge.

complicated, innit!

[laurenlavianafamer]

Blog Post #4

“The Space Traders'' by Darrick Bell is a short story originally published in 1992.  But it was also adapted for television in 1994 and made into a short film.  Like all adaptations, the television adaptation of “The Space Traders'' is not exactly like the writing it is based on.  But the differences between them are illuminating, and that is what I would like to discuss in this blog post.  

For those who have not read the story nor seen the made-for-television movie version of it, I will briefly summarize.  In the year 2000, what was then the future, aliens arrive on Earth and make the U.S. an offer—they will provide essential minerals, gold, new technologies that will solve all of our environmental problems, and immense wealth and the means to ensure global hegemonic power too, but in exchange the aliens want all Black Americans.  There is a vote, and 70% of Americans vote to move forward with the deal, while just 30% vote to say no to the Space Traders. And that is how both the short story and the movie version of it end—with 20 million Black Americans lined up, stripped to their undergarments, entering the space ship and nobody knows their future (the Space Traders will not tell us why they want all Black Americans…for good, for evil, we do not know).  

There are some difficult, deeply uncomfortable questions raised by this story that essentially argues that America is no better, no more equitable or inclusive and just as deeply racist as this nation was for the first century of its existence when slavery was not just legal but socially, morally acceptable too.  But while the short story seems to content itself with a, forgive me here, black-and-white portrayal of racial divisions in the U.S. today, the made-for-tv movie deals with a far more nuanced picture of that racial divisions are really like in America.  

The biggest difference between the short story and the made-for-tv movie was the ending.  In the story, Gleason Golightly is a prominent Black conservative who is part of the President’s Cabinet and who plays a big role in top-level discussions about how to answer the Space Traders’ offer. As a Black man, all of his education, cultural capital, and political power cease to matter—ultimately, he and his family are sent to space with the traders.  But that is NOT how the movie version ends.  

In the movie version, Golightly and his children are sent away with the Space Traders, but his wife is not—she is too light-skinned; she tries to sneak away with her family, but she is stopped because she is too light-skinned to count as “Black”.  The movie version, you see, engages in a far more nuanced understanding of what race is, what racism is, and it is one that gets into the weeds of how race was treated historically, for instance with laws breaking down who counts as “Black” or “white” according to fractions (like whether you are 1/16th Black), dividing racial designations into a crazy number of categories.  It wasn’t just a racial classification system, it was a caste system.  For example, Title 42, Section 267 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes from the 1830s stated that: “In signifying race, a person having one-thirty-second or less of Negro blood shall not be deemed as “colored,” a “mulatto,” “black,” “negro,” “quadroon,” “mestizo,” “colored person” or a “person of color” (Diamond & Cottrol, p. 257).   A “mulatto” was half white and half Black, while a “quadroon” was legally defined as someone with one-quarter African ancestry, and though this law did not mention “octoroon” this too was a term meaning someone with one-eight African ancestry; there were hexadecaroons in some laws too—the designations of racial classification seems endless (Diamond & Cottrol).  The history of racism in the U.S. is not a simple one of Black versus white; it is a nuanced and complex history of prejudice entrenched in laws, in society, in the very way we defined one another and ourselves.  And thus, to me, there is something more honest in the movie version of “The Space Traders,” something more hard-hitting in its acknowledgement that our history of racial divisiveness is a nuanced one with far more complexity than just a “black-and-white” issue.  

[nacricissa]

The Forever Project

Uh I realized I haven't got a WIP intro for anything That's because the work is arguably not in progress

But it's also the only thing I think about and I love to talk about it so...

There will definitely be several books, but this will function mostly for the first one, which is the only one with even vaguely defined parameters

We have been keeping secrets for some time now. We bear no ill will toward you, but we feared that you would take your knowledge of these things as a reason to harm us. You cannot overpower us, even if you should attempt to act against us, however, in the hope we could achieve our ends without conflict, we did keep things from the Council, until recent events forced our hand.

         We hope that despite our lack of openness, we can come to an arrangement. In service of this, we have compiled this document. Everything you need to understand us is presented here, and we ask that you read it in its entirety before judging us or attempting to negotiate. We will know whether you have complied.

--- Frederic Melior, and his sword Elise

Genre: High Fantasy/ Historical Urban Fantasy

Target Audience: ME

POV: First-person, past tense, as of now from only one POV

Blend Pitch: The Bane Chronicles spent a lot of time thinking about religion and multidimensional time travel

Themes: Great Power/Great Responsibility, The impossibility of perfection, the power of environment on a person's character

Characters below the cut:

Mary Elizabeth (Elise) Godslayer: She is the greatest weapon of All Time, forged to slay the Gods, strayed from her purpose. She's a Tumblr girlie with albinism ripped from her middle class life in the year 2014 to be wielded by her brother. She disagrees, and as she stumbles through her cataclysmic abilities, bending time and creating a whole universe entirely by accident, she ends up connected to Frederic, who would be an excellent Chosen Wielder if he wasn't a turn-of-the-century German aristocrat with the commensurate views on women and people of colour.

Frederic (Eric) Melior Fitzgerald: He was the first son of his family to survive to ten years old. By the time Eric was conscious of the world around him, his mother was widowed and spending a disturbing amount of her wealth to fund a sect that claimed to be fighting the forces of darkness within the world. When he completes a ritual in the cult which should get him the sword stashed behind the curtain, his ancestry kicks in and a white-haired pale-eyed girl who speaks a very strange English appears in his mind instead, granting him a degree of magic he had never anticipated. He will later learn that the reason this bogus ritual worked for him, and no one else, has a great deal to do with how his father died shortly after his birth, and his mother often seems to forget her own name.

Davriel Godslayer: Davriel is Elise's brother, and he for one is totally fine with the massacre every deity plan they were handed at birth. While his own magic is not very strong, his spellcasting is very practiced, and despite Elise's constant efforts to block him out, they still have enough of a connection that he can always seem to get at least a bit of her power to try to coerce her back to weapon of mass destruction status. However, while chasing his sister through the multiverse, he gets to see more people who happily live with the Gods as they are, and would in fact be devastated by their loss, not to mention the unnamed god.

the unnamed god: This god cannot have a name. He thinks of himself as being male, but inherently has no gender. He can't, because that would represent too much specificity, at which point a being with that specific trait would begin to exist. He is simply powerful, and benevolent. Two traits assigned by thousands of hypothetical "if there is a god" and "anyone listening" thoughts. Any prayer with no destination, any faith with no object, any belief with enough conviction but not widely shared enough to be a true religion. They all feed into him, and there is little he can do to direct that power back. There is no world which is his, in the same way the named gods have.

All Time: An amalgamation of various anthropomorphizations of the concept of Time. Gods which are similar enough will have their souls and consciousnesses merge together, making one entity responsible for and drawing power from multitudinous dimensions. This guy, while focusing his Cronus aspect, made Elise and Davriel to destroy the faith-based gods (which function differently than gods emergent from a concept).

The Dark God & The God of Faith: These are faith-based gods which, through machinations of the Dark God and the God of the Hunt ended up co-opting their emergent gods and exiling themselves to Eric's world, only half-alive and merged together. Their arrival created unleashed two races of beings on the world, as each god tried to pull apart from their combined form and failed. Vampires; faith absent darkness, and Wraiths, darkness absent faith.

[smokesandsonatas]

Theory and Analysis: The most powerful families in Twisted Wonderland

+++

Warning: Spoilers.

The world of Twisted Wonderland are full of interesting people. There's a lot of vague references to their families, but not outright confirmation from the character themselves.

Each clan is ranked based on their magical powers and/or wealth and influence in their respective nations.

Feel free to correct me should I missed some lore.

Draconia Family

As a descendant of the faeries and the king who ruled the creatures of the night, we all know how often it is said that Malleus is one of the top 5 most powerful mages in the world. But Malleus said that his Grandma surpasses his own. In Briar Valley, magic is part of their daily lives. Hence that's why it's so easy for Malleus to summon lighting, and why Lilia said that when he was a child Malleus burned his bangs and 'destroyed' mountains when he threw tantrums. Malleus is heavily implied to hatch from an egg, a nod to his dragon ancestry.

If Maleficent is Malleus' grandmother, that would make him her direct descendant. Thus he is the grandson of one of the Great Seven. His parents are not explicitly introduced, but they may be also part of the royalty in Briar Valley, as Malleus is a Prince himself. Malleus states that his Grandmother is the Queen and his only blood relative, supposedly left alive. Lilia himself got the highest honor from the Queen as a soldier who fought in wars.

Malleus' parents could've passed away from the previous wars. Their natural affinity for magic puts the Draconia family as one of the most, if not the most, powerful ones.

Shroud Family

Ortho is part of the Shroud family, even though he's an artificial being... Or is he?

Idia comes from a noble family. In the Ignihyde chapter, Vil stated that the wealth of his family is almost the same as the Asim clan. The Shroud family is a branch clan of the Jupiter Enterprises, a firm that made a fortune from rare metals and shady oil businesses. They are also the head in one branch of the S. T. Y. X organization, the one who studies magic and Overblot even at the time where 'humans are just writing down on clay tablets.'

The Shroud family thrives on technology that's why Idia is shown to have his own floating and flaming skull instead of a magical pen. Possibly to reference the Isle of Lamentation, his Hades underworld design, and how for them Technology is the same as Magic.

Idia's family is wealthy that's why he's able to live a life like that. Makes you think that if cryptocurrency exists in Twisted Wonderland, Idia would have a lot of investments.

Asim family

The Asim family are not royalties, but their immense wealth and distant relatives can make one believe that they are indeed part of Scalding Sand's Royal clan. Kalim's father is a merchant, the best one in their family. He also has a distant cousin who owns a tiger as a pet.

Though Kalim has 30+ younger siblings, which makes him the oldest, he remembers them all quite well, he just stopped counting at 30. They have their own private park, 100 servants, and personal doctors. Kalim is also prone to getting poisoned and having constant death threats to his life as the firstborn son. And it's implied that the Asim family possibly bribed Crowley to let him in at NRC to study with Jamil.

For me, the Asim family are not millionaires, but billionaires. They have this staggering amount of wealth that Kalim let Lilia borrow his Albert chain worth 10 million madol.

As the heir, Kalim is expected to take after his father.

Kingscholar Family

Coming from the long royal family line of the Kingscholar clan, Leona's claim to the throne is close to none. His brother Farena and his wife are the current rulers, which makes Cheka next on the throne. Unless his nephew declines to let his favorite uncle be the next one.

Leona grew up in a luxurious environment, to the point where the only things he needs to get home are his smartphone and wallet during the holiday vacation, as he has so many clothes at their place in Sunset Savannah.

This is where it gets tricky. From what I see, the lack of expectations for Leona forced him to be lazy and have a rude attitude, yet Leona is a hidden genius. But because their people will only look at him as this spoiled Prince 10 years younger than his brother, a second-pick to be the King, he does not exert effort unless he deemed necessary.

It seems Sunset Savannah is the only place where it's explicitly stated that poverty can be felt in their way of living, as Ruggie grew up in the slums. Makes you wonder what his older brother, Farena, is doing to eradicate or lessen it.

Leech family

Leech tweels.

I firmly believed the Leech clan has some shady business going on. Their home is at the Coral Sea, yet their father has been on land many times to the point he advised Floyd to always pick the best shoes because 'men who don’t pay attention to the small details get patronized'. It seems like the Leech' father instilled to them that appearances are important in land, as opposed to the sea where they just swim around naked in their merman forms.

The Leech tweels are taught self-defense at a young age. Their parties are home, are so formal to the point that Floyd finds them boring. Jade himself states that their father would make the guests sign waivers that the visitors' gifts for them would not ask for any favour in return.

During the time Jade went undercover as Vil's assistant, he got the shoes Schoenheit wanted. The brand is of Ténèbres, it's rare because it's not on the market. Vil told Jade, the next moment, Jade is pulling out a box of those luxurious shoes.

But how is he able to find a brand that not even Vil can?

Which can only mean, he used powerful and influential connections to pull the strings. To make Vil trust him, to the point that he laments giving Jade back to Azul.

The Leech twins are so glad they choose each other as they grew up because they're... interesting to each other. That's right, they choose. This implicates that Jade has the chance to not choose Floyd, and vice versa, yet they did anyway. This can also be a reference as to how hard it is to reproduce and give birth at the sea because in the eel's biology, they do external fertilization (atleast in theory, no one is really sure how eels mate) and once they hatch, they swim and survive by themselves by hiding in corals and rocks on the ocean floor.

Eels are also carnivorous cannibals, and this can also mean that they're shunned for eating fellow merfolks. What better way to hide evidence than eat them.

All of these point to one thing, the Leech family is a mafia clan from under the sea.

+++

The Draconia, Shroud, Asim, Kingscholar, and Leech clans are some of the most powerful families (based on the current lore) from Twisted Wonderland. You have a family of ancient faeries and dragons, the family of the descendants of the Underworld who operates independently from the government, a family whose personal wealth rivals a nation's economy, a family of beasts honed with primal instincts, and a family from under the sea who may or may not control the sea currents.

+++

And then we have Yuu who's just tired, and just wanna go home not getting paid enough.

[theculturedmarxist]

Tolkien is deserving of some serious criticism, don’t get me wrong. I adore his works and will defend them to my dying breath, but they aren’t perfect or absent any (ugh) “problematic” elements.

Much more significant than the brainlet accusations of “racism” however is Tolkiens stance towards deliverance, or salvation, rescue, whatever you want to call it. In his works, salvation from Sauron (the evil of Evils™) requires The Return of the King, ie, the legitimate ruler of Gondor, based on bloodline and so forth, for Evil™ to be defeated once and for all (in its material sense, since Sauron’s evil and the taint of Sauron and Melkor lingers on forever after) requires a singular, special individual.

Traditionally this is a rather commonplace concept. The nature of the Sagas from which Tolkien is drawing inspiration tend to emphasize the actions of the individual (or their bloodlines) on the course of history. As a simple piece of fiction, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, fits perfectly within the pre-medieval tradition from which Tolkien draws.

Tolkien is basing his narrative off of the root of a tradition which existed before, well, all which came after. Whether this makes it “innocent” or not, I frankly do no care. What I think is more relevant is how it fits into our modern ideological framework.

What racists call “white culture” or “white history” is in fact “bourgeois culture” and “bourgeois history.” The bourgeoisie emerge as a distinct class via the European Medieval period, particularly of Middle and Western Europe. The Feudal system ensured that occupations were (more or less) inherited. The sons took on the father’s business, and so forth. The reactionary fiction that Jews control finance has its roots in these circumstances where the lending of money and drawing interest on it were occupations relegated to Jews due to a Christian prohibition against the practice. Parenthetically, this is how Jewish people would end up on “both sides” of class struggle, with some Jewish families emerging as wealthy and influential financiers, and the majority of Jews obliged to take the same industrial jobs of their gentile counterparts.

To make a long story short, the extreme Individualism™ we see today has its roots in these hereditary occupations, and the wealth passed from one generation to another. The bourgeoisie benefited from the perception of individual members of their dynasty as being exceptional (just take Lorenzo “The Magnificent” for example).

