#most of that history is just european history

[binomech]

european history's narrative about the middle ages is literally that the world was a paradise of knowledge and science before religion cast the whole continent into darkness, destroying historical record and rejecting experimentation in favor of dogma. the enlightenment period that the french revolution got the moniker because it was meant to be a light to both uncover old findings and lead the way into a transparent, shining future. science would be the key to fixing the miseries of the dark ages, from forced labor to illness.

now, the thing is that enlightenment and all it's science paved the way for a more brutal, global colonialism, industrialization as a process that cemented the power of capitalism all over the continent and its colonies. all that knowledge that once meant to free us had shackled most of the world. i am thinking about jayce blinded by the light: trusting hextech to be a light and a tool to guarantee a better future suddenly getting overwhelmed by all the dire consequences his discovery resulted in. war, pestilence, famine, death. he paved the way for the horsemen because he believed in the inherent goodness of mankind, just like the revolutionaries did -- but that belief was rooted in catholic essentialism of the soul and narratives of original sin.

you had this and your humanity tainted it, give up on science because you're playing god and people will pay the price. in many ways this references the rune wars in shurima and azir ascending as xerath, a slave, gets consumed by magical energy and turns to a villain, which is the narrative that piltover holds about magic until they can use it for profit. jayce is blinded by the monster he created.

but he still reaches out because he believes that knowledge isn't inherently evil. he's a scientist and he knows for a fact it can be used for good from his own personal experience. there is always a choice, and they are choosing to do harm, but he doesn't have to follow suit.

[emmanuellececchi]

Defending the castle like a man...

I've just read this article : Defending the castle like a man: on belligerent medieval ladies.

One of my friend is practicing HEMA (historical european martial art) as well as forging. We speak often about it and I have many question, mostly because of my main character in my medieval romance. As in forging, strength is not all in fighting. Know how to do it and practicing is first and foremost (she is smaller and thinner than me. she can wield swords that I cannot lift).

She reads lots of things about medieval warfare and we have discussion about it, and more recently because of my main character in my medieval romance. She had send me this article. And while reading it, I thought about some of my mutuals and the quite recent discussion about Eowyn and Théoden. So this is for you : @torchwood-99 , @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras , @konartiste. @errruvande I thought about you as there is a good reference about Alfred's daughter.

Reading this, I thought about Théoden. Rohan seems to have a certain history of female fighters. Shieldmaiden is not a name coming out of nowhere. So... what led Rohan to, seemingly, forget about this role? When did it happen?

In this article, there are a lot of example of women who did fight in war and defend their territory. It seems there are more and more proof of that. Even more, it seems women were actually expected to know at least how to defend their castle and lands. "Do as their husband do". So they had to know how to fight or at least strategies and siege... And some knew how to use bows, crossbows and even swords. Still, they had been, most of the time, erased or played down.

It is not said if this erasing was all along or more recent, as it is noted that those women of war were common up until the 14th centuries. In any case, they existed, but in later ages, it was inconvenient for men to have their female kin show "men's virtue".

Did something equivalent happened in Rohan? Why would something like this would happen? I would be the first to say "Oh it's all Saruman/Grima's fault". But no. Theoden do not think of sending Eowyn to war. He does not even have the reflex to think about her as a leader for his people. if it had been Grima and/or Saruman, he would have think about it.

Could it be his gondorian upbringing? After all he grew up in Gondor, had a gondorian mother? Thengel did not seem to held his countries culture in high regard. So, could it be this? Or even before that?

In my glèomenn fanfic, Tirwald said it was legends and old story. Could it be even older? Something more recent, linked to another culture?

So... What do you think?

[velvet-cupcake-games]

excellent choice re: will’s new name!

now this is a lore question: was john’s mum from a different tribe than their dad? considering his name is from a different language and tribe than Will’s. we know Will’s mum’s origins, but not a lot on John’s mum. am i veering into lore book spoilers (is there such a thing)

So here's the beginning of the skinny on how Sunjata is organized. Like how my Avalon is loosely inspired by various Medieval-approximate European cultures, Sunjata is loosely inspired by various North-West-Central African cultures. Emphasis on the "loosely inspired" for both nations.

Sunjata is a continent of city-states that has a strong emphasis on technology and trade. It is more technologically advanced than Avalon, with things like aquaduct systems (and more modern-style plumbing!) and dynamite.

The thing that unites Sunjata is a single religion and a single language. Hundreds of years ago, it is said that the god Amun devoured all the other gods, ending their constant battles against one another. With his greatly enhanced divine power, Amun blessed the bloodlines of his most devout worshippers, essentially giving them superpowers. These Blessed Bloodlines went on to conquer the continent and found the great city states that rule over Sunjata today. With the common religion and its conquests came a massive upheaval/movement of people and a common language that swept across the continent (the holdout tribes who continue to worship the old gods are more likely to have held onto their traditional languages as well - these tribes hold the great heresy that Amun did not devour, but instead imprisoned their gods).

