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burningvelvet · 1 year ago

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Why Mr. Rochester and Bertha Mason Couldn't Get a Legal Separation; or, the Utter Madness of Marital Laws

So I saw a Jane Eyre post discussing why Mr. Rochester and Bertha Mason couldn't get a legal marital separation. I've thought a lot about this topic, and in order to procrastinate writing the final for my upper-level Brontë class, I've decided to write this sort of convoluted analysis instead. I know many others have written about this subject, but I wanted to explore a bit further on my own.

Preliminary context about me, the Brontës, their Byronic inspiration, etc.: I've learned a lot about 19th century British marriage laws recently in my classes on old British literature, as well as by having studied Byron, whose marital separation in 1816 was a notorious part of his history & also reverberated through 19c literature. He refers to this separation in many of his works, most famously in his notorious poem "Fare Thee Well." Harriet Beecher Stowe, the most famous American female writer at the time, was friends with Lady Byron and wrote a book defending her called "Lady Byron Vindicated: A history of the Byron controversy from its beginning in 1816 to the present time" (the original callout post).

Insanity accusations did factor in to Byron's separation. Many scholars have remarked how the Queens of Byronic Criticism, the Brontë sisters, took significant inspiration from their well-worn copy of Moore's biography Life of Byron when creating their works. The Brontës would have been very familiar with marriage laws not only due to their knowledge of Byron's trainwreck of a marriage, but also due to being well-educated women at the time who knew that marriage was the most important economic decision of one's life and could very well make or break a person. As a result, marriage plays a significant role in their novels.

More relevant preliminary context about the novel: Jane Eyre actually takes place in the Georgian era, despite most adaptations and anaysis presenting is as a Victorian piece due to the novels publication date (this drives me crazy; same goes for the other Brontë books). Marriage laws did not change drastically from the time the novel is set to the time Brontë was writing the novel, but things were a bit different socially. Rochester was also married 15 years before his attempt to marry Jane. According to this very good analysis, Rochester and Bertha probably married in or around the year 1793: https://jane-eyre.guidesite.co.uk/timeline.

Now, here are the reasons why Rochester couldn't separate from Bertha:

1) Insanity wasn't grounds for divorce/separation in the Regency era.

Rochester himself says that he couldn't legally separate from her because of her insanity, which presumably rendered any of her faults null on the grounds of that marital vow "in sickness and in health." This is possibly one of his biggest reasons:

"I was rich enough now – yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal procedings: for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad — her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity [..]"

2) Divorce was nearly impossible anyway.

There had only been around 300 divorces in English history at the time. Almost all of them were husbands divorcing their wives for committing adultery. Only a handful of divorces had succesfully been obtained by women, and they were only in cases where the husband had committed incestuous adultery or bigamy, and was extremely physically cruel. So technically after his bigamy attempt, Bertha may have had more grounds to obtain a divorce than Rochester would have, if only she were lucid enough to do so. However, in that scenario infertility would have helped their case, and Adèle's existence would have harmed their case if he attempted to seek a divorce before marrying Jane. Though as the novel explains, Adèle is probably not his, she definitely would have been used against him, as would the fact that he kept Bertha's existence a secret in England. But he wouldn't have tried for divorce that late in the game anyway, considering it was one of the most difficult options.

3) Female adultery was your best bet at divorce or separation, and this probably wasn't applicable to Mr. & Mrs. Rochester.

Although some scholars claim that there is subtext hinting that Bertha was adulterous (which some adaptations, like the 2006, include), you needed substantial proof of the adultery, which Rochester may not have had if it did occur. Being a proud man, he also wouldn't have wanted to be humiliated in that way by letting it be publicly known (as shame is one of his main reasons for hiding their marriage to begin with).

However, I lean toward the idea that Bertha may not have committed adultery. If she definitively did, seeing how affected Rochester was by Céline cheating on him (he shot her lover in revenge and left her with a stipend), if he ever suspected adultery on Bertha's part then I'm sure he would have been at court the very next day. I also think Rochester tries not to be too much of a hypocrite, and he is well aware that he himself is an adulterer, so he probably doesn't want to accuse Bertha of a crime he's committed and which he couldn't definitively prove she did.

Rochester does talk about hating Bertha's "vices" when they lived together, citing drinking, arguing, cruelty to servants, cursing, her being "unchaste," a "harlot," etc. - the last epithets, combined with her supposed lack of morality, and her being described as seductive, heavily imply that adultery could be added to her list of offenses. However, if she did truly cheat on him as well, I don't see why he wouldn't plainly tell this to Jane as well. I would imagine it would be his first complaint, and it would probably be considered his most justifiable reason against her by their cultural standards.

I don't see why he wouldn't jump to take Bertha's infidelity as an opportunity to defend his own actions, considering how open he is with Jane about his own adultery and being cheated on by Cèline Varens. While I can see how some of the textual evidence may strongly suggest Bertha's adultery, we cannot be fully certain, and that may be because Rochester himself is not fully certain. I cannot see why he wouldn't have sought legal advice on that account alone.

In short, if Bertha was an adulterer, there must have been no evidence to convict her.

Also: while the double-standard may seem odd and trivial to us, the reason why female adultery held more weight than male adultery has entirely to due with old patriarchal inheritance laws; i.e the risk of a wife getting extramaritally pregnant and passing the illegitimate child off as her husband's heir was considered too great of an affront. A man could have as many bastards as he wanted because he would know they were bastards and were not at risk of inheriting his stuff. One needed legitimate heirs to justify passing on one's ancestral wealth to. Essentially, marriage was a mere economic tool, and the economy was and is inherently patriarchal. I digress.

4) Rochester's lack of social & economic leverage, and risk of social ruin in general.

Only the wealthiest of the wealthy could obtain divorce or official separation, and it often led to social ruin. Rochester is rich, but he has no title and no great network of supporters due to being a younger son and having been abroad for most of the past 15 years (this was the length of his marriage to Bertha, stated by Mr. Briggs during the bigamous wedding attempt). He doesn't have as much leverage as Lord and Lady Byron had.

To continue on official separation, like Lady and Lord Byron obtained. Just like divorce, this was also a messy and scandalous legal proceeding, and required numerous good reasons to obtain, and being well-connected Lords and Ladies really helped your case. You also needed many witnesses and written statements as evidence. Bertha's family, as we see with Mason, would have been unhelpful to Rochester, and due to his shame and secrecy, no one could really testify on his behalf I'm assuming.

5) Unofficial separation would have been inconvenient, especially in regards to living situations.

Aside from divorce, which was extremely rare, extremely controversial, and only for the wealthiest members of society — there were unofficial and official separations. An unofficial separation was simply living apart from one another. I've often wondered why Rochester didn't simply move Grace Poole and Bertha somewhere else, but my main theory is that it would have been cost ineffective, and due to his family who were implied to be shitty, he probably really didn't want to live at Thornfield anyway so thought it would be convenient to place her there. Rochester says it would be dangerous to place her in his other residence of Ferndean:

"[..] though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate."

6) Annulment was likely impossible given their circumstances.

Annulment means evaporating the marriage, acting as if it never existed, that it was a mistake. This was rare and only granted in unique circumstances, and I believe it was more common with aristocracy and royals. I believe you could possibly get an annulment if you could prove that the spouse was insane at the time of the wedding and you did not know. However, Bertha did not begin to truly deteriorate until after they had been living together for a bit. And while Rochester says that he did not know her mother was in an asylum until after the wedding, having an insane mother doesn't mean that you are insane, which Bertha clearly wasn't at that point, at least not in a way that people would have publicly acknowledged, since Rochester says she attended parties and her hand was highly sought after.

Generally, the longer a marriage had gone on, the harder it was to prove why it could not go on. Rochester says that he and Bertha "lived together" for "four years" in Jamaica while her condition deteriorated and he tried to make things work. And again, after the wedding he found out her mother was "mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum." So we have more reasons for Rochester's difficulty: the fear of Bertha going to an asylum while she was still mostly lucid in those first four years, combined with the fact that they openly lived together and certainly must have consummated their marriage (things which would further prevent annulment), and were certainly publicly recognized as a couple in Spanish Town society, and her family wanting the marriage to continue so she could have children of "good race" i.e. to produce heirs.

Here's an important passage that to me suggests that Rochester and Bertha not only had an initial flirtation but likely consummated their marriage, likely had a passionate sexual relationship for some time, and likely implies his feelings for her were more complex than we'd initially assume, making annulment not so clear-cut of an option to him at the time:

"My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram; tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act! — an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her."

7) Spousal abandonment wasn't possible, and on some level he honored his legal and financial obligations to her and the Mason family.

Bertha's family likely refused to house her for legal and personal reasons, and spousal abandonment was forbidden due to the husband's financial responsibility as well as the law of coverture (a wife became her husband's full legal responsibility; some say "property"). Like we see in Anne's Tenant of Wildfell Hall, if a woman ran away from their spouse they would have to live in obscurity and be at risk of being sussed out. You couldn't just abandon your partner. Still, people did, because it was the easiest route to take.

But the more upper-class you were, and the more financial entanglements you had, the more inconvenient this was. We know that Rochester and his family became enmeshed with the Mason family, and he got a lot of money from Bertha, so her father likely would have taken him to court. At any rate, Rochester was legally bound to bring Bertha with him to England when he left Jamaica. If he attempted to abandon her in Jamaica, the backlash it would have brought would have brought him social ruin and foiled his chances at getting away with any bigamy attempts.

All this brings us to a further notice of Bertha's family situation. Based on Charlotte Brontë's positive comments about Rochester's character (https://www.tumblr.com/burningvelvet/731403104856195072/in-a-letter-to-w-s-williams-14-august-1848) I see no reason to suspect him, like many feminist critics do, of being an unreliable narrator or of lying about Bertha Mason's history. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and in mine, that is simply not the novel Charlotte wrote. By her own admission, she wanted his narrative to be a path to further goodness.

