#nuingiliath

[shredsandpatches]

like a well-regulated abbey or ghosts of departed quantities, please? 🥺

Secret for Ghosts of Departed Quantities: All of the rude things Henry remembers his father saying about his psoriasis are, verbatim, things my mother has said to me about mine.

Secret for Like a Well-Regulated Abbey: well, I've already told everyone the boring story of how I got reamed on yuletide_coal for this fic, and not even because of the fic but because of the tags and someone who recognized me and whose friendship with me had just ended disastrously. Also, I've got all the birthdates wrong and hadn't realized that the story of Mary and Henry's imaginary first son had been debunked, but that's not secret because you can see them if you just, you know, read the fic.

So here, because I didn't actually link it in the notes, here's a recording of the "Nay, Ivy, nay" song I used in it.

[nebylitsa]

Also, extremely important: what do you think of an AU where people from the WOTR are caught in the plot of 'Dracula'?

EXCELLENT QUESTION. honestly i see the words “wars of the roses au” and i instantly smash that like button. it could go one of two ways: the plot of dracula, but it takes place in the 15th century (which is plausible, seeing as the count is from an ambiguously medieval time period himself)

richard iii being like “hell yeah i can vibe with this dude”

henry vi feeling bad for dracula bc he doesnt want to hurt anyone, not even a vampire :’^(

dracula trying to make sense of the tangled mess of late medieval english dynastic politics (in the book he reads - among other things - train schedules, to improve his english and enhance his ability to blend in with victorian society; here he’d spend hours poring over genealogical tables, growing increasingly more frustrated because who the hell CARES who has the most royal blood flowing through their veins? its all blood anyway! precious, delicious blood...)

eleanor cobham and the woodvilles being accused not of witchcraft, but of colluding with vampires

cardinal beaufort becoming a vampire hunter by virtue of his religious vocation, stuffing the sleeves of his cassock full of consecrated hosts and extra large crucifixes

the princes in the tower disappear and of course its dracula’s doing. and then he adopts them because damn it, he may be an amoral vampire warlord but he cant stand to see these sweet, precocious children being used as pawns in a selfish political game

margaret of anjou and warwick each trying to cut a deal with dracula to get him to bite them and give them vampire superpowers, so he gladly bites them both

anne neville saying fuck this and going over to dracula’s side because are you tired of being nice? dont you just wanna go ape batshit??

or...

dracula with the standard 19th-century setting, but with a ragtag team of morally compromised megalomaniacs rather than a crew of light bound by the Power of Friendship

henry vi is an unassuming, soft-spoken solicitor and margaret of anjou is his badass educated New Woman wife. when henry goes to transylvania he immediately realizes his host is a vampire, but he just doesnt want to say anything because That Would Be Rude

margaret thinks vampires are cool (and respects dracula’s brides for exercising their Girl Power), but god damn it she’s the only one who gets to push henry around like that!

warwick is the shiftiest, least trustworthy van helsing ever. he isnt even all that invested in beating dracula and goes over to his side halfway through the story

the york brothers are the three suitors: edward is a dashing cowboy, george is a neurotic doctor addicted to drinking chloral, and richard seems like a quiet arthur holmwood type of guy, but deep down he’s kinda fucked up

anne neville is richard’s beloved fiancée who dies mysteriously and comes back as a horrific vampire, but richard’s like “jokes on you im into that shit”

in the 1931 dracula they partially merged renfield and jonathan together (mina has a husband in the movie, but his name is john and he has little to do with the jonathan in the book) so im gonna do the same thing here. henry has a nervous breakdown during his trip to transylvania and margaret finds him in a remote convent, in the grip of delirium and amnesia. sometimes hes completely unresponsive; at other times he raves about blood and eats bugs. after a stay at dr clarence’s asylum (which is admittedly not very humane by modern standards), henry slowly begins to recover enough to tell his story, though his mind is never truly the same again

thanks! <3

(feel free to add more ideas to this au - this is just what i could come up with but there are so many possibilities)

[beardofkamenev]

OTP meme, Catherine/Owen: 7, 16, 26 and 47.

AJKLDFJJDJKJKSJDKFAJKS THIS IS MY TIME TO SHINE!

7. Who comes up with the cheesy pick-up lines?

Owen for sure. While Catherine probably made the ‘first move’ in their relationship, she’s much too dignified to use cheesy pick-up lines on Owen lol. Historically, Catherine was a patron of poets such as John Lydgate, so I think she would take a more romantic approach to these things (an early copy of Lydgate’s Temple of Glas describes the poem as “a very pleasant dream made at the request of a lover” — with the “lover” possibly referring to Catherine). I can imagine Owen purposely trying to get under her skin by bombarding her with cheesy pick-up lines, which she pretends to hate but secretly loves.

