#m: son of the century
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Dress sword, circa 1790, set with plaques made by Josiah Wedgwood and Sons
From the Victoria & Albert Museum
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HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics
So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.
The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.
Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.
Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.
Rhaenyra heard his terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. "Of course, Your Grace," the maester answered. "Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head. "You, Your Grace," Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why do you serve my half-brother, the pretender?" Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing the Andal law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy Princess Rhaenyra.
(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)
In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.
Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.
Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).
In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.
Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:
Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood
the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens
hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.
Here are the arguments for Aegon II:
many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead [...]
Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92
the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter
Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was [...]”
Should the princess reign [...] Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.”
Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).
For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't seem to care about the laws of the Realm or the political need to maintain a more predictable/tested transfer of power.
Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.
And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?
This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession, but neither is "because daddy said so".
#hotd critical#hotd#house of the dragon#Fire and blood#A song of ice and fire#asoiaf#Long post#this doesn't mean I think the writers are Team Black#I just think the writers can't shake off their 21st century values enough to portray the Greens as an equally valid side#They're too girlboss-pilled#Imagine that Queen Nymeria page scene where Rhaenyra asks Otto why he defies the orders of his late king#Otto: The laws of the Realm decree that the crown pass to the king's eldest trueborn son#Rhaenyra: The laws of the Realm? The king's word is law and it is within his power to overturn these unjust traditions#Otto: The king's will is only one of many. The crown's power is derived from the support of its people. Jaehaerys the Conciliator himself—#Rhaenyra: Perhaps the people have forgotten that my forebears did not forge the Iron Throne with “support” but with fire and blood.#There you've shown why this civil war happened and why people fall on either side
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c. 1540 CE: a young man from Chalco, and his dragon.
#em draws stuff#em is posting about temeraire#temeraire#temeraire worldbuilding collection#⚬⚬⚬⚬⚬𐂂#<- tag for organizing when I'm drawing stuff that is temeraireVerse but not in the line of the plot of the books themselves#for school reasons I have been reading a lot about 14th-17th century mesoamerica#and thus am Interested in how that would have potentially played out in temeraireverse...#anyway! not sure if I'll draw these two again but I Have given the lad a day sign name (five deer) so I could Potentially. who can say.#haven't come up with a name for the dragon yet... maybe cipachcoatzin would work if can't think of anything else#<- Please Forgive My Dubious Command of Classical Nahuatl Grammar I Am But A Student#on that note zoomorphic interlace is not very much a style from this period/region but it helps me with composition things#five deer himself is mostly based on the illustration of the tlacuilo's son in the codex mendoza#the dragon is drawn more from a fusion of older scribal styles (ie. the codex borgia) and my own shorthands for dragon anatomy
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A central element of the myth of [Eleanor of Aquitaine] is that of her exceptionalism. Historians and Eleanor biographers have tended to take literally Richard of Devizes’s conventional panegyric of her as ‘an incomparable woman’ [and] a woman out of her time. […] Amazement at Eleanor’s power and independence is born from a presentism that assumes generally that the Middle Ages were a backward age, and specifically that medieval women were all downtrodden and marginalized. Eleanor’s career can, from such a perspective, only be explained by assuming that she was an exception who rose by sheer force of personality above the restrictions placed upon twelfth-century women.
-Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine
"...The idea of Eleanor’s exceptionalism rests on an assumption that women of her age were powerless. On the contrary, in Western Europe before the twelfth century there were ‘no really effective barriers to the capacity of women to exercise power; they appear as military leaders, judges, castellans, controllers of property’. […] In an important article published in 1992, Jane Martindale sought to locate Eleanor in context, stripping away much of the conjecture that had grown up around her, and returning to primary sources, including her charters. Martindale also demonstrated how Eleanor was not out of the ordinary for a twelfth-century queen either in the extent of her power or in the criticisms levelled against her.