Names in Sunjata descend from its variety of pre-Amunite languages and tend to follow certain regional trends, but for Amunites they are no longer connected to specific tribal identities. Sunjati continue to have strong kinship ties, but their cultural identity is generally tied to their city-state and to the Amunite religion in general. Thus you'll have family members with names from different Earth African cultures, similarly to how North American names are a real cultural mishmash (In my own family, my name derives originally from Hebrew and my sister's from Greek, but they're both considered standard American names - Sunjata at this point in history is similar).

That said, John's mother was not from his village. His father travelled often as the village chief, negotiating trade agreements with merchants in the larger settlements and the city-states. He met her on one of those journeys, just as he met Will's mother years after her death.

I haven't yet put together the finer details of Sunjati culture as I plan to do a lot more reading, research, and consultation before writing my second game (set in Sunjata with a Sunjati MC).

[detroitpedxing]

(Archived News, Sept. 17. 2024) Second Apparent Assassination Attempt on Trump Prompts Alarm Abroad

There is widespread concern that the November election will not end well and that American democracy has frayed to the breaking point.

In the nine years since Donald J. Trump entered American politics, the global perception of the United States has been shaken by the image of a fractured, unpredictable nation. First one, then a second apparent attempt on the former president’s life have accentuated international concerns, raising fears of violent turmoil spiraling toward civil war.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, has said he is “very worried” and “deeply troubled” by what the F.B.I. said was an attempt to kill Mr. Trump at his Florida golf course, fewer than 50 days before the presidential election and two months after a bullet bloodied the ear of Mr. Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

“Violence has no part to play at all in any political process,” Mr. Starmer said.

Yet, violence has played a core part in this stormy, lurching American political campaign, and not only in the two apparent assassination attempts. There is now widespread concern across the globe that the November election will not end well and that American democracy, once a beacon to the world, has frayed to the breaking point.

In Mexico, where elections this year were the most violent in the country’s recent history, with 41 candidates and aspirants for public office assassinated, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Even though what happened is still unclear, we regret the violence against former President Donald Trump. The path is democracy and peace.”

At a time of wars in Europe and the Middle East and widespread global insecurity as China and Russia assert the superiority of their autocratic models, American precariousness weighs heavily.

Corentin Sellin, a French history professor, said the “brutalization of American politics” had left France “wondering whether the presidential campaign will finish peacefully.”

France was stunned, he said, by the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, and “there is this notion that the story that started with that insurrection has not yet ended,” and that the Nov. 5 election will determine how it does.

The threat of violence �� at times, even the need for it — has been a core part of Mr. Trump’s message.

He has already cast doubt on the credibility of the coming November election results. He has persistently laced his language with calls to “fight” and used incendiary terms to insult immigrants. Just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, he urged followers to “fight like hell” or they would not “have a country any more.” In general, he has shown an ironclad incapacity to accept many truths, including the result of the 2020 election.

Democrats have responded by depicting Mr. Trump as a direct menace to American democracy, a “weird” would-be autocrat of fascist tendencies and a “threat to our freedoms,” in the words of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. The left-leaning New Republic magazine portrayed Mr. Trump as Hitler on a recent cover, expressing the view that a second Trump term is likely to lead to some form of American tyranny.

Some Europeans see things in a very different light.

“They tried to do everything,” said Andrea Di Giuseppe, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party. “They tried to bring Trump down with trials, they tried to bring him down with insinuations, they tried to bring him down by scaring people that ‘if Trump arrives democracy ends.’ Then, since all these attempts did not work, they tried to kill him.”

The authorities have identified a suspect in the Florida episode, Ryan W. Routh, a 58-year-old building contractor with a criminal history and a passionate embrace of the Ukrainian cause. He was charged in federal court with two firearms counts. More charges may follow.

Responding to the apparent assassination attempt, Carsten Luther, an online editor for international affairs, gave voice to deep concerns about the survival of American democracy in the respected German weekly Die Zeit. “The warnings of a civil war can be heard and no longer sound completely unrealistic,” he wrote. “It seems almost banal, as if it was bound to happen at some point.”

Of course, other Western societies, including France and Germany, are also viscerally divided and have seen the rise of xenophobic, far-right parties with many of the same messages as Mr. Trump. In May, an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia left him critically injured.

But a far more restrictive European gun culture has curbed the extent of political violence while leaving Europeans alarmed and incredulous at the ease with which Americans are able to obtain weapons.

Félix Maradiaga, a former Nicaraguan presidential candidate and political prisoner who is now a fellow at the University of Virginia, said that polarization, intolerance and the widespread availability of high-caliber weapons in the United States had led to a “perfect storm.”

“The world is watching, and the stakes could not be higher,” he added. “Russia and China are undoubtedly taking satisfaction in this deterioration of democracy.”

Lebohang Pheko, a senior research fellow at South Africa’s Trade Collective, an economics research institute, said that she perceived “a militarization of everyday life in the United States, and this essentially seems to be spilling into these elections.”

