#romana project

[stopmyhearts]

GOLD USHER: Do you swear by the Rod of Rassilon to uphold the holy office of President of the High Council of Gallifrey? ROMANA: Hang on. (ADJUSTS MATRIX AT JAUNTY ANGLE) I swear. (TIME LORDS LOOK SUITABLY UNCOMFORTABLE.)

Oh this is going to be good

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Sometimes I’ll be having a bad time and my brain will just go ‘well at least you can give those problems to romana’

[silverfoxstole]

I started toiling the new version of my NotD coat the other day, using an old duvet cover and some scraps.

I don’t normally re-toile a pattern I’ve made before but this one needs some adjustment; I already knew that the sleeves and skirts needed to be longer but having worn the one I made eighteen months ago out a couple of times before Christmas I decided that I’d raised the waist seam too far as well. I’ve therefore returned all the pattern pieces to their original lengths and added three inches to the hem (I’ll probably add another when I cut out the fabric as I want it to be just below the knee); the sleeves will need taking up a bit but I’d rather have that extra fabric to play with. I’ve also made the skirts slightly wider which gives me a bit more swish, and also for bum coverage; I had to add an extra bit to the tails as I was putting it together last time to try and rectify a bit of gaping over the rear!

While I was at it I decided to try and work out the right length for the collar at this stage rather than wasting fabric later on. I want collar and lapel to meet, so to be able to see where I was going I added facings and trim, which I wouldn’t normally do with a mock-up:

I cut out the lapel pieces again instead of the facing by mistake and the denim moved when I was sewing it which is the reason for the huge tuck on the left but I think I’m about there. I need to practise my mitred corners as the binding took me a whole day to put on last time!

I haven’t started the coat proper yet because I still need to order all the bits and bobs but I bought the fabric a few weeks ago as the supplier had low stock. For the first coat I used cotton drill but that was a bit stiff and having now seen the way Paul’s moves I wanted something a bit more fluid so I ordered several samples to choose from. I could have used a wool mix coating but that would have been too thick; I want to be able to wear this outside of cosplay but I don’t want anything too warm or heavy so I had a look at suiting fabric, plumping in the end for a gabardine:

The right-hand picture gives a better idea of the colour. It has a nice drape to it and a bit of weight without being too heavy so hopefully it’s going to work OK! I had to get a few samples of trim, too, to find one that was a good contrast:

I’m hoping to get started on it sometime next week. It’s not going to be a quick project; the first coat took me about fifty hours’ work across ten days and this time I’m intending to tailor as much as I can so am going for sew-in traditional interfacing rather than the iron-on I used before and which I want to try and pad stitch (not something I’ve tried yet!) to the shell.

Fingers crossed it all comes together!

[samwisethewitch]

On Lughnasa (August 1st), 2023, under a full moon in Aquarius, my partner and I got married in a handfasting ceremony.

We designed this ceremony from scratch ourselves, incorporating elements from our own faiths. My personal practice is a mix of Heathenry and Reclaiming (and, ngl, is heavily influenced by Wicca) and my now-husband is Roman pagan. We also both have Irish American heritage that is important to our families, which is why we chose to incorporate historic Irish elements.

And our boyfriend was our officiant!

[frateleeblaga]

“Ca furtuna am intrat

Eu n am venit cu valul nou, eu l am creat”

<BLVGV>

[triple1st]

underrated romana/leela moment to me is that despite leela swearing that blood will have blood & that her last purpose on gallifrey will be to avenge her husband by killing his murderer before joining him in death, she doesn't, when she learns it was romana (under pandora's control) who struck andred through his hearts she laments that she cannot kill romana & therefore she will leave gallifrey without her vengeance. like that is devotion baby, that's the unhealthy dependency that romana inspires in her friends, unflinching loyalty to the office of lord president as long as romanadvoratrelundar holds it & if she is no longer in power her closest friends will stay by her side until she regains her right as heir of dvora to rule gallifrey

[storiearcheostorie]

🔥🔥🔥 𝐄𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐨, 𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨 𝐥𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐦𝐮𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐮𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐨 𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐒𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐝𝐢 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐧𝐨 𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐨 𝟐𝟓 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢 Leggi l'articolo e guarda le 𝐞𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐳𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢 𝐟𝐨𝐭𝐨 su @storieearcheostorie Immagini: @ercolanoscavi #ercolano #archeologia #beniculturali #foto #italia

[idobebeinggay]

Not seen this one before!!!!