16. Who reminds the other to put on sunscreen before going to the beach (or pool)?

Catherine. I feel that having already been widowed once, Catherine would be very overprotective of her new husband. Gotta protect him from the melanoma! Also, I think women in general are more fastidious about things like skincare and applying sunblock? A lot of guys I know don’t give a fuck about sunblock because of perceived notions of “strength” and “manliness”, which is dumb because you will never be stronger than UV rays lol. But societal expectations regarding conformity to gender roles would have been much more enforced in the 15th century, especially for men like Owen. And sun in Wales compared to France? That man definitely didn’t apply sunblock without his wife forcing him to.

26. Who puts the fork in the microwave?

Hhhhhhhh. I find it hard to believe that anyone who does this would survive to adulthood lol (then again, my first flatmate did this and she’s still in the gene pool last time I checked). If I had to pick out of the two, I think Catherine would be the more likely to do this? Perhaps she accidentally left a fork in the microwave the first time she used it because she was a ~princess and a ~queen so was used to an army of servants doing everything for her. Owen, on the other hand, was her former servant so he’d definitely know how to operate a microwave properly.

47. Who says I love you first? How did it happen?

MY HEART. Tbh, I can actually imagine both of them being the first to say it? The little we know about Owen’s personality suggests he was rather bold and wasn’t just a meek and mild servant (well, he definitely wasn’t if he married THE QUEEN). And in Temple of Glas, he’s the one who gathers the courage to speak to Catherine. Personally though, I think Catherine was more likely to have told him she loved him first. There was a huge status and power imbalance between them, and I don’t think that some random Welsh servant could have gotten away with making romantic advances towards the Dowager Queen of England if he wasn’t sure of her feelings first.

As for how it happened, I assume it happened in private with no one else around? Perhaps it happened as Elis Gruffydd suggested, during a secret nighttime rendezvous with Catherine dressed incognito. In those circumstances, I guess there could be absolutely no doubt from either of them that their love was reciprocated <3

(The OTP ask meme is still open!)

[richmond-rex]

The what if scenario with Margaret Beaufort and Teen Henry Tudor visiting Elizabeth Woodville, please?

Hi! Thanks for the ask ❤️ 

The idea behind this story was to explore Margaret’s feelings and thoughts during the Readeption: the reunion with her son (she had not seen him in five years), and her anxiety and fears as she realises her cousin King Henry is no longer fit to rule and Edward IV is still out there and can possibly sweep the country to his side again. I wanted to bring Margaret and Elizabeth together because it is a scenario where, contrary to them working together during the 1483 crisis, the former’s good fortune is the same as the latter’s downfall. Here goes an excerpt:

The truth must be spoken plainly to one’s soul if not out loud: her royal cousin had shrivelled, no more fortitude could be found in him than in the husk of a hollow tree ravaged by the wind. Standing next to Archbishop Neville, Margaret had found a distance swimming — almost overflowing — in his eyes, one that seemed to be no more stranger to him than a constant companion. Years spent as a prisoner in the Tower could do that to a man, Margaret reckoned, years spent in imprisonment could do that to any man, especially one kept in less dignity than his royal birth commanded — the Lord’s anointed no less, another Son of Man thrown into the litter of scorn. 

My problem with this WIP (and why I haven’t been able to finish it) is that I can’t seem to figure out the dialogue order (how to make it a crescendo in terms of tension). I know how I want to finish this story but I haven’t been able to get there (wah). Again, thanks for sending this ask :) 🌹x

WIP ask

[ardenrosegarden]

for the character asks if you're still taking them: john duke of bedford!

favorite thing about them: He’s a morally grey character and a wonderfully talented schemer, but also very very attached to the well-being of his family. least favorite thing about them: I think he’s prone to black-and-white thinking and cognitive dissonance. favorite line:

Not to be gone from hence; for once I read That stout Pendragon in his litter sick Came to the field and vanquished his foes: Methinks I should revive the soldiers' hearts, Because I ever found them as myself.

brOTP: With his brothers! OTP: N/A nOTP: I don’t think he gets shipped a lot? So I don’t think I’ve seen any ships floating around that have rubbed me the wrong way.  random headcanon: That boy is ace af unpopular opinion: idk he’s a good boi and I love him song i associate with them: Heart Heavy by Mother Mother favorite picture of them:

[skeleton-richard]

I was checking Tracy Adams' Isabeau book and she makes a comment that Catherine was conceived during one of Charles VI's periods of madness - she was conceived late January/early February in 1401 and Charles had a "crisis" from 19 Jan-25 Feb. I don't know what to make of that, given the reports of his behaviour towards her during these periods (not saying that it was non-consensual or Catherine was the result of the adultery, it's just kinda exploding my mind right now) :\\

Hmmmmmm,,,,,,,,

I don’t know either. @princess-of-france, you’re our Catherine person, any thoughts?