It makes no narrative sense for our explanation of his and Bertha's history to be full of lies when he's trying to make ammends with Jane, who never suspects him of lying during his admission, but who does critique him and figure he'd tire of her like she was one of his many mistresses. Jane wonders if Rochester would lock her in an attic too, which he refutes on the basis that he loves her more than he loved Bertha when she was sane, and so he would care for Jane himself. Jane also tells him that it's not Bertha's fault that she's mad. So in my opinion, if Charlotte wanted us to believe Rochester was lying about his and Bertha's history to make himself look better or Bertha look worse, I don't see why she would have been vague about it, and I don't see why Jane wouldn't have called it out like she does everything else. I don't think Rochester is really a villain who locked his harmless wife in the attic for giggles; I think he weighed most of his options and found, like most people back then and even today, that keeping his problems locked up and ignored was the best solution.

Now, on with the point. I have often wondered why Rochester didn't simply "unofficially separate" from Bertha by leaving her with her family when he left. Why did he take her to England? Why didn't he just run away? It wasn't because he was an evil villain who wanted to keep her as a trophy. It's because 1) I don't think her father would have let him, as he was so quick to marry her off, 2) he felt obligated to her, and 3) it was criminal for men to abandon their wives, and it would have attracted publicity, which is what Rochester was avoiding by taking Bertha to England and sheltering her in secrecy.

Many claim that Rochester's adultery is a betrayal of his wife; and while religiously, narratively, socially, we can accept this statement, it was not legally a crime. While Rochester does honor his financial and legal obligations to his wife and her family, he does not take the religious part of the vows into account, and that's why he's cosmically punished and only rewarded after he repents, as he explains toward the end of the novel.

Another interesting point is that when Rochester recounts his decision to move back to England, he tells us that Bertha had already been declared insane in Jamaica and that she was already confined there (presumably around the 4 year anniversary before they left), meaning her father probably knew about confinement:

"One night I had been awakened by her yells (since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had of course been shut up) — it was a fiery West Indian night; [..]"

Locking away "insane" people was standard procedure then, and if this was done with Bertha's father's knowledge, considering he locked his own wife away in an asylum, then this further absolves Rochester of a lot of the blame in my opinion. It more than likely wasn't his idea to lock her away, but the advice of "the medical men" and presumably her father's consultation as well.

8) Even if he divorced or separated from her, he couldn't remarry. Attempting these, or getting caught attempting abandonment, would have brought negative publicity that would have likely prevented the success of any future bigamy attempts. To him, secrecy and bigamy seemed better chances at securing happiness than the social ruin and likely failure the other options would have brought him.

Aside from Rochester's own explanation (which I supplied in #2 re: the separation veto inherent to Bertha's insanity), the other biggest reason as to why Rochester wouldn't seek a separation/divorce even if she hadn't been declared insane and even if he were willing to accuse her of adultery truthfully or not, is due to the fact that one could not legally remarry upon separation or divorce (unless you were Henry VIII and got God's permission lol). Rochester's impossible dream is that he wants to be married to someone he really loves, and if secrecy and bigamy are his only options then he is willing to succumb; this is shown in numerous passages:

"[..] I could reform — I have strength yet for that — if— but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may."

"I will keep my word: I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness — yes, goodness; I wish to be a better man than I have been; than I am — as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, hinderances which others count as iron and brass, I will esteem but straw and rotten wood."

"Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God's tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgment — I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion — I defy it."

Closing remarks on the above's validity: I can't cite all my sources because a lot of this stuff I learned from lectures via my professor who specializes in 19th century English literature & history. But here's some recently published information from a historian, taken from "Inside the World of Bridgerton: True Stories of Regency High Society" by Catherine Curzon (2023):

"And if you were one of the newly-weds, you really did hope things would work out, because in the Regency till death do us part wasn't just an expression. As the Prince Regent himself had learned when he separated from his wife within eighteen months of their marriage, obtaining a divorce in Regency England was no easy matter. He never achieved it, and for those who did the stakes could be high and the cost ruinous in every sense."

"Until the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which legalized divorce in the civil courts, it was governed by the ecclesiastical courts, and the Church didn't end a marriage without very, very good reason. Even these divorces didn't allow a couple to remarry, though, and they were more akin to what we would today call a legal separation, with no shared legal or financial responsibilities going forward. It was freedom, but only to a point."

"The only way to obtain a complete dissolution that allowed for remarriage was to secure a parliamentary divorce, and these were notoriously difficult to obtain. They began with a criminal conversation case, because they relied on adultery by one of the parties to make them even a slight possibility. If a woman committed crim. con., her life in polite society was over."

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wrishwrosh · 10 months ago

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hey, i find your posts about historical fiction pretty interesting, do you have any recs?

anon this is the most beautiful and validating ask i have ever received. absolutely of COURSE I have recs. not gonna be a lot of deep cuts on this list but i love all of these books and occasionally books do receive awards and acclaim because they are good. in no particular order:

the cromwell trilogy by hilary mantel. of course i gotta start with the og. it’s 40 million pages on the tudor court and the english reformation and it will fundamentally change you as a person and a reader

(sub rec: the giant, o’brien by hilary mantel. in many ways a much shorter thematic companion to the cromwell trilogy imo. about stories and death and embodiment and the historical record and 18th century ireland. if you loved the trilogy, read this to experience hils playing with her own theories about historical fiction. if you are intimidated by the trilogy, read this first to get a taste of her prose style and her approach to the genre. either way please read all four novels ok thanks)

lincoln in the bardo by george saunders. the book that got me back into historical fiction as an adult. american history as narrated by a bunch of weird ghosts and abraham lincoln. chaotic and lovely and morbid.

the everlasting by katy simpson smith. rome through the ages as seen by a medici princess, a gay death-obsessed monk, and an early christian martyr. really historically grounded writing about religion and power, and also narrated with interjections from god’s ex boyfriend satan. smith is a trained historian and her prose slaps

(sub rec: free men by katy simpson smith. only a sub rec bc i read it a long time ago and my memory of it is imperfect but i loved it in 2017ish. about three men in the woods in the post revolutionary american south and by virtue of being about masculinity is actually about women. smith did her phd in antebellum southern femininity and motherhood iirc so this book is LOCKED IN to those perspectives)

a mercy by toni morrison. explores the dissolution of a household in 17th century new york. very different place and time than a lot of morrison’s bigger novels but just as mean and beautiful

(sub rec: beloved by toni morrison. a sub rec bc im pretty sure everyone has already read beloved but perhaps consider reading it again? histfic ghost story abt how the past is always here and will never go away and loves you and hates you and is trying to kill you)

an artist of the floating world by kazuo ishiguro. my bestie sir kazuo likes to explore the past through characters who, for one reason or another (amnesia, dementia, being a little baby robot who was just born yesterday, etc), are unable to fully comprehend their surroundings. this one is about post-wwii japan as understood by an elderly supporter of the imperial regime

(sub rec: remains of the day by kazuo ishiguro. same conceit as above except this time the elderly collaborator is incapable of reckoning with the slow collapse of the system that sheltered him due to britishness.)

the pull of the stars by emma donoghue. donoghue is a strong researcher and all of her novels are super grounded in their place and time without getting so caught up in it they turn into textbooks. i picked this one bc it is a wwi lesbian love story about childbirth that made me cry so hard i almost threw up on a plane but i recommend all her histfic published after 2010. before that she was still finding her stride.

days without end by sebastian barry. this one is hard to read and to rec bc it is about the us army’s policy of genocide against native americans in the 19th century west as told by an irish cavalry soldier. it is grim and violent and miserable and also so beautiful it makes me cry about every three pages. first time i read it i was genuinely inconsolable for two days afterwards.

this post is long as hell so HONORABLE MENTIONS: the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay by michael chabon, the western wind by samantha harvey, golden hill by frances spufford, barkskins by annie proulx, postcards by annie proulx, most things annie proulx has written but i feel like i talk about her too much, the view from castle rock by alice munro, the name of the rose by umberto eco, tracks by louise erdrich

#honestly will probably be coming back with additions bc this is just based on whats currently on my bookshelf #made this post while staring at the copy of mirror & the light i keep on my desk as some kind of hilary mantalisman #send me your address so i can explain my passions etc etc #histfic

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saintmeghanmarkle · 7 months ago

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Markle's Folly by u/C-La-Canth

Markle's Folly Today, I watched a movie based on the show Downton Abbey. For those who don't know, it's a British series set at a beautiful English manor in the early 20th century which depicts the lives of the aristocrats who live there and their domestic staff. The movie I saw takes place in 1927, and the plot revolves around a visit to the estate by King George V and his wife, Queen Mary. King George was Queen Elizabeth's grandfather, and the movie (although fictitious) takes place when Elizabeth would have been a baby. As I watched this sumptuous show (which won more Emmys than any other international program ever), all I could think about was how profoundly stupid and shallow MM is. Of course, the show's story happened a century ago, and some of the customs and formality have fallen out of fashion. Just the same, the excitement and respect that the citizens had for their King and Queen, and the dedication and loyalty they exhibited is similar to what people still feel. I remember seeing the Queen years ago at the Highland Games at Braemar. Her carriage made a loop around the field, and to see her sweet smile and royal wave was absolutely thrilling. Anyway, every time I think about how Meghan, that loathsome, festering pustule of a human being, had a one-in-eight-billion chance to meet HLMTQ, chat with her, live amongst the priceless treasures of those amazing properties, participate in one of the world's most historically rich environments, to listen and learn from a gracious and wise woman who'd met the most prominent leaders of the 20th and 21st century......I literally feel nauseated. I don't think there is anyone else in history who has squandered more privilege and opportunity. Harry forfeited it, but at least he knew what he was losing. But I don't think for even one nanosecond could Meghan stop feeding that insatiable ego of hers. She was so intoxicated with her own sense of importance and value (I am talking lunatic level here) that she was incapable of appreciating the potential treasure she was gifted. I don't know of any human who has fallen as far as Meghan Markle has for such petty reasons. I am also convinced that she is the worst kind of coward: when faced with the relatively minor task of adjusting to a new lifestyle, she fled (with her insipid dolt of a husband), and she tried her best to punish everyone else for her own weakness and failures. I don't know how a normal person can operate knowing how much damage they've done like she has, but then again---I don't think she is normal. post link: https://ift.tt/40lfBU2 author: C-La-Canth submitted: May 01, 2024 at 05:04AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

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dullgecko · 3 months ago

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I have this personal headcanons that there is a dialect of Infernal which sounds RIDICULOUSLY close to Goblin. Think like American English vs British English.