Welcome back Romana

[stopmyhearts]

Tegan’s experience of travelling with the Doctor had convinced her that (a) he didn’t know what was going on most of the time, and (b) when he did get things right it was more by luck than judgement.

She gets it

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Lore notes: Insurgency

‘Ladies and gentleman and others’ → yay for time lord transgenderism, i do wonder how gender is viewed on gallifrey though given that you can change whole bodies

Valyes introduces himself with his full name → i wonder how common of a way of introducing yourself this is, it seems to happen more often in official settings and even then, we don’t see everyone doing it

‘although for those of you visiting our shores, lacking grounding in the Old High Gallifreyan language, it may be easier to refer to me as Acting Chancellor Valyes’ → the full names have some aspect of old high gallifreyan in them then

Okay as of later in the episode, values says that not all courses are available to off planet students

Even though the post of chancellor was only recently reinstated they appointed an acting chancellor instead of just going back to not having one in brax’s absence, it doesn’t seem that brax was even in the position long enough for it to have had any meaningful impact on how the government runs, so i find it a bit interesting that they feel the need to fill the position, though i guess if they didn’t it would very clearly look like favoritism on romana’s part

‘Our aim here at the Gallifreyan Academy is to continue to produce the Time Lords and Ladies of tomorrow. Of course, this year we are also pleased to welcome valued friends from, uh, further afield with whom we hope to share our wisdom’ → seems to imply that the off world students are not able to gain the rank of time lord

Perception of age seems to be dictated by incarnation rather than body age (valyes being in his tenth incarnation making him respectable and experienced but also just old)

‘Your Academy may have opened its doors to other races, but to most of your kind, we are not welcome guests’ → time lords being racist? fork found in kitchen

There’s a good amount of boat metaphors here repainted to be about time travel, i don’t have anything really coherent to say on this, but it’s there

‘It is the experience of my people that the Time Lords rarely speak plainly’ → yeah

Neeloc called gallifreyan not time lord → still an academy student so therefore not yet a time lord

‘The prydonian college’ → chapters based on what college at the academy you go to

The doctor has fans on gallifrey → there are also other notorious time lord renegades, wonder how many of them are known about and what the perceptions of them are in the general public vs among politicians

‘In a hundred years time’ → neeloc says this to his friends which a) are they going to have the same slowed aging as leela, and would that mean that off world students spend the same amount of time at the academy as gallifreyan students b) taking this to mean that the academy takes around a hundred years and that neeloc is referring to when they graduate or shortly after

‘You have the wisdom of experience, Leela. Never undervalue that. It’s something that’s been denied to most Gallifreyans for generations’ → time lords have all this power and they just sit there and do nothing, most of them don’t actually know how to exist in the wider universe and yet still think themselves better than it

Many see the new students as a threat to the time lords

Valyes appointed by the high council, but still the acting chancellor despite brax being stripped of his title, it’s not like with the case of the acting president during romana’s time on etra prime where she still was president, if brax had his title taken away then there just wouldn’t be a chancellor anymore, so why is values just not the chancellor

Leela and andred still technically married despite the everything → wonder what marriage contracts look like on gallifrey, and how easy (or likely difficult) they are to break

‘It may not be my place to say so, Castellan, but I’m… pleased to see you’ve put the… misjudgements of your… previous incarnation behind you’ → it really seems that everyone on gallifrey had opinions on andred’s relationship with leela and most of them were not good

Academy dorms → they exist 👍

Off world students are getting expelled from the academy

Andred is prydonian, but has been made the arcalian castellan → guess it doesn’t actually have to line up with your chapter then, it’s just what chapter you oversee

‘It was not so very long ago we were fighting wars against these people’ → gallifrey was at war with the other temporal powers at some point (makes me wonder how old these temporal powers are, and at what point in gallifrey’s history they were at war given that gallifrey has been pretty isolationist for most of their history i would assume it would be relatively recently since we haven’t really seen much of the other temporal powers before this era)

Non gallifreyan students had access to the matrix for a time, though it was limited

‘Third space war’ → what is up with gallifrey’s war history, they keep referencing past wars in this episode

‘Persephone? The Ice Queen?’ → good old academy nicknames coming back up once again

I wonder how the application process goes for off worlders, because we know it’s not even guaranteed for gallifreyans, so i would have to assume it’s pretty hard to get in if you’re an alien