Just like today, in the medieval world and beyond, if you wanted to boss people around it had to be justified in some way. Today it’s “democratic will,” and in the Saxon traditions from which Tolkien draws it was a kind of proto-Divine Right. Aristocrats traced their lineages back to gods such as Odin, or with the advent of Christianity, as close as fucking possible to Adam and Eve.

Aragorn, son of Arathorn, is a product of this tradition. In the story, Aragorn enjoys a storied ancestry connected to some of the greatest and most powerful figures of his world. The stewards that reigned in the stead of the True King, the one rightful ruler, were as good and brave and competent as can be, but the kingdom which they run is one ever waning in the face of the onslaught of Evil. Only when the One True Ruler returns to his rightful place is Evil defeated, and the retreat of the kingdom reversed into a greater glory than which preceded it.

Modern Bourgeois society plays off of similar tropes. Take “the Founding Fathers,” of US tradition for example. As it is portrayed, the Colonies are more or less content to suffer in subservience to England until The Founding Fathers emerge, and their ideas, which are so much better and greater than that of the rabble and which elevate them, spread and the idea of rebellion and the desire for Freedom™ takes hold. The American Revolution, for all its significance, is rendered not as the confluence of man, ideas, industry, and circumstance that it was, but more simply of the product of the Will of a certain number of individuals.

More recently, the resurgence of the working class and their political engagement has been painted as being the product and responsibility of Bernie Sanders. Rather than a broad, massive movement, made up of countless individuals with names and histories and desires, the desire for qualitative change is reduced to the noisome rabble rousing of a single individual. This isn’t without precedent. Martin Luther King, Jr. is another outstanding example. For all his contributions, MLK didn’t originate the struggle for civil rights or economic equality, but simply among the most prominent figure among a sea of prominent figures. According to Bourgeois History his death marks the end of the Civil Rights Movement, as is only proper since it “belonged to him.”

This is the same ideology which the Democrat and Republican parties rely on every election cycle. There is Evil™, which the voting populace can only be saved by electing The Right Candidate™. The fact that any one of these candidates has a cabinet of advisers, countless individuals serving under them, many distinct yet affiliated lobbyists, “contributors,” etc, is as a matter of course ignored.

The expectation of deliverance is a falsehood which the working class clings to like a dying man amidst the storm-tossed waves. Liberals especially are suckers for this maneuver. Bush II taking the White House helped to shape the basis for this delusion, as though anything would have been different had Gore won. Obama being swept into office and all the “good” he did (far from the eyes of the majority of liberals) essentially confirmed it. The final nail in this ideological coffin was the election of Trump. Rather than the product of decades of economic devastation and Democrat incompetence, this result was framed as the Stupids not knowing what was good for them and electing The Wrong Candidate—the Steward instead of the King (or Queen, in this instance).

The Lord of the Rings is excoriated as racist on only the most superficial observations. One of the fundamental themes of the books is disparate races, with longstanding racial and cultural enmity, setting aside race-hatred in order to overcome evil. More pertinent by far I think is the Savior Worship that is also inherent in the books, of the need of certain special individuals in order to lead all the base, common folk to The Promised Land.

The Working Class won’t be emancipated or delivered by some condescending Savior. For deliverance to come, we must deliver ourselves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and we cannot afford to wait much longer.

[aion-rsa]

From Bridgerton to Sanditon—Putting Island Queen in a Period Drama Context

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This article contains book spoilers for Island Queen and a trigger warning for racism and sexual assault.

Caribbean history is often ignored in US discussions of the era, despite myself and many other Americans having ancestry from this part of the world. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park has extended references to Caribbean slavery but many adaptations sidestep these implications or briefly address them before moving back to the white main characters. In addition, the focus is often on male leaders of rebellions such as Toussaint L’Overture leading the Haitian rebellion, or on women with island ancestry such as Dido Elizabeth from the movie Belle living in England. All are written by white novelists and screenwriters who miss cultural nuances and are unaware of subconscious bias. Island Queen, Vanessa Riley’s latest foray into Black historical fiction reveals a hidden figure of Caribbean history. Dorothy Kirwan was born into slavery in Montserrat, but secured her own freedom by becoming an astute businesswoman. 

Riley’s novel takes readers on a complex but emotionally fufilling journey which brings up serious historical questions on slavery, class, gender, and business ethics during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Riley’s novel is the answer for fans who feel recent historical dramas prioritize varying levels of whitewashing or escapism over featuring real Black history. 

Kirwan’s story has incredible relevance today as many look to understand the enduring legacies of British colonialism and the slave trade in the late 18th and early 19th Century. Her diary does not exist but Riley assembled birth records and other primary sources to trace her life. This is in contrast to sources such as the anonymously published novel The Woman Of Colour which historians are still looking to corroborate authorship and connections to real Caribbean figures.   Kirwan at times the mirror image of the fictionalized story of July from The Long Song, but there are also flash points of difference along class and timeframe context. July was born roughly 50 years later than Kirwan in Jamaica.  In addition, Dorothy’s life journey takes the reader from Montserrat to Demerara (off the coast of modern day Guyana), Grenada, and Dominica. Most importantly, Riley is an Caribbean-American writer while Andrea Levy wrote The Long Song for Black British readers. 

Dorothy’s in-character first person narration is the glue that holds the story together through frequent flashbacks to her childhood and young adulthood to her life in 1824 as a grandmother. The main theme of self-determination in a world where rich white men decide the rules everyone must play keeps the reader engaged even when it is not clear where the plot is heading. In the present plot, Dorothy has returned to London after many years away to petition colonial leaders to retain hard-won rights for Black and biracial women in Demerara. These unequal laws threaten Dorothy’s children and grandchildren and could even take away the freedom and inheritance she has spent her whole life to build. 

Bridgerton’s critics will find solace in Island Queen. Those who wanted the Black aristocracy of Haiti and other Caribbean islands featured in the series will find this history at the center. Kirwan navigates a world with inherent inequality, despite how much she has achieved in property ownership and savings. When she interacts with British and colonial elites, they never treat her as if she has power over them. The racial caste system in existence influences all of her interactions. After a breakup, she takes up an offer from Prince William (Queen Victoria’s uncle who died with no legitimate heirs) to travel with him on his ship. In Dorothy’s story, he provides a temporary emotional distraction but also a recognition that she would never fit into the British elite because of her skin color and island background. Unlike Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton, the real prejudices of the era held Dorothy back from ascending completely into the highest levels of royal society. Riley’s narrative, especially, ignores what could have been and shows readers the truth. 

These rich white men who placed artificial limits on Dorothy were also the source for young Alexander Hamilton’s childhood poverty. However, his solution as featured in the opening song of Hamilton was to leave the islands to pursue his education in America. This was an option steeped in male and to an extent white privilege as women at this point in history were not allowed to attend college. In addition, American society had already enacted severe restrictions in the rights of free people of color. Hamilton also was an orphan. Dorothy’s parents and her children kept her rooted to the Caribbean. 

The road to Dorothy acquiring a thriving business and heirs was lengthy and arduous, and Riley does not sugar coat the dynamics at play in her life. Kirwan’s mother was a slave and her father owned a plantation. The more percentage of white ancestry you have in your blood, the more freedom and rights you have. In her teenage years, Dorothy’s white half-brother Nicholas rapes her and she ends up giving birth to a daughter. Dorothy is forced to run away with a trusted friend to another island and has to leave her daughter behind. This is the beginning of many sacrifices she makes in order to protect her family. 

Although many readers may object to Riley portraying incest and sexual assault, the historical research makes this clear that this was the reality for women in slave societies. Dorothy’s narration is carefully crafted to show not only the trauma of the event, but her processing the trauma. For Dorothy, healing comes in the form of survival. The objective isn’t exploitation or the male gaze, but to illuminate ignored history and the intersection of race and gender in sexual power dynamics. Dorothy has to repeatedly establish consent and trust in a world where her partners can and will refuse to agree to those terms. The debate over rape culture in historical fiction revolves around characters that are fictional facing fictionalized situations, especially in the TV adaptations of Outlander and Bridgerton. Additionally, Outlander has sidestepped any serious contemplation of exploitation dynamics in slave societies despite plots featuring 8th Century Jamaica and North Carolina.  It is difficult to apply this same critique to Riley’s novel as her intention is historical recreation and reconstruction of Kirwan’s life story. 

Riley’s explanation and contextualization of race and gender dynamics is something many viewers wanted the first season of British historical drama Sanditon to address, past the show alluding to Georgiana’s ancestry and £100,000 inheritance. In fact, Riley explains in the Author’s Note that the journey to finding Dorothy Kirwan began with figuring out who the real Miss Lambe could have been over a decade ago. For Georgiana to have that kind of wealth, she would have had to have a white male ancestor willing and able to use the law to secure her freedom. Sidney’s connection to Georgiana as her legal ward isn’t clear, representing a missed opportunity that erodes the story’s worldbuilding. Dorothy’s explanation of social rankings and her own background means it is highly likely Georgiana is the product of a relationship between a white planter and an enslaved or indentured woman. Georgiana isn’t the only example of an fictional heir from the islands around this time period. Rhoda Swartz from Vanity Fair has Black and Jewish ancestry along with thousands of pounds. Island Queen has the space and interest to completely center the story of women like Georgiana and Rhoda position from the perspective of a Black writer and historian. 

Dorothy also reveals through her life experiences that interracial relationships with unequal power dynamics were often one of the only ways enslaved Black and biracial women could gain their freedom. In stark contrast to America during the late 18th Century, interracial relationships were never officially outlawed, but it was very rare for white men to officially marry women of color. More often, these women were mistresses and concubines, and any children from these relationships legally belonged to the father. Any relationship an enslaved woman undertook carried the risk of losing her children, with her past often used as a weapon of misogynoir, or simultaneous racist and sexist discrimination.  

One plot line unites Island Queen and The Long Song: both July and Dorothy lose a daughter to their white slave holding father who wanted to raise them in England. This trauma drives July to poverty while Dorothy had to wrestle the trauma alongside her mission to to fight to secure manumission papers for her children and also to develop a source of income that cannot be controlled by the men in her life. 

Read more

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How The Long Song Spotlights Ignored Black Caribbean History

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

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How Bridgerton Season 2 Can Improve On Season 1

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

At one point, she engages in survival sex work, then finds work as a housekeeper. Eventually, she is able to start her own housekeeping and domestic worker agency. She was well aware that some of her employees would choose to have relations with their bosses, but she made sure that she was not seen as a brothel owner for legal reasons. This is in stark contrast to some of the characters from Harlots on Hulu where brothel ownership or their sex worker status was an open secret.This is another area where Black women would suffer worse consequences for perceived immorality in society compared to white women. In fact, rumors of sex work follow her  Dorothy doesn’t intefere if her housekeepers decide to engage in sex work but she insists on mutual consent.  Riley does not apply any modern notions of slut-shaming or anti-sex-worker rhetoric. The reader understands that options for women’s employment outside of domestic service in these island colonies were severely limited. 

Dorothy’s narrative exposes both vulnerability in her relationships with her children and her significant others and also in her resolve to maintain her status. Far too often, Black women in historical fiction are reduced to tropes such as the “strong Black woman” that are not realistic to historical or modern readers. Or even worse, authors who completely erase the presence of Black women in the late Georgian and Regency Era by only featuring white women. 

The challenge in reading Island Queen for those uninitiated in Caribbean history of this era is to separate our modern historical knowledge from the reality Dorothy faces. Although Riley’s narrative does not make excuses for her questionable decisions, the narration makes clear that Dortothy is navigating a racist, sexist and classist society. Part of Dorothy’s later wealth comes from owning slaves. This was not a decision based on wanting to inflict cruelty, but due to the power dynamics in colonial society which punished those who refused to participate in the slave trade. Dorothy opposes slavery but also realize that open rebellion will cost her life or the lives of those around her. She is not isolated from the violence of slave rebellions and of the consequences of suppression. Riley in the Author’s Note says Kirwan freed all of her slaves in 1833 when slavery in Demerara was officially outlawed.

Dorothy’s narrative may have the background makings of a tragedy, but Riley reveals that her life was ultimately a success. Kirwan built her business and eventually reunited most members of her family. She even saw her children marry successfully and met several of her grandchildren. None of her children lived in poverty and she prevented all of them from working as slaves. While some may wish her various relationships could have created a permanent happy ever after, the real satisfaction comes from seeing Kirwan preserve her legacy for the next generation. Real Black historical stories such as Kirwan’s are incredibly rare in US and UK media as wholly fictional composite characters dominate existing period dramas and historical fiction novels. Island Queen, if enough people read it, could become a TV or movie adaptation that would give viewers the real truths of late 18th Century/Regency Era Caribbean history. The genre is overdue for a biography adaptation led by Black writers without the white gaze. 

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Island Queen will be available in bookstores July 6th. You can order the book here.

The post From Bridgerton to Sanditon—Putting Island Queen in a Period Drama Context appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[floatingbook]

On names and naming

- Reading: Tales of the Lavender Menace by Karla Jay

Discussed during a consciousness-raising meeting:

“For instance, many of us grappled together and by ourselves with the implications of naming. The most obvious manifestation of this power is the fact that in most countries women bear the surname of their fathers and then of their husbands. A woman “loses” her name when she marries, but in fact she has never had her own name. only her father’s. Worse still is the possibility of not having a father because to be “illegitimate” is to lack the imprimatur of patriarchal approval.” p. 55

As a woman, you have your father’s or your husband’s name, you’re dispossessed of all your matriarchal origins. It also is very likely that your patriarchal origins are a lie—and I do not mean this as a critic of the women in our ancestry who had children who did not get the name of their biological father, but as a critic of this despicable tradition. Men do a fraction of the work and yet get to brand a newborn as their own, as if the woman giving birth was no more than a possession.

We all know what weights names carry. There’s no denying it. Some names get you despised, some get you laughed at, some drown you in their commonness. They used to reveal who you were: names were carved out of professions (take “Smith”, “Steward”, “Butler”, “Cook”, or “Lefevre/Lefebvre” in French, “Mercier” as well) or out of places of dwelling (e.g. “Hall”, “Brooks” in English; “Dupont”, “Dubois” in French). But that meaning is fast lost with physical and social mobility, with traumas and rebellions, with the pace of society.

“Many of the women in Redstockings changed their names in rebellion against the patriarchy, often choosing to use their mother’s names. In addition to being a symbolic gesture, adopting a nom de guerre made it just a tad more difficult for the government to figure out who we were and where our paltry bank accounts were stowed when it came time to incarcerate us. As much as I wanted to drop my patronymic, however, I wasn’t eager to claim my mother’s name. Instead I decided to substitute “Jay”, my middle initial, for my last name. // When I tried out my new name, Karla Jay, it felt immediately like a more accurate representation of who I was. I realized changing my name was not only about challenging the patriarchy—it was also about untangling my own identity from my family history.”

