#fuck the British empire and fuck the monarchy

[themainspoon]

SCOTLAND FOREVER!🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

it's gonna be hilarious if Scotland finally gets independence due to the fury over the overruling of the gender rights bill.

"so what finally broke up the union?" "well, we were too transphobic to stay in the same country"

look transphobia is bad and causes a lot of harm but imagine being so transphobic that you lose an entire country?

[helyeahmangocheese]

guys do you know how absolutely cracked the british!Grace siblings dynamic is... punk british Thalia who is so anti establishment bc look at the fucking monarchy and the british empire.... BLACK JASON GRACE, SON OF THE KING OF GODS, GRAPPLING WITH THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, THE BRITISH EMPIRE, AND THE EMPIRE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. the implications... and yet they're just kids who want to fit in... the family story, yall, fucking ouch.

[starlightshadowsworld]

I do find it interesting how Agatha Christie in Bungou Stray Dogs is known as Dame Agatha Christie.

For those that don't know when someone is knighted by the ruling monarch in England they recieve a title with their name.

Men are referred to as Sir, for example Sir Patrick Stewart.

(And yes people are referred to as Sir despite not being knighted and yes it's confusing, welcome to England.)

Women are referred to as Dame. The real life Agatha Christie was infact knighted and given the title of Dame.

So this could simply be a reference to that. But I am curious about it given the close connection the Order of Clock Tower has with the British Monarchy.

As told to us in Stormbringer about how they are used to protect the Queen.

That kind of immunity and infamouy sets them apart from shadowy illegal organisations like the Guild and the Rats in the House of the Dead.

And makes them more like the Hunting Dogs. Which... I'm sure means they've got as fucked up a backstory as they do.

Nothing government sponsored ever goes well in Bsd.

I also wonder if Agatha was knighted after the Great War.

Given her real life counterpart was knighted and promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Rather than for her literary work it would be for her fighting prowess.

Maybe, could just be a reference but the implications are fun to think about.

[ultraericthered]

Don't believe in what you can see (but I see you, Liam!)

Had some random thoughts to spare regarding Moriarty The Patriot following my viewing of the "Scandal In The British Empire" arc.

This is a series that lives or dies based on how it characterizes and handles the main protagonist, what he does, what he believes, and what he's striving for. And given that the protagonist in question is THE Professor James Moriarty, that had to be a tricky thing to figure out. So I guess it speaks to the writing quality that I am very engaged with how William James Moriarty and his brothers operate and am absolutely on board with the fundamental sentiments behind the motivation and support the revolutionary societal reforms they seek to bring about as their goal....but I also disagree with the angle Liam has settled on and what he believes has to be done to achieve it. Quite vehemently, in fact.

For starters, he wants to destabilize British society through a barrage of well planned, coordinated and directed crime waves throughout the empire, even reaching elsewhere in Europe. It'd be an extreme rarity that such crimes be victimless, and though done towards the end of crippling the power, wealth, and status-based influence of the nobility, there are plenty of non-noble class victims claimed. As part of these crimes, Liam will either commit murders, arrange murders, orchestrate suicides, or just look the other way as an aristocrat is placed in a life-ending situation by his machinations. Breaking laws, ethical norms, and common sense regulations of civil society in ways that harms more than helps is very, very seldom a good, righteous, justified thing no matter what rationalizations could be made for it. Now sometimes I can't fault Liam for what he does (the poisoning of the Viscount was aided by him but mainly required he simply not save the guy just as he himself hadn't save a terminally ill child, Dudley Bale fell off the bridge on his own, etc.), but most of the time his actions fall squarely under the category of "illegal felony".

Then there's the fact that the envisioned crescendo hinges upon the Lord of Crime coercing the masses into unity against a common threat to their homeland and collective well-being, prompting a need to re-asses and reconstruct things under dubious pretenses rather than allowing the people to seriously look at and examine the full reality of their fucked up society to come to a clear-headed, informed consensus on a decided course of action to fix things. It's the same thing Lelouch did in Code Geass R2 and I wasn't entirely okay with that either. I just think it's dickish and not even sustainable in the long term, and to think "I just need to make victims out of enough people to the point where they'll all rise up to want and demand social reforms and changes in their ruling class' leadership, and meritocracy will kick in!" is surprisingly naive for a genius like Liam.