It's from a point in history when Goblin culture separated into two groups which eventually became Imps and Goblins. (Eventually there was another split leading to Goblins and Hobgoblins but that's not relevant right now)

Fig hears a couple Imps talking and has to take a second to process when it sounds exactly like Riz speaking with his mom in Goblin. She immediately demands answers from them and quickly decides to learn Goblin/Imp. She doesn't tell anybody about it, and eventually becomes perfectly fluent.

Cue a moment of fantastic hilarity when Riz is speaking Goblin to himself (he tends to do that when working on a Board) and the rest of the party witness Fig drop into a (to them) perfect Goblin and say something to Riz, who responds automatically before clocking that something is off and blue screening when he figures it out. The party freaks out for all of the 20 seconds before Fig explains and Riz nearly bites a lot of them in joy.

Not many people take the time to learn Goblin. Especially with other races still viewing them as savages (sometimes), most of Goblin culture is participated in by Goblins alone.

So after Fig explains, Riz bursts into tears and has to explain to a very worried party that they're happy tears because he didn't think that anybody would ever take the effort.

Fig begins hosting lessons in private, and though none of them mention it to Riz, every single one of them becomes fluent in Imp/Goblin by the end of the month. Riz is once again blue screened by them all dropping into Goblin in the middle of a conversation which they carry with near-perfect accents (apart from Fig, whose vocal chords are literally made to speak it as a dialect of Infernal). It becomes their secret language to converse in since very very VERY few humanoid races take the time to learn it.

I like to think that the ancient ancestor to goblins actually came from the fey-wild, where they were a sort of mischevious brownie creature, before emmigrating to either the material plane or the infernal plane. Part of the reason why you can have half-orcs and half-elves but there are no half-goblins running around. They're humanoid, but they 100% do not have a common ancestor with elves/orcs/humans so you can't have half-breeds. There are still brownies in the fey wild, they're just very hard to find (serving under the fey queen of darkness and shadows) and are more or less the goblin races equivilent of humans and elves.

All of the emigrating groups somehow managed to keep hold of their language, for the most part, so you'll sometimes come across a creature that (if you dig backwards on the evolutionary tree far enough) is goblin-related and you kindof still understand.

Imp is still pretty close to the original fey version of the language, so to Riz's ears it sounds ridiculously posh, but honestly it kindof suits Fig so he never tries to critique her accent. He never even THOUGHT any of the other kids would try to learn goblin, especially not after that moment in their first year where it was suggested that they all use one language so they can communicate secretly and they just.... ignored him when he mentioned he spoke goblin. Goblin as a secret code language makes SENSE, the amount of people in solace who speak elvish/orcish/gnomish/halfling/dwarven is ridiculous and EVERY SINGLE ONE of their enemies has spoken at least one of those.

Gorgug has very little trouble picking up the language once he starts learning, but Kristen, Adaine and Fabian are physically not built to speak it. They do their best, and its passable, but they havent really mastered growling, and purrs are completely off the table ("nono its gotta be in your chest" "Fig we LITERALLY do not have the anatomy to make that noise.").

The unfortunate side effect of everyone knowing goblin is that they can understand Riz when he's being bitchy in another language though. Fig nearly gets downed when, on one particular occasion, she overhears Riz's muttering and he's using THE most foul and insulting language to describe someones parantage, their face, their general life choices and their fashion sense mid-fight and bursts into laughter. She only understood about half the swears he was using, and he ends up getting goaded into giving her supplemental lessons later.

#dimension 20 #fantasy high #d20 #riz gukgak #bad kids #gorgug thistlespring #fabian seacaster #adaine abernant #kristin applebees #fig faeth

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godinvent · 5 months ago

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So I saw this post about how in the books, Dracula is actually an old man and I always imagined Dracula looked like older Christopher Lee, who played him while he was a kid. While looking him up I accidentally discovered that Christopher Lee was the coolest person in the universe and there is a non-zero chance he was actually Dracula in real life

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee CBE CStJ (May 27th 1922 - June 7th 2015), Sir because he was knighted in 2009 for his charity and his contributions to cinema

So first of all, I saw that he actually knew 8 LANGUAGES (English, Spanish, French, Swedish, Italian, German, Russian and Greek) and was also a staggering 6 feet 5 inches in height. Born in Belgravia in London, one of the most Dracula sounding places I’ve ever heard of, here’s some insane facts about him

•His father, Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee of the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps, fought in the Boer War and World War 1

•His mother, Countess Estelle Marie (née Carandini di Sarzano) was an Edwardian beauty who was painted by Sir John Lavery, Oswald Birley, and Olive Snell, and sculpted by Clare Sheridan

•Lee's maternal great-grandfather, Jerome Carandini, the Marquis of Sarzano, was an Italian political refugee

•Jerome’s wife was English-born opera singer Marie Carandini (née Burgess), meaning that Lee is also related to famous opera singer Rosina Palmer

•His parents would divorce when he was four and his mother would marry Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, banker and uncle of Ian Fleming, making the author of the James Bond books Lee’s step cousin. Fleming would then offer him two roles as the antagonist in the film adaptations of his books, though he was only able to land the antagonist role in The Man With the Golden Gun. It’s believed his role in the film is significantly better and more complex than his book counterpart, played as “a dark side of Bond”

•His family would move and they lived next door to famous silent film actor Eric Maturin

•One night, before he was even 9 years old, he was introduced to Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, THE ASSASSINS OF GRIGORI RASPUTIN, WHOM LEE WOULD GO ON TO PLAY MANY YEARS LATER

•Lee applied for a scholarship to Eton, where his interview was in the presence of the ghost story author M.R. James, who is considered one of the best English language ghost story writers in history and who widely influenced modern horror

•He only missed by King’s Scholar by one place by being bad at math, one of the only flaws God gave him

•Due to lack of working opportunities, Lee was sent to the French Riviera and stayed with his sister and her friends while she was on holiday, and on the way there he stopped briefly in Paris with journalist Webb Miller, a friend of his step father. Webb Miller was an American journalist and war correspondent and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the execution of the French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, also known as BLUEBEARD. He also helped turn world opinion against British colonial rule of India

•While staying with Miller he witnessed Eugen Weidmann’s execution by guillotine, the last public execution ever performed in France

•Arriving in Menton, Lee stayed with the Russian Mazirov family, living among exiled princely families

•When World War 2 began, Lee volunteered to fight for the Finnish Army against the Soviet Union in the Winter War, and a year later, Lee would join the Home Guard. After his father died, he would join the Royal Air Force and was an intelligence officer and leading aircraft man and would later retire as a flight lieutenant in 1946

•While spending some time on leave in Naples, Lee climbed Mount Vesuvius, which erupted only three days later

•After nearly dying in an assault on Monte Cassino, Lee was able to visit Rome where he met his mother’s cousin Nicolò Carandini, who had fought in the Italian Resistance Movement. Nicolò would later go on to be the Italian Ambassador to Britain. Nicolò was actually the one to convince Lee to become an actor in the first place

•Oh yeah Christopher Lee was seconded to the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects where he was tasked with HELPING TRACK DOWN NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

•Lee’s stepfather served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps

•He was actually told he was too tall to be an actor, though that would honestly help him considering one of his first roles was as The Creature in The Curse of Frankenstein

•He was cast in Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N (1951) as a Spanish captain due to not only his fluency in Spanish but also he knew how to fence!

•Lee’s portrayal of Dracula had a crucial aspect of it which Bela Lugosi’s didn’t have: sexuality, a prime aspect of the original novels.

•While being trapped into playing Dracula under Hammer Film Productions, Lee actually hated the script so much that he would try his best to sneak actual lines from the original novel into the script

•Ironically, he was rejected from playing in The Longest Day because “he didn’t look like a military man”

•Christopher Lee was friends with author Dennis Wheatley, who “was responsible for bringing the occult into him”. He would go on to play in two film adaptations of his novels

•His biggest regret in his career is not taking the role of Sam Loomis from Halloween when offered to him

•Christopher Lee was the only person involved with the Lord of the Rings movies to have actually met J.R.R Tolkien

•When playing Count Dooku, he actually did most of the swordsmanship himself

•Christopher Lee was the second oldest living performer to enter the Billboard Top 100 charts with the song “Jingle Hell” at 91 years old. After media attention, he would get No. 18, and Lee became the oldest person to ever hit the Billboard Top 20 chart

I really am leaving some stuff out here and I may go on

#christopher lee #dracula #dracula by bram stoker #frankensteins creature #adam frankenstein #frankenstein #lord of the rings #star wars #count dooku #saruman #james bond #ian fleming

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 1 year ago

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hi! i just saw your analysis of the “treasure of my heart” quote and omg you have a GIFT for analysis! In that post you mentioned the “Rare Spices” billboard Inej talks about in CK; I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on that!

Hi, thank you so much!!! I personally think that the “Rare Spices” advert is one of the most important pieces of information we get to further both worldbuilding and charactisation, so let’s talk about it.

The advert is massive sign painted on the side of a warehouse in Ketterdam, near Sweet Reef, and alongside the words “Rare Spices” it depicts two young Suli women in “scant silks”, mimicking those that Inej was forced to wear at the Menagerie. When she’s first liberated from Tante Heleen, Inej begins to explore Ketterdam and one of the first things she sees beyond the city centre is this advert. It terrifies her. It terrifies her so much that she stands there just staring at it for an unspecified amount of time, before turning and running back to the Slat faster than she has ever run before. In fact, it terrified her so very much that she has a nightmare about the girls on the billboard that night. In Inej’s nightmare the girls come to life but are trapped in the paint, banging on the billboard to get her attention to ask her to free them, whilst she is powerless to help them. Inej at the time comments on the horror of seeing this scene mere miles from where “the rights to her body” were bought and sold and haggled over (I think most of that is quotation but I don’t have my books to hand so I’m not 100% sure), and it tells us so much about how the Suli culture is exploited and fetishised within this community; whether it’s Ketterdam, the rest of Kerch, or the world at large (we could argue this is highly implied through Zoya’s POV, but it’s a whilst since I read KoS and RoW so if anyone wants to weigh in on Zoya in this then please do I’d love to read it 😁).