Changing your name, starting with a brand new one, is a way to give yourself a clean slate. It’s a statement: I don’t want to belong to this family, I am not one of your possession. It’s a form of rebellion against the tradition that hands out last names. The point is to get rid of the branding connotation of the last name (either inherited from the father or taken in marriage) that turns a woman into just another piece of furniture that makes up the wealth of the men in her life.

“I understood for the first time that I had, in fact, always detested my birth name, Karla Jayne Berlin. Well, not all of it. Karla seemed to me an original first name, and I felt comfortable with it. […] His [Karla Jay’s father] first fought was to name me Gale because I had  been born in a blizzard. My mother objected, so he chose my name from a list of freighters he spotted in the shipping news that he read every day in conjunction with his work. I’m lucky, I suppose, that a ship with a name like the Brunhilde didn’t dock then. Fortunately, the Karla Dane steamed into or out of port the week I was born, and my father was determined that would be my name. My mother persuaded him to change my middle name to Jayne instead of Dane, with the addition of an elegant Y.

But if I liked my first name, I hated the surname Berlin. For one thing, I’m not German. My ancestors came from the finest shtetls in England, Austria, and Ukraine. My paternal grandfather was from England, and for a long time I supposed that he had been assigned the name of a city when he entered the United States; immigration agents had a way back then of altering what they considered unpronounceable names. Years later, I discovered that my grandfather had changed his name himself. […]

I wasn’t particularly fond of my middle name either; people often assumed it was hyphenated to my first name. My mother and even Jessica, my best friend, called me Karla Jayne to get my attention when they were angry. As far back as I could remember, I had used my middle initial in place of Jayne. But I did like the “Jay” part. Some of my fond association with the word was based on pleasant times in summer camp. During my first summer there I was only five. I was placed in J-Bunk—probably an abbreviation for Junior Bunk—a place for children considered too young to be away from home for two months. J-Bunk was my first taste of freedom, a fun-filled life in the Catskills. Furthermore, Jay rhymes with “gay”.” p. 55-56

First names are given to us by our parents, who can be short-sighted, equipped with a taste that does not intersect with ours, or just unconscious of what a certain name entails. First names both mean a lot and nothing at all, and by that I mean that a first name is attached to you yourself first and foremost. Its main vocation is to designate you personally, to make you as individual, separated, specific in your existence, as opposed to the surname, which marks the bearer as part of a whole, the family, the bloodline, and as a woman a part of the possessions of a man. So it’s easier to grow into your first name, to make room into it for all the facets of your existence, than it is to get rid of the yoke of the surname. Hence the question, what to do with these patriarchal, misogynistic surnames?

Should we shun the surnames we were born or married into? What do we replace them with, then? Something that sounds nice to us? Something that holds a personal meaning? Something that describe an occupation we hold, a place we settled in? Do we choose a system that allows for the tracing of the matrilineal line? But then how do we agree collectively on a system, so that it is lisible and understandable? Where do we find the coherence? Do we even need the coherence?

“Changing my name was also a way of to “divorce” my parents, to let them know that I had never accepted them in that role. As children my brother and I both fantasized that we had been adopted.” p. 56

Again, a rupture with patriarchy and with abusive parents. We have surnames because there are too many humans on this planet to be able to identify them easily with just one name. Do we need those surnames to keep us sequestrated with our parents? Or could they just be changed to something like “of” followed by the name of the city we live in? Rejecting the surnames we get from birth is also a rejection of the obligatory love and respect we are supposed to feel for our parents, who can sometimes be undeserving of them.

“I didn’t change my name legally until 1978. I felt that it would be a paradox for me to petition a male court to change a name that patriarchal law had imposed on me in the first place. But after I had co-edited three anthologies as Karla Jay, only old friends, relatives, and old people at work new that I had any other name. I felt fragmented and decided to hire a lawyer to execute a legal name change.” p. 57

We live in a society, not in a vacuum. Sometimes we have to go through processes we find tasteless or distasteful, because we still need them to be understood, to be perceived by others around us. Here is information on the process in France (Site officiel de l’administration française).

“I have now spent a full three-fifths of my life as Karla Jay. In the rare instances when I run into someone from my childhood or high school who still calls me Karla Berlin, I have the distinct feeling that they have mistaken me for someone else.” p. 57

So who gets to do the naming? Are our names things that should be gifted from us by our parents? By our mothers only? Should every daughter get to name herself, when she feels or knows she has found a name for herself? When she has made name for herself?

[minervacasterly]

Henry VII's Coronation: The Red Dragon and the Beauforts' Triumph

On the 30th of October 1485, two months after he won the battle of Bosworth, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond was crowned King of England, becoming the Seventh of that name by the grace of God and all his saints. The best description of Henry VII’s coronation and unlikely rise can be found in House of Beaufort by Nathen Amin, head of The Henry Tudor Society. Nathen Amin has done a good job reinvigorating interest in Henry VII’s reign by starting off the book with his coronation and from there moving on to the Beauforts. Henry’s maternal family, who were at the heart of every major conflict of the fifteenth century, including the wars of the roses.

“St. Edward’s Crown, resplendent in all its golden glory, was being held above the brown-haired head of a slender twenty-eight-year-old who had, until two months earlier, been a stranger to the country he was no invited to rule. The small blue eyes of this new king of England were focused, his mind resolute that this very day was the will of God. Many in the kingdom, not just the man now occupying the throne, interpreted the victory of his disparate army on a bloody battlefield under the Leicestershire sun as divine judgment. In his left hand he held a golden scepter topped with a cross, while in his right hand he clutched another scepter, mounted with a dove. The former represented his new temporal power while the latter symbolized a monarch’s spiritual authority, both of which were now vested in the royal person of Henry Tudor. 

The venerated, if aged hands that held the crown belonged to Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury and a clergyman who had witnessed the turmoil and tragedy of the previous forty years at close quarters. Due to the cardinal’s growing infirmity, he was ably assisted during the ceremony by Peter Courtenay and John Morton, bishops of Exeter and Ely respectively, and men who had spent considerable time with Henry in exile, establishing close relations with the man they now sought to serve. As the elderly archbishop lowered the crown onto Henry’s head, he was symbolically bestowing kingship upon no fewer than his third English sovereign; Bourchier had crowned Edward IV in 1461 and Richard III in 1483, as well as crowning Edward’s wife Elizabeth Wydeville as queen in 1465. The name of Henry Tudor was now added to that prestigious list.

As would become the standard for Tudor public ceremony over the next century, no expense was spared on the opulent occasion. There was good reason for this; Henry VII had been an unknown stranger to his new subjects before the Battle of Bosworth, and he was keen to ensure he converted any doubters with lavish festivities to mark his accession. From day one, the Tudors readily acknowledged the need to put on majestic displays to conceal any flaws in their claim to the throne. It is unsurprising to later read the king’s court historian Bernard Andre describe the occasion as a ‘most excellent coronation’. The Tudors had arrived. Throughout the day, the king appeared glorious in the new garments procured for the ancient rituals. Significant sums of money had been spent on items such as a velvet jacket with black and ermine furs, while during the day he proudly bore a surcoat crafted from fine blue cloth. Henry augmented his regal costume with a long gown of crimson cloth of gold and also had robes fashioned from crimson velvet and satin. A luxurious doublet of cloth of gold, as well as another doublet of black satin, had also been tailored for the king, who cut a glittering figure in front of his curious subjects. London’s goldsmiths, embroiderers and cloth merchants had clearly done brisk business in the weeks preceding the coronation. Apart from the king, the coronation of Henry VII represented the triumph of several other individuals among his affinity. Many had recently been granted estates and titles from an appreciative Henry, and the ceremony was as much their celebration as it was the king’s. Henry’s devoted and resilient uncle Jasper Tudor was one such figure, having been rewarded for rescuing his brother’s son from the Yorkists at the age of fourteen and fleeing to Brittany, then France, where the pair remained until only three weeks before Bosworth. It was Jasper who was given the fitting honour of bearing his nephew’s crown through the abbey, while others given prominent roles included Thomas Stanley, recently created earl of Derby and stepfather of the king, and John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, a skilled commander who had been integral in securing victory at Bosworth. Derby entrusted with bearing the Sword of State during the procession while Oxford was granted the honour of bearing the king’s train. Throughout the ceremony, the loud lamentations of an anguished woman threatened to disrupt the solemn proceedings. The tearful lady in question was the king’s beloved mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, Stanley’s wife and widow of Henry’s father Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond. It was apparent the countess had become stricken with fear for her only child, perhaps anticipating a series of threats to his person once settled upon the throne. During the funeral sermon given by Bishop John Fisher after Margaret’s death in 1509, her behavior during the coronation was recalled, with Fisher noting how she would ‘dredde the adversyte’ and that when ‘the Kynge her Son was Crowned, in all that grete tryumphe and glory, she wept mervaylously’. Margaret;s reaction seems extraordinary when one considers the monetous occasion, particularly as her son’s accession would bring her unparalleled influence, wealth and political sway as the king’s mother. What had prompted such a tearful outpouring of dread? For Margaret, her only child’s coronation represented not only the unlikely triumph of the Welsh-born Tudors, but also that of her own ancestors, the Beauforts. The family traced their origin to 1372 and the birth of Margaret’s grandfather John Beaufort, an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, the exceptionally wealthy duke of Lancaster and the third son of Edward III. The Beauforts were, therefore, royally descended, and after their retrospective legitimization in 1397 became loyal adherents to the first three Lancastrian monarchs, amassing considerable influence in the process. By 1471, however, it was Margaret alone who survived as the last living male-line member of her family, a status she wore with brazen pride, a sentiment similarly borne by her only son. It was, after all, Beaufort blood that gave Henry his slender claim to the throne. On the day of Henry’s coronation, several royal and dynastic emblems were liberally displayed on banners and tapestries throughout London, including generic insignia such as the English coat of arms and the badges of Saints Edmund the Martyr and Edward the Confessor. The new king had been particularly keen to draw attention to three of his own adopted emblems. The first was the red rose, which the king embraced to signify his kinship to the House of Lancaster and his uncle Henry VI, his father’s half-brother. The second was a red dragon, an ancient symbol purportedly borne by the seventh-century Welsh king Cadwaladr, from whom the Tudors claimed descent. The third symbol freely employed by the new king was that of a porticullis. In an era when heraldry was as recognizable as big brands are in the present day, those assembled in the abbey were acutely aware to whom the king was alluding, for the portcullis was an established Beaufort emblem synonymous with the family’s earlier members, including Henry’s grandfather and great-grandfather, both named John. The king would later use the motto altera securitas with the portcullis badge, stressing that his Beaufort ancestry only served to bolster his claim to a throne he had boldly claimed by right of conquest. If anyone at the coronation celebrations remained in doubt as to the king’s pride in his maternal lineage, the substantial figure of 50 pounds was spent commissioning 105 silver and gilt portcullises for distribution during the day. The purpose of this costly exercise was clear: to advertise the throne now belonged to the Beauforts, if not in name, then certainly in spirit. The improbable rise of Henry Tudor from penniless Welsh exile to king of England is one of the most remarkable episodes in British history, but the role played by his maternal Beaufort relations in the rise is often overlooked. The Beauforts had been born as bastards to a royal duke and his foreign-born mistress to become earls, dukes and cardinals, securing untold wealth and influence throughout the first half of the fifteenth century before losing everything in a series of catastrophic battles between 1455 and 1471. It was the gradual collapse of this mighty family during the Wars of the Roses that paved the way for Henry Tudor to take up the Beaufort cause in lieu of his mother. The Tudor triumph represented the resurgence of the Beauforts. And yet, in the momentous setting of Westminster Abbey and amidst the unbridled merriment of those present, Margaret Beaufort ‘ryghte tenderly’ wept. Though her beloved son, who ‘from a grave and serious child, had become a gallant and victorious Prince’, now occupied the throne, the tribulations of her family had preconditioned the countess to presume that soaring highs were inevitably followed by crushing lows. As Bishop Fisher summarized at her funeral, ‘whereyn she had full grete joy, she let not to saye that some dversyte wolde followe’. When one considers the Beauforts’ tumultuous existence throughout the fifteenth century, Margaret’s attitude is perhaps easily understood. Geoffrey Chaucer, a kinsman of the earlier Beauforts through marriage, captured such anxiety perfectly in ‘The Monk’s Tale’ when he wrote, ‘And thus does Fortune’s wheel turn treacherously, and out of happiness bring men to sorrow.’ 

From happiness to sorrow; it could almost have been a Beaufort family motto.” ~Nathen Amin, House of Beaufort

It’s deeply evocative. It reads more like a novel than a history book. This is what narrative history is all about. It reignites interest in these historical figures and encourages those who are new to the Tudor Dynasty, to find out more about it.

Additionally, there is something appealing about the Tudors that surpasses interest in any other dynasty. And that is thanks in part to the Tudor wit. The Tudors, more than any other monarch, learned that true power of the pen, proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Appearance were everything for them. Henry Tudor crafted an alternative tale of the events that led to the wars of the roses with the 'Tudor rose'. White over red, or red over white, it showed the union of two houses which had previously been at war with each other. This dynastic warfare had torn the country apart and it came at an end with Henry's reign and his marriage to Elizabeth of York. But as Dr. Lucy Worsley pointed out in the first episode of her documentary series Britain's Biggest Fibs, the truth was far more complicated than that.

“Henry VII’s marriage to Elizabeth would stir attention away from this …” Dr. Lucy Worsley explains, pointing to the the roll that describes the lineage of Lancastrian and Yorkist Kings, and their ancestors, the Plantagenets as well as the Anglo-Saxon kings and queens before them. The scroll belonged to the de la Pole family who had Yorkist blood via one of Edward IV’s sisters. For obvious reasons they didn’t like Henry and were in cohort with Margaret of York, Duchess Dowager of Burgundy and others, to depose Henry VII. Henry VII did descend from a “servant grandfather” as Dr. Worsley put it, but he did have Lancastrian blood via his mother, Margaret Beaufort. The Beauforts got their last name after one of the castles that belonged to their forefather, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Because the Beauforts had been conceived and born before John of Gaunt married their mother, they were considered illegitimate. But they were legitimized by Richard II. After Richard II was deposed however, their half-brother, Henry IV (the first Lancaster monarch) added another clause that excluded them from the line of succession. Henry VII's union did not end the wars of the roses nor did it lend credibility to his claim. Dan Jones also points this out in his book "Wars of the Roses: The Fall of Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors" (Hollow Crown in the UK). The war would go on well into the reign of Henry VIII, and the paranoia over those with (arguably) better claim than the Tudors, would lead to one of the most horrific executions in English history. Nevertheless, the rise of the Tudors is nothing short of astounding. The fact that ALL of them managed to defeat all of their rivals, and remain on the throne is worthy of recognition.

