#shakespeare was AFTER the medieval period

[moghedien]

once again need all the "medieval fantasy" fans out there to understand that by many historical opinions, the War of the Roses began AFTER the medieval period

"medieval" is a whole lot older than most of yall realize and i'm begging yall to look at a timeline before you start calling things "medieval fantasy"

[medievalandfantasymelee]

COME ONE, COME ALL to the MOSTE ILLUSTRIOUS TOURNAMENT of the FINEST, the MOSTE PUISSANT and HOTTEST MEN MEDIEVAL MEDIA HAS TO ITS CREDIT.

Be it known that we shall accept submissions of the hottest men OF THE PEOPLES’ CHOOSING from any live-action* TV or movie media property set between the years AD 500 – 1550 (Tudors WELCOME!!), and any fantasy properties which emulate said period!

KNOW ALSO that we, by the grace of this fine hellsite and with the counsel of the moste honorable and illustrious @hotvintagepoll (many thanks), have made

THESE GUIDELINES here given:

ANY HOT GUY who appears in any movie or TV show released in ANY YEAR, from ANY COUNTRY, shall be deemed eligible for entry. Below are listed examples of eligible properties. If YE BE NOT CERTAIN whether your hot guy is eligible, submit him anyway!

Examples of Eligible Properties: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-03), Game of Thrones (2011-19) House of the Dragon (2022), Wolf Hall (2015-2024), The Tudors (2007-2010), Ladyhawke (1985), The Princess Bride (1987), The White Queen (2013), Rise of Empires: Ottoman (2020-2022), Vikings (2013-2020), The Last Kingdom (2015-2022), Diriliş: Ertuğrul (2014), A Knight’s Tale (2001), BBC’s Robin Hood (2006-3009), The Last Duel (2021), The Story of Minglan (2018), The Borgias (2013), Robin Hood (1939), Outlaw King (2018), Pilgrimage (2017), Legend (1985), Braveheart (1995), The Green Knight (2021), Excalibur (1981), Beowulf & Grendel (2005), The Lion in Winter (1968), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), The Black Adder (Blackadder Series 1, 1982), Rashomon (1950)

Remember: This is just a list of examples—WOW ME!

These following titles are examples of properties that do not fall within or emulate the stated time period and therefore DO NOT QUALIFY: The Three Musketeers (Any Version), Pirates of the Caribbean (2004), Barbarians (2020), Gladiator (2000), Ben Hur (1959), Shogun (2024), Elizabeth (1999), 300 (2006), Troy (2004), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Disney's Robin Hood (1973)**, Yojimbo (1961), Shakespeare in Love (1998), King Arthur (2004)***

For the purposes of this tournament, "Man" and "Guy" are defined as any bi-pedal humanoid male character played by a man. As such, characters belonging to non-human races such as Hobbits, Orcs, Elves, Demons, Fauns, Werewolves etc. ARE admissible, and, indeed, encouraged.

If you have propaganda you forgot to include in your submission, just hold onto it and send it in an ask after the Tournament begins.

You may submit as many hot men as you like but please submit only ONE ENTRANT per submission.

Do not hesitate to submit ANY hot guy you think may qualify, no matter how popular he is. There is no such thing as a shoo-in with these tournaments. If you think "Someone MUST have submitted him already!" Everyone else is probably thinking that too and then he may well NEVER get submitted and we don't want that.

Do not worry about how many submissions your hot guy might have had already--I need to get a sense of who the strongest contenders are in order to fairly seed the draws, and the best way to do that is volume of submissions.

We are voting on the hotness of the characters. While the actors who portray them are of course a major factor in this, we are not voting on the actors themselves, therefore propaganda pertaining to the actors real lives (aside from anecdotes relating to their portrayal of the character) is not admissible.

By that same token, in the case of historical figures (e.g. Henry VIII) we are judging hotness based on the fictionalized portrayals of them in these properties, not on historical fact.

