#queens

[city-of-ladies]

The daughter of a great queen, Padishah Khatun (1256–1295) fought for her rights and proved herself to be a capable and determined ruler.

A strategic alliance

Padishah was the daughter of Qutb al-Din Mohammad, a member of the Qutlugh-Khanid dynasty, which was loyal to the Mongol Empire, and his wife, Qutlugh Turkan. After Qutb al-Din’s death in 1257, Turkan seized power, ruling Kerman (modern-day Iran) in her own name.

Padishah, her mother’s favorite child, received an exceptional education and excelled in poetry and calligraphy. In 1272, she married Abaqa Khan, the ruler of the Ilkhanate. Her marriage came with a grand household, and she frequently met with her mother and acted as her representative at court. This position was vital for defending her mother’s interests and maintaining her rule over Kerman

A wronged daughter

The death of Abaqa Khan in 1282 changed everything. His successor, Tegüder Ahmad, deposed Turkan and handed the throne of Kerman to Turkan’s stepson, Suyurghatmish. Soon after, Turkan passed away. Padishah chose not to accompany her mother’s remains back to Kerman, instead remaining at court to safeguard her interests. However, she sent her sister, Bibi Terken, to represent her in Kerman.

Tegüder’s reign was short-lived. In 1284, his successor Argun summoned Suyurghatmish to court and divided Kerman between Padishah and her rival. Unsurprisingly, Padishah was disappointed by this decision. Meanwhile, Suyurghatmish strengthened his position by marrying a Mongol princess, Kurdujin Khatun, eventually regaining full control of Kerman.

Padishah later married Argun’s brother, Gaykhatu. Although she managed to recover her personal domain of Sirjan in 1289, she had to wait patiently for the tides to shift in her favor.

Queen at last

Argun’s death in 1291 paved the way for Padishah’s return to power. Gaykhatu, now head of the Ilkhanate, reinstated Padishah as ruler of Kerman in 1292. She adopted the title Safwat al-Dunya wa al-Din (“Purity of the World and the Faith”) and also referred to herself as Ḵodāvand-e ʿĀlam (“Lord of the World”), a title that appeared on her coins.

Her first act was to neutralize her opposition. She imprisoned Suyurghatmish, and, doubting his loyalty, had him strangled.

Like her mother, Padishah’s reign was marked by justice and a dedication to the welfare of her people. She encouraged charitable works and extended her influence to nearby regions. Writing under the pen name Lāla Ḵātun, she composed poetry and supported scholars and poets.

Cycle of revenge

The assassination of her husband Gaykhatu in 1295 by his successor, Baydu, placed Padishah in a precarious position. Baydu was married to Shah ʿAlam, Suyurghatmish’s daughter, who sought revenge for her father’s death. Suyurghatmish’s widow, Kurdujin, was also ready to act.

Although Padishah remained in Kerman, many of her supporters abandoned her. She sought alliances but found none. Kurdujin, with the backing of loyal amirs, besieged Kerman, forcing Padishah to surrender.

Padishah was taken to court and eventually assassinated, likely at the instigation of Kurdujin and Shah ʿAlam. Her remains were returned to Kerman, where she was buried in the seminary built by her mother.

Though Kurdujin emerged victorious, she was never formally crowned ruler of Kerman, and her triumph was short-lived. She later became queen of Shiraz in 1319 and was succeeded by her niece, Sultan Khatun, upon her death. Their authority appears to have been more symbolic than political and limited to the city.

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Further reading 

De Nicola Bruno, Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns 1206-1335

Lambton Ann K. S., Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia Aspects of Administrative, Economic, and Social History, 11th-14th Century

Mernissi Fatima, The Forgotten queens of Islam

“PĀDŠĀH ḴĀTUN”, Encyclopaedia Iranica

[catdotjpeg]

11 Feb 2024, Lunar New Year vigil for Palestine led by Nodutdol and 30+ Korean, Palestinian, Asian American, and anti-war organizations, Queens, NY

The text on the kite in the first photo comes from "If I Must Die" by Palestinian martyr, poet, and educator Refaat Alareer; the text on the placard in the second photo comes from a quote by the Vietnamese revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh.