In his book Rise of the Tudors (Bosworth in the UK), Chris Skidmore points out how unlikely Henry's rise was, and how it often gets overlooked by modern audiences:

“The reality of Henry Tudor’s ascent to the throne –his narrow escapes from death, his failures and anxieties, complete with constant uncertainty of his situation, and the compromises that he had been forced to make, including the support from France and hiss former Yorkist enemies in gaining the crown- was a far less welcome tale. It remains nonetheless nonetheless just as remarkable; against all the odds, at Bosworth Henry achieved victory that he should have not on” One of the reasons that Henry VII doesn't get a lot of recognition is because the pendulum has swung to the other side, juxtaposing him in the role that was once cast for Richard. It has become fashionable to see Richard as the hero and Henry as the villain. And while it is great that many novelists and historians have taken a deep interest in the last Plantagenet king, they don't quite get that by painting both of these figures with a broad brush, they are doing the exact same thing that they accuse dozens of chroniclers and the celebrated playwright William Shakespeare of doing. They say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Clearly, Henry did learn from history because he continued with many of the policies that worked during the Yorkist regime, primarily those of his late father-in-law, Edward IV, and did away with those that didn't, making him one of the best administrator and successful monarchs of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century. At the time that Henry was crowned King of England, there was a lot of uncertainty. The country had lived through many uprisings. Margaret Beaufort herself shared their sentiment when she cried, according to her confessor John Fisher, tears of fear and joy upon seeing her son crowned. She, more than everyone, knew how fickle power was and if her son didn't reign properly, then he would meet the same fate as his predecessor. Time however, proved everyone wrong. Henry died on the 21st of April 1509, after ruling England for nearly twenty four years. He left the crown richer than it had ever been. He was outlived by his mother for a few months who, despite her ill-health and melancholy, refused to die until her grandson was of age and jointly crowned king of England with Katharine of Aragon as his queen. Henry was buried at Westminster Abbey, in the lady chapel, next to his wife, Elizabeth of York.

His story has been the source of inspiration for fantasy writer George R. R. Martin, who based one of his characters on him. If this wasn't evident before, it has become evident now with the last two seasons of the show which have gone beyond the books. Daenerys Targaryen's banner is a three-headed red dragon who is regarded as a foreigner by many of her would-be-subjects. She lands on the place of her birth, a place that is regarded as mysterious as it is dreary. This is awfully familiar to Henry's return from exile when he landed on the place of his birth, Wales, on Milford Haven, on August 1485. And like Henry VII, she had the odds stacked against her. Unlike her however, he got to sit on the English throne and reigned for nearly twenty-four years, restoring stability to the kingdom and establishing a dynasty whose members were never deposed or dethroned and died in their beds.

Unsurprisingly, Martin has also been inspired by his maternal family story. For those of you who have read the books, you probably know where I am going with this but those of you who don't, let me explain. In his recent book, "The World of Ice and Fire", co-written with Antonson and Garcia, there is a separate branch of the Targaryens known as the "Blackfyres". Their last name is taken from the legendary sword of their founder, Aegon Targaryen, better known as "the Conqueror". They are a bastard line that was nearly legitimized by Aegon IV. After they launched an open rebellion against their legitimate cousins, they were wiped out with only the female members of their line surviving. And while they are not prominent on the show, they play a major role on the books.

Once again, history is the best source of inspiration, but like JRM in The Tudors said, to get to heart of the story, you have to go back to the beginning and the story of Henry's rise doesn't begin with his birth, but with his maternal family, the Beauforts.

[theoddores-archive]

ALEX FITZALAN? No, that’s actually THEODORE BURKE  from universe 6. You know, the child of MERRICK BURKE and ESME BURKE (NÉE FLINT)? Only 18 years old, this RAVENCLAW alumni works as a CLERK/MANAGEMENT TRAINEE AT BORGIN AND BURKES. HE identifies as CIS-MAN and is a PUREBLOOD who is known to be FLIPPANT, BOISTEROUS, and EGOTISTICAL but also STAUNCH, VIBRANT, and ARTISTIC. — &&. ( CAMI, GMT+1, SHE/HER, 20. )

“ i hope you’re proud of me. i took all the awful things they did and turned them into empathy. i hope you’re proud of me. i may have let their poison under my skin, but i let it drip out of my fingers as poetry. “

depression tw, drugs tw, suicide tw

THE BURKES

old money, old names, old houses - although their name was proudly featured in the list of sacred pureblood families, kept pure throughout the ages, the burkes were never truly a part of that group. their ancestry was foggy, with no dusty records of alliances and ministry positions. their wealth was sufficient, yes, but never in the expected way. the oldest record of a burke they could relate to the present family was a healer of little consequence, and the rest mostly worked for others, especially under the great names they supposedly considered their equal. to marry a burke wasn’t treason, but it was a step down, the acceptance of an insignificant and middle-class life.

the family wealth grew when, in 1863, they partnered with the borgins to establish a shop in knockturn alley. their business? buying and reselling wizarding artifacts, mostly belonging to other more reputable families. the burke’s most potent claim to fame and respect was to be the money-hungry keeper of the deeds and inventories of their superiors. that stigma still accompanies the family to this day, anchoring them in a position of clerkship to the other great families - the burkes are not able to make their own history, so they buy and sell others’ for what they’d consider small change.

nevertheless, it has put them in the public conscience, even if negatively. the shop has grown over the last nearly two centuries, but has remained strongly in the families’ hands, leaving at least two people per generation stuck with the store. borgin and burkes is where people from all walks of life can attempt to sell their latest steal or inheritance, and where one may find the cursed objects capable to cause all sorts of pain, death, misery. the burkes may be inferior, but they are resourceful and plenty useful. their contacts with the criminal underground of the wizarding world and their possession of dark magic objects turned them into a desirable addition to extremist movements, even if never in positions of high power. grindelwald’s army did lead to half the family being imprisoned, some dying while evading capture. and some years later, the remaining burke’s gave a chance to a young man who would not forget the name he had worked under for nearly a decade. the job gave tom riddle a public justification for his search of knowledge in areas of magic so nefarious that no other place would allow for them to be explored but borgin and burkes. when he finished his ascent from man to power, he kept in mind those names. the recently graduated children of his employer, who he’d watched grow up, got the promotion of their lives, with a mark on their arm and a mask over their faces. and later, when their dark lord returned, it was their children’s turn.

merrick burke didn’t share the devotion of his elders, but certainly felt the same gratitude. to be picked, from all possible choices, to join the forces of the new era was, once again, the promotion he would have never dreamt of. in a perfect world, he’d have remained in the store, mostly dealing with finances as he’d always preferred, a quiet life that would leave barely more than a footnote in the writings of history. but how could he refuse such an offer? the man took the mark immediately, ready to pledge his all to the cause. but when their second attempt failed and died at hogwarts, merrick retreated to the store, forever hiding the lines on his skin. his girlfriend, esme flint, did the same, and their short-lived part in the second rise of the dark lord faded from memory. between then and the reformation of the death eaters, the couple married, devoted themselves to the shop and to evading association with their previous criminal activities, vowed to never speak of the darkest things they’ve done, and had two children.

BEFORE

born on august 13th, 2008, theodore talbot burke was brought into a peaceful world. the small cottage in upper flagley made up most of his existence for a few years. the world of impressive estates and ancient manors was the stuff of books and the occasional wedding or birthday celebration of some family friend, or acquaintance from his parents “old job”. the young boy’s loud personality made it possible, however, for even those encounters to grant him friendships he held dear, even when he was stuck in his small village. 

while upper flagley was mostly wizard populated, a handful of muggle families had settled there as well, and sometimes lines would be crossed. he’d climb a tree with a child that needed plasters and doctors should they fall. some kid from down the street would ask him to come play video games. while theodore didn’t mind them much, it was a chore to keep up with the other kids’ references and be mindful to not mention his parents’ store or words such as ‘wand’ and ‘spell’. his parents seem to share the same feeling, often mentioning during dinner that their realities were simply too different for such close-quarters coexistence. as such, theodore preferred the wizards in his village and in the big houses far away from upper flagley, with whom talking and relating to was simply EASIER. 

hogwarts was the adventure theodore had been craving for ever since he could remember. it was bigger and much more interesting than the broken clock that was upper flagley. it was a place where he could spend all of his time with the types of people he actually liked, those whose experiences were the same as him, with no fears of saying something he should not say. in many aspects, it was a reinvention. at last, he could attempt to become the person he’d rather be, full-time. one single train ride was enough for him to make sure most people his year at least knew his face, as he popped in to chat for a while. the sight of the castle came with a clear indication: he was finally somewhere big enough to contain all of him. 

his energy quickly had him dubbed as the wannabe class clown, evidenced in the story of how the burke boy, while playing around in the small boat that’d led them across the lake and pretending to be their legendary sea captain, tripped and fell into the water.

theodore was sorted rather into the ravenclaw house without much pondering by the hat, and that made sense to him. his mother was the smartest person he knew, and she owned more books than he could recall. his father was a genius with numbers. he’d certainly get his chance to prove his intelligence at hogwarts. the first year was a rude awakening.

try as he might, the boy seemed to lack behind in most things. in a highly individualistic group such as the ravenclaws, he found himself more and more alone in times of need. sure, theo was funny, he’d make the entire classroom giggle; he’d entertain the dorm room until near dawn; yet his connections felt hollow. he wasn’t very book smart. his house felt less and less like home - perhaps the hat had made a mistake. maybe he was a gryffindor like his mother, or a slytherin like his father. 

during his second year, theo was louder, more boisterous, a bit too much for some people’s tastes. what he lacked in grades and proper friendships, he made up in STAGE presence. it was near impossible to not notice when theo was sitting right next to you, or even in the same room. he tried out for the quidditch team (and failed), and ended up joining a few extracurriculars to fill his time with things he could actually be good at, since education was certainly not it. years of learning the violin with his neighbor, an elderly witch who’d done some tours with some forgotten orchestras, came in handy when he joined the hogwarts orchestra (although he only ever got truly good at it during his third year, with intensive practice - something he learned rather late was needed if he was to succeed, and yet he rarely applies to anything else). the debate club became one of his favourite activities, it being an outlet for the endless bite in him, to the constant need in theo to say something back until only he could have the final word. without realising it, he expanded his skills into things he could actually do. creativity. music. spontaneity. an ability to think on his feet at all times. a pompous nearly-suave way of being.

theodore’s path in life seemed to finally be taking shape. to add to the joy, after over a decade of struggling, the burkes at last brought to the world another child and, for the rest of the school year, that was all theo could talk about. philippa, philippa, philippa. to this day she’s his favourite being in the whole world and he cares about her so much!!

understanding that there’s more to him than just academic failure was truly the beginning of a constant discovery process of who theodore burke really was. the only class he usually got better than passing (or even failing) grades was DADA, which most attributed to all the knowledge he’d gain by working summers at his family’s store, or simply by living in a house decorated with priceless dark arts artifacts. he’d always showed a lot of curiosity in his family’s line of work, never as an ambition but as a hobby - magic, in all its glory and power, regardless of the confines of the law, always seemed to put a smile on his lips. being in possession of such items was a slippery slope of power and a rush he never really understood.

a big part of that self-discovery was a conversation his parents had with him during one summer, when he asked them in the middle of the store why they hid their dark marks. while not the most astute of people, a fourteen year old theo knew enough about the dark lord who’d terrified the world, and his many followers. he’d seen enough pictures from trials and attacks in some books, even heard incredible and terrible stories of their deeds. knew and cared about people whose families had been tremendously impacted by the dark lord. the kernels of ideology he’d been catching all his life came together at the kitchen table later that day, when he was told of the generous and righteous man who’d attempted to make a new world time and time again, for which the rest were simply not prepared. it wasn’t exactly an hostile story, but rather one of a rebel that kept being taken down by the establishment. the darker deeds the burkes themselves had been involved in? necessary evils. an escalation of events easily preventable had the ministry done something more. there were certain ideas and needs for separation that some refused to accept and, tragically, they’d forced their hands. esme and merrick were not proud, but what soldier doesn’t carry guilt? that does not deem their cause unworthy. 

it was a stark contrast. the loud boy that played the violin and made paper planes with his unfinished exam sheets. the legacy of a revolutionary line that was waiting for its new leader.

he digested it the only way he knew how - by sharing his experience to those who understood him. that group kept getting smaller, and by the middle of his seventh year, it was mostly those who carried the same expectation to join the ranks as soon as their leader returned to continue the war. some bits of it all made sense, but the main attraction for theo was the sense of belonging. he wasn’t really absorbing the ideology or the notion that voldemort had been the good guy. instead, he was understanding the feeling of comraderie his family had felt and he longed for it more than ever. he believed they were all misguided, on both sides, and generally put little thought into it. war, violence, hatred, anti-muggleborn laws? all terrible concepts to him, but that didn’t stop him from being drawn to the people within it all - always for their human side.  and he was also fulfilling a role that had started many years before, making his family proud. for once, he didn’t need to be louder than life to be heard, even if there was a clear hierarchy he refused to see - breaking an illusion was indeed a hard task.

the dissonance caused him great confusion. still struggling to understand his very own moral compass, theo finished his final year at hogwarts with tragedy. suddenly the big question was no longer what the orchestra should play for the christmas concert or what he’d do after hogwarts before he resigned to his faith of working at knockturn alley. no. it was who to turn to as his world shifted more than it ever had. there was little room for choice. the ones he’d gotten the closest to in the previous few years, those who understood the weight of his burden. the stakes were so damn high.

by trying so hard to fit into the pureblooded elite group, he’d pushed away most other people. some had also simply turned around when it was clear he was too far gone. in many aspects, theodore felt as if the world around him had become rather narrow, pushing him towards a single path with no way back ( despite the fact that a lot of that had been his own doing during his downwards spiral). he tried to quickly adapt to his role as support: theo wasn’t the brightest, the strongest, the fastest, but he trained like his life depended on it, as it probably it. above all, he provided the connections long desired in a burke, and the knowledge of dark arts no seventeen year old should possess. 

how could he justify murder? outside of a battle, where it was every man for himself? he’d met some of them. he knew their children. theo struggled with the true implications of the heroic stories of rebellion that his peers and family lived off of, and that uncertainty was visible. given how he wasn’t seen as a death eater powerhouse, theo had some manoeuvre room and wasn’t held accountable quite as much as the big guns, but enough was enough. his fraternizing with whatever enemies still remembered him as a kinder boy, his shaky hand during attacks, how he always held back, even faintly protested? something didn’t seem right.

weeks before graduation, he attempted to change it all. theodore tried to subtly feel for support within his peers, with very little success, which was disheartening. his old friends weren’t much of a solution either, as he could barely look them in the eye, let alone ask for a hand getting out of the grave he’d dug. theo even tried to get some guidance from professors, but fear held him back from proper help. in his last resort, he turned to lily potter, but his attempted betrayal was discovered before he could get any sort of protection from the other side. theodore was quickly taught that treason was frowned upon, and a simple thought ingrained in his mind: if he left, there was nowhere to run to, no one to go to. was he willing to let them all go? what did he even have but them? the prospects that came with the movement? the connections, the friendships? the lesson came with a few bruises and cuts, and a lot of broken trust he has not been able to fix. the cuts healed slowly, as he was told to not use magic on them - a mark of shame for a traitor, let the world see what happens to those. feel their stares. the trust even slower. the following day they walked with him to class, a reminder of WHO was there to help him on his feet the previous night, clean the blood off his face, bring him for class even though he’d spent all night imagining what it would be like to never leave that bed alive again. who gave him class notes as they saw he’d done nothing but stare at his own hands, head far too low to even see the blackboard? who gave a shit about his sorry little treacherous self? they did. they always would. 

