#historyedit

[city-of-ladies]

A controversial figure, Didda (924–1003) demonstrated remarkable political skill, overcoming all opposition to rule Kashmir in her own right.

Rise to power

Didda was the daughter of Simharaja, king of Lohara (modern-day Lohrin in Poonch), and seemed to have held her father in high regard. From an early age, she displayed intelligence and a strong, domineering personality.

The chronicler Kalhana referred to her as "footless." While this might have been a criticism of her character, it is more likely that Didda had a physical disability. Though capable of walking, she relied on a woman named Valga to carry her on her back during games that involved running. In gratitude, Didda later commissioned a temple in her honor, called Valgamath.

In 950, Didda married Kshemagupta, king of Kashmir. A dissolute ruler addicted to hunting and gambling, Kshemagupta soon fell under Didda’s influence. He became so associated with her that he was mockingly called "Diddakshema," a contraction of their names. Unbothered by the mockery, Kshemagupta even had coins minted bearing both their names.

Regent against all opposition

Didda gave birth to a son, Abhimanyu. When Kshemagupta died suddenly in 958 from a violent fever, she feared for her son's life and secretly hid him away. Rejecting the tradition of sati, she refused to join her husband on his funeral pyre, arguing that her young son needed her.

With Abhimanyu crowned as king, Didda ruled as regent. She immediately faced opposition from her late husband’s nephews but managed to turn some of their allies to her side. Her minister, Naravahana, defeated the remaining rebels in battle. Didda had the rest of the rebels killed, sparing only those she deemed useful.

She sent her general Yashodhara to subdue the neighboring king of Shahi. When Yashodhara returned victorious, she attempted to arrest him, fearing he might turn against her. Yashodhara rebelled, and although the conflict was difficult, Didda, with the help of her allies, ultimately prevailed.

The chronicler Kalhana had a negative view of Didda, labeling her immoral and licentious—stereotypes he often applied to powerful women. However, he grudgingly acknowledged her strength:

“The lame queen, whom no one had thought capable of stepping over a cow’s footprint got over the ocean-like host of her enemies just like Hanuman got over the ocean”.

A string of tragic deaths

As Abhimanyu grew older, he began opposing his mother’s rule. However, in 972, he died of consumption. His young son, Nandigupta, succeeded him, with Didda continuing as regent. She commissioned numerous building projects in memory of her son, ultimately founding 64 structures during her lifetime.

Tragedy struck again when Nandigupta died within a year of taking the throne. His brother, Tribhuvanagupta, succeeded him but also died soon after. Didda was accused of witchcraft and of orchestrating their deaths, though this seems unlikely, as she had nothing to gain from it. In 975, she placed her third grandson, Bhimagupta, on the throne.

During this time, Didda gained a key ally in Tunga, a commoner whom she initially employed as a letter carrier. Recognizing his abilities, she promoted him repeatedly until he became both prime minister and commander of her armies. Rumors suggested that Tunga was also her lover.

However, as Bhimagupta began showing an interest in governance and reforms, he died under mysterious circumstances in 981. Whispers spread that Didda had him imprisoned and tortured.

Ruling in her own name

With no heirs left to rule, Didda formally took the throne, minting coins bearing her own name: "Sri Didda". Kashmir had seen female rulers before, such as the legendary Yashovati and Sugandha, who ruled 50 years earlier, first as a regent and then two years in her own name. Didda was the first to govern with absolute power for an extended period.

Copper coins minted during Didda's reign

For the next 22 years, she ruled unchallenged, using bribes, strategic alliances, and ruthless reprisals to suppress periodic rebellions. She notably crushed an uprising led by her nephew.

As she neared the end of her reign, Didda sought a successor. She assembled boys from her maternal family and placed fruits before them, challenging them to collect as many as possible. Her brother’s son, Samgramaraja, incited the other boys to fight among each other and gathered the most. Impressed by his cunning, Didda chose him as her heir.

She made Tunga and Samgramaraja swear to cooperate. Their collaboration ensured stability in the kingdom for the next two decades. Under Samgramaraja’s leadership, Kashmir successfully resisted the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni—partly due to the strong army and administration Didda had built.

Didda passed away in 1003 at the age of 79.

