#other: william king

[johntorrington]

we’re reading this terrible book on call that’s claiming that there was a big conspiracy surrounding the franklin expedition and its disappearance and i don’t know how this got past any editors. james ross clark.

[anghraine]

I was talking to my students and then some family members about how the death of Elizabeth I and succession of James was necessarily an occasion of upheaval, even when it wasn't necessarily violent or flirting with treason or whatever. For one, the death of a monarch that will lead to a new dynasty (even a related one!) is not quite the same as a familiar figure inheriting the country's rule from their parent or grandparent. It's usually a bigger change, with dynamics of loyalties and affiliations shifting around—that's part of the reason Elizabeth delayed acknowledging James as her heir.

Typically, you'd see courtiers etc deserting a dying monarch in order to signal their loyalty to the new monarch, even if the old one wasn't actually dead yet. Elizabeth's reluctance to share royal power was fundamental to her reign and her public image, so it's not at all surprising that she would be loath to encourage that kind of desertion in any particular direction.

Of course, another thing that complicates the Elizabeth -> James succession is that she had reigned for a long time (44 years iirc). By the time she was dying, a good number of English people had few personal memories of life under any other monarch, and those who did would remember the abrupt and unstable reigns of her predecessors, Edward and Mary. So James's accession came with uncertainty about what exactly it would entail, and a lot of late Elizabethan/early Jacobean drama in English is very concerned with questions of what obligations the governed owe to their monarchs (obedience? loyalty? are those always the same thing?), but also what obligations monarchs themselves have to their people.

This seemed especially pertinent to Lear, in which multiple characters defy capricious orders from a monarch or other authority out of loyalty: Kent challenges Lear and is banished, so skulks around in disguise to continue serving him, Edgar also skulks around in disguise after Gloucester renounces him and ends up offering what comfort he can to his father, and Cordelia returns to Britain with the French army in her ultimately futile attempt to help Lear. Meanwhile, Lear loses everything, is driven to take shelter in a peasant hovel, and starts to contemplate how his own failures as a king resulted in, well, peasant hovels.

Anyway, now I'm thinking about what a wild figure Elros must have been as, specifically, a monarch to the Númenóreans. He lived for five hundred years. Even his own children (also half-Elves! sort of!) and other descendants who benefited from his lifespan didn't live as long, and most Númenóreans during his earlier reign wouldn't have come near to it. Undoubtedly there were Elves who had known Elros in the First Age who were baffled at him choosing mortality and DEATH, and meanwhile on Númenor, there are all these people living out their extended lifespans under the reign of a half-Elf king who was ruling their people at their birth and would still be ruling after they died of old age. We know Elros retained his half-Elvish characteristics as well, so they've got this visibly Elvish, barely-aging, eternal king who looks like Lúthien as part of the fabric of life for centuries.

Yes, he's literally the first king—but for a lot of earlier Númenóreans, he's also the only king they will ever know. It takes him an incredibly long time to weary of the world as other mortals do. By the time Elros finally gets weary of Arda, and willingly lays down his life and passes to the unknown fate of mortals, Tar-Amandil is stepping into some very big shoes.

[kurain-genealogy]

i made this post 8 years ago shortly after the fnaf movie was announced and while i still agree with the sentiment 14-year-old me had, i'm older and wiser now and have experienced the horrors of horny slasher fans and people who thirst over real-life serial killers and i understand that absolutely nothing will stop those type of people from wanting to fuck purple guy fnaf. and you know what? he's not real. if you want to fuck his crusty ass then what ever. not my problem. fuck that old man but you will not fix him you will not make him worse you wont even do a secret third thing. basically,

[accioroyals]

golden child, lion boy; tell me what it’s like to conquer

-

photos from pinterest

[dakukabi]

the eternal mood of being out and suddenly having a writing/art idea

[victoriademedici]

royal men + text post memes (insp.)

[mx-myth]

Okay so I've had some meta thoughts about Laurence's amnesia and how it relates to his relationship with Tharkay sitting in my drafts for like over a year now so I figured I'd finally clean it up and post it. Heads up it's really long.

Laurence finally consciously realises that he loves Tharkay (or is in love with him, whatever nuance you'd like) after "knew him, and knew himself." But at this point he's completely in pieces as a person (more on this next paragraph). Post-amnesia, he's an entirely different man. Pre-Temeraire Laurence is the harshest, strictest version both of and with himself. He follows the rules to the letter, basically takes Temeraire only out of duty in the beginning, and even keeps the promise between him and Edith despite there being no formal arrangement at all. Post-Temeraire but pre-amnesia Laurence has softened. He's putting less emphasis on the rules and more on his morals (see: treason). He has more leeway but still carries that honor/duty/order with himself.