NOW

his total loss of direction at the very end of the year (typical) came coupled with the personal downward spiral, and theodore left hogwarts with very few friends, many enemies, and a measly Acceptable NEWT in divination. he wasn’t aiming for much anyway, but it was still quite the slap in the face. although he could understand why he’d gotten zeroes in the other two: scribbling down his name and then staring at the parchment for hours, nothing in it, his head preoccupied with anything but question number six. not showing up to the DADA oral examination. staring at his hands rather than professor lupin during the charms oral exam, as he mumbled under his breath how he didn’t know how to do what was being asked of him (somewhere forgotten inside him he swore he did, but that would have required too much of him), storming out after 15 minutes. he got lucky with divination, mostly because his oral examination led him to predict a life of empty sorrow and loneliness, collapsing into a horrible death and an unmarked grave. for a few minutes he thought he was projecting until the professor assured him that he was somewhere in the vicinity of right. while he’d talked the big talk before about all he’d do with his life after hogwarts, he ended up behind the counter at borgin and burkes a few weeks after graduation, once his dad finally managed to get him out of his room. 

in all accounts, theodore gave up. he gave up on trying to better himself, to fulfill little dreams, to get out of a group he could no longer justify. it was a brutal reality check, and one he’s not quite recovered from yet. 

due to his mishap in the recent past, theodore’s role within the now formal death eater movement is a lowly one, mostly as an errands boy who needs constant surveillance; or disposable. some of his friendships fell apart after the fact, but the few that remain still have enough pull to keep him in. in fact, up until the collision of realities, he’d been on a quick crescendo, attempting to prove himself worthy of their companionship, their trust and their acceptance. theo devoted himself to the tasks given to him, even dared to show hints of a ruthlessness that does not belong in him - but there are many lines left to cross and many people he still cannot bear face, let alone fight. 

now he’s surrounded by all the ideas of what could have been. the most jarring group of people around is the real death eaters, with their original ideology and an unbroken line to the dark lord. in many ways, they feel much more nefarious and there is nothing shrouding their agenda: no more blood impurity, even if by means of murder. he acknowledges now that the movement he’s in is flawed, wrong even (depending on the day you ask him), but at least they are nothing like them!! slowly, it is sinking in that they are all born out of the same goal and their means are quite similar. their existence is breaking the spell, as is the knowledge that other versions of him exist and might not all be hopeless. theodore is slowly realizing just how sinful his actions have been, yet he doesn’t believe he has any sort of bravery or will left in him to risk it all once more.

MORE

he found himself in verse 8 with no money but the few galleons in his pocket and no access to his vault. he panicked BIG and i’m unsure what he can do afterwards so some DE hit me up from tbh any verse that can give him a hand while he tries to convince v8 burkes to give him any job at the shop because ‘that’s all i know how to do, that’s all i’m good for’

during 6th and some of 7th year, theo dated lily potter. they’d been friends for quite some time, explosive little things that needed to have the last word and a mess from the start - but full of heart and genuine love and friendship. however, she could feel him slipping away to a group of people so morally wrong, especially in 7th year. he knew she was distancing as well, like two high speed cars doing their very best not to collide, even if their fights were incendiary. eventually, it was clear that their paths could not merge, and they broke up. in all senses, they were never made to last, but the personal changes they suffered during their time together truly made them into all different people now. he reached out for her help once, but ended up regressing into his old ways. sometimes he considers asking for it again, but how often can that hand be there? 

lily was the biggest threat to his credibility in his group before they broke up, as she came with a whole lot of friends and relatives he’d decided to care about, even if many saw his attempted true colours. she was also certainly used as proof by his betrayed peers of how the other side would always leave him. very fresh wound, very messy, he hates how much he still cares about her and her family and friends

big classical music nerd!! ever since third year he’s realised how much he loves music and his violin is truly something that brings him immense joy. he’s dabbled into other things, mostly piano, but he always comes back to his preferred instrument. there’s also a musicality to him? he enjoys adding little rhymes to sentences, or good rhythms to casual enunciation. tapping his fingers to a song in his head. that was truly the most ravenclaw thing in him, a very deep creative passion that was so often unexplored~

also musicals. he’s even gotten into some muggle ones but that’s top secret now.

there’s something quite sophisticated about him that makes his background in a vaguely established pureblood family hard to forget. big words make up his vocabulary even though he’s seen as not that bright, his posture is fixed every time he snaps out of his own mind and his collection of robes is to be admired. the biggest tell is just how disconnected he his to muggle culture, no matter how mingled both realities are by now. 

he’s quite angry? theo is not very good at dealing with his own emotions, but he’s learned with some. if he’s too happy, he doesn’t hold back, despite knowing he’ll likely crash or become too full of himself. if he’s too sad, he’ll turn off, retreat into the covers of his bed for a few days, probably cry a lot (theo is very much not afraid to cry). but if he’s furious, he simply storms, which often gets him in trouble. he’s full of fire and bad coping mechanisms. in most circumstances, theodore picks the fight, the rush of anger, the ringing of loud voices and high stakes, the attack. one word could easily make him leap into an argument, and with those he despises? wands will come out.

the MOST dramatic. has read lots of theater plays (the only thing he’ll read) and he’s that bitch. probably tried to put on some plays at hogwarts with the help of the orchestra, which he’s tried to take control over many times with little success (theo, walking into the choir room: hi this is a coup). 

he has been introduced to glee, the iconic class old tv-show and in a better verse, he’s actually watched all of it and reenacts scenes with only a little bit of sarcasm. but yall should know he’s a bit of a rachel mix with brittany and i hate him for it

argue with him. he LIVES for the chaos of an argument! but also for long soft discussions - theo could sit on the floor and talk for hours, exploring different sides and opinions. despite being dumb as rock when it comes to academic things, he functions only with curiosities and if he finds interest in something, he can become incredibly well versed in it! 

big slut nowadays and i love him for it. hello hi he needs to feel the thrill of being alive through any means possible. 

loves soft aesthetics? flowers in his messy hair, picnics in the sun, glitter on his face as a party look

has a couple piercings in his ears and likes to put dangly dainty earings on. very rare to see him without painted but incredibly chipped nails. an aesthetic

clumsy as hell. tries to be suave, and sometimes does manage it with his words, but his body language ruins it all. although in general he’s more of a funny clowny sort of guy and just very lame

theo is 120% impulse and he truly doesn’t put that much thinking into his decisions, which often leads to mess

"theo was born w no thoughts, head empty, it's his life goal to keep the streak going for as long as possible" - chewie

no reflexes

listen the burkes had money, alright. they had no fortune but they did have money. except they didn’t spend it on a bigger house or any of that, but rather in savings for later in life and for philippa and theo, stuff like wedding savings and first house help. they went on nice vacations every summer for like 1 week. they invested back into the store. but they didn’t have full to the brim vaults of gold or a manor ya know

he cared about quidditch once in his life, for approximately 10 minutes during his incredibly failed tryout for the team at hogwarts, and then it was no longer a valid topic. he’s not once watched a professional game, and was mostly secretly drinking during matches in the stands at hogwarts once he finally started going to them. he also tried to become the commentator for matches at school and was denied based on the fact that he knew the name of no pass and wasn’t sure about who even was in the ravenclaw team

has an owl since hogwarts named amata and she’s the most ill tempered animal ever. he treats her like royalty and yet she attacks him at the slightest chance she gets, and hurts others as well. he adores the little thing regardless. 

little. treasons. theo was always made up of those, unaware or not of the lines he was crossing. even now, after learning his lesson from proper betrayal, he still dabbles into little treasons, and they’re ways to make him feel a bit more in control even though he has lost most of it by now. 

he has very addictive tendencies and bad coping mechanisms. ever since he was quite young at hogwarts, he realised things like alcohol or drugs could break him out of funks, even if just temporarily. he’s yet to give that proper attention

BEAUTIFUL handwriting, has no business being that nice

(SUICIDE TW) very shaky mental health. definitely non diagnosed depression and has had it for quite a while, before the war was really an issue over his head, although it has worsened it all so damn much. he’d often miss class, have to be dragged to it by friends, just struggle man. oh well. but also has this sort of nonchalant approach to dying? just a very vague suicidal ideation at times that he throws in as a joke oops. or as very serious but ‘eh it is what it is’.

i have described his character development/regression as those wavy crafts scissors

this fear of being all alone and irrelevant is a great button to push. as well as his own lack of self worth - theo has a very strong mindset of ‘you break things, you fuck up every good thing that comes your way’. 

VERY needy. very touchy as well. and above all, a big romantic? his heart yearns for love so so so much all the time and has a hard time moving on always and forever. he really clings onto memories of feelings and a need for love uh

northerner boy but god does he HATE upper flagley and yorkshire with all his heart?? it feels stifling and he always compared himself to friends living in much more interesting places, and felt like maybe only a big city like london could fit him

 loves complaining

sees big acts of bravery as usually stupid, or reckless, or a martyr complex oops

probably went to the library 4 or 5 times during all his years at hogwarts, truly doesn’t understand how it works

“i’m not a traitor, i’m just dumb”; “i’m not a liar, i’m just a coward”

highkey seems himself as a very pathetic figure oops

he LOVES the fact that voldemort once worked at borgin and burkes. “me and the dark lord are more alike than you think”, which isn’t as funny of a joke anymore

some stats, which you can find HERE.

click HERE for a bad pinterest board.

some character parallels: jake peralta (b99), eliot waugh (the magicians), quentin coldwater (the magicians), albus potter (cursed child, i know), josh chan (cegf), richie tozier (it), oberyn martell (asoiaf), nick miller (new girl), diana barry (anne with an e), vanya hargreeves (umbrella academy), percy jackson (pjo), felix dawkins (orphan black), jaime lannister (got), haley dunphy (modern family), jason mendoza (the good place), klaus hargreeves (umbrella academy), eleanor shellstrop (the good place), harry bingham (the society), brittany pierce (glee), rachel berry (glee), tom haverford (parks n recs), rebecca bunch (cegf), plumbella (the simmer, yes, i have discovered they share an accent and i love this)

WANTED CONNECTIONS

childhood friends: so we’ve got two options here. someone who was also raised, at least partially, in upper flagley. OR one of the pureblood kids around his age that he’d visit with his family. either way, people who knew him before hogwarts and had seen his changes over the years.

friends in low places: of those childhood friends, he’s grow closer and closer to those more affiliated with the pureblood ideology. it started in 4th year when he finally got out of the dark about his parents’ death eater past (maybe even pushed by some of these friends first?) and he sort of just narrowed his world to people who understood that experience more and more. it got extra intense in his last year and due to his attempt at betrayal, some dislike him and probably scare him (sign up to be the one beating up theo lets go) while others are truly close friends. his attachment is more to the expectation and to the PEOPLE, not to the ideology. real friends, betrayed friends. 

ex friends: joining the DE kids led to two main scenarios, as theo had always befriended people regardless of affiliation, family or blood. he started pushing them away for their and his safety but shit! does he still care! OR they walked away when they saw who he was becoming and his selfish ass likely resents that. 

bonus ex friends: people he’s secretly kept close or they’ve decided to stay, but they no longer acknowledge each other’s existences in public, or go full ‘i hate them’ sort of narrative. 

bunch of haters: people who have never liked him. that’s about it. could be from school or not, but theo is certainly not the most easily likeable person. extra points if its someone from hogwarts that always got in shit with him, ended up in detention, wands were drawn, stupid shit. 

old tutor: at various points during his time at hogwarts, theo needed a little help. but since OWLs preparation he started paying a sum of his allowance to another student to help him understand stuff better. he’s a slow learner, a distracted one at that, but he pours all of his loyalty and care into those who help him out along the way. but also makes them want to bang their heads against the wall. by late seventh year, however, he stopped asking for help. 

artsy people: music was one of the few things he discovered pretty soon he’s great at, so he can often be seen practising, listening with heart eyes to others’ music, or testing out instruments he does NOT know how to play and thus sounds horrible. music pals !! could be connections starting in hogwarts or not but that’s always his happy place. could also be other arts, painters and writers, poets at heart, theater nerds. people who fit into all these types of intelligence that isn’t exactly academic

fam: i’m open for relatives!! his mother is a flint so that’s wide open, bring all the flints!! as for burkes, i like to hc that the family is very small, which in a way helps keep the shop ownership more contained. so i’m open for burke relatives but would def appreciate talking about it first! theo puts family first always in anything so :eyes:

a borgin: anyone, just someone who works at the shop or has ownership over it, or a kid of those people. make borgin & burkes complete. 

borgin & burkes clients and traders: the biggest claim the burke family could make within the DE was always that they have the connections to be good supplies, and so they did. the same applies to theo until now, who used the knowledge of cursed and dark artifacts he learned at his family’s shop, and the connections they’ve gained throughout the ages, to be of use. his face is was a staple there during the summers and until the realities collided he worked there full time, so many characters would have dealt with him in v6.

helping hand: being thrown into v8 with no money on him, he’s in a tight spot and unsure of how to proceed. some pureblood, especially DE, from any verse who give him a hand while he tries to work something out, further making it clear in his head that he owes so much to ‘his people’.

other me’s: i don’t have super set plans on what’s up with theo from all verses but i know that they aren’t around osidfhbdsnkj i’m saying most of them just were not in london when it all happened. i do know that v5 theo made good decisions and got the hell away from bad people and is out there, living okay, being good but a shithead. v3 theo is BAD at being a DE and it’s the worst version of him out there, his heart?? don’t know it, exists somewhere way too burried. v8 theo doesn’t exist because his parents went to azkaban after the second war oops. SUICIDE TW (v1 and v2 theodore are dead. verse 1 due to suicide. verse 2 was a DE and suffered an overdose that was likely not accidental. v6 theodore was not surprised to hear any of this and he hates that oops). so people from other verses!! who have interacted or known these other characters i’m not writing and now have this poor excuse for a theodore oof

one nights: he’s A Slut and sad and lonely. another eh coping mechanism but oh well, at least he’s pretty

friends n lies: someone from another verse who has no clue about who he his and his life, never saw each other before. and they befriend each other, while theo exercises his improv skills and makes up lies to cover the ugliest parts of him. he knows it’s a ticking time bomb but he does love reinvention. perhaps they are lying too? :eyes:

[blackswaneuroparedux]

walaw17 asked: Any thoughts on Scottish independence?  

I have tried avoiding answers about Scottish independence and by proxy Brexit because like everyone else I am just bored into numbness by the whole on-going soap opera saga. There’s no escaping it. Even within families the conversation around the dinner table is about the next referendum and by proxy, Brexit.

I have Scottish roots on my father’s side and so when I meet my Scottish cousins up in Scotland for weddings, funerals and the like the topic does come up. This summer I was up in the Angus glens for the annual ‘Glorious 12th’ - the start of the shooting season - to join a family shooting party to shoot grouse and share a feast afterwards.