Though she ruled with an iron fist, she was undeniably a remarkable strategist and politician. As Mark Aurel Stein observed:

“The statesmanlike instinct and political ability which we must ascribe to Didda in spite of all the defects of her character, are attested by the fact that she remains the last in peaceful possession of the Kashmir throne, and was able to bequeath it to her family in undisputed succession.”

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Further reading: 

Achakzai Khawar Khan, “Queen Didda: between facts and fantasy”.

Gupta Garodia Archana, The women who ruled India, leaders, warriors, icons

Jan Changez, Forgotten Kings The Story of the Hindu Sahi Dynasty

Kalhana, Rajatarangini

[courtana]

JENIN, JENIN (2002) dir. Mohammad Bakri

[girlintheafternoon]

"I am not shy, I'm merely bored. They hang beautiful clothes on me and load me with jewelry, I step outside to say a few words to the people, and then I rush into my bedroom, tear off my finery, and write." - Elisabeth of Austria in conversation with Queen Elisabeth of Romania, 1880s

[anneboleynqueen]

She wanted everything, but settled for nothing. (insp)

Anne Boleyn in The Tudors (2007-2010)

[diioonysus]

history + last words

[levithestripper]

Jack Rackham’s slutty little necklace 🫶🏻💗 BLACK SAILS— Jack Rackham in 01x06 “VI”

[kate-bridgerton]

TUDOR WEEK 2024

Day 6: Favorite Tudor Couple - Elizabeth of York and Henry VII

The couple’s early years together may have been challenging, for Henry had to overcome his suspicions of his Yorkist bride and deal with her dangerous relations. Yet she clearly left him in no doubt as to where her loyalties lay. As time passed, he clearly grew to love, trust and respect her, and they seem to have become emotionally close. There survives good evidence that she loved him, and a moving account of how they comforted each other when their eldest son, Arthur, died. -- Alison Weir, Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen/Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World

[prideandprejudice]

“Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance figure who later became Pope Alexander VI, and Vannozza dei Cattanei. Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Juan Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia. She served for a time as de facto ruler of the Holy See during her father's absence. The fall of the power of the Borgias followed with her father's death in 1503 despite Cesare's immense capabilities. Cesare, gravely ill, was planning the conquest of Tuscany, but could do nothing without continued papal patronage. The new pope, Pius III, supported him, but his reign was short and was followed with the accession of the Borgias' deadly enemy, Julius II. While moving to Romagna to quell a revolt, Cesare was seized and imprisoned near Perugia. All Borgia lands were subsequently acquired by the Papal States. After exile to Spain, in 1504, followed by imprisonment and escape, Cesare joined his brother-in-law, King John III of Navarre; dying in his service during a military campaign in 1507. Meanwhile, Lucrezia, no longer needing to play a major political role at the court of Ferrara — which became a center for the arts and letters of the Italian Renaissance —was able to live a more normal life and turned to religion in her final years. She died on June 24, 1519 at the age of 39, due to complications occurring during the birth of her eighth child.”

[queencatherineparr]

Catherine Parr in Art* vs Catherine Parr in Firebrand [Costumes designed by Michael O'Connor]

*Catherine sat for the Family of Henry VIII portrait in lieu of Jane Seymour who appeared in the portrait.

[isabelleneville]

𓅃 ANNE BOLEYN WEEK 2024 𓅃

day seven | free day

To say it’s archetypal isn’t actually doing it justice. It’s flat-out impossible to envision Anne Boleyn without her pearl-and-gold “B” necklace – a fact that filmmakers and book cover designers seem to agree with. ... We think Anne owned at least four ‘initial’ pieces during her lifetime; it seems she had her famous “B” of course, an “A”, an “AB” and an “AH” for her and Henry. - Erin Lawless

ANNE BOLEYN'S "B" NECKLACE

[city-of-ladies]

"Here’s what we know about Julia Felix: she lived in Pompeii from at least 62 CE. She was possibly illegitimate but was definitely not a member of the social and cultural elite. She worked for a living setting up and running a very interesting business and, by 79 CE, she had planned to shift her focus from managing a business to owning property. We know all these things because twentieth-century excavations at her business uncovered an advert, carved in stone and attached to the external wall of her huge building. It reads:

"To rent for the period of five years from the thirteenth day of next August to the thirteenth day of the sixth August, the Venus Bath fitted for the nogentium, shops with living quarters over the shops, apartments on the second floor located in the building of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius. At the end of five years, the agreement is terminated."

