#historyedit

[everythingroyalty]

January 1928 ♦ Princess Ingrid of Sweden (later Queen of Denmark) photographed a few months short of her 18th birthday wearing The Turquoise Daisy Bandeau that she had inherited from her late mother, Princess Margaret of Connaught ✨

April 2025 ♦ Princess Isabella of Denmark (Ingrid's great-granddaughter) photographed in honour of her 18th birthday wearing The Turquoise Daisy Bandeau that has been gifted to her by her grandmother Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (Ingrid's daughter) ✨

[city-of-ladies]

Aldruda Frangipane (born after 1120 – died after 1173) was a powerful noblewoman who ruled as regent and gained legendary status for her military leadership during the rescue of Ancona.

The regent of Bertinoro

Aldruda belonged to the powerful Roman Frangipane family. She married Rainier Calvaconti, Count of Bertinoro, but was widowed in 1144. Rather than remarry, she chose to take power into her own hands, serving as regent for her children. Her power was such that she continued to rule even after her eldest son reached adulthood.

Her court at Bertinoro was known for its refinement and intellectual vitality. It celebrated chivalric ideals and literature, and welcomed troubadours and poets.

To Ancona’s rescue

In 1173, the city of Ancona was besieged by the forces of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, as part of his campaign to assert control over Italy. Ancona had aligned itself with the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, making it a target for imperial retribution.

Reinforcements came from Ferrara—and from Aldruda. The Countess of Bertinoro led her troops in person. Mounted on horseback, she rallied her soldiers with a rousing speech before engaging the enemy.

According to chronicler Boncompagno da Signa, the battle was won thanks to a clever ruse. Aldruda ordered her soldiers to attach two or three torches to each lance and march in a wide formation under cover of darkness. The sight created the illusion of a much larger army launching a night assault. The besiegers, believing themselves outnumbered, retreated.

Aldruda’s bravery became the stuff of legend. Byzantine chroniclers praised her as a courageous and generous leader who not only sent aid, but faced battle herself. In his orations, Eustathios of Thessaloniki described her armed with a lance, riding at the head of her cavalry. He likened her to biblical heroines such as Judith, and to the warrior queens of antiquity.

Following the rescue of Ancona, no further records of Aldruda survive.

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Further reading: 

Allaire Gloria, “Alruda Frangipani”, in: Higham Robin, Pennington Reina (eds.), Amazons to fighter pilots, biographical dictionary of military women, vol.1

Eustathios of Thessaloniki, Secular Orations 1167/8 to 1179

Frison Carluccio, “Frangipane, Aldruda”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 50

Jansen Philippe, “L’écho de l’événement : Boncompagno da Signa et le siège d’Ancône (1173)”

[awkward-sultana]

Hürrem's correspondence with Suleiman—preserved in Ottoman archives—shows her as his emotional anchor. In a 1540 letter, she consoles him: 'Do not let grief weigh upon your heart, my Shadow of God. Even the darkest night yields to dawn. Your strength is our empire’s strength.' This fusion of intimacy and political awareness underscores her unique role. — Roxelana: The Greatest Empress of the East (2010), Galina I. Yermolenko (requested by anonymous)

[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

[isabellaofparma]

Kings of Hungary in Hunyadi (2025– )

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Historical Fashion Challenge 2025

Day 23 (late): 1940s

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[levithestripper]

Soulmates reuniting. BLACK SAILS— Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny in 03x08 “XXVI”

[anneboleynqueen]

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

Anne Boleyn in The Tudors (2007-2010)

[diioonysus]

history + last words

[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

[city-of-ladies]

"In the seventeenth century the words ‘a brave woman’ were more and more frequently used in sermons with reference to women who were constant in their faith, practising such virtues as modesty, devotion to the family and thrift – women who were bringing up a large progeny well. But in the social mentality these words had a broader meaning. They were associated with the type of woman who appeared at the end of the sixteenth century, particularly in the south-eastern territories of the country endangered by the incursions of the Turks and Tartars. It was a type of courageous Amazon who could mount a horse and wield a sword no less competently than a man – a woman who could defend her own and her family’s interests and fight an enemy not with women’s, but with men’s, weapons. This Polish virago had her counterparts in Western Europe. The femme forte was glorified in France in the seventeenth century, the mujer varonil was lauded in Spain; the virago became the heroine of countless dramas and poems.