In my post where I mentioned the Rare Spices poster I was specifically focusing on the way Inej’s culture was sexualised for the purpose of being at the Menagerie, and how we know that other cultures are appropriated and fetishised by the Pleasure Houses as well (the Fjerdan girl at the Menagerie wears the wolf mask, an animal sacred to her people, and Nina wore a fake Kefta that was made in Kerch and is described to be a pale imitation of real Ravkan-made Kefta). But for Inej, up to the point of seeing this sign, that was a small part of the world; the actions of the few, a localised evil that she understood to be the opposite of the rest of the world because she still viewed everything with a childlike innocence. Seeing this sign breaks that façade for her and is arguably the first step towards what she views as the ultimate corruption of her innocence: murder. Because once she knew that the world on mass would see her and her people the way she was forced to present them, to appropriate her own culture, and to be fetishised for her “caramel” skin and “farcical mockery of a Suli caravan” she was forced to admit to herself that there was no way of returning to the person she used to be; not only someone who had been violated, exploited, and abused but also someone who believed that on the whole the world was a good place and that as long as you avoided the small parts of it that were dangerous you’d be okay.

And consider the wording of the sign. “Rare spices” next to two young Suli women wearing “scraps of mint-coloured silk”. There is a long history in our world of sexualising the so-called “exotic”; even the English/British idea, that I assume is what led to this same idea in the USA and much of the English-speaking world, that blonde women are more attractive, often leading them to be over-sexualised, can be drawn back to the Roman Colonisation of England because the vast majority of Romans were brunette or dark-haired and they saw the blonde Anglo-Saxons as “exotic” and attractive. (To be clear, in our own society this long history sexualisation has been mostly aimed towards people of colour and I’m absolutely not ignoring that, I’m just using this example because it’s the furthest back in history that I know of being as the colonisation was around 43 CE). The presentation of not only the spices but these women as “rare” to increase their sex appeal enhances this idea of ‘the exotic’ and by comparing them to the spices it, very similarly to all of the language surrounding Inej at the Menagerie, labels the women as stock, as produce, as something consumable like spices.

But something that I personally find really beautiful that Leigh Bardugo does surrounding this sign as well, is that Inej never condemns the girls on the billboard for the ‘suggestive’ outfits they wear, as long as they are worn by their own choice. She imagines that when she has her ship and begins to hunt slavers that the paint will peel from the sign and that she will have finally succeeded in freeing the girls, that they will “dance for no-one but themselves” and this is so beautiful but also so important as a declaration of female empowerment and autonomy because they have every right to dance and wear whatever they want to, but no-one has the right to force them to do that.

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unhetalia · 8 months ago

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well. I guess it depends on what relationship head canons you have for ukus if they ever truly got together?

I had to think about this (nap) because I realised just how LITTLE established relationship UKUS I've actually consumed. I think I've read a lot more established RusAme than established UKUS. Maybe because I'm incredibly picky about the latter dynamic? Anyway - because I haven't read a lot of it, I had to think really hard about what it would look like.

I personally don't think there would be obvious differences between Arthur-and-Alfred-as-friends and Arthur-and-Alfred-as-lovers, but that still means talking about how I see Arthur and Alfred as friends.

As friends, banter is a huge part of Alfred and Arthur's dynamic. A long time ago, there was probably real bitterness in their jabs. Over time, it becomes a softer thing. (One of the songs I associate with UKUS is "So American" by Olivia Rodrigo, because I absolutely believe that's one of the things Arthur always says to Alfred - "you're so American", smirking or laughing, no sharpness or rebuke in his words.)

Arthur grew up with a lot of siblings and he's quick witted - but Alfred has amazing memory and can bring up anything anyone has done that he's witnessed, and is really good at knowing exactly what someone finds embarrassing or infuriating. They have fun riling each other up - this is what leads to them trying to scare each other silly every Halloween.

As a couple, this doesn't change. (It works for them, especially since both of them have a hard time expressing themselves sincerely.) The importance of this aspect of their dynamic is the fact that Alfred doesn't get offended by any of Arthur's comments - not the stuff about himself, or his dry, unimpressed observations about everything around him. He finds it funny, and Arthur thrives on that. Arthur has suffered a lot from being tied to people who found him wanting in some way, but Alfred is one of the few people who actively enjoys and seeks out Arthur's company and doesn't seem to find him wanting in some way.

The second thing is they have a good balance of things they enjoy doing together, and things they're dragging each other to. Alfred enjoys a lot of British media and food (once again, something that's more important to Arthur than he can say). Arthur enjoys McDonald's, and doesn't mind eating there when Alfred gets a craving. But Arthur doesn't enjoy the wilderness in the way Alfred does - is a bit ... discomfited at how there's huge swathes of American land that are completely wild. Alfred drags him to these places, for hiking and camping, and Arthur re-discovers a part of himself that he'd lost in England's industrialisation. Meanwhile, Arthur really pushes Alfred to appreciate the depth of English and European history. It allows for both comfort and growth in their relationship.

The third thing - Alfred is high energy, and so curious about the world. I absolutely believe Alfred has a few doctorates under his belt and invents and fixes things in his spare time. While I don't see Alfred working for the government, I can sometimes see him working for NASA. He's constantly tinkering or jotting things down. He's actually incredibly cerebral.

Arthur is physical. He never stopped sword fighting, and practices martial arts. He runs, and goes to the gym, does boxing (I've mentioned these things in my headcanon about England's appearance before). But when he's not doing those things, he does things that quiet his mind. He crochets or knits. Something repetitive and soothing. Meditative.

They can sit for hours in the same room, Arthur knitting while Alfred has blueprints spread over their coffee table. And its peaceful, and you don't think it even matters if the other person is there or not, but Arthur has to go to London for a week to sort something out and Alfred can't get anything done at home and has to go to the office every day.

HAVE I EVEN SAID ANYTHING IN THIS ASK. Basically Alfred and Arthur after having sex is incredibly similar to them before having sex. The act of sex changes everything and nothing all at once. But their relationship is a lot of being able to feel appreciated where you never felt appreciated before, a lot of being able to do things together that you love, and doing things together that you hate but somehow still helps you grow as a person, and also being able to do nothing together.

#ukus #usuk #aph america #aph england #hetalia #theyre actually a boring relationship bc once they get there theyre married for ten years #like immediately they fuck and then settle into utter domesticity #their sex life is spicy as fuck tho #-#reply.#england/america.#england.#america.#file: canon b #file: defunct headcanon

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littlexscarletxwitch · 2 years ago

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reader meeting Florence’s family? being really nervous cause they’re American and worrying about how they won’t understand the British banter. also wanting to wear long sleeves to cover up their tats for flops parents just in case and flo is like “you’re so cute but you’re an idiot”

── ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎ 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝘁

paring: florence pugh x gn!reader

tag(s): fluff, established relationship, flo being an amazing gf, short blurb

warning(s): grammatical errors, unedited, not proofread, mentions of self doubt (?), overthinking

word count: 959

note: I'm aware that the title is shitty, so is the ending, but I tried my best. I really hope you like it, anon. It's so short is embarrassing and for that I'm sorry. I wrote this with a fem reader in mind, but I think it also works for a gn one. I'm not a native english speaker, so please let me know about any sort of mistake. Hope you guys enjoy <3

requests are open! + check my rules here <3

Staring at yourself in the mirror, you couldn’t help but let doubt fill your thoughts.

Your mind was going through every single little flaw that you had. The day had just begun and all you wanted to do was wrap yourself in a blanket and watch tv the whole day. You knew that day was inevitable. You had postponed it for a while now, but Florence wasn’t having that anymore.

She wasn’t mad at you, she understood how you were feeling. She felt the same way when she met your family. But she knew you had nothing to worry about. Deborah Mackin and Clinton Pugh were the chilliest parents ever in history. I mean her mother got high with Snoop Dogg of all people. And her siblings weren’t a problem, they will like you immediately. She knew you were going to be more than okay.

“Why can’t we just stay at home?” you said, while looking at the reflection of Florence in the mirror.

“Y/n…” Florence trailed off, getting closer to you.

“Yeah, let’s just stay, okay? I can make that dish you love, or we could–”

“Babe, stop,” she chuckled at you and grabbed your shoulders, softly squeezing them trying to calm you down. “We’ve already talked about this. You’ll be more than fine, okay? They are going to love you, as much as I love you.”

“Is just…” you were second guessing sharing your worries with her, afraid that you’ll sound stupid.

“What is it?” but she saw right through you, like she always did.

“What if I can’t understand them because of their accent? They’ve been in the UK their whole lives, their accent must be stronger than yours. They probably speak like Louis Tomlinson and I won’t be able to understand anything of what they’re saying.”

“Baby, you’re being silly,” she tried to soothe you.

“I’m not. Have you ever listened to that guy speaking? It’s like he’s speaking gibberish.”

“You’ll understand them. You can understand my mumbling better than no one else, it’ll be okay.”

“Okay, you’re right about that,” but still her words didn’t reassure you. “What if they don’t like me?”

“I’ve been telling them about you since the day we met, they can’t wait to finally meet you. They are going to love everything about you," she left a kiss on your forehead, she knew how much those little kisses soothe you and although you wanted them to work, it only made you more anxious. “Hey, why are you wearing long sleeves? It’s hot outside, baby.”

“I just, I don’t think it is appropriate if I’m showing my tattoos.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“I’m dead serious. I don’t want to give the wrong impression,” Florence just playfully rolled her eyes at you. “What if they think I’m part of a gang or something? That I’m a bad influence, huh?

“You’re so cute, but you’re an idiot. You are the sweetest person I know on earth, there’s no way for you to give a wrong impression. Plus, you’re a ray of sunshine, they can't possible think you are part of a gang” she placed her hand on your cheek and you leaned in her touch, finding some comfort in her warmth.

“But what if–”

“No, stop it. They are going to love every single little thing about you, and if they don’t I will force them to, but that won’t be necessary.”

“Okay. Yeah, you’re right, everything’s going to be fine. I’m just worrying over nothing,” you breathed out all the anxiety and stress you were holding in.

“I’m always right,” a cocky smile forming on her lips.