Then there's his hypocrisy. The title "Moriarty the Patriot" is because Liam, in spite of being a criminal mastermind, also cares greatly about Great Britain and has sworn allegience to the crown, believing the nation needs a healthy government, honest law enforcement, non-abusive abiders of Noblesse Oblige in key roles of society's upper levels working alongside commoners, and the monarchy and military kept in-tact in order to thrive. It's that last part that seems like a problematic area, as monarchy by definition puts those of royal blood and status above all other people, and it's been known to allow anyone close to or in the favor of the royals to play parts in shaping how the country is run and how society is influenced. So if Liam wasn't keen on deposing the monarchy and reforming government in Britain altogether, who's to say that, no matter what reforms his plan may yield, the class system won't continue to prevail, aristocracy won't continue to abuse its power, and society won't remain as cruel, unfair, and inequal as it was before? ..... Oh wait, we CAN say that!

Lastly, the senseless martyrdom factor. Liam never valued himself as a priority in his life, never saw in himself any worth to society at large beyond what he could reshape it into, and due to turning to aiding crime and plotting murder even at a young age, he believes his heart is too blackened and his hands are too unclean. So naturally, he plans on the fulfillment of his revolutionary vision to come along with the end of his life. Beneath all the ideals and the honest assessment of what ails British society and does great harm to so many of its people, Liam is driven by a personal desire to leave behind this harsh and unjust world, to give his life to his cause and seal the realization of his envisioned future with his blood, and to validate the self-image he has of an accursed, dreadful, loathsome villain who can bring into reality necessary change only through necessary evil. It's wasteful, corruptive, insensitive, self-loathing, self-destructive, and wrong. (Thankfully I do know Sherlock's around to talk him out of this.)

So yeah, I find the James Moriarty Brothers to be quite the compelling Villain Protagonists/antiheroes, and Liam especially. So much I want to laud him for and just as much I want to kick him for.

[kyliafanfiction]

I think one of my favorite moments in an Alternate History that I've ever read is from a story where history diverges in 1730s, and due to what happens, the ties between Colonial North America and the British Crown are much stronger. Eventually what ends up happening is that the 'Empire of North America' becomes a distinct unit from 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain', but with a shared sovreign, etc.

One of the things that helped spur this process is that, during an alternate version of the Wars of the French Revolution, England is invaded and the south east is occupied by an extreme jacobin force that kills most of the monarchy and aristocracy and even most MPs of the Commons. Eventually the French are pushed out, in part due to the help of the ENA sending reinforcements, but also after power in England is centralized in the hands of minor country Lord who achieves de facto dictatorial powers, albeit with the King still the King. (one of the King's kids had been out of England at the time of the invasion and thus survived)

Fast forward like 20 years later, and the crisis is over, England has recovered, etc, but the Dictator guy still holds all the real power. He dies, and his son decides he automatically gets to keep the de facto control of the UK (the ENA does not answer his calls). he retains physical control of the King as well as control of a heavily rigged and gerymandered Parliament, so he pulls it off, but not as deftly as his dad.

Ultimately though, the King really fucking hates this dictator and doesn't approve of his policies or his oppression. He manages to escape and flees to the ENA, though he fails to convince the North American Parliament to help him overthrow the dictator.

As in IRL by this point, the power of the King in the UK is largely theoretical and symbolic, so the Dictator doesn't lose any power losing the King, but it is a horrible symbolic defeat and does start hurting his legitimacy, giving rise to insurgents and would be rebels, etc. So he needs to find a king. He goes hunting for a suitable relative of the Hanoverian Dynasty he can control.

During the process, one of his advisors points out his great-grandmother was a sister of a King (or something like that), he has control of the Army and whatnot, why not just make himself King?

and the Dictator goes 'Do you have any idea how much power I'd have to give up to become king?'

[lousyglitch]

No one asked but here's how I'd bring back Gallifrey, address the timeless child and still keep the thematic relevance of its commentary:

We know nothing about the doctor's original people other that they're near a portal and can regenerate naturally, so keep that. Don't make them a godlike super-dimensional species, just a civilization with a neat biological defense mechanism that lived near some dimensional rift. The doctor isn't some special chosen one, just a curious kid that happened to fall in the lions' den.