Most of the clan and family friends gathered would be High Tory. Thus they are very much in favour of the Union as they are strong monarchists to boot - even if they have fought for and against the crown at different times in their gilded past. They remain fierce Scottish patriots to the extent that they (good naturedly!) admonish me for taking my Scottish ancestry for granted and being ‘Anglicised’ on my father’s side.

I believe the Scots are for the largely loyal to the Union and they proved that at the last referendum on Scottish independence. But Brexit is now added into the mix and its has clouded the picture somewhat for many Scots. It’s easy to see why.

If I take the Scottish part of my family and their clan. As loyal as they are to the Union there were grumblings about how Scotland seems to be pushed to the margins as Little Englanders run around and use the cover of nationalist fervour to concentrate wealth and power in the City of London to become a free market Singapore 2.0. Even worse leave the United Kingdom vulnerable to the whimsical mercies of Donald Trump if we ever did a trade deal. 

Where the Scots differ from the English is that they are natural Euro-philes. Scotland has always been close to France - even shared past Queens. The Scots are naturally outward looking people who in their proud history have always been travelers to the world - to seek work, or settle in new lands, or to trade. Look at the the British Empire, the Scots virtualy ran the empire and even populated it as far as India and North America. So one can’t ignore the impulse of the Scots to not turn its back on Europe.

The first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, now proposes a second Scottish referendum. While politically justifiable even if it’s opportunistic, this is not the best way forward.

Less than three years removed from the first referendum, in which Scotland voted to remain in the UK by 55%, the question of national sovereignty returns to the political forefront. While 52% of the UK opted to leave the EU, 62% of Scots voted to remain Citing the manifesto of her Scottish National Party (SNP), which holds the majority in the Scottish Parliament, Ms. Sturgeon stated that Brexit constitutes a significant and material change from the 2014 vote and a new referendum is necessary. In this, the first minister is right to call for a referendum, as circumstances have unquestionably changed. Forced to leave a union most Scots prefer, the nation should have the right to reevaluate the partnership with their southern neighbours.

Scotland is better off remaining part of the UK than leaving it. The SNP, a separatist group at heart, is misleading its countrymen by saying otherwise. The timetable set by Ms. Sturgeon places undue pressure to resolve Brexit during an already tight window of two years. With Greenland taking roughly seven years to finalise its departure from the European Economic Community, it is hard to believe the UK, a political and economic behemoth in the region, departing in a mere couple. The timetable also provides Scots with little ability to make an informed decision. Much uncertainty exists regarding Brexit and its future ramifications for the UK after Oct 31st. These are not empty words, as Scots increasingly believe that there should not be another referendum in the next few years.

Even for a leader with high approval ratings like Ms. Sturgeon, referendums are risky. The first minister need not look further than her European counterparts, where referendums in the UK and Italy led to the self-inflicted downfalls of David Cameron and Matteo Renzi. Ms. Sturgeon would be wise to learn from the past, as referendums can have dire and unpredictable consequences on a political career. She should act more like the citizens she was elected to represent, who currently have little appetite for another vote. Even if one were held, the most recent polls shows only 37% of Scots supporting Scottish independence.

Arguing for departure from the UK may play well politically, but it would have disastrous ramifications for the small northern nation.

How did we get here?

Through the inattention of the leaders of the British government of the two major political parties is one obvious answer. Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair was eager to devolve power from London to representative assemblies in Scotland and Wales, despite the constitutional problems. Large majorities of Scottish and Welsh parliamentary constituencies elect Labour members of the House of Commons, and particularly in Scotland there was deep discontent with the policies of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. They associated them with the inevitable decline of Scotland’s heavy industries — steel, shipbuilding — and the high unemployment that resulted. Glasgow, once the proud “Second City of the Empire,” as you can readily imagine when you see its impressive century-old downtown office buildings, was particularly hard hit. Scotland, since the Act of Union of 1707, has provided a disproportionate share of Britain’s philosophers, statesmen (11 prime ministers including its most recent in Blair, Brown, and even Cameron), colonial administrators and military officers and men.

Now the Scottish economy is dominated by the public sector, and the Scots are suffused with self-pity over what they regard as the underfunding of the welfare state. Scotland’s second Parliament went into operation in 1999, with Labour party stalwart Donald Dewar as chief minister and with power over much of Scottish domestic policy, including the ability to raise taxes. Indeed under the 1707 Act of Union, Scotland retained Scottish law rather than the English common law, kept the Presbyterian established Church of Scotland rather than the episcopal established Church of England; and under later legislation ran its own education system.

But in 2007, as Labour’s popularity was declining in the UK generally, Labour lost its majority in the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish National Party’s Alex Salmond became chief minister. With a Scots Nats majority, Salmond pushed for the referendum and he got an apparently absent-minded Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to agree to terms favourable to the separatists: the 16-year-old vote, the exclusion of Scots in the military or otherwise living outside Scotland, the fact that a “yes” vote favours separation rather than continuation of a relationship that has produced one of the world’s greatest nations for 307 years.

Scottish independence advocates argue that an independent Scotland will be able to tax itself to its heart’s content and will be able to draw on endless North Sea oil revenues to pay for whatever level of social services and community provision Scots want. But that’s unlikely. North Sea oil production is declining, and a pro-independence vote would be followed by negotiations between England (or rUK, rest of United Kingdom, as some dub it) over the division of oil resources — and division of the national debt.

UK authorities have made it plain that Scotland is not welcome to retain the UK pound, and that if it does (as Panama and Ecuador have the U.S. dollar as their currency), Scottish financial institutions won’t get a bailout if they get into trouble. So it seems likely that the two major Scottish banks and other financial institutions will move their headquarters and legal residence to London if Scotland votes for independence.

The EU’s doctrine of ‘subsidiarity’ seems superficially pro-devolution and the Treaty of Maastricht created the ‘European Committee of the Regions’ to promote regional identities against national capitals. But what is the reality? Neither Spain nor France will permit the precedent of secessionists joining the EU. During the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, the European Commission said Scotland would not inherit the UK’s membership of the EU.

Brussels instinctively backed Madrid against Catalonia, prompting famous Breton musician Alan Stivell to lament “Catalonia’s political prisoners represents the suicide of the idea of Europe”. And the EU has a poor track record of looking after small states like Ireland. Brussels forced two ‘People’s Votes’ after Irish referendums went against the Nice and Lisbon treaties. The bail-out imposed on Irish taxpayers, politicisation of the Irish border and Corporation Tax harmonisation fuel rising Irish Euro-scepticism.

For all this politics are about passion and not reason, especially when you deal in mobilising (low information fed) populist sentiment.

This is why I fear that the economic arguments against Scottish independence, while strong on the merits, are less likely to be persuasive than an appeal to cosmopolitanism and history: the fact that Scotland, as part of the United Kingdom, has in many ways led the world over the last 307 years, intellectually in the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century (which helped inspire America’s Founding Fathers), economically in the industrial revolution, politically in the British Empire and then the British Commonwealth of Nations. Scotland looms larger in the world as part of the UK than it would as a separate nation.

The first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has the right and perhaps may even be right to hold a Scottish referendum in the near future, but she should not do so at the expense of her citizens’ prosperity. Once the ramifications of Brexit and voting to leave the UK are fully known, then Sturgeon could consider proposing another referendum.

But I hope the arguments against independence prove successful and that whenever Scotland has a second referendum the vast majority of Scots vote ’No’. And if or when that happens the Scots will cease to be transfixed by the idea of secession, as have voters in Canada’s Quebec. Casting aside a working relationship which has had such outstanding results for the (by no means assured) chance of a slightly higher-spending welfare state seems like a foolish idea.

I have argued with Scottish family and friends that Scottish independence would disturb our identities more profoundly, in ways that few yet grasp.

Our modern politics are Whiggish. Even the name “Whig” comes from the term “whiggamor” meaning a Scots cattle-driver. As someone who was raised High Tory values from an early age, I find that hard to concede but it’s painfully true certainly from the 17th and 18th Centuries onwards with the rise of parliamentary democracy. I suspect it’s even harder for Marxist inspired leftists to stomach given the socialist driven Labour Party have traditionally worked within Whiggish principles despite their fiery rhetoric being matched only by their incompetence to actually govern.

Whiggism favouring the theories and practices that evolved in the formation of the British constitution. But a lot of Whiggish ideas evolved out of High Toryism and so as a committed British royalist I have a strong attachment to the Anglican Church, and of course the British constitution is modelled upon and arose directly from Anglican theories of governance. But it is British, not English.  Perhaps because her name begins with E, Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg and Gotha is sometimes thought of as an English monarch.  But she is Elizabeth I of Scotland, of a German family introduced to rule in Britain not just in England.  We have little, if any, reason to imagine that, absent the joining of crowns in 1603 or the Union of 1707, the constitution of England (or England and Wales) would have evolved remotely to resemble the British constitution as we have had it.  

British Whiggism has not only slowly seeped into and eroded the ideological underpinnings of High Toryism (think of Thatcherism rather than Lord Salisbury) but it has also ben entrenching a Whiggish inspired constitution over the past 400 years or so. But if Scotland leaves, that constitution and its history are over. There is little reason at base to imagine an English-only constitution any more (or less) likely to evolve in a future direction I would favour than, say, a European constitution. If Britain is literally finished – if the Union is broken and our constitution is no more – why would an England-alone future be any better than, say, membership of the Single European State? England survived perfectly happily as a component of a larger Union within Britain. Why should it be any less content as part of a larger union in the EU Federation?

The reality is that despite the marginalising of High Toryism, it is the Conservative party as the party of Britain, that has been the inheritor of the Whiggish tradition and appointed protector of the Whiggish constitution. If Scotland leaves the Union the Conservative Party would be finished in its present form, because it would dominate England so overwhelmingly that it would inevitably split. To be sure, it would perhaps last two or three more General Elections, in which with huge majorities it would govern in England (Wales doubtless becoming semi-autonomous and Northern Ireland departing to join Scotland forthwith). But no party that won 75 per cent and more of the seats in the House of Commons could last for long. Our adversarial politics needs an opposition as well as a governing party. So the Conservative Party would split, perhaps into Tories and the rest.

This is why ironically I believe in Brexit even if our current crop of incompetent politicians are making a real dog’s dinner out of it.

Passions aside, for me Brexit is an opportunity to reboot unionism between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It may twitch my High Tory nerves a little but I am coming around to the view that Brexit, the biggest ever vote of confidence in the political project of the United Kingdom, is an opportunity to fashion a new unionism. This new unionism might well have a sharper focus on citizenship and rights but it might also trash the canard that Brexiteers are little Englanders. A clean Brexit can rejuvenate marginalised and fraying institutions that were once the bedrock of a collective national identity. But only if we re-orienteer ourselves and go back to the original principle that allegiances of Unionism are to institutions and symbols of nationhood  and shared national values. If we can do that as a union then one might be able to capture a greater diversity that narrow nationalisms rather than widening them - under of course a unifying national figure of a monarch.

Even the most ardent of the free market Brexiteers will have to accept that the best one can hope for is a Unionism as the quintessential one nation politics. Here such Unionism acknowledges the reality of an inegalitarian society made up of people with different talents but tempered by roles and responsibilities that has an ingrained sense of a duty of care to others. But equally Unionism stands for equality amongst citizens governed by the same rules and respecting the authority of enduring institutions. All votes are of equal value in one of the world’s oldest and most successful democracies where MPs serve constituents rather than outside sectional or multi-national corporate interests.

Ironically then the best chance Scotland for its future is Brexit. Brexit will protect the Union that puts the ‘Great’ into Britain. Unionists can be confident we will stay better together in the good Union of the United Kingdom as we leave the bad union of the EU.

Thanks for your question.

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Anthony Janzoon Van Salee (1607-1676): First recorded Muslim settler in Colonial North America, a profile.

In part of researching history, genealogy is one aspect of history that is appealing as well.  Mostly, because its the story of how one comes to be.  From both of my grandfathers my ancestry extends to the colonial settlement of North America back in the 17th century.  That ancestry is a mix of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, German and Dutch among others.  One of the most interesting and unexpected finds in my ancestry was that of Anthony Janzoon Van Salee, who was my 9th great-grandfather.  Anthony is notable for two primary reasons, first the detailed record of his character and deeds and secondly, his religion and unique parentage and upbringing.

Anthony was born around 1607 in Cartagena, Spain the son of an interesting pairing.  His mother was recorded as a Moorish woman, known only as Margarita.  Her own ethnic background and history is lost to time and only a matter of speculation.  She was only positively identified as a Moor which has no ethnic connotation but a religious one, meaning she was a Muslim who had inhabited Spain.  She could have been of a Berber or Arab background or most likely been of European Spanish descent in a family that had converted to Islam during the days of the Moorish Conquest of Iberia, though definitively there is no record of this known.  Anthony’s father was Jan Jansen or Jan Janzoon Van Haarlem (c.1570-c.1641).  Jan was a Dutch privateer or sailor in the service of the Dutch Republic, then trying to establish its independence from the Hapsburg-Spanish Monarchy during the Eighty Years War (1568-1648).  Jan’s early life is little attested to other than he married a Dutch woman and started a family with her, though his profession at sea kept him away at times and he subsequently abandoned his Dutch family.  He is known to have entered into a “union” with Margarita at this time.  They had four sons, of which Anthony was the second born.  Jan mostly attacked Spanish ships but is known to have attacked ships of all nations and made runs into the Barbary Coast of modern day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya which at time were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but were in fact semi-autonomous city states that had as their source of income, piracy and slavery.  European slaves destined for all parts of the Muslim world were their primary source of income.  Jan Janzoon himself was captured in 1618 and converted to Islam, in the words of Europeans he had “turned Turk” which was a euphemism for all Islamic conversions at the time, since all Muslims were associated with the Ottoman Turks.

Jan Janzoon eventually became renamed Murat Reis the Younger and became quite the powerful Barbary pirate.  His knowledge of European coasts would take him to great distances the Barbary pirates had not yet undertaken.  He also was a master of deception, from his days as a Dutch privateer, he and his crews would fly friendly or neutral flags to lull their targets into a false sense of security before attacking with swift ferocity.  He setup his base in Salee or Sale Morocco, opposite the river bank of the modern capital in Rabat.  Sale had a small but nice natural harbor from a river flowing into the Atlantic coast.  There a Republic of Sale (1624-1668), a short lived independent Barbary Republic existed with Murat Reis serving as its first President/Grand Admiral of the Republic leading the dreaded Sale Rovers and their distinct corsair ships.  Murat ventured at one point back to the Dutch Republic where the authorities tried to sway him back by bringing forth his original Dutch family to no avail.  Though it did reconnect him with his children from his first marriage, namely his daughter Lysbeth, who would visit him later in life.  During this time, his sons with Margarita were all brought up Muslim and lived with him in Sale, including Anthony. 