“That’s debatable,” you chuckled at her.

“Let’s just go, okay? You ready?”

“Put me in the car before I change my mind,” even though you were joking, Florence knew that you were also telling her the truth. So she rushed the both of you to her car and quickly started the car.

[...]

“Please, come back soon, okay? We will love to have you again,” Deborah, Florence’s mum, said to the two of you before walking out the door. Your smile only grew bigger at her words.

“We sure will, Deb,” you called her by the nickname she told you to. You looked over at Florence, a smile as big as yours on her face.

“It was lovely to finally meet you, Y/n,” Clinton said, getting closer to you to hug you goodbye.

“The pleasure was all mine.”

“Okay, I’m gonna have to interfere here, before you two take them away from me,” you all chuckled at Florence's words, still she held you from your waist.

The four of you said your goodbyes, and Florence and you made your way to her car. Once inside, you let out a big laugh, Florence didn’t know what came over you, giving you a confusing look.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid to avoid this for months, your family is the best,” she smiled at you, relief washing over her.

“I don’t wanna say I told you so…”

“You do wanna say I told you so,” you mumbled.

“But I told you so,” she finished, you rolled her eyes at her, trying to hold your smile. But how could you? If she made you so happy by just existing.

“I love you, Flo,” you said, failing to suppress your smile.

“And I love you more,” she rested her hand on your thigh, giving it a gentle squeeze.

You rested your hand on hers, grateful that she was right there with you, to reassure you when you doubted, to hold you when you were falling apart, to love you like no one else. You thanked the universe you got to call her yours only.

Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated! <3

-M

#florence pugh #florence pugh x reader #florence pugh x you #florence pugh x y/n #florence pugh x fem reader #florence pugh imagine #florence pugh fluff #littlexscarletxwitch's fic #requests by lovely anons ‘๑’#your fav florence pugh blog <3

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critical-birb · 4 months ago

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Random things I feel people outside of Scotland should know about Scotland.

-Kilts are formalwear. You only wear that kinda thing to like - weddings and funerals and stuff usually, maybe a fancy party. You wear a sporran with a kilt, it's like a little pouch that's usually fuzzy.

-If you live in Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen you probably hate bagpipes because everywhere you go there's buskers with bagpipes. They just....appear. you'll be trying to work your 9-5 and suddenly there's a bagpiper on the corner by the office and for the next six hours you have to listen to it. There is only one song that is played on the bagpipes and it gets real repetitive real fast.

-I am ruining the joke for everyone but as an autistic person who would be super confused by this unspoken rule in another country I need to share - literally everyone in Scotland will try to convince you as a foreigner that the wild Hagis is a real animal that lives in the Highlands. Every single museum has a Haggis exhibition with like a weird taxidermy animal that's usually a mash up between like a hedgehog and a bird or something. People will, with a straight face, talk to you about how they were hunted to near extinction. Zoos and safari parks will have empty exhibits with signs saying there is wild Hagis living in there hiding. This is the most widely known Scottish joke that literally every Scottish person is in on.

-Haggis is lamb, fat and oats boiled in a sheeps stomach with a bunch of spices. It's unironically good actually if you give it a chance. It's basically fatty spiced meat.

-Other popular foods in Scotland include Cullen Skink, which is a rich cream based soup with potatoes and fish. Black pudding, a sausage made with blood - great for iron deficiency. White pudding, a sausage made from oats, grains, herbs and spices. Stovies, which is basically potatoes/onions/meat boiled together and usually eaten with bread, Neeps and tatties which is mashed potato and sweed. We are also known for deep frying anything, any corner shop chippy will deep fry a chocolate bar for you. Somehow we are obsessed with sugar and fat but at the same time we also put salt on our porridge.

-A Ceilidh is a group dance - a similar concept to square dancing if you're in the US. Except a lot more violent. Someone will usually briefly teach everyone the steps and then you are thrown into chaos and the music gets faster and faster. Someone will inevitably be thrown into you at high speeds and you will break a bone. It's extremely fun. Often done to accordion music. Lots of larger pubs do ceilidh nights you should go to one if you can, it's good if you go alone because they only work with an even number of people and 99% of the time they're begging for a single person to join to make up the numbers. You'll make a lot of drink friends and possibly get vomited on as you're thrown around at high speeds and kicked in the shins laughing like a loon.

-The more North you go the less you will understand people. I'm from Edinburgh and live near Glasgow and for the fuck of me I can't understand a word anyone says here. I went to Aberdeen once and I swear they were talking gibberish. They felt the same about me. The dialects are too strong.

-We also have a rich history of language including Gaelic and Doric and a few others. Scots is what you probably think of when you think Scottish people - it is technically its own language but is very similar to English just with lots of different terminology. Our native languages like Gaelic were outlawed by England when they colonised us and it's only in recent decades we have started to try to reclaim them.

-We dislike England. Don't ever call a Scottish person 'British' rather than Scotish, it opens up a whole can of worms I am not about to go into right now.

-Iron Bru (the bright orange soda that tastes like a candy store) is more popular than Cola here. Scotland is the only place worldwide where Coke isn't the most popular carbonated beverage. Iron Bru is the lifeblood of Scotish people and it is literally everywhere.

Anyway there's your Scotland facts of the day

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swiftiebookwormlogastellus · 1 year ago

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ATYD Characters As Stuff My Friends Have Said:

……..

Sirius: Is it Arthritis when your heart clenches?

James: I’m pretty sure that’s love

Remus: No, that’s a heart attack

………..

McGonagall, about the Marauders: I wanted to say no but they didn’t give me enough time

………..

Lily, during potions: BOILING WATER WILL NOT CATCH FIRE

…………

Remus, when asked about money: I have 1.90 plus a paper clip

…………

James: Keep my dog’s name out of your barking mouth. Woof.

………..

Peter: Is lactose intolerance ice cream phobic?

………..

Lily: Pregnancy is not a birth defect, Sirius.

……….

James, when asked about quidditch: Hustle. Slay. Repeat.

………

Grant, concerned: Remus is like thank u, next to my next life

……….

Regulus: History is one big meme and we’re all fools in it

……….

*texting*

Regulus: Who’s drowning Debbie?

Regulus: wait

Regulus: that says downer

Regulus: nvm

Voldemort: I mean if someone’s drowning it’s gonna be you

……….

Sirius: You’re gonna be proud of me.

Regulus: Doubtful, but go on.

………

*while doing a presentation*

Remus, just before a full moon: Lily, if you see anyone talking, throw your shoe at them.

Sirius, from the back: You sound like my mom

………

Sirius: *rapid French*

Peter: Si?

……….

Sirius: I will sue my bloodline

……….

Remus: I met 5 people today. I hated this experience. I’m an introvert.

………

Walpurga: What are you gonna sue me with?

Sirius: ….A lawyer.

……….

Snape: It’s not racially motivated if you hate everyone equally

………

Peter: I’m attracted to cheese

……….

Remus: I traded intellect for chocolate.

……..

Chris: 10/10. I’m recommending it to the person who recommended it to me.

……..

Grant, about Sirius: And that, my friends, is what we call materialistic.

……..

Sirius, during PoA: This is animal abuse at it’s finest! *kicks rat*

……..

Sirius to Professor McGonagall : Have you tried hop on?

……..

Remus, holding up a scrabble tile: Stop giving me D!

……..

About Fenrir: His favourite food is gay people.

……..

Sirius, when trying to become an animagus: I have a condition in my hair where my mouth won’t move.

……..

Lily, trying to explain muggle technology: Do you know what a gigabyte is?

James, completely lost: Gigachad?

……..

Mary and James about English cuisine: Isn’t it ironic how you colonized places and started wars over spices but still have the blandest food ever?

……..

Sirius: *kicks snow at James*

Remus, narrating: As you can see, the Cold War has begun

……..

Sirius, drunk: J’ai no stupid

……..

James: What does KFC stand for?

Sirius, to the tune of California Girls: KaliFornia Curls

……..

Remus: *starts beatboxing*

Peter: *starts dancing*

Sirius: *raps about peppa pig*

James: BUM BADA DA DA BADADADA DA DA

……..

Snape: Pigeons are fat and ugly.

Sirius: Look who’s talking

……..

Walpurga: You can punt kids without legal repercussions.

……..

Sirius: I’m gonna do what the Canadians did to the First Nations. *stabs someone with an exacto knife a wand*

……..

Sirius: Applying cell theory to my hair to dye it…

……..

Marlene, after meeting James' mom: GUYS I JUST MET A MILF

……..

Dorcas: Lucrative! That's a big word for...

Barty: Elmo?

……..

James: A PUNK ROCK DRUMMER AND HE'S SIX FOOT-

Sirius: *tackles James*

……..

Pandora, about Barty: Evan! Talk some sense into this British goblin!

……..

Sirius to Snape: I will drain your spinal fluid and shove it up your butt.

……..

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miastjames · 2 months ago

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❀ you’re not from around here , are you? i figured because you totally just missed { AMELIA "MIA" ST. JAMES } walking by. don’t tell me you don’t know who { SHE } is/are ? they kind of look like { HANNAH DODD } and i could be wrong but i think that they might be { TWENTY EIGHT } years old right now. they’ve been living in palmview for the last { TWENTY EIGHT YEARS }. and i don’t know if anyone has ever told them this before but they kind of remind me of { MIA THERMOPOLIS } from { THE PRINCESS DIARIES }. if you stick around the town long enough you might catch them in action working at { FREELANCE } as a { AUTHOR }. you see this town isn’t really that big of a place, some folks like to call them the { THE LOVABLE ROGUE } of palmview! they took a liking to the name too after a while, go figure. oh crap, they must have heard me yapping. they’re coming this way. i got to warn you though, rumor has it they can pretty { KLUTZY} at times. i wouldn’t take it too seriously though, from the times i’ve spoken to them they seemed pretty { PASSIONATE } to me. we see each other all the time since they live in that { 1 ROOM LOFT } apartment beside me over in { MANGO BAY }. i better leave you to it. it was nice meeting you!

