#and about historiography

[elucubrare]

"on the one hand," i tell the late medieval monk i hang out with sometimes, "each age reconfigures the great events of history in the way that makes them most meaningful for their own time. like how you keep drawing alexander in full plate."

"he's a knight, what else would he wear"

"on the other," i continue, ignoring him, "it does make me feel like i've gone a little bit crazy when people applaud caesar's assassins as restoring power to the people. at best they wanted a different dictator for life."

"was your 1st century ad stoic friend busy or something"

"yes. anyway the point is applauding action taken for action's sake without looking at the consequences is silly. it's not like killing caesar restored the Res Publica anyway -"

"because all Caesar did was knock over its rotted corpse," he says along with me. "can i play Dark Souls in peace now?"

[balrogballs]

I'm still sad about this heartwarming and mildly amusing little section where feral adolescent Aragorn brings some joy to Maedhros in his unhinged little way, which I had to cut out of Cast in Stone for structural reasons, especially as I had gone to the trouble of illustrating it!

But I realised it reads perfectly fine standalone, so you guys can have my crumb of Maedhros-joy instead. No context required: Maedhros and Maglor are temporarily staying in the Shire during the late Third Age, Maedhros had a horrible night of traumatic dreams and was being maudlin — until young Aragorn, aka Elros II and the bane of his life, turns up like a bad penny, as he often does. Enjoy!

---

"You look unhappy," said Estel, sitting down before Maedhros, legs crossed. "Does your hand hurt? Surely it can't be as bad as when it got chopped off, can it?"

"No, but leave me be, Estel, I have —"

"All right, but let me ask just one question. I promise, then I'll go away. I just remembered something from my lessons, and every time I ask Ada he looks up at the sky and asks the Valar where he went wrong in raising me," Estel moved closer, looking around for eavesdroppers. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But I would like to know."

Maedhros frowned, swallowed the lump in his throat and dragged in a breath. "What?"

"Fingon rescued you on one of those enormous eagles, didn't he? On that mountain with Morgoth and all of that. It was one of those, right? Manwë's Eagles."

"Yes. He did. I do not wish to answer any further questions on the matter, clear off."

"And it was quite a long journey, wasn't it?"

Maedhros grunted.

"I've always had a question about it… and again, you don't have to tell me if it's too traumatising," Estel's eyes shone, as though he were about to hear a state secret. "And I promise I won't tell anyone."

"Spit it out, boy, or leave me now. I am in the mood for neither company nor memory."

"Did it… you know…?"

"If you're trying to ask me if losing the hand hurt, yes it did," Maedhros snapped. "Now leave me alone, I've had enough reminiscing for a damned century. Get off home, now!"

"Oh, shut up, I wasn't asking about your stupid hand, I don't understand why you think everyone sits around thinking about your hand," Estel scowled, pursuing his lips, before deciding his quest for scientific knowledge was more important than whatever had crawled up Maedhros' arsehole and died. He widened his eyes conspiratorily, looked around again. "My question has nothing to do with that! I just wanted to know, did the eagle… you know?"

"Estel, I am not going to repeat this, get out of my sight right this —"

"Did it take a shit?"

"Did… what?"

"Did it take a shit?" Estel flushed as he said the word, Elrond's parental touch finally taking hold, though in a predictably useless manner. "And if it did, how big was it? As in, was it normal bird crap, or was it, you know — like a bucketload of it?"

Maedhros blinked. Estel held his hands out to demonstrate.

"I've always wanted to know that about them, you know," the boy continued, stroking his chin like a philosopher. "Manwe's eagles, that is. Surely if they're big enough to carry two people, one being a towering beast like you, their droppings must be massive."

"What…?" Maedhros couldn't formulate words, a state of being Estel clearly had no familiarity with. "Their… what?"

"And yes, I know they're divine, all of that, but surely they can't be toilet trained, can they? I just don't see Manwë having enough time to toilet train an eagle, you know. Could you imagine just… going about your day, and having this massive tub of birdshite fall on your head? Oh, it could drown a person, I'm sure of it!" Estel grinned, as if said occurrence would be the best day of his life, had it happened to him. "So, did it? And if it did, did you see if it went on someone?"

Maedhros sat there blinking at the boy in complete silence before rising quietly, taking the now-extremely-familiar ear, and slowly — like he were a corpse — leading Estel to the village gate. He didn't say a word, only gestured weakly and put up three fingers, a signal the now sulky boy was very used to.