Murat would set up base on small islands off the coast of England namely Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel and he was responsible for the pirate slave raid on Baltimore, Ireland where English settlers were abducted and sold into slavery and as far away as Iceland in the so called Turkish raids of 1627.  That same year due to political instability in Sale, he moved his family and operations to Algiers, Algeria.  He also conducted raids in Italy, Spain and France and the surrounding islands.  He often was known to attempt to convince other Europeans to convert to Islam and though he was known to  secure the release of his fellow Dutch from other pirates.  1635 saw him captured by the Knights of Malta where he was imprisoned on Malta for five years before being released after a Barbary raid on the island.  He was restored to Barbary service in 1640 and returned to Morocco and was visited by his daughter Lysbeth during this time.  He was serving as a governor of the fortress of Oualidia.  Though he lived a life of luxury he was older and enfeebled by age and imprisonment.  No record of his life beyond here is mentioned and he likely died shortly thereafter.  The story continues with his son Anthony and the New World.

Anthony was known as Anthony Janzoon Van Salee though the specifics of his childhood are little known other than his parentage, his being raised Muslim and living variously in Spain, Morocco and Algeria during his youth.  However, due to his Dutch ancestry and his father’s connections he made his way to the Dutch Republic as a young adult and in 1629, he married a Dutch-German woman by the name of Grietse Reyniers and in 1630 under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company, he and his wife left Amsterdam for North America and a colonial life in the New Netherlands colony, the city of New Amsterdam was their destination, the precursor to modern New York City.  Initially, Anthony lived in Manhattan.  It is speculated that his father left him considerable wealth and as such he was able to independently purchase land with his inheritance and became a prominent and successful farmer, merchant, landholder and creditor within the colony.  His farm was located on present day Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. 

The Dutch were known for their relative tolerance of certain matters but were primarily driven by a capitalist free enterprise ethos, a legacy instilled in their American descendants’ ideology.  In matters of religion, Anthony appears more pragmatic than anything, his Islamic upbringing did not stop his at least nominal conversion to Dutch Reformed Calvinist Christianity.  He and Grietse appear to have ever since their arrival been nominal Christians and their four daughters, including my 8th great-grandmother Sara Jansen (Emans) married into prominent Dutch Christian colonial families.  By that same token, Anthony may have practiced Islam privately and is known to have kept a copy of the Qu’ran and read from it at times, it was later sold at auction.  Anthony and Grietse were also reported in records of the time as being characters about town, in records from 1638-1639 there were responsible for 15 out 93 court cases in the colony.  Everything from cases of slander, drunken behavior, to property disputes and pointing his guns at neighbors and colonial authorities who angered him.  Anthony was also known for his outspoken character in defense of minorities including better treatment of African slaves, and audaciously housing an English Quaker in his house in defiance of the Dutch Reformed Church’s strict rules.  He became so defiant to the colonial authorities and religious leaders that he and his family were eventually booted from the colony for their disturbing the peace and for not being devout enough in their Christianity, but he appealed the decision and a compromise was made, he had to leave Manhattan but he was allowed setup a new farm and purchased land in nearby modern day Gravesend, Brooklyn and Coney Island.  He was friendly with his neighbor and Gravesend founder, English Anabaptist, Lady Deborah Moody, the only known woman to establish a colony in North America.  This new colony setup was in part a collaboration with the Dutch West India Company who sought to add more settlers and was allowed for total religious freedom as part of the attraction, which was in line with Anthony’s somewhat loose religious affiliations.  His wife Grietse preceded him in death and he remarried another Dutch woman who was a Quaker she supposedly helped bridge some of the damaged relations between him and the church, making him more tolerant of it which in turn made them relatively tolerant of him.  He died in 1676 still a successful farmer and landholder despite his relative alienation within the colony. 

Anthony’s physical appearance is unverified he was described at quite tall for the time period and very strong in build.  Beyond on that all physical descriptions are varied and hard to discern with any accuracy.

There you have the story of the first recorded Muslim within American history, a character with an interesting and unique backstory, the son of a Dutch sailor turned successful Barbary pirate.  A story of one who entered European society with one foot in the door, the other ever the outsider and his personality and deeds reflected this.  He was a capitalist, defender of the rights of minorities, pragmatic in his religion, proud of his past and proud of his business accomplishments and willing to stick up for himself, true to himself as much as he could be.  In some ways a precursor to the quintessential early American: enterprising, skeptical and defiant of authority, a pioneer in more ways than one.  On a personal note I’m quite glad to count him among my ancestors and am truly fascinated by his story and the little portrait/slice of life it gives in colonial America and in particular the Dutch influence on the stew of ideology that later lead to the American Revolution and USA itself.

[theosdoros-blog1]

❝ Wish somebody would’ve told me I’d end up so lost without you leading me astray. ❞ ALEX FITZALAN? No, that’s actually THEODORE BURKE. A SEVENTH YEAR student, this RAVENCLAW student is sided with THE DEATH EATERS. HE identifies as a CIS-MAN and is a PUREBLOOD who is known to be EGOTISTICAL, BOISTEROUS, and FLIPPANT but also VIBRANT, AUDACIOUS, and STAUNCH. { CAMI, NINETEEN, GMT, SHE/HER }

THE BURKES

old money, old names, old houses - although their name was proudly featured in the list of sacred pureblood families, kept pure throughout the ages, the burkes were never truly a part of that group. their ancestry was foggy, with no dusty records of alliances and ministry positions. their wealth was sufficient, yes, but never in the expected way. the oldest record of a burke they could relate to the present family was a healer of little consequence, and the rest mostly worked for others, especially under the great names they supposedly considered their equal. to marry a burke wasn’t treason, but it was a step down, the acceptance of an insignificant middle-class life.

the family wealth grew when, in 1863, they partnered with the borgins to establish a shop in knockturn alley. their business? buying and reselling wizarding artifacts, mostly belonging to other more reputable families. the burke’s most potent claim to fame and respect was to be the money-hungry keeper of the deeds and inventories of their superiors. that stigma still accompanies the family to this day, anchoring them in a position of SERVITUDE to the other great families - the burkes are not able to make their own history, so they buy and sell others’ for what they’d consider small change.

nevertheless, it has put them in the public conscience, even if negatively. the shop has grown over the last nearly two centuries, but has remained strongly in the family’s hands. borgin and burkes is where people from all walks of life can attempt to sell their latest steal or inheritance, and where one may find the cursed objects capable to cause all sorts of pain, death, misery. the burkes may be inferior, but they are resourceful and plenty useful. their contacts with the criminal underground of the wizarding world and their possession of dark magic objects turned them into a desirable addition to extremist movements, even if never in positions of high power. grindelwald’s army simply led to half the family being imprisoned, some dying while evading capture. some years later, however, the remaining burke’s gave a chance to a young man who would not forget the name he worked for. the job gave tom riddle a public justification for his search of knowledge in areas of magic so nefarious that no other place would allow for them to be explored but borgin and burkes. when he finished his ascent from man to power, he kept in mind those names. the recently graduated children of his employer, with whom he’d spent some shifts at the store during their summer breaks, got the promotion of their lives, with a mark on their arm and a mask over their faces. when their dark lord returned, it was their children’s turn.

merrick burke didn’t share the devotion of his elders, but certainly felt the same gratitude. to be picked, from all possible choices, to join the forces of the new era was, once again, the promotion he would have never dreamt of. in a perfect world, he’d have remained in the store, mostly dealing with finances as he’d always prefered, a quiet life that would leave barely more than a footnote in the writings of history. but how could he refuse such an offer? the man took the mark immediately, ready to pledge his all to the cause.

when their attempt at a fully fledged second war failed, merrick retreated to the store, forever hiding the lines on his skin. his girlfriend, esme flint, did the same, and their short-lived part in the second rise of the dark lord faded from memory. between then and the reformation of the death eaters, the couple married, devoted themselves to the shop and to evading association with their previous criminal activities, vowed to never speak of the darkest things they’ve done, and had two children.

BEFORE

born on august 13th, 2007, theodore talbot burke was brought into a peaceful world. the small cottage in upper flagley, yorkshire, made up most of his existence for a few years. the world of impressive estates and ancient manors was the stuff of books and the occasional wedding or birthday celebration of some family friend, or acquaintance from his parents “old job”. the young boy’s loud personality made it possible, however, for even those encounters to grant him friendships he held dear, even when he was stuck in his small village. he always prefered those other children, though. at least with them he didn’t have to be careful to mention his parent’s store or which spells they were performing at home. after all, upper flagley was mostly wizard populated, but still had a handful of muggle families settled there. a preference was clear in his mind. children with magical families like his, no matter how different from the burkes, understood him better than the rest. they were EASIER.

hogwarts was the adventure theodore had been craving for ever since he could remember. it was bigger and much more interesting than the broken clock that was upper flagley. it was a place where he could spend all of his time with the types of people he actually liked, those whose experiences were the same as him, with no fears of saying something he should not say. in many aspects, it was a reinvention. at last, he could attempt to become the person he’d rather be, full-time. one single train ride was enough for him to make sure most people his year at least knew his face, as he popped in to chat for a while. the sight of the castle came with a clear indication: he was finally somewhere big enough to contain all of him. his energy quickly had him dubbed as the wannabe class clown, evidence in the story of how the burke boy, while playing around in the small boat that’d lead them across the lake and pretending to be their legendary sea captain, tripped and fell into the water.

theodore was sorted rather quickly into the ravenclaw house, and that made sense to him. his mother was the smartest person he knew, and she owned more books than he could recall. his father was a genius with numbers. he’d certainly get his chance to prove his intelligence at hogwarts. the first year was a rude awakening.

try as he might, the boy seemed to lack behind in most things. in a highly individualistic group such as the ravenclaws, he found himself more and more alone in times of need. sure, theo was funny, he’d make the entire classroom giggle; he’d entertain his dorm room until near dusk; yet his connections felt hollow. he wasn’t creative. he wasn’t very book smart. his house felt less and less like home - perhaps the hat had made a mistake. maybe he was a gryffindor like his mother, or a slytherin like his father. perhaps an hufflepuff even.

during his second year, theo was louder, more boisterous, a bit too much for some people’s tastes. what he lacked in grades and proper friendships, he made up in stage presence. it was near impossible to not notice when theo was sitting right next to you, or even in the same room. he tried out for the quidditch team (and failed), and ended up joining a few extracurriculars to fill his time with things he could actually be good at. years of learning the violin with his neighbor, an elderly witch who’d done some tours with some forgotten orchestras, came in handy when he joined the hogwarts’ orchestra (although he only ever got truly good at it during his third year, with intensive practice). the debate club became one of his favourite activities, it being an outlet for the endless bite in him, to the constant need in theo to say something back until only he could have the final word. without realising it, he expanded his skills into things he could actually do. creativity. music. spontaneity. an ability to think on his feet at all times. a pompous nearly-suave way of being.

after over a decade of struggling, the burkes at last brought to the world another child and for the rest of the school year, that was all theo could talk about. philippa, philippa, philippa. to this day, she is his favourite person in the world and he cares about her just so much.

NOW

the following years were a constant discovery of who theodore burke truly is. although he’s been achieving no better than passing grades, except at DADA, which most have attributed to all the knowledge he gets by working summers at his family’s store; theo’s proven himself in the two extracurriculars he’s in, and spent most of his sixth year training to join the dueling club and not make a fool of himself, or at least no more than one would expect from him.

a big part of that discovery was a conversation his parents had with him during one summer, when he asked them in the middle of the store why they hid their dark marks. while not the most astute of people, a fourteen year old theo had heard enough about the boy who lived, the dark lord who’d terrified the word, and his many followers. he’d seen enough pictures from trials and attacks in some books. the kernels of ideology he’d been catching all his life came together in that kitchen table, when he was told of the generous and righteous man who’d attempted to make a new world time and time again, for which the rest were simply not prepared. it wasn’t exactly an hostile story, but rather one of a rebel that kept being taken down by the establishment. the darked deeds the burkes themselves had been involved in? necessary evils. an escalation of events easily preventable had the ministry done something more.

it was a stark contrast. the loud boy that played the violin and made paper planes with his unfinished exam sheets. the legacy of a revolutionary line that was waiting for its new leader.

he digested it the only way he knew how - by sharing his experience to those who understood him. that group kept getting smaller, and by the end of his sixth year it was mostly those who carried the same expectation to join the ranks as soon as their leader returned to continue the war.

the dissonance caused him great confusion. still struggling to understand his very own moral compass, theo began his final year at hogwarts with a bang. suddenly the big question was no longer what the orchestra should play for the christmas concert or what he’d do after hogwarts before he resigned to his faith of working at knockturn alley. no. it was who to turn to as his world shifted more than it ever had. it didn’t take long for one side to attract him, the one he’d gotten the closest to in the previous few years, those who understood the weight of his burden. their names had history too, much longer than his, more scarier. theo has quickly adapted to his role as support. he isn’t the brightest, the strongest, the fastest, but he’s been training like hell. he has the connections the group might need at times. he isn’t seen as exactly a powerhouse, and that gives him some manoeuvre room many don’t possess. he is a part of the revolution. and he has no clue how much of himself he’s ready to commit to it.

MORE

some stats, which you can find HERE.

some character parallels: jake peralta (b99), albus potter (cursed child), greg serrano (cegf), richie tozier (it), eliot waugh (the magicians), quentin coldwater (the magicians), nick miller (new girl), percy jackson (pjo+hoo), felix dawkins (orphan black), haley dunphy (modern family), eve polastri (killing eve), eleanor shellstrop (the good place)

WANTED CONNECTIONS

ravenclaw friends: i’m assuming mostly from the creative side of the house, rather than the studious one. people who’ve grown up with theo, gone through some of the same challenges of being pulled towards a characteristic of their house that often gets neglected. just creative out-of-the-box nerds pls thanks

ravenclaws that do not like him as much: this is really more of a default house sort of thing. theo doesn’t fit the most general template for ravenclaws lots of times, and in fact, mocks it a lot. gets house points deducted all the time. just not a general fan-fave.

a tutor: or more really. someone his year (or a professor who’s given him the extra time and help) who gave him a hand in some subjects and kept him from truly failing them. he’s a slow learner, a distracted one at that, but he pours all of his loyalty and care into those who help him out along the way. but also makes them want to bang their heads against the wall.

childhood friends: so we’ve got two options here. someone who was also raised, at least partially, in upper flagley. OR one of the pureblood kids around his age that he’d visit with his family. either way, people who knew him before hogwarts and had seen his changes over the years.

borgin and burkes clients and traders: the biggest claim the burke family could make within the DE was always that they have the connections to be good supplies, and so they did. the same applies to theo right now, who uses the knowledge of cursed and dark artifacts he learned at his family’s shop, and the connections they’ve gained throughout the ages, to be of use. his face is a staple there during the summers so many characters would have dealt with the boy.

ex ex ex: theo falls fast, hard, and then crashes and burns everything around him. he’s had many absurdly short-lived relationships in the past, usually ended by his own making. fight him.

ex friends ex friends ex friends: see above. he’s just terrible at human connections wow

orchestra friends: or just musically inclined really. playing was one of the few things he discovered pretty soon he’s great at, so he can often be seen practising, listening with heart eyes to others’ music, or testing out instruments he does NOT know how to play and thus sounds horrible. music pals !!

debate club pals: his tongue is sharp, fast, and accompanied by a wannabe suave personality and an intense need for validation. the only times theo can be seen in the library are doing research for debate topics, and he’s really just invested in perfecting how to talk his way out of things. that, however, leads to more philosophical and introspective conversations than he’d rather have, so lots of room for development all around for characters !! he became the president of the club this year and he is devoting so much of himself and his to it, it’s ridiculous and mentally provoking and i love it

pine trees galore: his this is theo and he falls in love too much. it’s obviously not always a two way street and he’s not ashamed to proclaim to his peers that ‘you see that one over there with the yellow jacket? i will marry him someday’. be the yellow jacket person

ravenclaw 7th year dorm room: who has had to share a bedroom with this idiot for the past 7 years and how tired are they?

duelling partners: he’s not in the official duelling club, as he feels like he has enough on his plate this year, but he’s made tremendous progress in the last year. theo’s been practising more and more, for what he isn’t certain. it started as training to join an extracurricular. then it turned into perhaps a need to protect himself and those he cares about in the upcoming dark times. and maybe it’s a way for him to prove himself within the death eaters and show his worth as their soldier. whatever the reason, he needs people to practise with him so LETS FIGHT

death eaters: this is a bit of a vague one and applies to regular ones and students. theo is a good fighter, but not great. he’s a diplomatic talker, but no expert in mental warfare. he can’t brew the easiest of potions to save his life. however, he’s loyal to a deep fault, especially to the PEOPLE, not the cause. death eaters and their legacies are mostly what he grew up surrounded by, and those he’s navigated towards the last few years. he’s the loyal servant who keeps trying to prove he can be more than that, and the resourceful one who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. sometimes, however, others may doubt his commitment to the cause, or need to shake him up a bit to get hi to loosen his morals. that may cause some connections of friction or suspicion, some of superiority (with him being seen very much as the loyal dog and not an equal in many occasions), and some of protection, both him protecting others (be it from the DE, from their enemies, or them themselves and their own actions) or others protecting him in the face of all the impulsive illogical decisions he makes or his lack of care for the ideology.