Maybe he was briefly fine for a short time during that episode?

[feuillesmortes]

it's your birthday? HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Indeed it is 🤗🤗 thank you so much ❤️ you’re a darling! xx

[harry-leroy]

fic prompt: your Hal lives AU: the first time Hal saw his baby son, please!

Ahh okay this one got sad?? ahahaha - Also was going for a bit of a modern AU vibe because it’s too good of an AU. It feels a bit 1940s to me - I’ve been doing a lot of archival research there for the past few weeks, so it’s rubbed off. Enjoy! (Definitely an angsty fic I think...) 

                                                         * * * 

He had lived through pictures for months. Little letters were sent to the camps, with pictures that only Catherine had the skill to take; he kept them under his cot, under the Bible he had brought as well. Before bed, he would study them and try and figure out whether he looked more like him or Cate, hoping that he would take after his mother as he ran a hand over the scar on his face. He had missed milestone upon milestone, but a country needed him. His brother had needed him, and he hadn’t been there in time, and he would never live it down. No one would hurt his Henry, his Cate. 

When the country was rejoicing over a healthy baby prince, Hal had been on the front lines of war across the water. Every morning’s alarm was incessant gunfire. There were no kisses from his wife, none from his infant son. Instead, it was the scorch of burning fields and the cries of civilians. He was stuck in between wanting nothing more than silence, though hating it all the same. 

It was illness that had brought him back to England now. The war had weakened him, though he was expected to present a strong greeting to the English people upon his return. A speech perhaps, to boost morale. He hadn’t the energy for it, though. He wanted his wife, his son. 

By the time he returned, he could barely walk. There was no greeting, no speech. Instead, there was a fortnight in a hospital bed, fever, weakness, a blur of faces; one day there was finally clarity. He would be okay. While the nation supposedly cheered, Hal was kept in a quiet room in the palace, kept in a wheelchair until his strength returned, lest he fall back into sickness. 

“Your majesty,” it was uncle Exeter, who had returned with him. Hal raised his head slowly, still exhausted. “The queen wishes to see you,” 

Before Hal could respond, he looked past his uncle to see her standing there, the light from the window hitting her so she looked angelic. She wore a mint-colored dress, and was talking to a nurse-maid before taking a little boy into her arms, wearing a coordinating outfit. 

“Catherine…,” Hal could barely say her name before realizing that the boy was his son, his Henry. 

“Hello, my sweet,” Catherine said once she was close enough for him to hear. There were tears in her eyes; her husband looked ill. All of her attempts to visit him in hospital were denied, but she had prayed every night for his recovery. 

“Oh, Catherine,” Hal felt a tear roll down his cheek. “Is that... our?” 

“Oui, Henri,” she said. “This is Henry. Our son,” 

She came closer, and with a nod from Exeter and Hal, carefully sat the boy on Hal’s knees, still holding most of the boy’s weight. 

“He’s so beautiful,” Hal was crying now. “Oh Henry, I wish our first meeting were not like this,” 

Henry shifted uncomfortably on his father’s lap, perhaps sensing his weakness. Catherine took the boy back into her arms and kissed her husband on the forehead. 

“But here we are, and I would not rather have today any other way, mon cher,” she said. “I love you,” 

“I love you,” Hal reached out and took Catherine’s hand in his own. They would all be okay. 

[thewritingpossum]

nuingiliath I can't remember this book but I honestly am not surprised. I know she had 12-year-old Isabella having a tantrum about Edward not consumating their marriage immediately too. (Isabella was written as a bratty bitchy too so ugh).

Oh lord, I never got far enough in this book to meet Isabella and thanks God for that i guess...

I’m genuinely so confused too because the only reason why Eleanor didn’t wanted to sleep with her new husband right away was because of her youth but I’m pretty sure at this point of the story she’s 13 years old? I understand that different girls would have different views of sex at a different age but from a narrative perspective this is so bizarre like wtf

Also yeah, nothing says ‘sensible, original histfit about Edward II’ like making Isabella a bitchy brat, good job Susie, you did great. Oh, that makes me realize that I also didn’t read her version of Piers Gaveston, it must have been....something.

[bending-sickle]

"mercy" for the wip meme please? :)

She meets Justin by their trucks and hands him his coffee without a word. Luca shuffles beside them sipping on a soda. How he can drink cold stuff in this weather is beyond her.  For her part, Mercy chugs her coffee down quickly.  These paper cups are useless against the cold, and the backs of her hands are growing numb by the second.  Her palms, on the other hand, are burning. “Fucking winter.”