‘You’d be such an asset to the Chancellery Guard. Alien or not, I’m sure I could–’ → the implication here that aliens can’t be in the chancellery guard despite seeing in the previous episode that there don’t seem to actually be rules around aliens having jobs on gallifrey, wonder if they changed things since then

Time lords get called the greatest of the temporal powers, granted this is by pandora, but i do wonder how the temporal powers all compare, i’m sure that the time lords do have the advantage of having been around for a long time, but they probably don’t have as much experience in the wider universe as some of the other powers given how isolationist they were for most of their history

‘his datapad trashed and books torn up’ → they use both data pads and physical books

Though interesting that neeloc does say this in reaction to a parchment → ‘It must be centuries old’, maybe it’s just that it looks old, or it’s like a scroll or something that they don’t really use anymore

Also the whole thing with violence at the academy really shows how deep the prejudice on gallifrey goes, you hear it talked about with them saying that the older time lords are often more traditionalist, but clearly a number of younger gallifreyans feel the same as well

‘The Time Lords’ obsession with secrecy is such that they hide knowledge even from themselves’ → yeah

Taylor has a point, those computers do make a lot of noise

Is the chancellor typically in charge of the academy, or is it just that way now because romana put brax in charge of it then made him chancellor so it kind of just got added onto the job

I wonder how long the whole aliens at the academy thing has been going on, it seems pretty well established by this point, but honestly i’m just generally curious about the timeline of this series as a whole

‘scaphe port’ → have ports for transport other than tardis transport, wonder if they were added recently or if they’ve been there for a while

‘our turbulent history with the Monan Host, the Nekkistani, the Sunari’ → i wonder what is up between them

Also → ‘sometimes I think the Time Lords greatest curse is our long memories’ how long has all this been going on between the time lords and the other temporal powers

People in general do not like the time lords

‘By allowing unfettered access to the Vortex to every species that’s worked out how to rub two sticks together’ → implication that the time lords have some sort of control over vortex travel as a whole and can stop people that they see unfit from gaining access to it (you know, when you say things like this, it really isn’t all that hard to see why other species hate you)

‘Public register address’ → the public register seems to be a sort of news reporting type thing, i wonder how often darkel gives addresses to it, or is she only doing so now because it is relevant to something specific

The academy has a school nurse

The great key can be used to tap into the power of the eye of harmony

‘Its location is known. It has always been known. Albeit to a very few select keepers. It is hidden from the President as it has been for millenia. For in conjunction with the Rod and the Sash of Rassilon, the Key would imbue her with more power than even the greatest of the Time Lords could handle’ → talking about the great key

There is some ancient edict that lets the time lord president take complete control

‘Prydonian College of the Gallifreyan Academy’ → i said something about this above, but just putting this here anyway (do wish we got to see what was going on with the other chapters colleges though, does the academy experiment include all of them, or is it just the prydonian college) (also this does kind of beg the question, why is the arcalian castellan hanging around the prydonian academy)

‘That chamber, Narvin, has been sealed since the earliest days of the Stellar Engineers. It is protected by a series of security codes that change with every microspan’ → chamber below the panopticon hall (where the eye of harmony is)

Artefacts of rassilon allow a person to access and control the eye of harmony

Moss and cobwebs → things that exist on gallifrey 👍

How easy are the vaults to access? because like they’re clearly not somewhere people are supposed to be, but it also seems like a lot of people make their way down there

‘I, Darkel of the House of Jurisprudence, do hereby challenge Romana, of the House of Heartshaven, to an electoral contest to decide the Presidency of the High Council of Gallifrey’ → i am tired and have a migraine, i am not going to try and decipher how the time lord presidency works right now, maybe i’ll be back, but who’s to say, anyway moral of the story, what is going on with their system for appointing/electing presidents

[official-imperatrix]

You spread falsehoods and deception, in pursuit of your own power. Return to your collection Braxiatel, or you will be removed.

Florana is nice though. Very pretty.

@darkel-for-president @commander-torvald @homunculetteofgallifrey @princess-varan-of-gen-seng @another-romana @liviacaralis @justine-of-faction-paradox @official-imperatrix

Presidential Canidates. The Coordinator of the CIA and I have confirmed that there is an alien presence who has taken advantage of the current chaos and is attempting to influence Gallifrey. We are currently working together to dispose of it. Should any of you have heard telepathic whispers from anyone, I urge you to disregard them. The Coordinator and I have both been targeted and I know at least some of you have been as well.