[wisdomrays]

Four Characteristics of the Age of Ignorance

QUESTION: In one of his sayings, the noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, stated that his followers would not abandon four characteristics of the Age of Ignorance: boasting of (merits such as) high rank, reviling other peoples’ genealogies, using the stars to forecast rain, and wailing over the dead. What are the lessons to be drawn from this saying?

ANSWER: Let me state first that it is not correct to imagine that these characteristics of the Age of Ignorance have remained or will remain among Muslims in the same form for, unlike Muslims, the people of the Age of Ignorance did not have sound belief. Therefore, even if some of these characteristics of the Age of Ignorance are observed in some Muslims later on, it is necessary to note that these actually differ in nature. In other words, the people of the Age of Ignorance had these characteristics in the real sense. Their continuation amongst Muslims should be considered in a metaphorical or secondary sense. Therefore, the idea that Muslims will not abandon these practices should not be understood as them continuing them in the same way as the pagans, rather that they will continue in a different form.

Boasting of one’s merits is a form of futile consolation and deception

The first characteristic mentioned is boasting of one’s merits such as coming from a good family or holding a high rank. Boasting about any quality like status, nobility, knowledge, wealth, beauty or intelligence, etc. signifies disrespect toward God. If a person wishes to avoid both ingratitude and boastfulness, he must acknowledge that all these blessings such as knowledge, wisdom, reason, judgment, wealth, health and the like, come from God; he must say, “all of these beauties belong to the Beautiful Creator of Beauty”. At times, when it is necessary to mention them, a person should only mention them in the form of acknowledging God’s blessings.

To elucidate this further, boasting and vanity are qualities disliked by God. He knocks down those who are boastful and haughty. The hadith refers to a particular form of this kind of failing which is boasting of one’s high rank, family and nobility. Even if a person is descended from the pure lineage of the noble Prophet, he must say: “My God, coming from such a blessed lineage is not something in my control. I know that You are the One Who blessed me with it. This goodness belongs to You and it is a heavy responsibility for me at the same time. My Lord, I praise You with thanks for having bestowed on me this favor and I ask for Your help so that I can give this responsibility its due.” No one should ever use this as a way to assume superiority over others.

If a person makes statements such as, “I am a descendant of such and such a general, my ancestors were so rich. We used to have such and such mansions in that most expensive area,” they also fall into the category of boasting of high rank. Similarly, one’s being the child of a high-ranking bureaucrat might also be a cause for boasting and ostentation. However, none of these bear any value in the sight of God, on the contrary, they are objectionable acts. If a person who entertains such considerations has faith, their punishment occurs in this world. If not, then the punishment is postponed until Judgment Day, which is a much graver consequence. In this respect, no matter at what level, a person should not commit a mean act by being boastful of one’s family and should not see this as a factor of superiority. The merits of one’s ancestors are of no benefit whatsoever for a person. What really matters is having worthy personal values. God Almighty drew attention to this fact in the Divine decree:

“Surely the noblest, most honorable of you in God’s sight is the one best in piety, righteousness and reverence for God” (al-Hujurat 49:13).

The measure of an individual’s value is related to that person’s worship, the quality of his or her relationship with God, and whether that person leads a God-conscious life; acting with the knowledge that God sees everything and as if one were able to see God. If a man does not stand where he should, descending from a noble lineage will be of no benefit to him at all. Umar ibn al-Khattab highlighted the vanity of seeking virtue and merit outside of Islam by saying, “Indeed, we are a people God has honored with Islam. Hence, we shall never seek any means of honor other than that.”

The caste system that humanity has not gotten rid of

Secondly, the Messenger of God referred to the issue of holding others in contempt on account of their ancestry. While a person’s coming from a humble background and being the child of a shepherd does not reduce that person’s value at all—as stated above—coming from such and such lineage does not bring any virtue either. What really matters is having personal values.

It is definitely wrong to reproach and deride people by looking at their cultural environment, material status, neighborhood, family and the like. Ideas of superiority, and seeing others as inferior, date back to a more distant past. The caste system, born out of local religions in India, continued in many societies that were not rightly guided by the message of the Prophets. In the present day, this understanding continues in overt or covert forms in many places in the world. Given that humanity still continues a caste system in different forms and manifestations despite so many claims of progress in civilization, democratization and human rights. Nobody has the right to condemn anyone on such a basis. Note that even the fathers of most of the Companions passed on to the afterlife without declaring faith. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate people not based on their past or lineage but according to their own condition.

Fortune telling by the stars and the deep voids in the heart

Another characteristic of the Age of Ignorance that continues to survive is the issue of expecting rain from the stars and ascribing the coming rains to the stars. In Mesopotamia particularly, the people deemed the stars to imbue a special holiness. The people of that land believed the stars to be directly influential on a person’s destiny. Although such beliefs do not exist in our time, belief in fortune telling by the stars and horoscopes still continues showing that this tradition of the Age of Ignorance remains in different forms.

In relation to this subject, the noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, expressed that God Almighty stated:

“On this morning, some of My worshippers remained as true believers and some became unbelievers; he who said that it rained with the blessing and mercy of God is one who believes in Me and does not believe in the stars, but he who said it rained because of such and such (star) does not believe in Me and believes in the stars.”

Then, seeing the falling rain as a manifestation of God’s mercy and responding to it with praise is a sign of faith, whereas ascribing it to simple causes, such as the stars, is a sign of associating partners with God. If God Almighty had rendered the stars a veil before the operation of His power and greatness, it could have been acceptable to see them as causes. However, as the natural sciences have also proven, there is not even a direct relation of causality between the stars and rainfall.

Unfortunately, when people do not believe in what they should, namely, when they do not have sound faith in God, the Prophets and the Qur’an, the natural need for belief in something, that is an attribute of human nature, leads them to believe in falsehoods. While some seek help in yogism or meditation, others try to find satisfaction with horoscopes and the like. All of these block the ability and potential of the human soul from accepting the real truth. Human nature is inclined to a quest for the truth but sometimes people put on the hat of falsehood and try to satisfy their heart, which actually yearns for the truth, with stones, trees and stars instead, even though those are not even conscious beings.

Faith in destiny and a culture of wailing

The final point stated in the hadith is wailing over the dead. In some parts of Turkey, there still exist certain forms of mourning that are incompatible with the essential teachings of the Qur’an and sunnah. People gather together and mention the good attributes and virtues of the deceased person. While they sing his or her praises, the women slap their hands on their knees and cry artificially like performers.

However, this exaggerated display of emotions is of no benefit to the deceased whatsoever. Let alone being beneficial, as it was stated by the Messenger of God, while the mourners sing the praises of the deceased, angels hold that person to account for whether he or she had really been like that; thus the wailers in a way cause suffering to the deceased.

If a person did not attain closeness to God through worship, and did not live as an obedient servant while in this world, it is useless for him (or her) even if a large crowd attends his funeral, sings his praises, or bears witness that he was a good person. In addition, it also needs to be stated that knowingly giving a positive account of an evildoer is bearing false witness. Therefore, God will call to account whomever commits such a falsehood. We surely can bear positive witness about a person who attended the mosque and seemed virtuous, for we make judgments according to the outward reality. Only God knows what is in one’s heart. On the other hand, some people are openly enemies of religion while others merely pay lip service to religion while committing embezzlement, misappropriation and fabricating slanders. Giving a good account of them is both a horrible lie and a gross disrespect toward God.

Funeral ceremonies of pharaohs and tyrants

Millions of people attended the funerals of so many pharaohs, nimrods and other tyrants, but this does not absolve them from the sins of their atrocities and oppression. Even if the world shakes with the shouting of crowds singing their praises, it means nothing at all for that person. Such a person will enter the pitfalls of Hell anyway.

As a matter of fact, the noble Prophet said that if forty people bear positive witness for a deceased person, that person will be forgiven. However, as I have tried to point out above, this does not apply to knowingly bearing false witness. The Messenger of God made the following address to Abu Hurayra as a warning against death:

“Restore your ship, for the sea is deep. Take your provisions perfectly, for the journey is truly long. Keep your load light, for the slope before you is truly steep. Preserve sincerity in your deeds because God, The All-Seeing and Righteous One, is well aware of any of your acts.”

These were the points the Messenger of God found worthy of emphasis. If you pass away having remained within such a righteous sphere, then you will have passed to the pure horizons of our soul and be blessed with the truth of:

“Surely we belong to God (as His creatures and servants), and surely to Him we are bound to return” (al-Baqarah 2:156).

Otherwise, the wailings and praises—even if performed by millions of people—and the crowds attending your funeral will do you no good at all.

[rangerofpelor]

A9, C1, C2, D3!!

A9. Are any areas set aside for magical, religious or cultural reasons? What are they like?

The Spires of Divergence is the major site. They sit at the corner, right in between the three major sovereign nations. It’s a neutral territory and is considered Holy to Human, Demon, and Divinitas alike. According to legend, it was in the valley between three mountains that the Gods split the Divine race into three separate ones: Human, Demon, and Divinitas (ie, humans, tieflings, and aasimar). Each mountain has a watchtower on top of it, and in the valley between there are three spires. It’s a common location for peace talks and other negotiations, and every ten years there will be mass pilgrimages from all over to come and worship at the site.

C1. Is the world ruled more by magic, technology and science, religion or a mixture of them?

It’s mostly a mixture of religion and magic (and by extension, bloodline in some places). Religion is...a little complicated and messy (when is it not). 

In the Queedom of Vetrunia, religion is more of a Cult of the Ruler, with the Immortal Queen as both the head of the cult and the object of its worship. But people are allowed to worship the Seven Spirits (the Human Gods) and there’s at least one temple for each in the Obsidian City and others in various parts of the countryside (as well as numerous shrines). The Immortal Queen claims to be blessed by the Seven Spirits with magic and immortality, so she really can’t keep people from worshiping them.

In the Aereal Republic, religion, magic, and bloodline all come hand in hand. The country is ruled by the Council of Seven, which is comprised of seven members of the highest Divintas caste (the Auri), which have the most powerful magic. Each position on the council corresponds to one of the seven virtues, and also to one of the Seven Angels (the Divinitas Gods)

The Duchy of Lucalis is the most democratic out of the three. Prince Phobos is the figurehead of the government, but he mostly lets his people govern themselves. The parliament/senate/political body will come to him for advice because he’s over 300 years old...he knows a thing or two about governing...he also gets final say on laws and high profile court cases. That said, magic still plays a large part in keeping the urban areas functional and also aids in agriculture. There’s freedom of religion, so it’s not too much of an issue...most of the time....it’s usually not a problem unless there’s a bunch of murder involved...which has happened a few times with worshippers of one or more of the Seven Devils (the Demon Gods)...but other than that....yeah....

C2. What sorts of magic exists in this world, if any? Are there any severe limitations to magic use?

The basic categories are Fiendish magic, Celestial magic, and Natural magic. Both Fiendish and Celestial magic are passed through blood, so only those who have Demon or Divinitas ancestry are able to have this kind of magic. Demons were more inclined to...breed...with other races (like humans and fey), which means that Fiendish magic tends to be more common. It tends to manifest itself in the form of hellfire or shadows, and is usually more physical and tangible than Celestial magic is (which tends to take the form of clouds or light). 

In their most basic forms: Fiendish magic = evocation. Celestial Magic = Abjuration. However with more training and practice both types of magic can utilize the other schools of dnd magic (with the exception of necromancy).

Everyone is capable of Natural magic as long as they have a genuine connection to the land or nature. Fey have a natural affinity for it, but even a human can pick up a little bit. Human performed natural magic is a lot more subtle and slow acting than Fey magic however. Most farmers are able to work enough Natural magic to make their fields yield just enough to keep their families and animals from starving. More dedicated practitioners are usually hermits who take to the woods. There are stories about some who tried to use Natural magic to make large profit of their farms, but in the end, the magic always gets out of control and the land ends up overgrown. Nature always wins in the end. 

All of these types of magic are physically draining in the same way exercise is. Push yourself too much and you’ll exhaust yourself and your body will start eating away at itself. Magic is a raw power that takes years to learn how to use effectively. Basic natural magic practiced by unwitting farmers is the slight exception: because they work hard tending to and caring for their land, the land loves and cares for them in return

Then there are the Ancient Rites which are...Forbidden...and considered to be the ultimate Sins and Insults to the Gods. It requires incredibly powerful magic to perform the Ancient Rites. Magic that hasn’t been seen since the time of the Divergence, almost 800 years earlier.  

D3. Are any plants, animals, or locations given great significant meaning? If so, why?

I mean the Spires of Divergence have significant meaning, as mentioned before. Poppies are associated with the Immortal Queen because of her Queendom’s expansive poppy fields in the East (which is also where she was originally from). She’s incorporated the image of a poppy into her royal symbol and she likes wearing red. And in the city of Prova, wolves are important animals in local folklore because a town hero, Lydia the Hunter had a wolf animal companion (that is said to still roam the surrounding woodlands).

The Duchy of Lucalis is known for its lavender fields and so it’s become a symbol of wealth and prosperity there. 

Eye color is of great importance in the Aereal Republic, and signifies caste. Gold is the highest caste, then silver, then copper.