[warhead]

[kropotkindersurprise]

September 2024 - Huge banners were dropped in New York City reading "F🔻CK YOU ADAMS", "NO COP CITY IN QUEENS", and "THIS MEANS WAR", against the plans of Democratic NYC Mayor (and ex-cop) Eric Adams to spend 225 million dollars on a new police training center in the city. Coincidentally, the homes and offices of the NYPD commissioner and a whole bunch of city officials appointed by Mayor Adams have been raided by the FBI this week for corruption. [link]/[link]

[iluvjuicybooty]

🩷🖤🩷🖤🩷🖤🩷🖤

SO NICE HE MADE THEM TWICE!

[hawkshawed]

Snow-covered pigeons in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York

[just-your-casual-nerd]

Joe, you are the sweetest and most loving man. You cheer on the women of the BAU in the show and in real life. All the love and support to them is amazing. You're the true papa of the BAU ♥️

[lgblackfeet]

Lily Gladstone and Eva Green attend the premier of Kinds of Kindness, Cannes Film Festival, day 4.

[artdecodude]

41-00 43rd Ave, #Queens, #NewYorkCity #ArtDeco 📸:me/2023 Almost near 43rd & 43rd, but not quite.

[chocolatepot]

Hi! Can you elaborate on "Fuck GRRM's committment to 'historical realism' without knowing anything about medieval social history"? I would love to know about what GRRM gets wrong about medieval gender roles, specifically.

So Cersei learns at an early age that she has no agency, her only value is producing heirs and is barred from traditional routes of power so she has to use underhanded methods such as influencing men with sex or using underhanded magical means. I would love an explanation on why this doesn't reflect medieval queen consorts and noble women irl.

Sure! The basic summary is: GRRM "knows" the things that everyone "knows" about the middle ages, which are broad stereotypes often reflective of a) primary sources that deserve a critical reading rather than being taken at face value and b) the judgements of later periods making themselves look better at the medieval period's expense.

As Shiloh Carroll argues, building on the work of Helen Young, “readers are caught in a ‘feedback loop’ in which Martin’s work helps to create a neomedieval idea of the Middle Ages, which then becomes their idea of what the Middle Ages ���really’ looked like, which is then used to defend Martin’s work as ‘realistic’ because it matches their idea of the real Middle Ages.”

Since you're mainly interested in Cersei here, I'd strongly recommend a book: Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz. It's an excellent read and speaks to exactly what you're asking about. The tone of the book is very positive and non-judgemental when it comes to GRRM and his depictions of women on the whole, but I think some of this is rhetorical positioning to not seem like "mean angry academics jumping on fiction for not being accurate," as the actual content turns the reader to thinking about how much agency and power medieval queens had in different European societies and how little of that worked its way into GRRM's worldbuilding.

It's true that women typically didn't inherit titles and thrones in their own right, and that they were usually given in marriage for political/dynastic reasons. However, they weren't seen as brood mares whose only duty was to pop out sons: both queens and noblewomen had roles to play as household managers, counselors, and lieutenants, actively participating in the ruling of their domains and in local and international diplomacy (women in political alliances were not just pawns sent to a powerful man's bed, but were to act as ambassadors for their families and to pass information back and forth), and they had to be raised with an understanding of this so that they could learn to do it. Motherhood was very important, don't get me wrong, but it's a mistake to assume as pop culture does that a wife's foremost duty being to provide heirs for her family meant that she was ONLY seen as a mother/potential mother.

Catelyn is a great example of what was expected of women in these positions. But in the books, Catelyn is basically the only woman who inhabits this role, and the impression given is that she's exceptional, that she's just in charge of the household because she's so great at it that Ned allows her to be his partner, and that he listens to her advice because she happens to be a wise person in his orbit - and also that Ned is exceptional for giving so much power to a woman, because in the world of ASOIAF, it takes an especially good man to do this. In GRRM's view of the medieval world, realpolitik and the accumulation of power are the most important things, so men in Westeros are extremely unlikely to give up any authority to their wives, even though this is historically inaccurate.

Cersei, on the other hand, is supposed to be a more realistic depiction of what would happen to an ambitious medieval woman. There's a chapter titled "Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, “Realism,” and the Case of Cersei Lannister" in the book I've rec'd, and it deals with why this is problematic extremely well. (This is the source of the quote at the top of this post.) In it, Kavita Mudan Finn argues that Cersei embodies pretty much every medieval trope for the illegitimate wielding of power by a woman. She underhandedly gets people killed for opposing her, she seduces men into doing her bidding, she advances her family's interests and her own at the expense of the realm. She's made sympathetic through fannish interpretation and Lena Headey's performance, but in the text she's an evil woman doing evil things. Even when she gets to be regent for her son - a completely legitimate historical position that allowed women to handle the levers of power almost exactly like a king - she continues to do shitty things and not be taken seriously because she's just not good at ruling.