Regarding immortal/time-travelling/dimension-hopping/extremely long-lived characters, regardless of when the character was born, the main action**** of the story must take place within the Medieval Period (see dates listed at the top of this post) or Medieval-esque fantasy fantasy realm in order for them to be eligible for submission. As such, characters like the Pevensie brothers (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Ash Williams (Army of Darkness) are admissible, but Asgardians (the MCU Thor films) are not.

I, as the Administrator and Master of Revels of this tournament, am exercising discretion in the admittance of characters from works by Shakespeare, since many of them have no set date.

Re: characters adapted from books/written works - Book quotes by/ about your character are not admissible as Propaganda for their tv/ movie counterparts unless said quotes were also written into the show/movie.

Book illustrations and fanart are not admissible Propaganda

SUBMISSIONS SHALL REMAIN OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT, JULY 1st

The Tourney shall begin at a date yet to be determined with the Melee (Qualifying Rounds), wherein the entrants with the fewest submissions and least propaganda will duke it out in a free for all brawl to determine who will enter the Lists.

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRANTS HERE TODAY!!!

-- Master of Revels

*The "live-action" qualification does have a caveat: exception may be made for those CGI films which were all the rage in the mid-00's that used the motion-capture and likeness of the actors; for example characters from, Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf (2007) are admissible.

** this one doesn't qualify, not because it isn't the right time period, but because it falls solidly under the "Animated" category.

***Yes, sadly we are deprived of the beautiful countenances of Clive Owen, Mads Mikkelsen, Ioan Gruffudd et al because the producers of this film in their infinite wisdom and in an attempt to seem "more historically accurate" chose to set it during the Roman withdrawal from Britain, which occurred in the 5th Century (About a CENTURY earlier than Authurian tradition) and is generally agreed to have ended by AD 410. It therefore does not fall under the Medieval umbrella and is not eligible for submission.

**** "Main Action" here defined as "More than half an hour of a movie and more than two episodes of a series"

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I realise you're HE, but any thoughts on how high school level education should be run/changed/etc? I'd love to know your views!

Oh sure, plenty, but they're not particularly informed lol

Well; Wales is actually massively and fundamentally changing secondary education atm, but we won't be getting students from it until the year after next, I think, so no real comment on effectiveness yet - but it's very interesting. They're getting rid of isolated subjects in favour of broad umbrella areas, as I understand it? So there's now Science and Technology (Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computing, and all the various DT subjects like Woodwork, Electronics, Cookery, etc), Maths and Numeracy, Humanities (History, Geography, Ethics, Religion), Languages Literacy and Communication, and Health and Wellbeing (actually maybe Cookery comes under this one now? Dunno.) And there's a sixth to do with arts but I can't remember what it's called. But it includes Art, Drama, Media Studies, etc.

And then the idea is that a class will learn about a given topic at a time (I don't know for how long, so let's say six weeks), and this will be taught in each of those six umbrellas but via their own methods. So like... I dunno, let's say the Tudors:

That's fairly straightforward for Humanities, but in addition to giving you the historical facts you'd also explore historic trade routes and natural resources of the time and how they related to the politics (geography), the religious make up of the country and how THAT related to the politics (religion), etc.

Maths and Numeracy might explore how to use statistics to analyse Tudor era population or trade data.

Science and Tech could look at disease outbreaks and virology, or technological advancements and how they worked and get students to build one, or get students to construct a Tudor-era town using computer software

Languages can study plays from the era (Shakespeare), look at linguistic development, or use historical events as talking points to practice using vocab in conversations

Health and Wellbeing can explore stressors and challenges of the average Medieval peasant and how they overcame them, or play some popular Tudor sport or game, or make food to Tudor recipes, etc

The Arts one (god I cannot remember the name) can look at art history of the period, fashions, perform plays, etc

So everyone is still teaching the skills and knowledge of their subject areas, they're just united by one big case study. It apparently allows for far more integrated teaching, too, where two previously discrete subjects can join forces on a project.

All of which seems pretty good, on the whole, but also rife with issues if everyone isn't careful, so we'll see how it shakes out over the next few years.

From my own experiences of school though. Jesus. Something definitely needed to happen, fuck me.