And as Estel, muttering darkly all the while, neared the completion of his first punishment-lap of three around the village green, he heard something that sounded like a donkey in immense pain. It was a sound so tremendous and unexpected that it brought Maglor running from the house, gaping at the source, having not heard such a thing in centuries. It was no donkey, but Maedhros in complete hysterics, sitting on the ground exactly where he was when he beckoned Estel to run, sobbing with laughter, actual tears pouring down his face, which itself was screwed up and flushed so pink he looked like he'd been badly sunburned. He was trying to explain the situation to Maglor (who had been glaring at Estel as if he had personally killed his brother, and now looked upon him like he was Iluvatar himself) but Maedhros was howling too hard to even stand, let alone form coherent words.

Estel pretended not to notice, and started on his second lap. Though objectively speaking, the laugh itself sounded like something between a foghorn, a pig and whatever noise he imagined Ungoliant would make — there was something rather lovely about it that brought an inexplicable little smile to his face.

[vivelareine]

In her book Marie Antoinette: The Journey, Antonia Fraser claims that Joseph Weber told Marie Antoinette that her grief for Sophie could not have been very great, due to her age and not yet being weaned.

From Fraser's Marie Antoinette: The Journey:

"The Queen's foster-brother Joseph Weber tried to cheer her by saying that the baby had not even been weaned when she died, implying that the grief for one so young could not have been very great. But he struck the wrong note. 'Don't forget that she would have been my friend,' replied the Queen, a reference to her daughters, who were "mine," unlike their brothers, who belonged to France, that sentiment first expressed at the birth of Marie-Therese. Her tears continued to fall.

But... in what appears to be typical Antonia Fraser fashion, this is not actually what Joseph Weber's memoir* says.

What Joseph Weber wrote, in context of discussing the queen's grief at the death of Louis Joseph, was:

Marie Antoinette's heart had already been put to a similar test two years earlier, when she lost her daughter, only eleven months old. In vain did those who were admitted to her intimate circle present the princess's tender age as a reason to alleviate the bitterness of her regrets; she replied to them: "Do you forget that she would have been a friend?" and her tears continued to flow in the name of daughter and friend.

He did not say that he said this and that Marie Antoinette told him this in reply to him 'striking the wrong note,' yet Fraser puts the words in his mouth specifically, along with bringing up not being weaned, which Weber did not mention.

Was Weber among those in her "intimate circle" who said this? Maybe... he was in France, and if we believe the memoir, she was touched by his considerations for her when she had a miscarriage and it's not impossible he might have been one of those who tried to console her. But Fraser mischaracterized what was written by putting it specifically in his mouth.

*We also know that these memoirs were at least partially written (if not primarily written) by Trophime-Gérard, Marquis de Lally-Tollendal, not Weber himself.

As always... check the sources of your sources!

[wardensantoineandevka]

this is relevant to a lot of fanspaces, but I'm feeling it most with CritRole C3 right now, though it applies to a lot of other works too: I feel like a lot of fans mistake "the work had the potential to expound on XYZ themes and tell a narrative about such-and-such with these particular building blocks" for the work actually telling that narrative and working with those themes

the building blocks merely existing in a text does not necessarily mean that the text has that particular narrative at all, let alone is telling that narrative well. a lot of the time, a text has the potential for it but is not using those elements to actually tell that story and is just plain ol' missed opportunity

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[jeannereames]

Of all the lost ancient sources on Alexander - those we do not have - which one do you think is more likely to be just or mostly propaganda instead of actual history?

Alexander and Propaganda

Well, I suspect all of them had some useful history embedded, but I reckon Onesikritos is the most notorious for writing nonsense recognized as nonsense in his own time. He reputedly cracked up Lysimachos with his account of the Amazon Queen. He seems generally to be regarded as a boaster. He certainly inflated his own place in the campaign.

Ephippos of Olynthos is almost certainly guilty of negative propaganda, although we have so little of it (reliably attributed to him), it's hard to tell a lot. He didn't like Alexander (or Hephaistion), apparently.

Pompeius Trogus (on which Justin's account is based) was also highly problematic (and negative), not unlike Theopompos of Chios, writing about ATG's father Philip. This is one reason (of several) that Justin simply can't be relied on unless it backs up something found elsewhere ... which is super-annoying as some things are found ONLY in Justin. But is he making shit up?