I know that many of you distrust or dislike me, but I ask that if you move against me or each other, you make sure you are doing it of your own free will. I hope to update you soon when the problem is resolved.

Good day.

[lerios]

i want TW or WR era narvin, delirious from blood loss or being scifi drugged or something, calling romana Madam President again

let it be clear that to his bones he still considers her his commanding officer. to him she is bound irrevocably to the concept of Gallifrey itself. he is building that cross and nailing her to it because he needs something to devote himself to and now that his eyes are open his planet is no longer something he's able to worship no matter how much he would like to be blind again. he will never be anything less than doggedly loyal to her because he will never allow her to stop being the power structures that he needs and has projected onto her

[anghraine]

I've had an unfathomably stressful weekend among my right-wing maternal relatives. Naturally, I'm celebrating my escape with a poll!

I like to headcanon a bunch of my faves as ace or grey-ace, sometimes with reasons that make sense to other people, sometimes out of pure projection (I'm a grey-ace lesbian myself, and this bleeds out into my fandom tastes!).

REMINDER that this isn't (necessarily) a vote for your favorite character, or even your personal favorite-of-all-time ace headcanon. Vote for the character on this list that you would most enjoy imagining as asexual or grey-ace. Feel free to add details about your headcanons for your choice, though!

Details for mine specifically:

Luke Skywalker - aro-ace, misunderstands his natural rapport+psychic bond with Leia as attraction in part because he's never actually experienced real attraction and never will.

Charlotte Lucas - ace lesbian.

Men in Tolkien - grey-ace or ace, depending on the instance (I was tempted to exclude a very few specific individuals like Finwë, Samwise Gamgee, and Eöl, but it was inconvenient, and honestly, I still feel the Tolkien default for dudes is grey-ace).

Spock - gay grey-ace outside of pon farr scenarios (he hates the prospect of pon farr with T'Pring for multiple reasons! he's also aggressively disinterested in Mudd's women, the lady sexbots in "Shore Leave," etc, for ... uh, also multiple reasons).

Romana I - grey-ace.

Athena - very aggressively 100% aro-ace, can and will strike down anyone who doubts this.

Anakin Skywalker - Padmésexual.

Fitzwilliam Darcy - grey-ace, has been slightly attracted to people before, but rarely and not very strongly, until Elizabeth upends his entire experience of sexuality in the space of about 2 weeks. His own feelings only get (far) more intense and foreign to him from there.

Emelye - aro-ace. Rarely have I more strongly wished I could free someone from the story they're trapped in.

Tar-Telperiën - aro-ace, will bring the full weight of royal power to bear on anyone who has a problem with it (following the example of her lesbian great-grandmother Tar-Ancalimë, but refusing to marry at all. goodforher.jpeg)

Moiraine - grey-ace & lesbian. Yes, I know Jordan wants me to believe she's into Thom. je refuse

Cassian Andor - grey-ace, and near the "fully ace" boundary. He's mostly into Jyn and very surprised (and initially dismayed) about it.

[autisticzoeheriots]

*pats romana on the head*

you’d be surprised how much self projection, disability headcanons and whumpy fic ideas can fit into this timelord

[religio-iapygiorum]

oh hey this got popular while i was asleep! there's already more interest than i expected tbh, which is super exciting!

i do want to clarify bc i'm worried i'm getting people's hopes up that this is Reconstructionism Hard Mode™. we've got a fair bit of material evidence, several short-ish inscriptions, a bit of description from outsiders, but no narratives from the emic (i.e., ingroup) perspective. there will be deities we know only by name & practices we know only by the offerings that failed to burn completely. there is nothing resembling a complete picture here, especially not by the standards of hellenic polytheism-but when we find similarities to hellenic polytheism, we can guess at the gaps. sometimes.

i think this sort of exercise is worthwhile, personally. i yearn to know more about deities long forgotten, the evidences they've left behind, their echoes in a landscape long buried. but while there may be a treasure trove of individual pieces here, it's difficult to form an overall narrative. so. be warned, ig

right, so: what is this project & why am i doing it?

a quick intro first—i’m e (any pronouns) & i’m a history student of a completely different time period. that’s your first indication not to take my word as fact! i’ll be drawing on & quoting from established scholarship, which i’ll always cite. they’re the real experts, not me, so please do go back and read them if you’re curious & have the language. (you can always message/ask if you’re having trouble accessing papers.)

in general & on a personal note, i’m super interested in life on the peripheries. we’ve got a billion million sources for the polytheisms of rome and athens and a few other greek poleis—awesome, but what about everywhere else?