“Think it’s technically fall, still.”

“What do you know?”

Justin gestures around them. “It’s a sun thing,” he says, as if that explained everything.

Luca plays with the metal tab of his can. “Equinox,” he mutters.

Justin points at Luca. “That.”

Mercy grunts. “Fine.” She tips the last of her coffee into her mouth.  Her hands are starting to hurt with the cold, so she pushes her cup into Justin’s hands and pulls her gloves back on.  Mercy whistles through her teeth, lip curling in disgust. “There’s snow. It’s winter.”

It’s an Alaskan winter, which is worse.  She’s been here three years, driving back and forth across the state, picking up people’s trash - sorry, “valued possessions” - and dumping it somewhere else. Somewhere just as empty and ugly.  These towns up here have no heart.

“Sure.” Justin crumples his paper cup and tosses it at the garbage can, doing his best three-pointer pose, but misses by a yard. He tries again with Mercy’s cup.  It does not fall as far off the mark, at least.  Luca makes a perfect throw and belches.  Justin glares at him as he goes to pick up the cups and throw them into the garbage.

Together they walk to their trucks - an eight-wheeler and, nearly dwarfed beside it, a box truck - in silence.  When they reach the box truck, Luca wastes no time in clambering into the cabin and starting the engine.  Through the window, Mercy can see him pressing his hands against the air vents.  The kid never wears gloves. 

“I’m going to pick up his fingers off the ground one of these days,” she tells Justin.

The old man shrugs and zips his jacket up tighter. “Young blood.”  He gives her a wink. “Vant to suck his blood? Ve vill be warm!”  His attempt at an accent is atrocious.

From inside the truck, Luca gives a half-hearted “Gura, ba!!”  From the number of times he’s said it, Mercy has figured out it’s something like shut up in Romanian.  She has to admire his tenacity.  He must get a Dracula joke at his expense nearly every day, and he still tries to stop it. 

“You heard the kid.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Justin turns to go.  “See ya, blood suckers.”  He gives Mercy a double-handed gun gesture which Mercy has repeatedly told him makes him look ridiculous.

“Chupacabras are Puerto Rican, you idiot.” Mercy has told him this a thousand times, but Justin loves his joke too much to let it go.

[harry-leroy]

Yay! Sounds like you’ve got a good jumping off point - and yes I have Lauren Johnson’s book on my phone so I have to wait til May 7 to see how big she is but it’s really well done:) I’d love to read it when you’re done!!

For the “wish you would write a fic” thing: one where teenage/adult Henry is feeding ducks, and then maybe he’s doing it again after Gloucester’s gone - sorry to ruin your life with angst >_

Don’t be too sorry because I was already vaguely planning something like this! ;) I was playing with writing an extremely depressing epilogue to the duck-feeding fic about Henry reacting to Humphrey’s death before I decided it was better as its own fic. The basic image I have is Henry staring out the window at either an empty duck pond or Humphrey’s coffin being carried out while filled with this desire to just dive back to the time when he was 4 years old and his uncle of Gloucester was the best man in the whole, wide world and doing something to make them stay that way. But now I kinda want to do something like, five times Henry and Humphrey (or someone else) fed ducks together and one time Henry fed ducks by himself.

(what’s stopping me is needing to read up on Henry to get more of a sense of who he is and pondering the unanswerable questions  of what, exactly, was planned to be to done to Humphrey during his arrest and how much Henry knew/approved.)

[shredsandpatches]

falstaff fails at regicide please? :)

So this fic is a silly little AU crackfic where Falstaff is one of the men tapped by Exton to go and kill Richard and ends up saving his life instead (I think it was inspired by a conversation with someone years ago). 

It’s short, so I’m actually gonna go ahead and post all of it that exists. It is probably easy to tell that Richard is being played by Ben Whishaw (I wrote this not long after the Hollow Crown came out).

*

The road from London to Pomfret is quite a long one.

Long enough, really, to come up with some quite cunning plans, if the purpose of your trip is to come back with a present for the new king, one that is shaped remarkably like the old king, and one that would cost King Henry quite a bit of cold hard cash.

Which is, after all, what has gotten Sir John Falstaff into this business. It's not about the politics, since most of the time one king's as good as another. It's certainly not the fame. Not that Jack objects to fame, mind you, but there are much safer things to be well-known for. Like making the almost-impossible double Cheapside pub crawl.

But the money—that's something else again. Jack has a lifestyle to maintain, after all. He can handle a bit of dirty work. Granted this is dirtier than most, but it ought to pay well.