But even before then, from a medieval perspective she had access to completely legitimate power that she didn't use: she'd have had estates giving her a large personal income, religious establishments to patronize (giving her a good reputation as a pious woman and people she'd put in high positions being personally loyal to her), artists and writers to patronize as well, power over her household, men around her listening to her counsel. That she doesn't have that is a reflection of GRRM either deciding these things don't really exist in Westeros in order to make it a worse world than medieval Europe and justify Cersei feeling she had to use underhanded means of power, or not knowing that they were ordinary and unexceptional because he has a good working knowledge of the politics of the Wars of the Roses but little to no knowledge of social history beyond pop culture osmosis, and, imo, little to no interest in actual power dynamics.

There are a lot of books I'd recommend on this subject. There's a series from Palgrave Macmillan called "Queenship and Power" and nearly all the books in it are THE BEST. Theresa Earenfight's Queenship in Medieval Europe is a very readable introduction to the situations of queens in European societies across the continent. She also has a book, Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, that also addresses non-royal women's power. I'm also a huge fan of English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers, by Barbara Harris, which really emphasizes the "career" aspect of women's lives as administrators and diplomats.

[dinoberrypress]

Little Wolves is crowdfunding NOW!

It's finally here, y'all! The crowdfunding campaign for our tabletop RPG of folk tales, fae queens, and werewolves is live on Backerkit~

Support our work here!

From the award-winning publisher behind Motel Spooky-Nine, You’re In Space And Everything’s Fucked, Dinocar and more, Little Wolves is a tabletop role-playing game about adventuring through a realm of folk & fae as shapeshifting werewolves.

In Little Wolves, you’ll craft real-world paper masks that represent their characters, modifying them over the course of their adventures to reflect the marks their experiences leave on them while transforming between your Wolf and Mortal forms!

The crowdfunding campaign aims to bring the game’s vivid world to life in an 8.5” x 8.5” full-color perfect bound book loaded with gorgeous art from a team of 4 artists accompanying setting & mechanics from award-winning designers Julie-Anne Muñoz and Nevyn Holmes. 

The crowdfunding campaign launches May 14th, running through June 11th, 12pm US Central with an initial funding goal of $19,500 USD with plenty of stretch goals to unlock for more art, more content, and even an expansion!

Making masks & shifting forms

In your Wolf form, you have access to the benefits of your beastly Attributes, can sing magical Spellsongs, and can resist harm with your Resolve. In your Mortal form, you'll switch your Attributes, Spellsongs, and Resolve out for strong, flexible Mortal Powers that can turn the tide of any situation they're used in. Through character advancement, you can strengthen yourself as you see fit. Perhaps you favor one form over the other, or you may switch between them frequently. The choice is yours.

The Enchanted Forest

As you explore this dense forest you'll meet the powerful and mysterious Queens and aid them, and their courts, through all manner of quests and favors. As a werewolf, you're uniquely gifted in traversing the forest, capable of making it to every edge of the woods, meaning that only you can learn its deepest secrets.

✨ A free demo/quickstart for Little Wolves is available to download and play, get it here! ✨

[unplaces]

Rockaway Beach Blvd, Far Rockaway (Queens).

[roach-pizza]

I usually don't post stuff from where I live but I was hoping y'all could spread this around especially if you live in NYC.

Transcript: Missing 12 year old girl. Date: 03/21/2023

Name: Kaniya Graham

Age: 12

Missing since: 03/16/2023

Image Description: A black girl in a white jacket, with black zippers, a black Tshirt with a green graphic, black leggings(?), and white sneakers. She is standing in a bedroom with a flower in her hand, smiling.

Please contact 911 or ACS investigator.

(516)695-6552: James Maloy

(347)765-2561: Brigitte Browning

(917)808-2239: Robert Browning

[birdy-babe]

Their friendship actually means everything to me. Just these two gossip divas giving each other the 🤨 look when bro is spittin some bullshit

This is Older Sister and Gay Little Brother solidarity and I’m so here for it

[lobeliamaximoff]

ok but imagine these two fashion icons on one screen