Say that at some point the time lords managed to find them and colonized their planet. Maybe that part of their history wasn't in the matrix because it's too secret or whatever. Gallifrey got access to the rift and just ruled over those beings for eons. Over time and with a lot of killing, the planet became mostly populated by descendants of gallifrey who still feel oppressed by the mainland, but also see themselves as superior to the native species.

When gallifrey got wiped out in the time war, maybe one of the things that contributed to their downfall was the fact that they weren't just fighting skaro, they were also fighting multiple colonies that were using the instability of the time war to free themselves from their colonizers. Make it clear that the time lords are just as supremacist as the daleks, they just prefer to conquer and exploit than kill everyone. They don't find the daleks morally disgusting, they find them uncouth. They prefer their sense of superiority coated with opportunistic politeness.

Make the new planet rule most of the universe. They built an empire when gallifrey got wiped out. They're now crossing the rift to expand their empire to our side of the universe. Maybe they got access again when Sutekh was scratching the walls of the time vortex. They're the new villains, and they seem unsurmountable. In case the analogy isn't completely obvious, the time lords are the british monarchy (as always) and the new empire is america.

They seem more modern than the time lords. Their decor isn't as tacky, most of the people living in the main planet don't see them as oppressive or even an empire, but for the natives, and for most of the rest of the universe, it's very obvious. There's a resistance forming inside, a movement by natives and allies to take their, uh, land back, if you will. But the empire dismisses them, and mostly worries about the "real threats" - go wild: Skaro. Mondas with super updated Cybermen that can teleport and shit, the pantheon, hell, whatever the fuck swarm and azure were supposed to be. Make them all fight the empire.

I know, it's not an action show, you can just imply that they're fighting while the doctor monologues through debree or tells us about how the hallways they're reusing for the 400th time are inside a cyber-armada spaceship or something. The important thing is that they all try to fight the empire and fail.

Then you bring back Gallifrey.

The timelords are now back, in an universe that barely remembers them. With no real status or power, desperately clinging to their perceived position through overvaluing ancient rituals and artifacts. A collective ego held together with bloated arbitrary ettiquete. The new empire completely owns these shoulderpadded dorks. They're pathetic and we can all see it. They barely even understand the post-time war, post-flux universe. Everything changed. Political affiliations, cultural norms, even time itself. They're silly little relics, a tourist attraction, clowns in embarrassing robes.

They try to fight the empire and... lose miserably, obviously. Get put in their place. The empire's got tech that can shut down rassilon's stupid glove with a single gesture. So they try to get the doctor to fight for them. Maybe the master / missy tags along. They offer the doctor everything - an army, a bunch of sci-fi weapons, the goddamn moment if you wanna get wild. But timelord tech isn't getting them out of this. Instead, the Doctor goes to the empire's main planet, finds its native people, his people, and helps in the revolution. Ideally he isn't the main star of it or anything, it was happening anyway.

The revolution wins, obviously. They have people inside the empire's ranks, they know their enemies, they were being underestimated in every step, and, you know, they regenerate indefinitely. None of the anti-regeneration techniques work on its originators. They're thoroughly made of life. "If you represent death, then surely I must represent life." They do what no one else in the universe could, and demolish the empire from within. The victory must come from the oppressed, or it's no victory at all.

It's doctor who, so most of that would have be crammed in the finale. A two-parter if we're lucky. But I think it could work. After that you have new story possibilites with the doctor learning more about his people as they rebuild, maybe taking susan! Meanwhile, you got the time lords pulling stupid stunts to regain relevance. Plus, you know, the usual stuff, fighting CG ostriches with blackbeard, uncovering a conspiracy in a reality show in pluto and whatnot.

There! A new dynamic that's not like the last 20 years of modern who and not quite like classic who either. New possibilities for commentary and thematic relevance. Is this me just coping with not having time to write a whole fanfic? absolutely. This ended up like 3x bigger than I expected and I need to work oh god oh no

[historia-vitae-magistras]

"He's probably the best emotionally adjusted brother too."

You're making me fall for him even more

I mean the bar is on the floor here. Below the floor really. If Arthur is somewhere in the seventh circle of hell, Rhys and Brighid somewhere above that, Alasdair is in the top soil. He's a practical, ambitious bastard.

He's supremely flexible. His own original Celtic language of Pictish was supplanted by Gaelic originating in Scotland in his late teens. Scotland got fucked up by the Vikings but there's evidence that has been used to argue that the Gaelic-Norse fared better than the Anglo-Scandinavians and ties to Norway continued well into the medieval period and in other forms, into the modern day.