Last, I want to mention Kallisthenes, Alexander's own court historian. It would be LOVELY to have Kallisthenes in full, even if it cut off in Baktria ('cause he was arrested!). Yet as the official account, I think we can tag it as propaganda in at least some places. He wrote some nonsense to flatter Alexander, such as the waves of the Aegean bowing to the king at one point. 🙄 He's also the one who did the most to promote Alexander as the son of Ammon.

BUT it would be great to have him because there's probably quite a lot of useful detail embedded in the account thanks to access to official records. We'd have to be careful of some exaggeration (especially in enemy numbers and enemy dead, et al.) but it would still be info much closer to the source than anything we've got now. So yes, definitely propaganda, but I'd still like to have it.

(This doesn't address later, Roman accounts who used him for moral lessons, like Lucian of Samosata and Seneca the Elder. What they're writing is akin to modern preachers telling parable anecdotes in sermons, and about as divorced from history. After all, a good parable can be TRUE without being, you know, historically accurate.)

For more on Alexander in our Roman-Era authors.

[rotzaprachim]

one of the biggest issues with the current misinformation and/or propaganda discourses is that a lot of people on some level hold the idea that there's a linear separation between "media that is Propaganda" and "True Media, which is Correct and Pure," and that is fundamentally not how the news works, or how history works, or how historiography works. Some news and history is certainly working to push particular points more than others, and not all aspects of the political equation bear equal validity, but a lot of people are refusing to engage with the fact that all news and all media needs to be engaged with critically, and that "read from a variety of sources" isn't a conservative psyop but an attempt to try to counter the fact that every journalist ever - every person every, and certainly every twenty something tiktoker ever - has certain biases. there is no linear, singular, pure "truth." in fact, the acceptance of the idea that there can be some media that is wholly pure versus others that is nothing but pure propaganda is exactly how people buy into propaganda to begin with - because it presents a clean, straightforward, and seemingly just explanation for the world

[free-smarcher]

every time your team in Veilguard start getting all red-string-board, lore-connecting, do you think it's possible that I'm just. Besties you would have loved being on tumblr in 2015

[beardofkamenev]

[Philippa] Langley does not tire of proclaiming her mission to debunk the Tudor view of the Plantagenets […]. Although the actual Wars of the Roses was fought between two English factions (with varying degrees of non-English lineage), the Ricardian focus on the Wars of the Roses may be code for preserving Englishness and the values of “little England” amid an increasingly multicultural United Kingdom. In ‘Good King Richard?’, published in 1983, Jeremy Potter, then Chairman of the Richard III Society, straightforwardly links his interest in Richard III to Richard’s Anglo-Saxon “blood.”

— Richard Toon and Laurie Stone, ‘Game of Thrones: Richard III and the Creation of Cultural Heritage’ (2017)

“As the genealogical tree of his [Richard III] descents indicates, “the last English king of England” might more accurately be described as the most English of all the sovereign rulers of England for more than a thousand years. Before him there was a dominance of Danish and French blood in the royal family: after him some Welsh and much Scottish and German. The two royal brothers of the house of York alone had four English grandparents and, while Edward IV’s birthplace was in Normandy, Richard was born in Northamptonshire in the heart of England.” (Potter, 1983: 5)

[dead-generations]

the new obsession among Christian conspiracy freaks with gnostics is really really funny. a popular and well regarded YouTube 'historian' of Stalingrad recently fell down a rabbit hole and now believes that Marxists are literally gnostics and that gnostics descend from hermeticists and that gnostics basically run the world and are responsible for modern art and pessimism. and all it took was an uncritical reading of a single 1880s book about the development of the German nation.

[enlitment]

Get yourself a friend who'll borrow you books like this:

(or alternatively, get yourself a friend who doesn't do it a couple of weeks before your final state exams. Ugh, must... focus... on... studying...)

Still, goals though 💅

[fideidefenswhore]

It is interesting that Catherine of Aragon was as strict as Anne Boleyn when she believed that others violated her will Catherine's relationship with Spanish servants is very interesting

Well, if anything Anne would have been at pains to be stricter. Nobody cast doubt on Catherine's legitimacy as Queen of England until Henry did (well, save the Bishop of Tarbes...maybe, it's debated).