Which is why post-amnesia Laurence is the version of himself that discovers that he loves Tharkay. In the wake of losing his memories and then regaining them he's lost and unmoored. Both of his past selves are so different and therefore so distant. They're both true but it's too jarring for him - especially in his current circumstances, much less the overall war - so Laurence becomes a new person. This is Laurence at his most vulnerable, his most unguarded, who smiles more often now because he doesn't really know that he didn't smile that much before. He has two major tethers to his personhood: Temeraire and Tharkay (I hesitate to say only tethers, simply because Laurence's life isn't that small, but repeatedly these two are the ones who have had the biggest impact on his life, who have kept him going). Obviously he loves Temeraire, he's never going to stop loving Temeraire, he just isn't capable of it, but seeing Temeraire didn't bring back his memories (I can't imagine how Temeraire must have felt, meeting a version of Laurence who had never met him). Laurence loves Temeraire in the most unconditional, selfless way - to be very Greek about it, his philia. But I think when he finally comprehends how Tharkay was the catalyst behind this radical change of his self he dives into his memories again and goes over them in excruciating detail (and he was definitely doing that already, but now he's doing it with a lens exclusively focused on Tharkay). At some point he comes to the realisation that Tharkay loves him, and that he loves him, and that he's been unconsciously shoving it down every time it's surfaced (past-Laurence was saying no homo while actively homo-ing). And with the benefit of being an new version of the same person (and also some hindsight, finally), this Laurence says, I've committed treason. My country sees me as a traitor but they still need me to serve them as a tool. I lost myself once in a war (see: "what are you doing?") that's still being fought. Time is short and there's no guarantee I won't lose my memories again, that I will still be the person I am right now. What do I have to lose?

(And on some level, this Laurence thinks, what can stop me?)

He begins giving to Tharkay what Tharkay always had given to him. His acts of devotions start small (relative to Tharkay's; transporting too many ferals is obviously a little outside of what Laurence can feasibly do). He cares for Tharkay once he wakes ("have you noticed the top of your head appears likely to come off?"), he helps him eat and drink, he massages his hands once they heal, he stays with him through the nightmares that come to haunt him. And he continues doing these little things for Tharkay, hoping that he understands (he's willing to wait, Tharkay waited for him after all, and Laurence doesn't want to push him, especially as he's healing). But I think the act that hits Tharkay like, oh, it's different this time is when Laurence bargains his freedom to Napoleon. I feel like that carries unspeakable meaning for Tharkay, who was ostracized growing up and ended up never having a "permanent" home since he travelled so much. I can't imagine that he hasn't been in a similar situation before, but he's probably always been expected to weasel his way out of it without any outside help. He's trained himself out of expecting someone to help him, to care enough about him to save him. Yet part of the man who turned to treason simply so the dragons of France wouldn't die in pain lives on in this Laurence. Pre-Temeraire Laurence is rules and post-Temeraire pre-amnesia Laurence is morals, but post-amnesia Laurence is all heart. There was never a way he was going to leave Tharkay behind.

So Tharkay starts watching him. He watches Laurence continue to devote himself to him, again and again. He brings him his coat on cold days. When it rains and their scars ache he curls around his hands and rubs lotion into them. When he goes into town he always brings Tharkay back a little gift. He starts growing vegetables in the garden and he learns how to cook non-wartime foods and how to knit (because he is a man forged by war and what does one even do during peacetime when one's dragon is busy reforming the government, anyway?) and suddenly he's providing for Tharkay like never before. He looked away for one moment and suddenly Laurence's prescence and all that he does has made the manor a home.

Yet Tharkay, for years, has told himself so many times that Laurence is off-limits, untouchable, that he can love him but that there's no chance that Laurence will love him back. The only way he can love Laurence is silently, nearly from afar, and so he tried to do that. But he can't just stand by and so every time he finds himself committing a deux ex Tharkay (see: ferals, again). He understands that there's some shit Laurence needs to learn himself (and god is this series very good about character development for Laurence) but he's not going to do nothing when the man in about to die. For him it's about caring and providing for Laurence even if he doesn't know it. He learns to content himself with the knowledge that, even if nothing comes of it, he can still be by Laurence's side.

But then the amnesia plot happens (which he only learns of after all of it goes down) and suddenly there is a half-stranger wearing the skin of the man he loves (loved, he tells himself) looking at him with those familiar blue eyes filled with a completely unfamiliar emotion. He's relieved that Laurence remembers but he's said that his Laurence is gone that he's even thinking of it like that (Tharkay has a lot of anger, both at himself and others and the world). Laurence is right in front of him, he's not gone at all, but he's gone in a way that matters. But also this new Laurence is by his side all the time. He's feeding him and helping him drink and dress and he sleeps on the floor by his bedside. Tharkay is so confused because this has to be some kind of fantasy dream he's having. He must still be in the cave (and it's believable that he is, because he returns there every night in his dreams). But he isn't and he has to struggle to come to terms with this new Laurence.