If we look at Eleanor’s predecessors as Anglo-Norman queens of England, we find many examples of women wielding political power. Matilda of Flanders (wife of William the Conqueror) acted as regent in Normandy during his frequent absences in England following the Conquest, and [the first wife of Henry I, Matilda of Scotland, played some role in governing England during her husband's absences], while during the civil war of Stephen’s reign Matilda of Boulogne led the fight for a time on behalf of her royal husband, who had been captured by the forces of the empress. And if we wish to seek a rebel woman, we need look no further than Juliana, illegitimate daughter of Henry I, who attempted to assassinate him with a crossbow, or Adèle of Champagne, the third wife of Louis VII, who ‘[a]t the moment when Henry II held Eleanor of Aquitaine in jail for her revolt … led a revolt with her brothers against her son, Philip II'.
Eleanor is, therefore, less the exception than the rule – albeit an extreme example of that rule. This can be illustrated by comparing her with a twelfth century woman who has attracted less literary and historical attention. Adela of Blois died in 1137, the year of Eleanor’s marriage to Louis VII. […] The chronicle and charter evidence reveals Adela to have ‘legitimately exercised the powers of comital lordship’ in the domains of Blois-Champagne, both in consort with her husband and alone during his absence on crusade and after his death. […] There was, however, nothing atypical about the nature of Adela’s power. In the words of her biographer Kimberley LoPrete, ‘while the extent of Adela’s powers and the political impact of her actions were exceptional for a woman of her day (and indeed for most men), the sources of her powers and the activities she engaged in were not fundamentally different from those of other women of lordly rank’. These words could equally apply to Eleanor; the extent of her power, as heiress to the richest lordship in France, wife of two kings and mother of two or three more, was remarkable, but the nature of her power was not exceptional. Other noble or royal women governed, arranged marriages and alliances, and were patrons of the church. Eleanor represents one end of a continuum, not an isolated outlier."
#It had to be said!#eleanor of aquitaine#historicwomendaily#angevins#my post#12th century#gender tag#adela of blois#I think Eleanor's prominent role as dowager queen during her sons' reigns may have contributed to her image of exceptionalism#Especially since she ended up overshadowing both her sons' wives (Berengaria of Navarre and Isabella of Angouleme)#But once again if we examine Eleanor in the context of her predecessors and contemporaries there was nothing exceptional about her role#Anglo-Saxon consorts before the Norman Conquest (Eadgifu; Aelfthryth; Emma of Normandy) were very prominent during their sons' reigns#Post-Norman queens were initially never kings' mothers because of the circumstances (Matilda of Flanders; Edith-Matilda; and#Matilda of Boulogne all predeceased their husbands; Adeliza of Louvain never had any royal children)#But Eleanor's mother-in-law Empress Matilda was very powerful and acted as regent of Normandy during Henry I's reign#Which was a particularly important precedent because Matilda's son - like Eleanor's sons after him - was an *adult* when he became King.#and in France Louis VII's mother Adelaide of Maurienne was certainly very powerful and prominent during Eleanor's own queenship#Eleanor's daughter Joan's mother-in-law Margaret of Navarre had also been a very powerful regent of Sicily#(etc etc)#So yeah - in itself I don't think Eleanor's central role during her own sons' reigns is particularly surprising or 'exceptional'#Its impact may have been but her role in itself was more or less the norm
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Luca Marinelli
#<3#luca marinelli#m - il figlio del secolo#m. son of the century#toronto film festival#my pic#my edit
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So. ive been going through your billy batson tag bc im very normal and super hinged about this kid and you ARE right about Billy growing up the normal way and how that would effect him, but I need us all to consider the opposite: The Magic went "Ah, he's pure of heart bc he is but a lad", and not *letting* him grow up. Billy being immortal but stuck as a kid forever. The realization everyone is going to grow up w/o him. That he is *always* going to be a kid. That could be a very bad time too.