Assuming you're indicating the parallel of 'strictness' re: unapproved marriages, I mean, sort of, yeah? I don't think it's a 1:1 equivalency or parallel necessarily tho.

Let's preempt this: among 16c royalty and nobility, ladies in waiting marrying without the consent of their parents, their 'mistress' (at the highest level, the Queen), the King, etc was more than a faux pas, it was taken very seriously, particularly women marrying men that were much more lower status than them. The legal term for this was 'disparagement', and the man in question could actually be severely fined for the offense.

Now, there were some exceptions to this rule, widows, for example, generally had more autonomy, but overall it was a hard and fast rule. It is not palatable to modern views, but their respective reactions are quite understandable in the context of the era in which they lived

That being said...the situation with Catherine as 'Dowager Princess of Wales' in and of itself was a bit unusual. According to her own allegations, her household was kept in relative penury. So yes, Francesca de Carceres had committed an offense in marrying a wealthy banker without the permission of her mistress...however...it was again, an unusual situation. Catherine had apparently not been paid her proper per annum for years at that point, and all her ladies were subsequently feeling the pinch.

So, when I read about the case of Francesca de Carceres, and Catherine's extreme reaction, even knowing the broad context, but also knowing the narrower context, I sort of went...well, yes, she wasn't supposed to do that, but what was she supposed to do, girl?? You weren't paying her (ik this was probably not Catherine's fault, but that was the situation) 😭 Of course she took that lucrative opportunity, and decided better to ask forgiveness than permission.

And if it'd just been left at that, Catherine doesn't forgive her, she won't accept her back into her own household once she's Queen, that would be one thing. But she goes rather further, actually: when Francesca de Carceres, after her rejection from Catherine's household, seeks employment in other royal households, Catherine not only refuses to reccomend her, but exhorts these other royal women to never admit her to their households, nor to ever reccomend her to another, because she says she 'would not reccomend an untrustworthy person'.

So, her grudge against her was intense enough that she potentially, seriously inhibited her future livelihood.

Again, that in and of itself...I mean, it's not especially endearing, but when it's thrown into relief with her reaction to Fray Diego's scandals, it's quite galling. It was alleged that he had slept with numerous women, married and unmarried, his response to his exile from court was to hint at blackmail (his letter to Henry was something to the effect of you don't want to do this, I know state secrets-- ??), and Catherine still reccomends him to her father and claims he's been slandered-- mind, this after he's blackmailed her husband-- and he was the best confessor she could ever have had, etc.

I have my own speculation about Francesca de Carceres. Certain stans in past times have melted down in my inbox and insisted that my assessment of this was unfair, actually everybody loved Catherine, 'if she hated her so much why was she a witness in her favor at the Trial of Zaragoza, hmm, CHECK AND MATE', well...actually, she wasn't. Francesca was mentioned via hearsay, she never testified herself or signed any witness depositions.

I think Francesca de Carceres was compartmentalized by her mistress in the same way Alessandro Geraldini was (speculation). It was their understanding (speculation, insofar as de Carceres, this is just my theory, but for Geraldini there's substantive evidence) that Catherine had consummated her marriage with Arthur. This was anathema to her. If true, this explains the extremity of her reaction (she knows Francesca might bear a grudge in mutuality, she doesn't want her spreading lies-- or, 'lies'-- about her in the royal households of other women).

OK...so onto the parallel with Anne as Queen...

Well, I think the reason her exile of her sister, Mary, for her marriage to William Stafford usually gets a more emotive reaction (besides that it's more popularized in fiction) is that Mary was her sister. She was also a widow, sometimes people point to the example of Henry's sister, but that was a very different sort of Henry, a very different sort of Queen (acknowledged as legitimate, as I said above), but importantly as well, she was a Princess. Henry's 'compromise' could be to severely fine her and her husband (a Duke). Stafford was not wealthy or titled, there was nothing to fine (this was probably why Mary asked, in her letter, for William to be granted some post at court, besides income and proximity to favour, possibly an 'offset' for the offense?), Mary's dower and jointure were not significant enough to fine, her son was already Anne's ward.

But Anne was already disparaged for her 'low birth', for her comportment not being 'queenly' enough. The Boleyns and Howards not only lost a potential marriage alliance to strengthen them, but one of their own had 'married down', which marred their image. Altogether this better explains the reactions Mary cited in her letter (of Lord Rochford, her brother, and Norfolk, her uncle, especially being 'so cruel against us').