So every time Laurence does something even remotely nice he hyper-analyses it and rationalizes it to himself. He deludes himself into thinking that this is normal for Laurence now. It's normal for Laurence to fuss and hen over him now; it's normal for him to smile at him with that emotion written plainly on his face that Tharkay still hasn't (refuses) to decipher. And he does this well into post-canon.

For that reason he only gets with the program when Laurence has to leave the manor (leave home) for a long while (probably with Temeraire) and suddenly Tharkay is all alone in this huge manor. He's wearing the socks Laurence knitted for him and eating food Laurence grew and walking into rooms and seeing little parts of him scattered everywhere. There's a novel he's reading left on the table by the chair he prefers in the library. There's a cookbook in the kitchen in which he's bookmarked recipes he thinks he might like. Tharkay finds a handwritten list of things they need to buy in town left out for him. He left his pillows on Tharkay's bed because he knows he likes sleeping with a ton of pillows (and they smell like him, and Tharkay pretends he doesn't bury his face in him, that he doesn't miss him while he's gone). When Tharkay wakes up in the morning he makes two cups of tea and waits for Laurence to come in from talking with Temeraire before remembering that neither of them are here (home). He expects Laurence to appear in the evenings to ask if he wants to go on a walk through the grounds with him (and he always ends up saying yes). Tharkay learns that the manor is too big for one man who has always been a little too lonely in his life.

So until Laurence returns home he plots and plans and agonizes. After a week once Laurence has come home (and the first thing he had said to him was welcome home, and Laurence had beamed at him, and it was so unbelievably natural to say it) Tharkay begins his attempts at reciprocating. He wakes up earlier so that he can brew Laurence tea so he can take it out to sit with Temeraire. He says that he cooked some of the recipes from Laurence's cookbook and insists on making them for Laurence (he had to figure out his system of marking which recipes were Laurence's favourites). He gifts him a sturdy, functional, and beautifully crafted knife to wear around the house for daily use; he specifically makes sure the knife is up to Temeraire's standards. In fact, Tharkay talks to Temeraire about everything, and Temeraire tells him, with no minced words while completely drawing his own conclusions, that it's very nice that Tharkay is asking him for his blessing, but does he really need it at this point? Haven't they been courting long enough? He's always approved of Tharkay, because he makes Laurence happy.

That's how Tharkay realises he and Laurence have been dancing around each other like shy birds, both of them subtly showing off but not making the first move. And maybe he realises that Laurence is thinking how he used to think - that it's okay as long as he can be by his side, that he doesn't need his love reciprocated (it's a very long chain of Tharkay loving Laurence, Laurence knowing Tharkay loves him and loving him back, and Tharkay loving Laurence and knowing he knows he loves him and loves him back). And of course Tharkay wasn't going to make the first move back then, and if Laurence hasn't by now, then maybe he should borrow some of Temeraire's courage.

It's something small. The words come later, given how action-forward both Laurence and Tharkay are. They don't even need words. Maybe Tharkay takes Laurence's hand during dinner and intertwines their fingers, maybe he touches Laurence's cheek after he's braided his hair as their eyes meet in the mirror, maybe as they pack away the port and piquet he kisses him good night. Whatever it is, they look at each other and simply know. Tharkay sees Laurence slowly start to smile, a huge one that spreads across his entire face, one that he's only seen on Laurence when he thinks he's alone with Temeraire. He seems to brighten, almost radiating light.

For his part, Laurence reciprocates. He squeezes Tharkay's hand, he turns his cheek into Tharkay's touch, he pulls him in for another kiss. He watches as something seems to drop from Tharkay, something that he hadn't even known he was carrying. He becomes loose and relaxed, his body language more open as he looks at Laurence with one of his little smiles, a bit of shyness that he's never seen before evident on his face. He tells Tharkay that he's the most beautiful person he's ever seen.