And so Jack Falstaff finds himself riding up to Pomfret in ungodly weather with equally ungodly company, contriving a plan which will result in him getting the lion's share of the money while committing a minimal portion of the...required business. It goes something like: step one, wait for other people to do the pointy things; step two, bring out bottles of sack for a celebratory job-well-done drink; step three, drink everyone else under the table; step four, return to Windsor with a big box of ex-king; step five, profit.

What he doesn't count on is that when the noise from the prison cell stops and he peeks nervously through the door, the last man standing, or rather, sliding down the wall in exhaustion, but still, the only one demonstrably alive, is the former king.

King Richard—former King Richard, whatever—looks a complete mess, all skinny and half-naked (in the dead of winter, no less) and covered in blood and sweat and dirt. Even though he has just, apparently, inexplicably cut down three men, Jack feels oddly sorry for him. Which is uncomfortable. It will make things a lot harder if he decides to go ahead with the stabby part (which seems a lot less of a good idea than it did ten minutes ago).

"I'm guessing this is a bad time," he calls out, sticking his head around the door frame, "but by any chance, is any of that blood yours?"

Richard looks up, startled, but he has enough self-possession left to ask: "What in God's name is wrong with you?"

"Well, I thought," Jack says, "you might have managed to get mortally wounded. Then I wouldn't have to stab you."

Richard grimaces incredulously. "You don't look like much of a killer."

Jack grins at him. "Neither do you."

"I am the son, and grandson, of the greatest warriors England has ever known," Richard says, pulling what remains of his dignity about him, and Jack shrugs.

"Fat lot of good it did you."

Richard raises an eyebrow. "I suppose you would know something about fat lots."

"The point is," Jack says, "I don't think you're in shape to kill me."

"And I don't think you have the nerve to kill me. I suppose that makes us even."

"You're probably right. Sounds like a good time for a drink to me!" Jack pulls a bottle from his holster and takes a swig. He's about to put it back when he thinks what moralizing types would consider better of it. Because Richard does look awfully cold and miserable. And he's probably going to die soon anyway, from this poxy weather if nothing else. What's he going to do, escape? 

Richard gives him what is patently an are-you-completely-insane look, but when Jack offers him the bottle, he takes it and drinks—after all, he's seen Jack drink, he obviously knows it's safe, and even if he'd been carrying a poison tablet in his mouth like some Italian assassin, it's not like Richard has anything to lose, really.

As soon as he's got a proper mouthful, though, Richard grimaces, although he manages to swallow anyway.

"How much sugar did you put in this, anyway?" he splutters.

"Oh, great," Jack says. "The doomed former king is a wine snob!"

[nebylitsa]

what (besides Dracula) are some of your favourite gothic books? What are the sexiest? Is there a difference between the two lists? 🧐

thanks for the ask! <3

i havent read all the famous gothic novels yet, but aside from dracula, my other top favorite one is frankenstein. i also have some favorite gothic short stories: “viy” by nikolai gogol, as well as “the fall of the house of usher,” “the masque of the red death,” “a descent into the maelstrom,” and “the oval portrait,” all by edgar allan poe. as a side note, alexander pushkin wrote some gothic-adjacent stuff that i really love - the short story “the queen of spades,” and four short plays known as “little tragedies.”

in terms of sexiness... thats a good question. certainly THE sexiest piece of gothic fiction is dracula. i find it funny when people are like “sexy vampires are a modern invention! the original vampires were NOT attractive!!!” because first of all, pretty much every dracula movie since 1931 contains sexual undertones. (whats a bit newer is the idea of the sympathetic/romantic vampire, of which the 1979 frank langella dracula is the earliest significant example, and the romantic vampire who is also a good guy or at least morally conflicted about their vampirism, which didnt originate with twilight but thats the major example of it that im familiar with.) and second of all, even the novel itself is pretty damn sexy??? bram stoker may not have meant it as a positive thing, but its... definitely there. the vampires may be described as scary and weird-looking and gross-smelling, but jonathan’s encounter with the brides? or dracula’s face being described at one point as “cruel and sensual”? or vampire lucy’s “languorous, voluptuous grace”? or the fact that dracula forces mina to drink his blood from a gash in his BARE CHEST and not like, his arm or something? absolutely horny on main. (which is why it might sound weird to say that im interested in asexual readings of this novel, but there you have it. dracula contains multitudes.)

as for other sexy gothic novels/stories - wuthering heights is pretty damn sexy, i admit begrudgingly. i have a tumultuous love-hate relationship with this book, which is fitting, i guess; it genuinely enrages and tires me but at the same time i get the urge to reread it every once in a while. (and i have to say, gothic romance doesnt get much better than “You said I killed you – haunt me, then! [...] Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”) so im not sure if its on my list of favorite gothic novels but it certainly is on the list of sexiest ones!

out of the other stuff i mentioned, i guess poe also qualifies, but more in a “catching a glimpse of a beautiful, consumptive-looking young person / being tormented by horrific visions / dancing a slow waltz with the personification of death while wearing layers of fancy restricting clothes” kind of way. also, pushkin’s (admittedly only marginally gothic) “mozart and salieri” (from the little tragedies) is kinda sexy because its basically just “the inherent homoeroticism of developing an envious obsession with a young pretty boy-genius composer, inviting him to dinner in order to secretly poison him, and weeping when he plays the piano for you.”