What I should have learned in Textiles:

How to use a sewing machine

How to sew by hand to mend a tear

How to darn a hole

How to hem, dart, take in, and let out clothes

How to sew from a pattern

What I actually learned in Textiles:

How to use a sewing machine on its most basic setting

How to phone in creating a hand puppet out of felt because gluing was easier than sewing

How to badly sew an extremely makeshift and shit bag out of scrap fabric that you in no way want to then use

How to lose all interest in Textiles because it was useless and uninteresting

Like that is a VITAL skillset-imparting subject, and they fucked it, lads, they completely fucked it. Why did they never set us the task of buying a cheap shirt from a charity shop that we then amended in class? That would have been so useful.

Games and PE! Fucking hell! Here's what I should have learned:

How to stretch my body safely to target specific muscle groups, and in particular, how to cultivate a daily stretching routine I enjoyed and wanted to do

How to find a physical activity active enough to get me out of breath that I genuinely enjoyed, so that I wanted to continue it, e.g. salsa dancing or rope climbing or ice skating or hill climbing or assault courses or fucking anything at all

How to build my body up to doing particular activities safely and sustainably

How to find a physical activity to do on wet, cold, rainy days that would still be fun and I would still enjoy

Here's what I actually learned:

Physical activity is always uncomfortable and miserable and sometimes even painful

If you aren't enjoying running around in the wind and rain instead of the indoor gym The Problem Is You. Start Enjoying It.

Wanting to stay warm and dry and comfortable is a punishable choice.

You are only permitted to do physical activity in clothes that make you feel profoundly exposed and uncomfortable (a gym skirt and gym knickers in my school. Cycling shorts got you detention. Don't get me started on jogging bottoms.) Again, if you do not enjoy this, The Problem Is You. Start Enjoying It.

There are only three activity options. If you don't enjoy any of them, physical activity is not for you.

You should be able to Just Do physical exercise, without any training to build you up to it. If you can't and it hurts, this is because you're Bad At PE.

You will only be shown Once

Physical activity is only ever a team sport that you aren't good enough to be willingly picked for

LIKE WHAT THE FUCK

And you know what, LET'S round off with Food Technology/Cookery. Because I remember the things I was asked to make in FT. As a little baby Year 7, I still vividly remember two of the things we made.

Angel Delight. Easy, you might say! A simple treat, you might think! Easing the children into food prep, I hear you cry! But no, because the theme of the year was healthy eating, and so we were to add fruit to our Angel Delight. Any flavour Angel Delight, any fruit. Off you go. I don't know if any of you have encountered fruit, Tumblrs, but it famously has faintly acidic juice. This will prevent the Angel Delight from setting within the one hour lesson, no matter how well you mixed the pudding, or how quickly you got it into the fridge. It will result in soggy gross lumps of oxidising fruit in sloppy liquid pudding. Lesson learned: fruit makes food worse.

Cake. Easyish, you might say! A little harder than the Angel Delight but good training, you might think! A fairly straightforward process with a child-friendly food at the end, I hear you cry! But no, because the theme of the year was still healthy eating, so the teachers made it into an experiment; make four small cakes. One with sugar, one with sweetener, one with apple, and one with carrot. Then taste them and rank them in order. Off you go. I don't know if any of you have ever tried eating sugarless carrot cake, Tumblrs, but I have, and I can tell you categorically that it really puts the "Did you know" into the phrase "Did you know that fructose and sucrose are not actually equivalents of each other in a culinary setting?" It was rancid. It was disgusting. It was vile. It made me hate carrot cake for the next 12 years, in case my mouth had to go through that ordeal again. I'm still highly suspicious of the stuff even now. To (I assume) the surprise of fuck-damned no one, we unanimously put them in the order of sugar, sweetener, apple, carrot. Lesson learned: FRUIT MAKES FOOD WORSE AND CARROTS ARE ACTIVELY DISGUSTING

What possessed them?! No idea. Fucking hell.

Anyway this is getting long and I am still ill-informed. Peace out.