►GENERAL INFORMATION

FULL NAME: Amelia Cosette St. James Beaumont Daventry NICKNAME(S): Mia, Milly LABEL: The Lovable Rogue AGE: 28 DATE OF BIRTH: September 25, 1996 ZODIAC: Libra Sun, Virgo Rising, Pisces Moon GENDER & PRONOUNS: Female; She/Her HERITAGE: English, Gharandrian SPOKEN LANGUAGE(S): English OCCUPATION: Author SEXUALITY & ROMANCE: Bisexual; Biromantic PET(S): Siamese cat named Caesar

► APPEARANCE

FACE CLAIM: Hannah Dodd HEIGHT: 5'6" WEIGHT: 110 lbs. DOMINANT HAND: Right HAIR COLOR: Auburn EYE COLOR: Brown SCARS: None notable. TATTOOS: None.

►PERSONALITY

POSITIVE TRAITS: Authentic, Adaptable, Passionate, Romantic. NEGATIVE TRAITS: Self-critical, Clumsy, Introverted, Naive. LIKES: Writing, hanging out with friends, trying new things/learning something new, sunshine rain, dancing. DISLIKES: Liars, people who put others down.

►MENTALITY

PHOBIAS: None. DISORDERS: Anxiety ALLERGIES: Seasonal (Pollen)

►BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN: Palview Grove, FL CURRENT RESIDENCE: Palmview Grove, FL EDUCATION LEVEL: MA in Art History FAMILIAL CONNECTIONS: - Poppy St. James - 55, Mother, In Contact - Sylvester Beaumont Daventry - 54, Father, Deceased

►FAVORITES

FOOD: Egg rolls / Chinese Food DRINK: English Breakfast Tea MOVIE: Serendipity TV SHOW: The Great British Bake Off, Bridgerton BAND/ARTIST: Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams SONG: Cruel Summer - Taylor Swift

► EXTRA INFORMATION

JUNG TYPE: INFP ENNEAGRAM: The Advisor (9w8) TEMPERAMENT: Sanguine MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good SIN: Pride VIRTUE: Charity ELEMENT: Water CHARACTER PLAYLIST

► BIOGRAPHY

TW; Death mention, Bullying mention

Gharandy is a small country nestled in the corner of France and Italy. The country is mostly English speaking with French and Italian also being notable languages spoken amongst the people. They usually don’t even make the map because of how small they are. At least, that’s what Sylvester told Poppy. Did she believe him? The answer changes every time the whirlwind summer romance story is told. The product of such a thing? None other than Amelia Cosette St. James Beaumont Daventry. The Beaumont Daventry portion of Mia’s name was always dropped as she grew up. Never being able to know her dad due to his death, and no one else around them knew he was the supposed next king of a European country - Mia’s mother thought this made Mia safe. More importantly, this meant Mia could live a normal life. And a normal life Mia, in fact, did lead. She was the awkward kid who always reminded the teachers about homework. Her head was always in a book, her head in the clouds. She got bullied, but who didn’t besides those doing the bullying? Never good at sports, Mia was always picked last in gym class. It wasn’t until her paternal grandmother came to visit, that Mia’s world was flipped upside down. “Me? A princess? Shut up!” She remembers so clearly standing there in the hallway, her mother halfway down the stairs looking on. There was a face of guilt there, and Mia couldn’t take it. She went up to her room and shut everyone else out. That was, until school the next day when she was bombarded with cameras. Now aware of her royal status, Mia is still in Palmview Grove. Why? Well, the land of Gharandy isn’t safe and hasn’t been safe for her since her birth. With people wanting nothing more than the crown, her grandmother advised her to stay in Palmview until further notice. Mia is indifferent to it. She doesn’t mind not having the responsibilities she knows she one day will have to step up to. On the other hand, she finds herself coming up with plans to aid the orphanages and school programs from her balcony window.

► PERSONALITY (DEEP DIVE)

Mia is always rebelling against her princess title, ever since it was bestowed upon her. She used to be very reluctant as a kid, but now she loves to go out and get into a little trouble to try to disconnect herself from her title. She's a romantic at heart, which is probably why her journalling turned into a romance series for all to read. Though, she isn't lucky in love. Usually, people just attempt to use her for their own selfish gain - whether that's fame or fortune for having their faces splashed across magazine articles with her. She loves art and some of her fondest moments are when her mother and her would throw paint-filled water balloons at huge canvases in her mother's studio. It was her mother that influenced Mia to get an Art History degree. To this day, she still loves to wander and get lost in art museums. Kind to a default, Mia tends to give people numerous chances - even if they don't deserve it. It's a great fault of hers and makes her come off as naive to some. You can usually catch her at home attempting to bake a new recipe she finds online, or at the local book store. She loves hanging out with friends, but also values her alone time. Mia stumbles over her words very easily. She mostly gets stuck in her head and gets caught up on not ruining moments, but then ruins them cause she's so caught up on it. In the end, she's a very clumsy but lovable person who means well - she just doesn't agree with the cards she was dealt.

► HEADCANONS

Mia has a locket that was given to her by her father before he passed away. It's a heart with a cursive 'G' on it (for Gharandy). It is also a key for her journal that was given to her by her paternal grandmother.

When super anxious, Mia plays with her hair. It's a habit her grandmother doesn't approve of, but she just can't help it.

She collects snow-globes. She just loves how beautiful they are, and keeps all hers in a china cabinet.

Mia is the ultimate double-texter. It makes her want to run and hide sometimes, but she can't help but to text multiple times in a row.

#palmviewintro #tw death #tw bullying #//here she is!

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cigarette-catgirl · 7 months ago

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Today marks 76 years since the forced expulsion and annexation of Palestinians by Zionist forces in 1948, an event dubbed “Al-Nakba” or, “The Catastophe”.

Even though Israel was officially founded as an occupation on that year, I cannot stress enough how this is a project that has been in planning and conspiracy since World War II, since the defeat of the Ottomans under the British, since the Belfor Agreement. I’m sure by now, many of the people who would even bother to read this know that mainstream media, pundits, grifters and politicians, will try and have tried to say that this all started with the Hamas attacks on October 7th, but never had and never will have started there. The current killings, expulsions and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is only another brick on an colonialist, racist and horrific project led by the Zionist Movement to break down and discourage Palestinians from ever fighting back.

This year has been a year of very personal spite and vitriol for me, spite and vitriol that’s been bubbling since my grandfather told me how his mother almost left him at 10 months old in the village of Bayt Mahsir when Zionists invaded in 1948. I have nothing but hatred for the powers that be, the political west that has benefited and built itself upon the bodies of my ancestors and my family, for the spineless cowards who continue to insist it’s a conflict, a war, a battle between two sides with equal power.

For the Americans and English who continue to live in willful ignorance, for the ones who continue to ignore boycotts, protests and refuse to advocate, for those who engage in their comfort fast food chains and their shitty coffee. You do not deserve comfort, nor do you deserve any form of happiness, not when your enjoyment continues to exist due to a system that funds the murder of human beings and the theft of their homes. You do not have the right to tell me of your mental struggles, of your inability to process this horrific situation, when I have lived my entire life knowing that I am not recognized as human by the occupation that dares to rule over me, when my father and mother were born into an occupied Palestine, when my father had to watch uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews all drop one by one, buried under the rubble or mangled beyond recognition.

I hope every single one of you suffer tenfold the amount of suffering my Palestine has been made to suffer.

76 years of oppression and 76 years of struggle, and we will continue to struggle for 76 more years if we have to. But I believe, sooner rather than later, I will get to see a free Palestine in my lifetime, and the crimes this world has committed against my home will be etched into history forever.

From the River to the Sea.

#ciggy dot txt #personal #current events #news #ps #israel #al nakba #freepalestine #freegaza

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dwellordream · 7 months ago

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A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?

Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker

“Last August, Lucy Letby, a thirty-three-year-old British nurse, was convicted of killing seven newborn babies and attempting to kill six others. Her murder trial, one of the longest in English history, lasted more than ten months and captivated the United Kingdom. The Guardian, which published more than a hundred stories about the case, called her “one of the most notorious female murderers of the last century.” The collective acceptance of her guilt was absolute. “She has thrown open the door to Hell,” the Daily Mail wrote, “and the stench of evil overwhelms us all.”

…The public conversation rushed forward without much curiosity about an incongruous aspect of the story: Letby appeared to have been a psychologically healthy and happy person. She had many close friends. Her nursing colleagues spoke highly of her care and dedication. A detective with the Cheshire police, which led the investigation, said, “This is completely unprecedented in that there doesn’t seem to be anything to say” about why Letby would kill babies. “There isn’t really anything we have found in her background that’s anything other than normal.”

The judge in her case, James Goss, acknowledged that Letby appeared to have been a “very conscientious, hard working, knowledgeable, confident and professional nurse.” But he also said that she had embarked on a “calculated and cynical campaign of child murder,” and he sentenced her to life, making her only the fourth woman in U.K. history condemned to die in prison. Although her punishment can’t be increased, she will face a second trial, this June, on an attempted-murder charge for which the jury could not reach a verdict.

Letby had worked on a struggling neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, run by the National Health Service, in the West of England, near Wales. The case centered on a cluster of seven deaths, between June, 2015, and June, 2016. All but one of the babies were premature; three of them weighed less than three pounds. No one ever saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner did not find foul play in any of the deaths. (Since her arrest, Letby has not made any public comments, and a court order has prohibited most reporting on her case. To describe her experiences, I drew from more than seven thousand pages of court transcripts, which included police interviews and text messages, and from internal hospital records that were leaked to me.)

The case against her gathered force on the basis of a single diagram shared by the police, which circulated widely in the media. On the vertical axis were twenty-four “suspicious events,” which included the deaths of the seven newborns and seventeen other instances of babies suddenly deteriorating. On the horizontal axis were the names of thirty-eight nurses who had worked on the unit during that time, with X’s next to each suspicious event that occurred when they were on shift. Letby was the only nurse with an uninterrupted line of X’s below her name. She was the “one common denominator,” the “constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse,” one of the prosecutors, Nick Johnson, told the jury in his opening statement. “If you look at the table overall the picture is, we suggest, self-evidently obvious. It’s a process of elimination.”

But the chart didn’t account for any other factors influencing the mortality rate on the unit. Letby had become the country’s most reviled woman—“the unexpected face of evil,” as the British magazine Prospect put it—largely because of that unbroken line. It gave an impression of mathematical clarity and coherence, distracting from another possibility: that there had never been any crimes at all.