This find illuminated the building it was attached to, bringing what otherwise looked like a very large anonymous domestic house into dazzling focus. With this description of the purpose of each room written by the owner herself, archaeologists and historians could see the site through a whole new lens and they realised that they had discovered a Roman entertainment space for the working middle classes. It is, so far, a completely unique find and it is magnificent. It offers us, as modern viewers, two amazing things: a little glimpse into the lives of the commercial classes of the Roman Empire who are so often completely and utterly invisible, and a brutal reminder that so much of what we ‘know’ about Roman women in the Roman world comes from rules concerning only the most elite.

We’ll do that second part first, because it’s the least fun. Roman written and legal sources are pretty universal in their agreement that although women could own property, they could not control it; they had no legal rights, could not make contracts and were to be treated as minors by the legal system for their entire lives. In order to buy or sell property women required a male guardian to oversee and sign off on any transactions. This is a basic truism of women in the Roman Empire, repeated ad nauseum by sources both ancient and modern including me, and it is undermined by Julia Felix’s rental notice. 

The rental ad makes it pretty clear that Julia Felix is the owner-operator of a business complex including public baths, shops and apartments (there’s more too, as we’ll see), and she doesn’t seem to require anyone else to help her rent it out. She names her father – sort of; ‘Spurius’ might just mean that she is illegitimate – but this is effectively a surname, a personal identifier to differentiate her from other Julia Felixes in the area. It doesn’t mean her father was involved. Furthermore, the use of her father’s name as an identifier suggests that Julia didn’t have a husband and was either unmarried or widowed in 79 CE. The strong implication of her advert is that Julia Felix was an independent lady, a honey making money and a momma profiting dollars who could truthfully throw her hands up to Destiny’s Child.

We will never know if Julia escaped the flames and choking ash of 79 CE, fleeing as it swallowed her business and her home, but one discovery, made on 28 January 1952, suggests that she didn’t. The archaeologists, led by Amedeo Maiuri, uncovered on that day the skeleton of a woman who had fallen while running across the garden during the disaster. It’s clear this fallen woman was well off, because she was wearing a lot of gold jewellery. She carried four gold half-hoop earrings and wore four gold rings. Two of these rings were particularly expensive; both contained a red carnelian gem, one carved with a figure of Mercury, the other with an eagle. Around her neck she wore a necklace of gold filigree, dotted with ten pearls and hung with a green pendant. Someone stole both the necklace and earrings from the Pompeii Antiquarium in 1975 and no one, somehow, had ever bothered to photograph them so all we have are descriptions but the rings that survive are fine and expensive. The woman who wore them – was wearing them when she died – had real money to buy these objects and the woman who wore them did'nt leave Pompei in time.

 Moreover, when she was found it was clear that at the moment of her death she was heading not towards the street or towards safety, but towards the shrine to Isis in the garden where all the most valuable possessions were kept. The valuable possessions that Julia Felix grafted for and maybe couldn’t bear to leave behind. There’s no way to tell whether this skeleton is Julia Felix, whether these bones once stood and looked at the plots of land Julia bought and made plans, or whether they belong to a looter or a chancer or someone just caught out. But it’s nice to pretend that Julia Felix, who shaped the city’s roads around her dream and offered respite and luxury to workers and made a tonne of money doing it, died and was buried with the place that still bears her name."

A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire, Emma Southon

[nat111love]

THOSE ABOUT TO DIE ↳ Season 1 ↳ Episode 5 ↳ Betrayal

[girlintheafternoon]

Anne's girlhood has been overlooked in the popular imagination. It is also a period that has been misrepresented, reduced to the upper-class equivalent of reform school. But Anne Boleyn's French girlhood was neither a punishment for bad behaviour nor a hotbed of flirtation.

Instead, the girl-centred atmosphere of the French court was a quiet and intimate world defined by close bonds with other women, forged over the performance of music, shared religious beliefs, and love of learning.

During the years Anne Boleyn spent in France, she participated in female friendships that extended across nations as well as generations.

- Deanne Williams, Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Performance and Pedagogy 

[cesareeborgia]

↳ house woodville & house boleyn + parallels (requested by anonymous)

[platypusesforarms]

Pompeii, Italy | Pompeii - The New Dig

In AD 79, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius entombed Pompeii in metres of pumice and ash preserving the city and its people for two millennia. Today, Pompeii's ruins are the archaeological wonder of the world.