And while England and then Wales got brought under Norman rule fairly early on, Scotland repulsed them multiple times. Alasdair will find a way forward somehow. To many Scots, firmly Presbyterian by the end of the 17th century the acts of union in 1707 prevented a potentially absolutist catholic monarchy and contained a way to fill the ambition of an overseas empire. Though it must be said the Jacobean revolts show there certainly wasn't consensus.

But Arthur paid off the debt's remaining from nightmares such as the Darien Scheme and Alasdair took up something of the role of head of household. Power was always firmly vested in England. Do not mistake Alasdair's role as being that of the power-broker. He isn't but with their childhood birth order and the conventions of Georgian Britain it fits. While Arthur preferred the navy and the roving half wild across the ever expanding empire usually the role of a younger son in a human family, Alasdair was somewhat (emphasis on the somewhat) content to take interest in the financials and the running of things. As would happen in a human family. It's much more complicated than this, he and Arthur have gut each other plenty. But he's also fucked around and found out with Brighid and Rhys plenty too. Outside looking in, the arrangement suited him. He's detail and numerically oriented in that way. The Empire cost him dearly, but he also projected a lot of power across the world via that very same British empire. And I think that often limited but very real agency gave him a bit of a steadier head on his shoulders. The ability to look himself in the mirror and say he made the best of it while now looking back and trying as hard as his siblings to recover what he gave up is really important.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Character ask game: you know I gotta go Integra and/or Alucard lmao

okay let’s go with integra!

favorite thing about them: love a character with an intense worldview dichotomy! the fact that integra hunts all vampires but then she has the emotional support pet vampire at home. love a built in existential crisis like that.

least favorite thing about them: uhhh I guess she’s just not very fleshed out in canon? I’m pretty unsatisfied with the ending where she’s made such a monumental choice to dissolve hellsing but we don’t see how she arrived at it because of the fucking time skip. likewise I dislike that she’s still even talking about alucard and walter that far ahead? idk I would like for her to have moved on after *thirty years* but also if she hasn’t then I want to see why? what’s going on with her emotionally?

favorite line: “you cut his head off? is that all?” is very fun in its smugness. also in gonzo when she tells alucard “you don’t make decisions” like. lmao.

brOTP: …walter? there aren’t enough characters in this series

OTP: alutegra baybey! we love to see a twisted mess of power imbalances. the way deep seated resentments and genuine emotional investment can coexist. chivalric devotion turned obsessive and suffocating. the moral quandary of like. what does it mean to be loved, above all else, by a genuinely sadistic, awful, bloodthirsty monster? someone who represents everything she hates but is the only person she can depend on? someone her family, who she is so very proud of, has done unspeakable things to— but perhaps for a good purpose and with cause? what does it mean to even consider returning those feelings? love a morally and philosophically messy ship! like he is her dog on a leash and they are inevitably going to destroy each other one day but in the mean time they’re going to bicker like an old married couple.

nOTP: I guess the major? I’ve seen that sometimes and I do not like it!

random headcanon: I think she’s very bad at technology (while alucard is very good at it)

unpopular opinion: my girl would have the most rancid politics known to man!! I feel like fanon leaning towards her being bizarrely progressive and like. she runs a paramilitary organization for the british monarchy. she’s part of a *feudal* style secret government. I don’t want to hear a single word she has to say about imperialism, the british empire specifically, or anyone’s human rights

song I associate with them: many songs bc I have many hellsing playlists lol. but one is haunted houses by emma ruth rundle

[beardedmrbean]

There something about the French Revolution fetishizers that confuses me. Should we tell them that the France colonized the living fuck out of the Middle East and Africa. And also been connected to several assassinations of African countries heads of state?

The French empire was some of the most evilest motherfuckers on the planet with the likes of British empire. But Hitler just happened to kick off ww2 so the French and British use that to hide their atrocities in textbooks.

Not saying all French people are evil, but we really need a course on the evil shit the French empire did. Why do leftists romanticize the French Revolution? The evil they hate just stop wearing crowns and switch to top hots.

UK hasn't managed to keep that kind of thing down so well, France still has a few "colonial" territories left too, one of them I popped up a bit back island with about 200,000 inhabitants that overwhelmingly voted to stay French, doing otherwise was economic suicide.