OH MY HEART. you're so right and i'm kissing you on the mouth. okay i need to marinate in this now stand by
so I think it's fairly accepted now that the Wizard chose Billy to be Shazam when he was so young because all of the previous Champions were adults, and that went Badly (see: Black Adam). So obviously, if the adults can do the whole superhero thing, then we should give the role to a kid. But then, to take it a step further: if the adults can't do the superhero thing, then we should make the next Champion stay a kid.
And like, it takes a hot minute for Billy to notice. Say he became CM at 8 - he doesn't know the average rate of growth for a boy. He just thinks he's not getting as tall as quickly as his peers. It's not like there's adult supervision around to go "hello small small child, why are you still small and a child?" I could see him going at least a few years before realizing there might be something wrong. Then it takes him a little bit to figure out what exactly is wrong, and then a little longer to be in denial, before he finally has to come to terms with, yeah, he really is 8 years old for the rest of forever.
I wonder how it affects him, mentally? Because you could go one of two ways: either he stays mentally an 8 year old forever and doesn't mature, although he gains knowledge and experience with time, or he does mentally mature and becomes an adult, just stuck in the body of a child.
For angst reasons, I like the second one, but realistically, the whole reason he's in this mess is because the Wizard wanted someone who was pure of heart to stay pure of heart. Why go through all the trouble to not let him physically age but allow his mind to change? So now we have an eternally "both mentally and physically a child" situation.
I feel like, when you're that young, you can't really... process how devastating that is? He's only a little kid - at that age, you can't even imagine turning 18 yet, much less living out the rest of your life as an adult. He doesn't know what he's lost. So instead of Billy angst, it's outsider POV angst. Everyone is growing old and watching Billy stay the same as always. I imagine he reveals his identity at some point, a while into being Captain Marvel, and they have a Twilight moment of "I'm 8" "....how long have you been 8?" ("no, but actually, we've known you for 12 years, you can't actually be 8. what do you mean 'a wizard did it'."). Everyone is just quietly mourning the person Billy could have become, had he not been chosen to be the Champion of Magic, meanwhile Billy is living out the eternal childhood dream of Superpowers + Adult Body w/o Adult Responsibilities. It's tragic in a way Billy can never comprehend because of what the wizard did to him.
Feel free to add onto this post!
#mads posts#billy batson#captain marvel#shazam#dc#dc comics#dcu#anyways Billy refuses to watch Peter Pan because it makes him feel shrimp emotions#also his foster siblings. or at least his twin Mary depending on the canon#can you IMAGINE what it's like for them#that has to be wild#half a century down the line its like 'yeah this is my brother billy. i adopted him and he's basically my son because we've known each othe#our entire lives but he has never gotten older and he can't comprehend everything he's lost. i can though.'#sobs#anyways PLEASE let this become one of those collaborative Everyone Adds On sort of posts. i need this idea to spread now#anon ily
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SPOILERS FOR LMK SEASON 5 EPISODE 1 UNDER THE CUT
THEY MAKE ME SO ILLLLL!!!!! I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE UNDER THESE CONDITIONS?????
also please no spoilers ive only seen the first 2 episodes that came out in english
#lego monkie kid#lego monkie kid fanart#monkie kid season 5#lmk season 5#pigsy lmk#pigsy lego monkie kid#mk lmk#mk monkie kid#CARRYING HIM TO BED#MAKING HIS FAVORITE FOOD TO HELP HIM SLEEP?????#i dont know how i ended up with you#but#im so glad i did#i love you#son#IM GONNA FUCKING MURDER SOMEONE#HES FATHER OF THE FUCKING CENTURY I DONT WANNA FUCKING HEAR IT ANYMORE
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) "Rest" (1879) Oil on fabric Academicism Located in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
#paintings#art#artwork#genre painting#genre scene#william adolphe bouguereau#oil on fabric#fine art#academicism#cleveland museum of art#museum#art gallery#french artist#female portrait#portrait of a woman#male portrait#portrait of a boy#child#children#portrait of a child#mother and child#mother and son#mother and baby#clothing#clothes#1870s#late 1800s#late 19th century
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#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel fanart#hazbin hotel adam#adam#hazbin hotel lucifer#not adamsapple (maybe one-sided only)#anyway#old adam#he fought for his life and lives of his family for centuries#and lost two of his sons#he’s very tired
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The Bun House
Built in 1848, The Widow’s Son is a historic grade II listed pub in Bow, East End London. It had a strange tradition of "The widow's son bun ceremony".