[latinare]

Hi! A while ago you mentioned that you use ecclesiastical pronunciation and not classical. I have a vague understanding of the distinction, but I've always wondered how much of a difference between the two there are. Like if someone learns ecclesiastical latin, would they be unable to read Cicero? Or if someone learns classical latin would they be unable to understand [famous example of medieval latin]? (I don't know any)

On those lines, when I pull up Google translate for Latin, which one am I getting?

I love this question!

So, pronunciation is strictly about how the words are spoken aloud. The same Latin text can be pronounced ecclesiastically or classically: for instance, the famous veni, vidi, vici in ecclesiastical pronunciation would sound something like "vay nee vee dee vee chee", and with classical pronunciation more like "way nee wee dee wee kee"--but the written form doesn't change. It's not hard to switch between them; it would be a bit like me (Canadian) listening to this--slightly unfamiliar to the ear, but easy enough to understand.

There are differences in written Latin too. Many spelling variations, especially early on, plus a lot of words that only came into use after Latin was technically a dead language, in the Middle Ages or later. I'd compare this to the sort of change English has undergone since Shakespeare's day: potentially confusing at first, but very intelligible once you're familiar with the rules.

The classical period does have some highly stylized forms, especially poetry, that may be daunting if you're more used to Medieval Latin; they are to me, at least.

P.S. You might not be getting real Latin from Google Translate at all; it seems to be pretty bad at it.

[hotvintagepoll]

I am adoring all of these polls and gif sets and just being fed so many hot vintage people. As someone who really hasn’t watched very many classics, are there any movies you’d recommend for someone just starting to dip their toes in older media but unsure where to start?

Sure! I don't want to sway any voting, but I'll put an incomplete list of favorites that involve hot men not still in the bracket below the cut.

Something to note that applies to most of these old movies—older movies have different pacing than modern movies, so some of these might seem really slow or weird to start. There are also different ways of framing gender and agency, for better and for worse. I've italicized the ones that I think are the best for starting with, but go with whatever genre/aesthetic sounds best.

The Court Jester (Danny Kaye, Basil Rathbone)—a circus performer working for a quasi-Robin Hood infiltrates the royal court. Fun comedy that's incredibly accessible and still so light on its feet. Swordfighting, glamorous medieval costumes, court intrigues, and silly accents.

Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly)—fun polyamorous musical comedy. The dancing is incredible, but so is the sense of joy and camaraderie between Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. Genuinely captures the feeling of hanging out with your best friends. 1920s Hollywood, big movie studios, backstage drama, goofy hijinks.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone)—classic swashbuckler/romance. It could read a little slow to modern tastes but the action scenes are absolutely killer, as is the sentiment of seeing little guys pull down big capitalists evil monarchs. Swashbuckling, labor activists merry men hanging out in the woods, hot men in tights, social commentary swords, a Maid Marian who really holds her own and falls in love with the socialist

Charade (Cary Grant)—thriller/romantic comedy. Audrey Hepburn's husband dies and leaves her a hidden inheritance, and she's racing some skeevy characters to find it. A little bit scary but mostly charming and gorgeous, and you can find it high quality virtually anywhere because they fucked up the copyright trademark in the opening credits. Romance, murders, Paris, 1960s fashion, chases in the night.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Dick Van Dyke)—this movie is divisive for some reason—I personally like peace, love, and joy, so it makes the list. This is a James Bond movie if James Bond had two kids, lived in a windmill in the south of England, and was into cottagecore inventions more than martinis and racism. This is very much a kids' movie so go in with that expectation, but enjoy the gorgeous production design, the wonderfully silly performances, and Lionel Jeffries pulling out every stop as an insane old man. Dick Van Dyke has excellent DILF energy. Magical cars, big musical vibes, fun inventions, and romantic fantasy.

To Be Or Not To Be (Jack Benny)—comedy/drama. A ragtag Warsaw theatre troupe stands off against the Gestapo after the invasion of Poland. TW for Nazis, obviously, but overall this is a comedy with some heft, and kind of shocking to be this ballsy about fucking hating Hitler's guts in the 1940s. Hambone actors, Shakespeare, spies, 1930s gowns. It's been a minute since I watched it so I don't think there are any TWs here, but go forth with caution.