[tianalaurence1]

A wet afternoon at Buckingham Palace as the Prince of Wales hosts a garden party on behalf of the King. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, Zara and Mike Tindall, and Peter Phillips are also present. 📷 @YuiMok

[soupmanspeaks]

silly salvaged and its william just being a looney toons character and just decides to possess random electrical things throughout the pizzaplex and is like "HAHA! TRY TO CATCH ME NOW, MICHAEL!" and then stuff like ovens and lights and pat pats all go haywire and the staff have no idea whats going on but Freddy just is frantically running all throughout the pizzaplex trying to catch william and its just getting real annoying for mike and he's like "God how did cassidy keep doing this for years"

[aimeedaisies]

Their Majesties/The Waleses/Edinburghs/The Laurences/The Tindalls

The British Royal Family’s 2023 Christmas cards

[heinzezsquirt]

more horror movies

[leonisandmurex]

Past, present and future Swedish with British monarchs

King Gustaf vi Adolf with Queen Elizabeth ii, King Carl xvi Gustaf with King Charles iii, Crown Princess Victoria with Prince William

[wanderingmind867]

I wanted to give Martian Manhunter a bit of a rogues gallery, since he never really had one in the 60s. So I took the liberty of trying to create some villains for him. I may continue working on it at school. And this was probably my most original idea: I based his powers, backstory and even his initials on my real life. The Conqueror of Constants: the Enemy of Time!

The Conqueror of Constants (Sean Casey): Sean Casey is a man beaten down by the passage of time. He's only 40, and yet he feels like he's been alive 3000 years. His mother died when he was 17. His father died in a car crash when he was 35. He's never been able to make any close friends, and his whole life has felt like nothing but chaos. Constant shifting of the earth beneath his feet, constant changing. It's ruined his life. Why can't things just stay the same!?

Driven mad with desperation, Casey flung himself into researching a way to slow time down to a crawl. For five years (ever since his father died), he's holed himself up in a bunker and slowly worked to perfect his machinery. And recently, he finally did it. He managed to get his machine to work. A wrist mounted cannon that fires a beam; a beam with the ability to freeze time around an object, keeping them alive and immortal, albeit stuck at their present apperance, age and point in time. Never again will time ruin his life. Never again will time steal from him! No, he'll steal from time! Now he is the Conqueror of Constants, Enemy of Time!

First drawn to J'onn's attention when J'onn has to investigate a series of robberies in town where the people never noticed anything was missing until a full 24 hours later, J'onn realized he was pulling off his robberies by stopping time around the bank, meaning the brains of all the people within the bank were stuck at their present moment in time. They only saw life as it was, never dreaming he was stealing all the money in the bank in the meantime.

J'onn tries to trail this so called "Conqueror of Constants" by following him while in disguised in his human identity of Detective John Jones. But when "John" manages to break into the Conqueror's lab, that's when J'onn finally realizes he's outmatched. Because Sean Casey trains his time cannon on J'onn, and freezes him in his human body. He can't shapeshift back, no matter how hard he tries. He's stuck in his human form, helpless to use any of his martian powers.

Thankfully, the Conqueror underestimated the Manhunter's skill, even when trapped in an ordinary mortal body. J'onn still manages to stop Sean Casey's wave of crime, but he's sadly unable to restore himself back to his martian apperance. For around 10 issues of his comic, I'd have J'onn stuck in ordinary detective mode. It's only after a chance encounter with Doctor Light (back on his quest to pick off the members of the Justice League one by one), that J'onn manages to regain his shapeshifting abilities and become the Martian Manhunter once again. Somehow Doctor Light's blinding lights managed to break the mental block J'onn was stuck under, which was certainly very bad news for Doctor Light.

But back to the Conqueror of Constants: He continues to appear all throughout Martian Manhunter's comic, constantly trying to find new ways to preserve things as they are. At one point, he manages to freeze J'onn while he's Invisible. At another point, he invents a time reversal ray and gets J'onn stuck inside his memories of his past on Mars. The Conqueror of Constants is always finding ways to beat time!

In fact, he even shows up in a crossover story with Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow and Speedy (otherwise known as me testing out giving these three their own stories, like Superman, Batman and Robin had). In that story, him and Clock King end up very reluctantly teaming up, using their control over time and clocks to wreak havok all across North America. Only J'onn, Green Arrow and Speedy can stop them.

But in any case, I think the Conqueror of Constants is an amazing villian idea, and I think he should definitely fight more people than just Martian Manhunter. Martian Manhunter is his main foe, but he's capable of going toe to toe with just about anyone. Superman? Batman? The Flash? Aquaman? I'm sure we could find clever story ideas with Sean fighting any one of these heroes.

[king-of-havoc]

SPOOKY MONTH FANDOM

What do you head canon Skid and Pump's real names to be? If you have any ideas at all that is HJFDCS

[accioroyals]

but you’re a king and im a lionheart

and as the world comes to an end

i’ll be here to hold your hand

cause you’re my king and im your lionheart

-

king and lionheart - of monsters and men

photos from pinterest

[foxyfire101]

My favorite thing is logging onto Tumblr in class and just praying that I don’t see any naked gay men kissing— please my classmates don’t need to know I ship two old fictional men with a very complicated relationship that involves a lot of stabbing in the back, dead kids and fursuits