Since Letby was a teen-ager, she had wanted to be a nurse. “She’d had a difficult birth herself, and she was very grateful for being alive to the nurses that would have helped save her life,” her friend Dawn Howe told the BBC. An only child, Letby grew up in Hereford, a city north of Bristol. In high school, she had a group of close friends who called themselves the “miss-match family”: they were dorky and liked to play games such as Cranium and Twister. Howe described Letby as the “most kind, gentle, soft friend.” Another friend said that she was “joyful and peaceful.”

Letby was the first person in her family to go to college. She got a nursing degree from the University of Chester, in 2011, and began working on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where she had trained as a student nurse. Chester was a hundred miles from Hereford, and her parents didn’t like her being so far away. “I feel very guilty for staying here sometimes but it’s what I want,” she told a colleague in a text message. She described the nursing team at the Countess as “like a little family.” She spent her free time with other nurses from the unit, often appearing in pictures on Facebook in flowery outfits and lip gloss, with sparkling wine in her hand and a guileless smile. She had straight blond hair, the color washing out as she aged, and she was unassumingly pretty.

The N.H.S. has a totemic status in the British psyche—it’s the “closest thing the English have to a religion,” as one politician has put it. One of the last remnants of the postwar social contract, it inspires loyalty and awe even as it has increasingly broken down, partly as a result of years of underfunding. In 2015, the infant-mortality rate in England and Wales rose for the first time in a century. A survey found that two-thirds of the country’s neonatal units did not have enough medical and nursing staff. That year, the Countess treated more babies than it had in previous years, and they had, on average, lower birth weights and more complex medical needs.

Letby, who lived in staff housing on the hospital grounds, was twenty-five years old and had just finished a six-month course to become qualified in neonatal intensive care. She was one of only two junior nurses on the unit with that training. “We had massive staffing issues, where people were coming in and doing extra shifts,” a senior nurse on the unit said. “It was mainly Lucy that did a lot.” She was young, single, and saving to buy a house. That year, when a friend suggested that she take some time off, Letby texted her, “Work is always my priority.”

In June, 2015, three babies died at the Countess. First, a woman with antiphospholipid syndrome, a rare disorder that can cause blood clotting, was admitted to the hospital. She was thirty-one weeks pregnant with twins, and had planned to give birth in London, so that a specialist could monitor her and the babies, but her blood pressure had quickly risen, and she had to have an emergency C-section at the Countess. The next day, Letby was asked to cover a colleague’s night shift. She was assigned one of the twins, a boy, who has been called Child A. (The court order forbade identifying the children, their parents, and some nurses and doctors.)

A nursing note from the day shift said that the baby had had “no fluids running for a couple of hours,” because his umbilical catheter, a tube that delivers fluids through the abdomen, had twice been placed in the wrong position, and “doctors busy.” A junior doctor eventually put in a longline, a thin tube threaded through a vein, and Letby and another nurse gave the child fluid. Twenty minutes later, Letby and a third nurse, a few feet away, noticed that his oxygen levels were dropping and that his skin was mottled. The doctor who had inserted the longline worried that he had placed it too close to the child’s heart, and he immediately took it out. But, less than ninety minutes after Letby started her shift, the baby was dead. “It was awful,” she wrote to a colleague afterward. “He died very suddenly and unexpectedly just after handover.”

A pathologist observed that the baby had “crossed pulmonary arteries,” a structural anomaly, and there was also a “strong temporal relationship” between the insertion of the longline and the collapse. The pathologist described the cause of death as “unascertained.”

Letby was on duty again the night after Child A’s death. At around midnight, she helped the nurse who had been assigned to the surviving twin, a girl, set up her I.V. bag. About twenty-five minutes later, the baby’s skin became purple and blotchy, and her heart rate dropped. She was resuscitated and recovered. Brearey, the unit’s leader, told me that at the time he wondered if the twins had been more vulnerable because of the mother’s disorder; antibodies for it can pass through the placenta.

The next day, a mother who had been diagnosed as having a dangerous placenta condition gave birth to a baby boy who weighed one pound, twelve ounces, which was on the edge of the weight threshold that the unit was certified to treat. Within four days, the baby developed acute pneumonia. Letby was not working in the intensive-care nursery, where the baby was treated, but after the child’s oxygen alarm went off she came into the room to help. Yet the staff on the unit couldn’t save the baby. A pathologist determined that he had died of natural causes.

Several days later, a woman came to the hospital after her water broke. She was sent home and told to wait. More than twenty-four hours later, she noticed that the baby was making fewer movements inside her. “I was concerned for infection because I hadn’t been given any antibiotics,” she said later. She returned to the hospital, but she still wasn’t given antibiotics. She felt “forgotten by the staff, really,” she said. Sixty hours after her water broke, she had a C-section.

The baby, a girl who was dusky and limp when she was born, should have been treated with antibiotics immediately, doctors later acknowledged, but nearly four hours passed before she was given the medication. The next night, the baby’s oxygen alarm went off. “Called Staff Nurse Letby to help,” a nurse wrote. The baby continued to deteriorate throughout the night and could not be revived. A pathologist found pneumonia in the baby’s lungs and wrote that the infection was likely present at birth.

The senior pediatricians met to review the deaths, to see if there were any patterns or mistakes. “One of the problems with neonatal deaths is that preterm babies can die suddenly and you don’t always get the answer immediately,” Brearey told me. A study of about a thousand infant deaths in southeast London, published in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, found that the cause of mortality was unexplained for about half the newborns who had died unexpectedly, even after an autopsy. Brearey observed that Letby was involved in each of the deaths at the Countess, but “it didn’t sound to me like the odds were that extreme of having a nurse present for three of those cases,” he said. “Nobody had any concerns about her practice.”

…At the end of January, 2016, the senior pediatricians met with a neonatologist at a nearby hospital, to review the ward’s mortality data. In 2013 and 2014, the unit had had two and three deaths, respectively. In 2015, there had been eight. At the meeting, “there were a few learning points, nothing particularly exciting,” Brearey recalled. Near the end, he asked the neonatologist what he thought about the fact that Letby was present for each death. “I can’t remember him suggesting anything, really,” Brearey said.

But Jayaram and Brearey were increasingly troubled by the link. “It was like staring at a Magic Eye picture,” Jayaram told me. “At first, it’s just a load of dots,” and the dots are incoherent. “But you stare at them, and all of a sudden the picture appears. And then, once you can see that picture, you see it every time you look, and you think, How the hell did I miss that?” By the spring of 2016, he said, he could not “unsee it.”

Many of the deaths had occurred at night, so Powell, the unit manager, shifted Letby primarily to day shifts, because there would be “more people about to be able to support her,” she said.

A week later, a mother gave birth to identical triplet boys, born at thirty-three weeks. When she was pregnant, the mother said, she had been told that each baby would have his own nurse, but Letby, who had just returned from a short trip to Spain with friends, was assigned two of the triplets, as well as a third baby from a different family. She was also training a student nurse who was “glued to me,” she complained to Taylor. Seven hours into Letby’s shift, one of the triplet’s oxygen levels dropped precipitously, and he developed a rash on his chest. Letby called for help. After two rounds of CPR, the baby died.

The next day, Letby was the designated nurse for the two surviving triplets. The abdomen of one of them appeared distended, a possible sign of infection. When she told Taylor, he messaged her, “I wonder if they’ve all been exposed to a bug that benzylpenicillin and gentamicin didn’t account for? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, just don’t want to be here really,” Letby replied. The student nurse was still with her, and Letby told Taylor, “I don’t feel I’m in the frame of mind to support her properly.”

A doctor came to check on the triplet with the distended abdomen, and, while he was in the room, the child’s oxygen levels dropped. The baby was put on a ventilator, and the hospital asked for a transport team to take him to Liverpool Women’s Hospital. As they were waiting, it was discovered that the baby had a collapsed lung, possibly a result of pressure from the ventilation, which was set unusually high. “There was an increasing sense of anxiety on the unit,” Letby said later. “Nobody seemed to know what was happening and very much just wanted the transport team to come and offer their expertise.”

The triplets’ mother said that she was alarmed when she saw a doctor sitting at a computer “Googling how to do what looked like a relatively simple medical procedure: inserting a line into the chest.” She was also upset that one of the doctors who was resuscitating her son was “coughing and spluttering into her hands” without washing them. Shortly after the transport team arrived, the second triplet died. His mother recalled that Letby was “in pieces and almost as upset as we were.”

…Brearey, Jayaram, and a few other pediatric consultants met to discuss the unexpected deaths. “We were trying to rack our brains,” Brearey said. A postmortem X-ray of one of the babies had shown gas near the skull, a finding that the pathologist did not consider particularly meaningful, since gas is often present after death. Jayaram remembered learning in medical school about air embolisms—a rare, potentially catastrophic complication that can occur when air bubbles enter a person’s veins or arteries, blocking blood supply. That night, he searched for literature about the phenomenon.

He did not see any cases of murder by air embolism, but he forwarded his colleagues a four-page paper, from 1989, in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, about accidental air embolism. The authors of the paper could find only fifty-three cases in the world. All but four of the infants had died immediately. In five cases, their skin became discolored. “I remember the physical chill that went down my spine,” Jayaram said. “It fitted with what we were seeing.”

…After Letby returned from vacation, she was called in for a meeting. The deputy director of nursing told her that she was the common element in the cluster of deaths, and that her clinical competence would need to be reassessed. “She was distraught,” Powell, the unit manager, who was also at the meeting, said. “We were both quite upset.” They walked straight from the meeting to human resources. “We were trying to get Lucy back on the unit, so we had to try and prove that the competency issue wasn’t the problem,” Powell said.

But Letby never returned to clinical duties. She was eventually moved to an administrative role in the hospital’s risk-and-safety office. Jayaram described the office as “almost an island of lost souls. If there was a nurse who wasn’t very good clinically, or a manager who they wanted to get out of the way, they’d move them to the risk-and-safety office.”