[beardofkamenev]

17, 20 (>_>) and 27!

Thanks for the ask!

17. What historical item would you like to own?

Ooooooooh this is hard! Tbh, it never entered my mind that I would own a historical item. I’d love to own Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (I have an entire tag devoted to drooling over the pretty colours), but no conservator in their right mind would let me handle a medieval manuscript. The Goldenes Rössl (Little Golden Horse Shrine) has also been living rent free in my mind ever since I first laid my peasant eyes upon it:

LOOK AT IT. LOOK UPON ITS GLORIOUS GLORIOUSNESS.

You probably already know this because it’s Isabeau-related, but here’s the Wiki description anyway:

The Little Golden Horse [given to Charles VI of France by Isabeau of Bavaria in 1404] is the single surviving documented étrennes of the period. Weighing 26 pounds (12 kg), the gold piece is encrusted with rubies, sapphires and pearls. It depicts Charles kneeling on a platform above a double set of stairs, presenting himself to the Virgin Mary and child Jesus, who are attended by John the Evangelist and John the Baptist. A jewel encrusted trellis or bower is above; beneath stands a squire holding the golden horse.

It’s definitely sturdier than a manuscript and I can use it as a paperweight or something.

20. Who, if anyone, is your historical crush?

Answered here ;)

27. What’s your favourite historical “What if…” scenario?

MORE HARD QUESTIONS. Maybe “What if Prince Arthur lived?” But that’s so #basic and I just like, don’t give a shit about Henry VIII’s reign lol. Maybe “What if Henry V didn’t die early?” You’d have to wonder whether the English would have lost all their French territories under his rule, or if the Wars of the Roses would have even happened. The Tudor dynasty almost certainly wouldn’t have happened, since Catherine de Valois wouldn’t have been widowed so young and therefore wouldn’t have married Owen Tudor the Ultimate Medieval Stud. I’ve also sometimes wondered “What if Edmund Tudor didn’t die young?” It’s universally agreed upon that he was a shit, but I’m curious as to how Margaret Beaufort and Henry VII’s lives would have turned out if he had lived longer (would he have been attainted like his brothers? Most likely), or whether Henry would have even become king had he not died and freed Maggie B up to marry Thomas Stanley.

(The history ask meme is still open!)

[richmond-rex]

What do you think Henry VII remembers, if anything, of his other uncle Henry VI?

This is such an interesting question and something that I myself have been wondering, so thank you for providing me with the opportunity to expand my thoughts on here 🌹

We know that Henry VII only ever saw his uncle King Henry VI once during his life, when he was 13 years old. However, I’d argue King Henry must have caused quite a great impression on him, and considering Henry Tudor was old enough at that time, also a profoundly lasting one. So far young Henry Earl of Richmond had been living as a ward of his uncle Jasper’s enemies, the Herberts. By 1470 his old guardian, William Herbert, had been executed, and then, as the Earl of Warwick changed sides and brought about Henry VI’s readeption, Henry Tudor was returned to his uncle Jasper who took him to London to meet King Henry VI. That Jasper felt like acquainting his nephew with his brother denotes a special degree of closeness and advocates for his idea of family, in my opinion.

According to André, Henry VII’s court poet and self-styled regius historiographus, on 27 October 1470 Henry VI held ‘a splendid feast with the nobles and best men of the kingdom’ to commemorate his return to the throne. As the king was washing his hands, young Richmond was brought to his presence, and according to André, ‘the king prophesied that someday the boy would undertake the governance of the kingdom and would have all things under his own power.’ Polydore Vergil, a historian that began his service under Henry VII in 1506, wrote in his Three Books that in that 1470 meeting ‘the king... is reported to have said:’

“This truly, this is he unto whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over the dominion.”