Mannish women in Poland had many opportunities to display their talents. The most famous among them was Marina, the daughter of Polish magnate, Jerzy Mniszech. In 1605 she married Dimitr, the alleged son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and in 1609 was crowned in Moscow. After Dimitri was murdered, she married the second impostor and, when the latter also died, she tried to keep the throne for herself. Beautiful and greedy for power, Marina ended her stormy life in a prison and soon became the heroine of numerous legends and poems. The period of Russian civil war enabled her – a woman with a dominant personality and great imagination – to surpass the passive role accorded to women in general.

Life in the eastern and southern borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth offered many opportunities for women to display their energy and courage. A legend about an energetic bride, Beata Dolska, relates how, on her wedding day in 1577, she saved her native town of Dubno from a Tartar attack. Told about the enemy, the courageous bride rushed on to the ramparts, loaded a cannon and fired a shot which hit the tent of the Khan himself. As a result, the Tartars lifted the siege.

Another famous ‘borderlands’ lioness’, Mrs Teofila Chmielecka, fought bravely at her husband’s side against the Tartars in the 1620s. Unfortunately, she was also a notorious organizer of forays against her neighbours and an extremely cruel mistress: she mutilated one of her servants, a certain Anna Walicka, by cutting off her nose. When her son fell in love with a beautiful girl whose father refused to agree to the marriage, she abducted the girl and arranged the marriage by force. Another lady, Anna Dorota Chrzanowska, wife of the commander of Trembowla castle, roused the defenders of the fortress to action during the siege in 1675 and personally led them in sallies against the Turks; she threatened the soldiers that she would blow up the fortress if they capitulated. In the Ukraine some women took up arms during the Chmielnicki uprising. During the Swedish invasion many women all over the country took part in the war activities.

In times of peace, too, women surpassed their official female roles and, in this respect, we have already mentioned the battles organized by Mrs Chmielecka. In addition, W. Łoziński’s book presents many Polish women engaged in military actions. Forays and armed attacks led by females were by no means a rare occurrence, especially in the borderlands. A. Gradowska has recently come across an interesting example of a fierce family quarrel in the eighteenth century: Mr Kazimierz Drohojowski sued his aunt, Mrs Antonina Księska née Drohojowska, for the sums bequeathed on his village, Bestwinka. The trial continued for 30 years. In the end, the aunt administered justice herself, organizing an attack on her nephew’s house. Drohojowski was shot during the fighting and died from his wounds."

Maria Bogucka, Women in Early Modern Polish Society, Against the European Background

[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.”

[awkward-sultana]

"Amid this general mayhem Barbarossa savored a special kind of mission given to him by Ibrahim Pasha. The pirate was to attempt to kidnap the most beatiful belle in all of Italy, Giulia Gonzaga, painted by many artists, including Sebastiano de Piombo, and coveted by many. This ravishing beauty was the widow of a Colonna prince, and therefore the mission would bring the Turks into conflict with the powerful family that had sacked Rome a few years earlier. Ibrahim's scheme was for the Italian prize to be delivered to Suleyman's harem, and to supplant Roxellana, the sultan's wife, who was giving the Grand Vizier fits. But when the Turks stormed her castle at Fondi, Giulia Gonzaga fled into the night nearly naked in the company of a single knight and escaped the clutches of the Turkish pirate. In reprisal, Barbarossa burned her village and torched a nearby convent, massacring the Benedictine nuns within. When the Turks were safely gone, Giulia Gonzaga had the knight who had aided her escape killed, for he had seen too much." —Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe, 1520-1536, James Reston Jr.

[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 

[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.