But as for hiding their sins, not sure if the hiding was done on purpose or if it was just a case of it being overshadowed by people that would rather bitch about the US and UK, odd since many of the issues in the middle east are a direct result of the UK and France going behind the US's back so they could do what folks consistently bag on the US for. AKA they wanted that oil.

Back to fun with France, the year was 2015 and I promise there's a point.

How dare they do that with a "traditional" dish

Yes manipulation of the "traditional" recipe for "traditional" Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwich.

They replaced the "traditional" Vietnamese crispy baguette bread with non Vietnamese ciabatta bread.

Because the baguette is a traditional Vietnamese food steeped in thousands of years of culture and not something that was brought over by the French when the whole area was known as French Indochina and its capital was Saigon.

French left the area in 1954, so not too long ago.

Food is a screwy thing from a cultural standpoint, potatoes will forever be associated with Ireland even though they didn't exist outside of south america until the age of exploration. Don't even try to figure out who invented hummus just eat it, sausages and dumplings exist everywhere the contents are the only thing that changes.

Fortune cookies were brought to America by Japanese immigrants and managed to get associated with Chinese food because of WW2 and prejudice. That's one story at least.

Tangent over, maybe one day I'll go into how yoga is actually Dutch tho.

but ya, for some reason people forget how big the French empire was, it included Mexico at one point even now it's pretty much just French Guyana, it's weird really you'll hear more about the Belgian Congo than French Morocco, granted France didn't treat the people of Morocco nearly as bad as Leopold did the people of the Congo so there is that.

Spain still has a little corner of North Africa that's connected to Morocco I think it is, that's about all they have left of their empire other than one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

Wildest thing about France in all of this is how many times the place shifted power, topple the monarchy still got all the colonies, first republic falls to napoleon, still got the colonies, 2nd republic pops in still got the colonies, here comes napoleon again, colonies, 5 republics, 2 empires, and a hereditary monarchy, oop can't forget the vichy nazi collaborators either, Petan should have already been dead imho but that's a different story.

Imagine being a French colonial governor when the revolution started, managing to keep your post and ride the whole thing out then the republic that was formed falls to Napoleon, then the Burbons pop back in for a few months, what a mess.

This was long but I hope entertaining in a way and maybe enlightening too, I could keep rambling like this lot of interesting things and my brain functions like a wikipedia tree when it starts in on things like this so I have to force myself to stop.

[poetryforventing]

The Language

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. It’s a front well practiced, one hammered and honed in the flames of a mind that has burned up and on and on and out so many times that it has forged an entire armory of defences.

But you ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine and you think me plain, dull, awkward, unkind. Alright. But I don’t know that I have a better answer. The world is dying, and I have no hope left. I don’t believe that there is good in all of us. As we speak we’re spilling blood: foreign blood, poor blood, queer blood, girl blood, black blood, native blood in a genocidal fervour that has persisted millenia. And our violence leaves a gouging slash across our collective chest, staining the human consciousness with ever more eternal, immovable shame. I don’t believe everything will work out just fine in the end. I don’t believe we will all be okay.

I’m uncommunicative. It’s true, I’m sorry. But I don’t care about your sex life. I don’t care about your opinions on influencers. I don’t care about your shitty inherited politics. I don’t care what they said on Insta, or Reddit, or X, or Facebook, or TikTok. I don’t care what the hot topic is. Fuck your hot takes. There is blood flowing in the streets, native bones buried beneath the buildings of white settlers, there are generational stains on our souls and yet we work only to sear more grief into the essence of our very beings. Good god, colonialism really taught us nothing. We are killing every last ‘other’ until we are all that’s left, just so that when we kill our world too and go down with it we can claim that it was ours. In the ash of all that is left, perhaps, finally, earth will be as white as we wanted it to be.

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. You think me cold but I am an inferno inside. I have carved my life into a shell to surround these lashing flames of thought. I don't act how I feel–my whole existence is an energy shield–but, god, I feel hate like you won’t believe. I dream of ripping out throats with my teeth. Capital rules the world and has us kiss its feet, but even that is a lie. The mechanics of power subjugate us in entirety. Capital is just the tool of choice, the selected construct. It is nothing more than a rotten, violent euphemism that cradles us in its maw, waiting for the order to bite.