…The Royal College team interviewed Letby and described her as “an enthusiastic, capable and committed nurse” who was “passionate about her career and keen to progress.” The redacted section concluded that the senior pediatricians had made allegations based on “simple correlation” and “gut feeling,” and that they had a “subjective view with no other evidence.” The Royal College could find no obvious factors linking the deaths; the report noted that the circumstances on the unit were “not materially different from those which might be found in many other neonatal units within the UK.” In a public statement, the hospital acknowledged that the review had revealed problems with “staffing, competencies, leadership, team working and culture.”

…In May, the police launched what they called Operation Hummingbird. A detective later said that Brearey and Jayaram provided the “golden thread of our investigation.” That month, Dewi Evans, a retired pediatrician from Wales, who had been the clinical director of the neonatal and children’s department at his hospital, saw a newspaper article describing, in vague terms, a criminal investigation into the spike in deaths at the Countess. “If the Chester police had no-one in mind I’d be interested to help,” he wrote in an e-mail to the National Crime Agency, which helps connect law enforcement with scientific experts. “Sounds like my kind of case.”

That summer, Evans, who was sixty-seven and had worked as a paid court expert for more than twenty-five years, drove three and a half hours to Cheshire, to meet with the police. After reviewing records that the police gave him, he wrote a report proposing that Child A’s death was “consistent with his receiving either a noxious substance such as potassium chloride or more probably that he suffered his collapse as a result of an air embolus.” Later, when it became clear that there was no basis for suspecting a noxious chemical, Evans concluded that the cause of death was air embolism. “These are cases where your diagnosis is made by ruling out other factors,” he said.

…Evans relied heavily on the paper in other reports that he wrote about the Countess deaths, many of which he attributed to air embolism. Other babies, he said, had been harmed through another method: the intentional injection of too much air or fluid, or both, into their nasogastric tubes. “This naturally ‘blows up’ the stomach,” he wrote to me. The stomach becomes so large, he said, that the lungs can’t inflate normally, and the baby can’t get enough oxygen. When I asked him if he could point me to any medical literature about this process, he responded, “There are no published papers regarding a phenomenon of this nature that I know of.” (Several doctors I interviewed were baffled by this proposed method of murder and struggled to understand how it could be physiologically or logistically possible.)

…Nearly a year after Operation Hummingbird began, a new method of harm was added to the list. In the last paragraph of a baby’s discharge letter, Brearey, who had been helping the police by reviewing clinical records, noticed a mention of an abnormally high level of insulin. When insulin is produced naturally by the body, the level of C-peptide, a substance secreted by the pancreas, should also be high, but in this baby the C-peptide was undetectable, which suggested that insulin may have been administered to the child.

The insulin test had been done at a Royal Liverpool University Hospital lab, and a biochemist there had called the Countess to recommend that the sample be verified by a more specialized lab. Guidelines on the Web site for the Royal Liverpool lab explicitly warn that its insulin test is “not suitable for the investigation” of whether synthetic insulin has been administered. Alan Wayne Jones, a forensic toxicologist at Linköping University, in Sweden, who has written about the use of insulin as a means of murder, told me that the test used at the Royal Liverpool lab is “not sufficient for use as evidence in a criminal prosecution.” He said, “Insulin is not an easy substance to analyze, and you would need to analyze this at a forensic laboratory, where the routines are much more stringent regarding chain of custody, using modern forensic technology.” But the Countess never ordered a second test, because the child had already recovered.

…The police consulted with an endocrinologist, who said that the babies theoretically could have received insulin through their I.V. bags. Evans said that, with the insulin cases, “at last one could find some kind of smoking gun.” But there was a problem: the blood sample for the first baby had been taken ten hours after Letby had left the hospital; any insulin delivered by her would no longer be detectable, especially since the tube for the first I.V. bag had fallen out of place, which meant that the baby had to be given a new one. To connect Letby to the insulin, one would have to believe that she had managed to inject insulin into a bag that a different nurse had randomly chosen from the unit’s refrigerator. If Letby had been successful at causing immediate death by air embolism, it seems odd that she would try this much less effective method.

In July, 2018, five months after the insulin discovery, a Cheshire police detective knocked on Letby’s door. …Inside, she was told that she was under arrest for multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. She emerged from the house handcuffed, her face appearing almost gray.

The police spent the day searching her house. Inside, they found a note with the heading “NOT GOOD ENOUGH.” There were several phrases scrawled across the page at random angles and without punctuation: “There are no words”; “I can’t breathe”; “Slander Discrimination”; “I’ll never have children or marry I’ll never know what it’s like to have a family”; “WHY ME?”; “I haven’t done anything wrong”; “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”; “I AM EVIL I DID THIS.”

On another scrap of paper, she had written, three times, “Everything is manageable,” a phrase that a colleague had said to her. At the bottom of the page, she had written, “I just want life to be as it was. I want to be happy in the job that I loved with a team who I felt a part of. Really, I don’t belong anywhere. I’m a problem to those who do know me.” On another piece of paper, found in her handbag, she had written, “I can’t do this any more. I want someone to help me but they can’t.” She also wrote, “We tried our best and it wasn’t enough.”

After spending all day in jail, Letby was asked why she had written the “not good enough” note. A police video shows her in the interrogation room with her hands in her lap, her shoulders hunched forward. She spoke quietly and deferentially, like a student facing an unexpectedly harsh exam. “It was just a way of me getting my feelings out onto paper,” she said. “It just helps me process.”

“In your own mind, had you done anything wrong at all?” an officer asked.

“No, not intentionally, but I was worried that they would find that my practice hadn’t been good,” she said, adding, “I thought maybe I had missed something, maybe I hadn’t acted quickly enough.”

…After more than nine hours of interviews, Letby was released on bail, without being charged. She moved back to Hereford, to live with her parents. News of her arrest was published in papers throughout the U.K. “All I can say is my experience is that she was a great nurse,” a mother whose baby was treated at the Countess told the Times of London. Another mother told the Guardian that Letby had advocated for her and had told her “every step of the way what was happening.” She said, “I can’t say anything negative about her.” The Guardian also interviewed a mother who described the experience of giving birth at the Countess. “They had no staff and the care was just terrible,” she said. She’d developed “an infection which was due to negligence by a member of staff,” she explained. “We made a complaint at the time but it was brushed under the carpet.”

In September, 2022, a month before Letby’s trial began, the Royal Statistical Society published a report titled “Healthcare Serial Killer or Coincidence?” The report had been prompted in part by concerns about two recent cases, one in Italy and one in the Netherlands, in which nurses had been wrongly convicted of murder largely because of a striking association between their shift patterns and the deaths on their wards. The society sent the report to both the Letby prosecution and the defense team. It detailed the dangers of drawing causal conclusions from improbable clusters of events. In the trial of the Dutch nurse, Lucia de Berk, a criminologist had calculated that there was a one-in-three-hundred-and-forty-two-million chance that the deaths were coincidental.

But his methodology was faulty; when statisticians looked at the data, they found that the chances were closer to one in fifty. According to Ton Derksen, a Dutch philosopher of science who wrote a book about the case, the belief that “such a coincidence cannot be a coincidence” became the driving force in the process of collecting evidence against de Berk. She was exonerated in 2010, and her case is now considered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Dutch history. The Italian nurse, Daniela Poggiali, was exonerated in 2021, after statisticians reanalyzed her hospital’s mortality data and discovered several confounding factors that had been overlooked.

Burkhard Schafer, a law professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies the intersection of law and science, said that it appeared as if the Letby prosecution had “learned the wrong lessons from previous miscarriages of justice.” Instead of making sure that its statistical figures were accurate, the prosecution seems to have ignored statistics. “Looking for a responsible human—this is what the police are good at,” Schafer told me. “What is not in the police’s remit is finding a systemic problem in an organization like the National Health Service, after decades of underfunding, where you have overworked people cutting little corners with very vulnerable babies who are already in a risk category. It is much more satisfying to say there was a bad person, there was a criminal, than to deal with the outcome of government policy.”

…For one baby, the diagram showed Letby working a night shift, but this was an error: she was working day shifts at the time, so there should not have been an X by her name. At trial, the prosecution argued that, though the baby had deteriorated overnight, the suspicious episode actually began three minutes after Letby arrived for her day shift. Nonetheless, the inaccurate diagram continued to be published, even by the Cheshire police.

Dewi Evans, the retired pediatrician, told me that he had picked which medical episodes rose to the level of “suspicious events.” When I asked what his criteria were, he said, “Unexpected, precipitous, anything that is out of the usual—something with which you are not familiar.” For one baby, the distinction between suspicious and not suspicious largely came down to how to define projectile vomiting.

…Toward the end of the trial, the court received an e-mail from someone who claimed to have overheard one of the jurors at a café saying that jurors had “already made up their minds about her case from the start.” Goss reviewed the complaint but ultimately allowed the juror to continue serving.

He instructed the twelve members of the jury that they could find Letby guilty even if they weren’t “sure of the precise harmful act” she’d committed. In one case, for instance, Evans had proposed that a baby had died of excessive air in her stomach from her nasogastric tube, and then, when it emerged that she might not have had a nasogastric tube, he proposed that she may have been smothered.

The jury deliberated for thirteen days but could not reach a unanimous decision. In early August, one juror dropped out. A few days later, Goss told the jury that he would accept a 10–1 majority verdict. Ten days later, it was announced that the jury had found Letby guilty of fourteen charges. The two insulin cases and one of the triplet charges were unanimous; the rest were majority verdicts. When the first set of verdicts was read, Letby sobbed. After the second set, her mother cried out, “You can’t be serious!” Letby was acquitted of two of the attempted-murder charges. There were also six attempted-murder charges in which the jury could not decide on a verdict.

…The public conversation about the case seemed to treat details about poor care on the unit as if they were irrelevant. In his closing statement, Johnson had accused the defense of “gaslighting” the jury by suggesting that the problem was the hospital, not Letby. Defending himself against the accusation, Myers told the jury, “It’s important I make it plain that in no way is this case about the N.H.S. in general.” He assured the jury, “We all feel strongly about the N.H.S. and we are protective of it.” It seemed easier to accept the idea of a sadistic “angel of death” than to look squarely at the fact that families who had trusted the N.H.S. had been betrayed, their faith misplaced.”

#medicine #word to the wise

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