Mr. Trump has often appeared to seek this very militarization of which he has narrowly escaped being a victim. The multimillionaire son of a real-estate developer from Queens, he has positioned himself as the defender of the gun-toting, God-fearing American frontier against what he portrays as the Democrats’ politically correct socialist takeover.

Alluding to his Democratic opponents, he has blamed “the things that they say about me” for the first assassination attempt and the second episode, not the easy access to guns that he defends.

The question now is how violent will this political confrontation in America prove. For many around the world, it seems to contain the seeds of rampant conflict.

“There is a sort of reciprocal delegitimization, where the political opponent is no longer a normal political competitor, but also an existential enemy,” said Mario Del Pero, a professor of United States and International History at Sciences Po University in Paris. He called this process “a degradation of political and public discourse.”

In the United States, this has been a degradation compounded by guns, as much of the world sees it.

“Style over substance. Image over issues. Lies over facts. Distractions over policy. Repeated violence,” said Tomasz Płudowski, the deputy dean of the School of Social Science, AEH, in Warsaw. “That seems to be the contemporary American reality.”

The core confrontation in Western societies is no longer over internal issues. It is global vs. national, the connected living in the “somewhere” of the knowledge economy vs. the forgotten living “nowhere” in industrial wastelands and rural areas.

There lies the frustration, even fury, on which a Trump or a Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right French National Rally, or Ms. Meloni in Italy have been able to build.

The perceived vulnerability of American democracy has already provoked many reactions around the world, from Russian gloating and interference to European anxiety about its security. Few countries in the developing world want American lessons in how to run their societies these days.

Yet, a fascination with the United States endures, and the checks and balances of its institutions have proved resilient, including through the first Trump term.

Mr. Trump often cites the template of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary: neutralizing an independent judiciary, subjugating much of the media, demonizing migrants and creating loyal new elites through crony capitalism. But it would not be easy to impose in America.

Still, the world is anxious. The 48 days to the election feel like a long time.

“In the end, the only real final word is for the American people,” said Mr. Di Giuseppe, the Italian lawmaker. “And if you want to defeat a person whom you think is not fit to govern the United States of America, you have to defeat him in a democratic system with elections, not with justice or Kalashnikovs.”

[miraclemaya]

i do think it's funny that there is most definitely a non zero amount of people who like played a ttrpg like ars magica and that inspired them to learn more history

[hymnsofheresy]

what are your thoughts on your religion stealing every single one of its holidays from pagans? xo

That in order to relieve themselves of guilt and discomfort, white people create and believe narratives that deprive their European ancestors of any autonomy whatsoever. Casting their ancestors as victims of the church rather than active participants.

[zevranunderstander]

number #1 tactic that people use to not sound as racist as they are when they talk to black people: 'uhh so you AMERICANS need to stop pretending everything is about YOU. why should i know this im not from the us :/' (= is talking about like. a phenomenally internationally well-known black artist)

[unopenablebox]

i admit that i find it a little bit frustrating how Wildly Astonished other antizionist jews act when i tell them my israeli jewish family have lived in the region since [some unknown length of time before 1800 when there start being records about it]

[frankensteincest]

reading about historical rape laws is so maddening bc most of them require the raped woman to make her appeal immediately after the event (blood and torn garments and all), prove that she is no longer a virgin with a physical exam, and never deviate from any details of her initial testimony no matter how many times she has to give it over the course of the case. and it would still be her word against the man’s, as judged by men. this was of course only for virgins of sufficient rank, with women of other statuses having even less hope of a coherent case. and it’s so maddening bc very little has changed with this process to this day. it goes beyond burden of proof, it’s just extended torture.

[femmesandhoney]

why did no one tell me martin luther was insane and into conspiracy theories, had to read his insane anti semitic rants with my religion class today and we all sat there like wtf is this guy on about

[screechingsandwichhologram]

my uninformed american opinion is that i will be calling it derry not londonderry because im american and therefore will always support ireland if its ireland vs the british.

(i wasn't even going to post this but i wrote a whole essay in the tags so i don't want to waste that)

[slicksquid]

I hate being on twitter for competitive splatoon because this shitass social media keeps showing me the most braindead takes such as “public health measures during the Black Death were better than the Covid-19 pandemic”

[skitskatdacat63]

You look over to me in class and I am just intensely working on a Habsburg family tree KDKFLGLGL I'm mentally well, I swear....

[kazz-brekker]

reading up on english history is just like “damn bro this also happened in asoiaf”

[doux-amer]

Sorry to the Swiss, but it’s a relief to see that Korea didn’t get knocked out with the biggest defeat in the Round of 16 lkdjflajfa. If only we went against each other and Portugal had Brazil, but oh well.

[trans-an4rchy]

its. literally the entire reason everybody is here today. it's there so people can reproduce, have kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids. i wouldn't be here today if my mother never had a period, same for literally everyone else on earth. I think something with that type of power should absolutely be celebrated as divine.

i understand people who have periods wanting to learn more about how the menstrual cycle affects their body and being mindful of certain things, what i hate is turning it into something divine and transcendent. it's just a bodily function! what's next? finding the divine in my piss? me and my feminine piss.