I've been thinking about the tragedy of Elizabeth Woodville living to see the end of her family name.
I don't mean her family with her husband, which lived on through her daughter and grandson. I mean her own.
Her sisters died, one by one, many of them after 1485. When Elizabeth died, only Katherine was left, and she would die before the turn of the century as well.
All her brothers died, too. Lewis died in childhood. John was executed. Anthony was murdered. Lionel died suddenly in the peak of Richard's reign, unable to see his niece become queen. Edward perished at war. Richard died in grieving peace. For all the violence and judgement the family endured, it was "an accident of biology" that ended their line: none of the brothers left heirs, and the Woodville name was extinguished. We know the family was aware of this. We know they mourned it, too:
“Buy a bell to be a tenor at Grafton to the bells now there, for a remembrance of the last of my blood.”
Elizabeth lived through the deposition and death of her young sons, and lived to see the end of her own family name. It must have been such a haunting loss, on both sides.
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Sometimes it doesn't matter how many times people try and drill it into your head, some things only click when you're scrambling around, frantically throwing together a protection jar to shake off a nasty curse that the ingredients don't matter.
Magic is Intent.
Sure, some things have become so deeply woven into common beliefs that it is difficult to remove those associations (salt=protection, pink/red=love, etc. etc.)
But in the end, it doesn't matter.
Humans like to have systems and guidelines to follow to make their work simpler, that's just what we do.
So it makes sense that we have assigned certain attributes/meanings/purposes to different things to make witchcraft, well, easier (see: crystal charts, spice/plant uses, color theory, and so forth).
One of my biggest gripes for the longest time was about how people seemed dead set on "ingredients" having specific/limited uses, and to use them otherwise was foolish. Which! Never made sense to me! But until recently, I lacked the right words to explain this frustration.
But honestly? I can't be mad about it any more. Fuck, sure, why not, salt is useful for preservation and keeping unwanted pests away, so yeah, it's good for protection.
It's much easier to do work with a few tokens of meaning than try and do everything with only mental effort (speaking for myself)- having physical objects to represent your intent can help tenfold. Doesn't matter if people don't have the same associations with those tokens as you- only your intent matters.
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i turned my phone off post-race, turned it back on after ~2hrs, and then burst into tears trying to find just a smidge of amusement in any of this. can you tell we’re a week out from what is usually the worst day of the year for me?
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PleSe find and wear the beer sweater I’m begging
RIGHTT it was literally made for me.....alas I don't need it
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