(why this particular periphery? my ancestors, both very recent & presumably more distant, are from this location. that’s where my interest stems from, but it doesn’t have to be yours—i will not tolerate folkist attitudes in this space.)

ok, so, what is this blog?: a place for me to aggregate research, in english, on the religious practices of pre-Roman Iapygia. this is not my own research—what i’m doing here is not-strictly-academic synthesis of existing research, primarily for a polytheist reconstructionist audience.

the evidence my sources discuss are almost entirely drawn from archaeological research, and most of this research is written in italian. i am not an archaeologist and italian is not my first language (though i can get by), so there’s another handful of reasons to take anything written here with a grain of salt—though of course i’ll always strive to be as accurate of a transmitter & translator as i possibly can.

why am i doing this?: because i wanted something like this to exist, and it didn’t. at the very least, this blog will be a place for me to sort out my own thoughts, organize my notes, and speculate on possible historical practices. at the very most, it’ll be interesting to other people as well.

if you’re interested in learning a bit about pre-roman religion in one region of the italic peninsula, then i’d love to have you along for the trip!

[daughterofheartshaven]

A quick Timeline of Romana

I was rebloging something by a mutual and I realized that I have a very specific order of Romana's different stories in different mediums in my head and that might actually be relevant to share here given how many of my mutuals are Romana fans. As usual, I assume Last Great Time War is the same as The War In Heaven. So here we go. I'm starting with Romana's return from E-Space. Anything in bullet points is a headcanon I made to reconcile different stories

Blood Harvest / Goth Opera: Romana II returns from E-Space and takes a place on the Gallifreyan High Council

The Chaos Pool: takes place while Romana is on the High Council, but before her Acencion to Presidency

Happy Endings: Romana becomes President

The Apocalypse Element: Romana's Presidency is interrupted by the Etra Prime incident and the disaster that followed

Neverland / Zagreus: Romana meets Leela, and is forced to watch the Doctor remove himself from the universe

Lungbarrow: Romana has a run-in with a Doctor from the past, from before he left the universe, and has to be very carful to avoid letting either the Doctor or the CIA know that she knows the Doctor's future

The Gallifrey Series (and a couple misc. audios that have Romana II as president): Lots of things happen, but the big one is that the Time War starts

following the end of the Gallifrey series, Romana escapes the Time War and flees into Gallifrey's past at the cost of her current incarnation's life. Now in her third incarnation, she Spearheads the Nine Gallifreys project to give herself a different Gallifrey to work with - avoiding a paradox - and begins preparing her Gallifrey for the war she knows is coming

Luna Romana framing narrative: Romana III prepping her Gallifrey for war

The Shadows of Avalon / The Ancestor Cell: Romana comes into conflict with the Doctor (still from before he left the universe), and her plans end in disaster as her Gallifrey is destroyed before it can even reach the war

The Gallifrey Chronicles: The Doctor is implied to resurrect Romana and the other citizens of her Gallifrey

Now that she has lost any chance she had at making a difference in Gallifrey's stand in the War, Romana flees Gallifrey and reconnects with the Tharils before the war starts.

The Little Book of Fate: Romana, now running refugee support from the Time War, meets the Doctor from before they came into conflict (and before he left the universe). They are able to work together, but Romana still has to conceal all she knows about his future.

Romana eventually gives up on Gallifrey and the Time War and, with her third body dying, flees to the end of the universe (much like the Master did, but without a chameleon arch).

Tomb of Valdemar framing narrative: Romana III dies at the end of the universe and we meet her fourth incarnation - a dark skinned woman

Gallifrey returns and Romana finds her way back to it. At some point, she regenerates again into someone with freckles and ginger hair

Cwej: Down the Middle: Romana is implied to be actively trying to help Chris behind the scenes, and appears at the very end to negotiate with him regarding the end of the Cwejen Uprising against Gallifrey

Notes:

Does Romana ever find out that the Doctor returned from the Divergent Universe? It seems likely, but from the Doctor's perspective, Zagreus appears to be the last time they met.

If you want me to elaborate on any of this, I'd be happy to! Just let me know.