And, you know, we don't have the benefit of time to estimate the strength of the grudge. Anne relented enough to send her sister some money and a gold cup, she never allowed her and her husband back to court, but we don't know what Anne might have or might not have done as the years continued, because she was executed not even two years after this banishment.

I suppose the similarity would be how intensely they felt the betrayals due to the intimacies of the relationships. Francesca was to Catherine, probably like a 'surrogate' sister, with her since she was a young teenager, her 'dresser and confidante', there for her pivotal moments, her arrival into England, her marriage to Arthur, her widowhood, her betrothal to Henry, etc. Mary was obviously literally Anne's sister, they had their shared childhood and had been there for the pivotal moments in each other's lives: Chateau Vert, George's wedding, Mary's widowhood, Calais, the coronation, etc.

[edwardseymour]

Do you think that the six queens of Henry VIII actually did not receive attention? But each of them has a biography, which is rare among women in history.

i think the tudor period as a whole receives too much attention. tudor fatigue is very much a thing! to the extent where the tudors have lost a degree of respectability amongst academics, because it’s seen as pulpy and embarrassing — i know a hysterical number of people within the sector who try to avoid the tudors, and people who hate them. so just because all the wives have at least one biography, it doesn’t mean they’re good biographies. it’s almost like the egregious capitalisation of the period is… a bad thing!

[zugmode]

i've been attempting to write a long-winded, angsty fiddauthor fic for months now, but i have hated every single draft i've come up with. so i tried the academic approach: i did a little reading on quantum mechanics as they were understood in the 1980s, and tried to figure how that might've impacted the nature of ford's research. and now this draft reads like a history of SMT paper. i think i have completely lost the ability to write creatively.

[wonder-worker]

[Anne de Pisseleu] has almost entirely disappeared from historical accounts. Francis is generally considered the strongest and most impressive French Renaissance king. To acknowledge Anne’s political power would diminish his reputation. But for errors of political judgment in his waning years, Anne has [often] been blamed.

— Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses in Renaissance France / Tracy Adams, Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources

"The Duchess of Étampes [Anne de Pisseleu] has been characterized over the centuries in reflexively misogynistic terms, and traces of the misogyny remain despite the scholarship of David Potter and Francis Nawracki demonstrating that that she was a central political figure during the last years of the reign of François I. She is described, for example, as “undoubtedly a detestable person, capricious, arrogant, taking advantage of her powers as favorite of a feeble, aged king,” and as “the duchess, insolent, capricious,” who “made sure that no one was unaware of the power that she held over [the king].” She was at “the heart of much in-fighting at court,” and she was “fickle.” Charges of greed and vainglory persist, as well: “Combining intelligence with beauty, she was also ambitious and grasping.” The reputation of Diane de Poitiers among historians has been different. She was much reviled immediately after her death, but, by the nineteenth century, she had been embraced as a romantic icon, and, ever since, she has been treated with sympathy or curiosity—the story that she ingested gold to preserve her beauty has garnered considerable interest in the popular press over the past few years—in recent biographies."

[jeannereames]

Was Alexander in love with Roxane? As far as I understand, Plutarch, Diodorus, Justin and Arrian mention that Alexander was in love with Roxane, she is the only wife he is said to have been in love with. Is there any truth to that? I have seen people question it, but they are the same people who say that Alexander loved Hephaestion (romantically) when no such thing is said in any source.

So, here’s another “ask” that I’m not sure isn’t meant as trolling. That said, as before, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. The first part at least seems genuine enough. It’s only the second part that strikes as a bit dismissive.

That said, the question suggests both limited knowledge of who is arguing what (see the suggested reading near the end), as well as a disconnect between pop history online versus actual scholarship.

For historians, this is not about “We want to make Alexander gay!” versus “We want to make Alexander straight!” This is about understanding the HISTORIOGRAPHY of the ancient sources: what to believe and what not to believe, which in turn means understanding the agenda of ancient authors. That makes this question fundamentally problematic for two reasons:

It assumes one of these things cancels out the other. It doesn’t.

It assumes the ancient sources can be trusted, and all of them say the same things about Roxane, with the same motives. They don’t.