You wish I would speak more but I have so little to say if we’re not planning the deaths of the bourgeoisie, the policy-makers, the bigots and the land-lords the world over. Every throat I want to taste. Every drop of blood I want to spill in the sort of ritualistic vengeance we absolutely don’t need. Just, please, let me at them. When I'm done I will jump into the sea and it will all be over. Finally.

I can barely even bring myself to get worked up over our changing climate–though I know it’s another active tragedy and, in the moments I stop to think, it makes me sick–when apocalyptic radioactive annihilation is one bad day away, when women’s rights are those of livestock and POC are institutionalised into modern slaves, when we’re living in a world where autonomy and identity are dangerous things. It’s too much grief to contain in one life. It’s too much pain to even attempt to bear. I hope you are starting to see: it’s not any one of these things, it’s everything.

There’s nowhere even to run away. I flew to North America where Pride is sponsored by Target and they build Wendy’s on sacred native land. I returned to England where we practice monarchy and xenophobia as a matter of course, pine for the British empire and laugh openly at the murder of trans girls. Next I go East, where I am ignorant, but things are every bit as twisted, I just won’t put their particularities in my white words, I refuse to appropriate any more into my British Museum of atrocity. In the end I go to bed, where sadness makes sense.

If you’re not angry, you should be. If you’re like me, I’m sorry.

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. But really I don’t have the words. Even all of this despair and rage is nothing but the bubbling skin of the witch’s brew. The essence of the thing is a wicked magic, not communicable in words, it is violent and immediate and spanning and intrinsic and awful and consuming.

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. But the truth is I don’t have the language.

[natequarter]

"the king was hardworking and dealt with the trials™ of the first world war skilfully 🙂‍↔️" dude it's a constitutional monarchy, all he did was nod when the government or the army did things whilst he profited off the huge amounts of land and wealth and colonised countries that constituted britain and the british empire. "hardworking" HE WAS BORN INTO IT! he's not fucking oliver cromwell! and at least henry v actually bothered to invade france himself!

[thesem]

Immigrant whining (it's me I'm the immigrant)

It's a weird position to occupy as a white American immigrant to the UK that I'm in a like pretty amazing pace of privilege and all but also it does sometimes wear on the soul to constantly be in the outgroup. I hate America but I love America but I can't live in America and I think America is doomed but maybe America is okay. I don't even know

But also living in the UK I don't feel like I have to love it. Like I get to complain about the shitty stuff here. I fucking live here haha. I like living here it's why I applied for settlement. But I don't think it's perfect and I think I'm allowed to point out how it could be better

I don't know. I feel like I'll never be able to not Be American but also I am sort of British, in that I live here. And maybe will one day get citizenship (subjectship? IDK man you guys still have a monarchy whatever anyway). I haven't decided yet, probably won't until one of the countries yells at me about it.

It's also fun transitioning in the UK haha but. Different problem for a different post. Again immense privilege that my parents support me because I couldn't do it otherwise because the NHS is a mess about gender here. Sighs. I don't even know

I guess also the thing that gets me is that Brits and Americans are so crazy similar that I think we're sort of too similar and have to fight like dogs about it. Maybe the world isn't big enough for the two of us. Maybe the world would just be better with no UK or US. I think about that too, sometimes. I just moved from one empire to a sad, depressing empire in its death throes. Brits seem to crave the respect of Americans but won't bother to respect them in turn, so... we argue. And like I chose to move here so I guess on some level I have to agree. But it feels more complicated to me

[shiverandqueeef]

i don't have a lot to say about the red, white & royal blue movie (mostly because i just can't bring myself to care about something so mediocre) but i will say that it is a pretty damn perfect example of "good representation", in the blandest most liberal identity-politicking iteration possible.