The story goes that a Widow living on the site of this pub received a letter from her son, asking for a fresh hot cross bun for when he returned for Easter.
Sadly the widow’s son never returned but dutifully his mother every year produced a new hot cross bun, and when her house was demolished to make way for the pub, a store of these buns were discovered.
Under the former owners of The Widow’s Son many of these varnished buns hung in a net over the bar. Every year a new one – with the date baked into the top was added by a serving member of the Navy.
Sadly it appears the pub is now permanently closed.
Source x and x
#naval history#naval custom#19th century#widow son bun ceremony#london#age of sail#just wanted to share this with u
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"Although perhaps, we shall never be [...] intimate friends [...], still I would not wish a better." (x)
#the terror#the terror amc#francis crozier#edward little#theterroredit#*mine#toxic father-son relationship of the century!!#francis please trust your second more he really does respect you deep down and just wants to do the right thing#and if you don't he may just combust from three years of repressed fury#they truly could have had it all...the besties that could have been.....#this is also my first attempt with glitching gifs so if it looks unpolished apologies!
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Typography Tuesday
STEPHENSON BLAKE
Today we're showing a new acquisition from one of the giants of British type founding, Specimens of Printing Types from Stephenson, Blake, the Caslon Letter Foundry, Sheffield, published in Sheffield, England by Stephenson Blake & Co. in 1959. Stephenson Blake claims a lineage directly back to William Caxton, the founder of English type and printing in 1476. We think they stand on firmer ground, however, in also claiming descent from William Caslon, the founder of the first truly British typefaces beginning in 1734.
Silversmith and mechanic William Garnett and toolmaker John Stephenson began foundry operations in 1818 with financial support from James Blake. A year later, they acquired the firm of William Caslon III and IV, an offshoot of the Caslon family business. Garnett left the firm in 1829 and the company was renamed Blake & Stephenson in 1830, but Blake died soon after. Stephenson himself died in 1864 and passed the business onto his son Henry. The company was purchased in 1905 Sir Charles Reed and Sons, but the Stephenson name was retained. In 1937, the company purchased H.W. Caslon & Sons, the other branch of the storied Caslon dynasty, securing its right to claim full Caslon heritage.
Stephenson Blake continued to make some type until 2001, but it finally closed its foundry in 2005, with much of its historical stock going to the Type Archive in London. Because of financial issues, the Type Archive also had to close its doors in 2022, and the Stephenson Blake collection was transferred to the Victoria & Albert Museum as the interim custodian.
Shown here are some shaded typefaces and ornaments from the 1959 catalog.
View more Typography Tuesday posts.
#Typography Tuesday#typetuesday#Stephenson Blake#Stephenson Blake & Co.#John Stephenson#James Blake#William Garnett#Sir Charles Reed and Sons#Type Archive#type specimen books#type display book#type specimens#typefaces#shaded type#type ornaments#20th century type
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#honkai star rail#hsr#jing yuan#yanqing#jingliu#a few centuries ago he was like ahhh shes evil we need to kill her! and now hes like sure take a day trip with my son idgaf#my sillies
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Working with Luca [Marinelli] has been one of the great privileges of my life. I genuinely believe that he is one of the greatest actors living today. He’s certainly up there with Gary Oldman.
- Joe Wright
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Luca Marinelli
#<3#luca marinelli#ph: gareth cattermole#toronto film festival#m - il figlio del secolo#m. son of the century#my edit
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