A colleague of mine is currently working on a paper about the role of “love” in stories of Macedonian kings (not just Alexander) and specific wives (who bear the heir). I’m not going to say more about that, as I don’t want to steal Borja’s thunder, but he let me read a draft of the paper and I found it very interesting. Yet we shouldn’t take these “love stories” at face value.

The asker must remember that our surviving sources are separated from Alexander by at least 300 years, or more. They have other (now lost) sources between them and Alexander—sometimes more than one source. I’ve talked about the problems with the sources and Alexander in these two TikTok videos:

ATG and the Sources, Part 1

ATG and the Sources, Part 2

I’d suggest watching those first, then returning here to finish reading this post.

So, assuming the asker (and other readers) have now seen those two videos, we must consider the “story” that lies behind reports of Alexander marrying Roxane for love … or not.

Plutarch is one of the main surviving sources for the “He fell in love with her story,” as well as the “He never laid eyes on Statiera,” as well as the “He turned up his nose at prostitutes (both male AND female).” It’s not about the “purity” of a love match, but CONTROL of his sexual impulses. E.g., sophronsunē. Please don’t conflate Plutarch’s point with later Christian moral lessons. Plutarch was not a Christian and would have emphatically disagreed with many aspects of Christian theology.

Plutarch is telling a story in his Life of Alexander about how Alexander rose above his semi-barbaric Macedonian origins (of which Olympias and Philip are symbols) due to his GOOD GREEK PAIDEIA (education). He was properly “Greekified.” He was therefore controlled and reserved and properly virtuous when he invaded Persia. After Gaugamela, however, he began to succumb to the alure of Evil Oriental Debauchery. Sadly, the Roxane story is part of that—she’s a barbarian girl—although marrying her for love kinda redeems it. This view of Alexander is part of the Second Sophistic more broadly, so we also find it in Arrian. Curtius and Justin are both Roman imperial authors, but with a similar message. Not the Greek education part, but the “corrupted by the Oriental East” part. Diodoros (writing earliest of all) also has it, but not as emphatic.

Marrying Roxane, especially for Curtius, is not a good thing. She’s a hillbilly barbarian tart! He marries (gasp!) her because he gives in to his impulses instead of controlling them with Roman discipline. It’s almost the opposite of Plutarch. Marriage makes it worse, not better, opening the way for half-barbarian heirs (shudder).

What really spurred Alexander’s marriage to her was a political alliance with important Baktrian and Sogdian families, so he could get the hell out of there after a 2+ year war against regional insurgency (which he actually caused). You can read about the whole thing in Frank Holt’s brilliant Alexander the Great and Bactria, from Mnemosyne (1993). And last time I checked, Frank wasn’t making any arguments at all about Hephaistion.

Sulochana Asirvatham has written several articles about Plutarch and Alexander, but “Plutarch’s Alexander” might be of the most use from Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great. Sulo isn’t making any arguments about Hephaistion either. I don’t think he even comes up in that paper.

Sabine Müller has also written about Alexander and women, including Roxane (“Stories of the Persian Bride, Alexander and Roxane,” in The Greek Alexander Romance in Persia and the East). She, too, not only doesn’t argue that Hephaistion was his lover, but (elsewhere) argues they weren’t. We agree on a lot about Hephaistion’s career and importance, but not on that particular point.

Finally, you might especially want to read a forthcoming book chapter “Alexander’s Polygamy: Remarks on Alexander the Great’s Relationship(s) with Women,” by Monica D’Agostini in Macedon and Its Influences, coming out either late this year or early next, from Colloquia Antiqua (#44). It deals with Barsine, Roxane, and his other women/wives.

There is also here the matter of what love and marriage meant in ancient Greece and Macedonia, versus now, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion. As noted above, for the Greeks, loving a woman did not in any way, shape, or form preclude loving a boy/man. Even at the same time!

Ergo, the idea that people who argue he didn’t love Roxane are doing so because they (wrongly) want to believe he was in love with Hephaistion is, frankly, ridiculous, not to mention downright offensive to real scholarship. As if our opinions are driven by romantic wishful thinking instead of a careful evaluation of the sources and their reliability, in terms of both what is said, and what isn’t.

(Apologies for being a tad testy if this was not a troll, but I've fielded a few too many of these sorts of queries that are a backhanded attempt to "prove" that any claim Hephaistion and Alexander were lovers is just romantic claptrap by silly women who aren't "real" scholars. Ergo, my skepticism.)