Queer, trans, and poc characters are highly visible in positions of power and authority. of course the actual nature of the authority and power in question is never addressed beyond a few painfully clunky mentions of 'privilege'. as far as this movie is concerned the only fault of the british monarchy are its' antiquated attitudes towards queer identities, and the american presidency has no flaws at all, ostensibly because it's being run by a woman who loves her bisexual son. She's one of the good ones!

british imperialism? never heard of her. american imperialism? don't worry about it. this movie isn't interested in deconstructing the structural inequalities of either empire, or their dependance on the continued subjugation/exploitation of colonized nations because of course it fucking isn't it's a fucking rom com.

i honestly would have respected it a lot more if it had just embraced the fantasy and spared us the flaccid, transparently calculated levels of self-awareness included specifically to placate it's target audience: predominately straight young women/teen girls with entirely ethnocentric ideas of racism, homophobia, and what makes a piece of media ~problematic~

that math is mathing though, and the target audience is going to love it, so job well done.

oh also sarah shahi needs to be cast in more comedies. like, all of them. no more hollywood comedies allowed unless sarah shahi is in it.

edit: okay reading this back and it's a little unnecessarily mean. i stand by what i said about the movie, but i think i unintentionally implied pretty heavily that if you do enjoy it then you must be ignorant, racist, and/or incapable of critically engaging with media while still enjoying it. sorry about that. this rant was brought to you by seeing so many articles praising the movie for being such powerfully positive representation and listen. there's only so much romanticization of modern imperialist empires that a brown lady can take before needing to vent about it

[warwickroyals]

I think it’s time to hear a George and Alexandra love story! 💕

Yeah, I do think it's time to learn about George and Alexandra's love story.

King George was born the son of the Duke and Duchess of Glencairn. The was born during a time when Sunderland was struggling to produce a male heir to succeed George's uncle King Louis III. So when George was born he was celebrated as first in line to the throne . . .

That was until George's cousin Prince Louis was born a year later. Louis was the son of the Duke of Lennox, Louis III's heir presumptive, and was higher up in the line of succession than George. This angered George's parents because, what the fuck, George was the oldest surviving grandson of King Louis II, he should be king. When King Louis III died, the Duke of Lennox became King James. His mother did not like James or his wife Caroline, and to avoid the drama she took George and his sister back to her father's home in London. By this time George's father had also died.

Now, the Duchess's father was a British statesman and he filled George's head with all sorts of ideas about imperialism. He wanted to see Sunderland transformed into an Empire as mighty as Great Britian, with his grandson as king, of course. Pretty evil, huh? But you can't really start your super cool Empire without a family dynasty. George's cousin Louis was weak and rumoured to be impotent; it was widely accepted that Geroge would become King someday, and finding him a bride became a top priority.

So, George embarked on a journey to find a suitable wife. He originally had hoped to marry one of Queen Victoria's daughters, but these plans fell through. So, he travelled around Europe and eventually ended up at Winter Palace, where he met the eldest daughter of Alexander II, Grand Duchess Alexandra Alexandrovna of Russia. The two hit it off instantly and had a shared love of music, literature, and history. However, Russia was an enemy of Britian during the Crimean War, and George's ailing grandfather disapproved of the match.

But fuck him honestly.

Prince Louis became King Louis IV, but he was so sickly, he died three years later. George became king and one of the first things he did once his succession was secure was return to Russia and formally propose to Alexandra. One of the issues preventing them from getting married was George's questionable status, but now that George was King he was truly worthy of the daughter of an Emperor. Alexander II didn't want his daughter to leave Russia, but he saw how in love Alexandra was and he just couldn't say no.

George and Alexandra had two wedding ceremonies, a Russian Orthodox ceremony at Winter Palace, and then a Lutheran ceremony at St. John's Chaple at Woodbine Castle. When Alexandra arrived in Sunderland she was greeted with a lot of enthusiasm, people were genuinely captivated by this foreign princess. One of the first things George did for his new bride was build an Orthodox chapel on the grounds of Woodbine Castle so that Alix wouldn't feel homesick.

The pair were married for sixty years. It was one of the longest marriages in Sunderland's royal history. After decades of dysfunctional marriages between young women and Warwick princes twice their age, it was great that the public finally had two young people who were equally committed to each other at the centre of the monarchy. Over eleven years, they had nine children. Their marriage suffered some low points over the years, but both remained extremely passionate and devoted. It's a really fascinating relationship and we will learn more about them in the near future, I'm writing up a mini biography about one of their daughters as we speak <3

[machineryangel]

i hate watching news so fucking much its always 'woman abused / killed by ex' & 'inflation sky high' & 'gas prices on rise again' & 'scientists warn against global warming crisis, yet no actions taken by world leaders' and never 'israeli forces withdrawing from palestine' & 'american empire on collapse' & 'long ruling dictator dies at 70' & 'british monarchy abolished'