It seems not even Vergil lends much credence to this tale as expressed by his choice of words: reported to have said. As expected, this myth has largely been viewed as Tudor propaganda and indeed the episode has been immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part III. In the play, King Henry VI meets a toddler Henry Richmond (then escorted by Somerset), calls him ‘England’s hope’, and says Richmond was ‘Likely in time to bless a regal throne’. Given that King Henry VI had his own son Prince Edward as his heir at the time, it seems unlikely he would ever have said such a thing. However, if anything remotely close to that happened, then I agree with Leanda de Lisle in saying that it must have been King Henry VI taking Henry Tudor to be his own son Edward, who thanks to his imprisonment in the Tower he had not seen for five years (and would not ever see again). It’s absurdly sad to think King Henry VI would confound his nephew with his son but arguably also not out of the realm of possibility. We don’t know if Henry Tudor saw his uncle King Henry again, but it’s also not unlikely that he, his mother and uncle Jasper stayed at court for the feast of All Hallows’ (1 November) and All Souls’ Day (2 November).

If King Henry VI ever made such prophecy, wittingly or not, then it must have greatly impacted on Henry Tudor. Henry VII believed to have been chosen by God to, against all odds, become king of England. He once wrote about ‘the crown which it has pleased God to give us with the victory over our enemy at our first field’. Henry Tudor was reported to be very pious—he made pilgrimages to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury every Easter, as well as frequent pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and donations to the shrine of St Vincent Ferrer in Brittany. He also founded the cult of the Breton saint St Armel in England and boosted the teachings of St Francis by his patronage of the Franciscan order. He especially favoured the Observants (the Franciscans, also known as the Greyfriars), granting them annuities for the establishment of monasteries in England and abroad. It seems he also favoured staying at religious houses when travelling or going on progress around the kingdom.

Most importantly, Henry VII held a singular devotion to the Virgin Mary and his adoption of the red rose as his personal symbol—aside from dynastic reasons—had everything to do with the religious connotations of that flower. Henry VII could have associated himself with his uncle Henry VI by adopting his antelope badge, for example, but instead, he chose the five-petal flower associated with the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ. The Franciscans were noted for their devotion to the Passion, and Henry VII had come in contact with the Observants during his exile in Brittany. The rose had five petals like the five wounds of Christ—St Bernard of Clairvaux once stated: “As many wounds as there are on the Saviour’s body, so many roses are there! Look at His feet and His hands; do you not see roses?” 

Forgive me for still going on a tangent about it, but Henry VII’s personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception is exemplified in his Book of Hours, where a miniature shows a figure representing the king kneeling at a prayer desk before a vision of the Virgin as a baby held by her mother, St Anne (or, alternatively, The Virgin and the Child Jesus). His devotion to the Virgin was also highlighted in his rebuilding of the Lady Chapel (now Henry VII’s Chapel) at Westminster Abbey which I will return to in a moment.

I’m not sure but I think it was Vergil who reported Henry VII as having said that religion was his ‘continual refuge’ during exile. His piety has been largely attributed to the influence of his mother Margaret Beaufort, herself also a very pious woman. But given how many years—and formative years those were—they spent apart, I imagine that Henry must have looked up to someone closer to him at the time, namely his uncle Jasper Tudor. We know that after the death of Catherine of Valois Jasper and his brother Edmund were raised by nuns at Barking Abbey, and that then at some point they joined King Henry VI’s court. According to John Blacman, Henry VI’s biographer and chaplain writing in 1485:

[…] and like pains did [Henry VI] apply in the case of his half-brothers, the Lords Jasper and Edmund, in their boyhood and youth; providing for them most strict and safe guardianship, putting them under the care of virtuous and worthy priests, both for teaching and for right living and conversation, lest the untamed practices of youth should grow rank if they lacked any to prune them.

Blacman also claimed that the king personally protected his half-brothers from sexual temptation by keeping ‘careful watch through hidden windows of his chamber’ (yes, I know). Like his uncle King Henry VI, Henry VII would also set a court that ‘maintained the highest standards of sexual behaviour’. Indeed, Retha Warnicke made an extensive compilation of scandals during the first two Tudor reigns and not a single case of sexual misconduct was found to have taken place during Henry VII’s time, marking his court as a decidedly different one than Edward IV’s had been.

Going back to Henry VI’s supposed prophecy, his words surely must have acquired a great weight in Henry Tudor’s mind by 1483 when he made his bid to the English throne. By that time King Henry VI had become a popular saint in England and even though Edward IV had tried to have him modestly—and somewhat obscurely—buried in Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, people had started to flock to his grave. A peasant claimed that Henry VI helped him when he had a bean trapped in his ear, which only popped out after he prayed to the king. Painted images of King Henry VI began showing up in churches around the country, like this one at Barton in Norfolk:

One of King Henry VI’s most ardent devotees was Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort (Jasper’s feelings towards the cult are unknown) who had met her kinsman when she was about nine years old. When King Henry VI allegedly offered her the option of remaining married to Suffolk’s son or be remarried to his brother Edmund, Margaret says St Nicholas came to her in a dream dressed as a bishop, telling her to choose Edmund. Again, if this story is true or not, we may never know, but Margaret told that to her confessor John (bishop, then saint) Fisher—why would a famously pious woman such as Margaret Beaufort lie to her own confessor, thus committing a sin? It might be that the events took a mystical turn in Margaret’s imagination as a young girl, but that she associated divine intervention to hers and her son’s fate, and likewise to King Henry VI’s proposal, is clear.

It seems Richard III tried to control King Henry VI’s ever-growing cult by moving Henry VI’s body from Chertsey Abbey to St George’s Chapel at Windsor, a place where visitors wouldn’t have easy access to the king. Nevertheless, when Henry VII came to the throne he wholeheartedly encouraged pilgrimages to the place. Henry VII launched an official campaign to have his uncle canonised, with several petitions to popes Innocent VIII, Alexander VI and Julius II. Henry also ordered the compilation of a book of miracles worked by his uncle, and a biography of Henry VI was published in 1500 claiming that Henry VI had been ever pious and chaste during his life, towards his queen never behaving ‘unseemly ... but with all conjugal honesty and gravity’. Henry VII planned to have the body of King Henry VI re-interred at the heart of the new Lady Chapel he was planning at Westminster Abbey. 

However much Henry VII enjoyed good relations with the papacy, especially Pope Innocent VIII, his campaign to have his uncle King Henry VI canonised never came into fruition. Henry VII decided for him and his wife to be buried at his new Lady Chapel instead, next to the tomb of his grandmother Queen Catherine of Valois. In his will, he stated his wish for his body to be buried:

“in the Chapell where our said graunt Dame laye buried, the which Chapell we have begoune to buylde of newe, in the honour of our blessed Lady.”

That doesn’t mean Henry VII set aside the memory of his uncle King Henry VI. He employed the same man that was overseeing the construction of the Lady Chapel at Westminster, Reginald Bray, to continue the rebuilding of St George’s Chapel at Windsor set in motion by his predecessor Edward IV (it came to be informally known as the Bray Chapel). The modest thirteenth-century chapel of Edward the Confessor was expanded into a vast cathedral-like chapel where, importantly, Henry VI’s body was placed alongside a famous relic, the fragment of the True Cross (a reliquary known as the Cross of Gneth) and the bones of John Schorne (revered for curing gout and toothache).

We may argue that Henry VII’s campaign to have King Henry VI’s canonised was fundamentally political (much like Richard II’s campaign for Edward II) as many historians have done. King Henry VI as a saint, combined with his supposed prophecy, would successfully contribute to the image of Henry VII’s reign as one chosen by God. When we put Henry VII’s religious devotion into perspective, though, his efforts to have ‘the glorious King Henry’ canonised take another dimension—in fact, there’s no doubt that in Henry VII’s eyes God had intervened in his favour. Henry VII’s will also stated his wish for an image of himself to be placed in St Edward’s chapel at Westminster, depicting him returning to God and the Virgin Mary the circlet with which he had been crowned at the Battle of Bosworth.

This is me purely speculating, but I think that even though Henry VII only came in contact with King Henry VI once in his life, his half-uncle might have exercised a great influence on him through his uncle Jasper. Jasper seemed to have been genuinely attached to his brother Henry on a personal level as well as devoted to his political cause. If Henry VI’s saintly qualities had been enough to impress Margaret Beaufort, it is very likely that they might have impressed young Henry of Richmond as well.

[ardenrosegarden]

reverse unpopular opinion: constance did nothing wrong and richard i was just a shitlord

You know what? Honestly, yeah.

I could play devil’s advocate here and make a case for Richard’s position with his brother and Philip II but 1.) it’s real reverse popular opinion hours 2.) I still don’t think that excuses what Richard did and how he chose to move forward.

Honestly, I can’t believe Ranulf would’ve kidnapped Constance himself if he didn’t know he would have Richard backing him up, and I think to believe Richard didn't want Constance out of the way or help plan it is just naïve.

There are two larger arguments I tend to hear that Richard was unhappy that Constance didn’t let Arthur grow up in the English Court so he had to take him by force and that he was unhappy that Constance made Arthur duke without consulting him.  In either case...being angry that she made either of these decisions was considered an insultingly massive overreach of Richard’s power; while he was their overlord, he was not Duke of Brittany and there was a reason none of the Plantagenet kings could ever title themselves as such- because Brittany would go into open revolt.

That compounded with refusing to let Constance and the other hostages go as he originally agreed as well as the damage his men and mercenaries caused, I really can’t see how Richard was in the right here.