Witness for the Prosecution (Tyrone Power)—mystery/legal drama based off an Agatha Christie story. The performances are campy fun and the twist would be at home in something like Knives Out. Big dramatics, hambones, lots of talking, a bit of a mindbender.

The Lady Vanishes (Michael Redgrave)—mystery/suspense/romantic comedy. It's a little slow to start but roll with it—once the action moves to the train the pacing really picks up. This gets slotted as a thriller sometimes but it's much funnier and gentler than that. There's some period-typical snarkiness directed at anyone Foreign™ by some of the British characters; the British characters are also made fun of. Trains, British people, international shenanigans, mystery, and humor.

All About Eve (absolutely none of these hot men, lots of hot women though)—a legendary actress fights for her life against the rising star who supplants her. Big drama, big performances, lots of gasp! and dahling! and vicious little quips. New York, theatre pronounced theahhtah, drama queens and plotting.

The Philadelphia Story (James Stewart, Cary Grant)—talk-heavy comedy, lots of quick banter and period transatlantic accent fun. It's a bit shouty and conflict-heavy at times, but I don't think James or Cary have ever been hotter, and Katherine Hepburn is just wow. Very funny dialogue, relatable characters, incredibly hot across the board. There is one instance of a racial slur (not directed at anyone but still there) and one shove. Some people won't like the discussion of Hepburn's character's choices as a daughter and a wife. With all of these movies you'll see a a range of how female characters are presented and treated, and while some period movies fall hard for sexist tropes, I personally think the performances, direction, and subtext of many of these films actually prioritizes the experiences of the female characters and shows them as living, breathing people, even if they're not framed the way they would be today.

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 42: Assorted Other Performances II

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

All time periods welcome. (Yes we have Live Aid).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

I am looking for Shakespeare play premiere's you'd particularly like to see.

Shakespeare Plays Have their own poll. For purposes of this poll, Early Modern will arbitrarily be 1500-1799.

[nanshe-of-nina]

Favorite History Books || Triumph and Illusion: The Hundred Years War Volume 5 by Jonathan Sumption ★★★★☆

The wheel of fortune is one of the most ancient symbols of mankind, an image of capricious fate and the transience of human affairs. In the late middle ages it was everywhere, in illuminated manuscripts, in wall paintings and stained glass, in sermons and homilies, in poetry and prose. ‘The wheel of fortune turneth as a ball, sudden climbing axeth a sudden fall,’ wrote John Lydgate in The Fall of Princes, a work commissioned by one of the dominant figures in this history, Cardinal Henry Beaufort. The present volume traces the remarkable recovery of France in barely two decades from the lowest point of its fortunes to the dominant position in Europe which it had enjoyed before the wars with England. Sudden climbing axeth a sudden fall. These years saw the collapse of the English dream of conquest in France from the opening years of the reign of Henry VI, when the battles of Cravant and Verneuil consolidated their control of most of northern France, until the loss of all their continental dominions except Calais. This sudden reversal of fortune, inexplicable to many contemporary Englishmen, was a seminal event in the history of the two principal nation-states of western Europe. It brought an end to four centuries of the English dynasty’s presence in France, separating two countries whose fortunes had once been closely intertwined. It created a new sense of identity in both of them. In large measure, the divergent fortunes of the French and English states over the following centuries flowed from these events. The passions generated by ancient wars eventually fade, but those provoked by the wars of the English in fifteenth-century France have proved to be surprisingly durable. The foundations of scholarship on the period were laid by patriotic French historians of the nineteenth century, writing under the shadow of Waterloo and Sedan. The passage of the centuries did nothing nothing to soften their indignation about the fate of their country in the time of Henry VI and the Duke of Bedford. The extraordinary life and death of Joan of Arc defied historical objectivity until quite recently. Joan’s story became the focus of disparate but powerful political passions: nationalism, Catholicism, royalism and intermittent anglophobia. Much of what has been written falsifies history by attributing to medieval men and women the notions of another age. But myths are powerful agents of national identity. The great French historian Marc Bloch once wrote that no Frenchman could truly understand his country’s history unless he thrilled at the story of Charles VII’s coronation at Reims. Writing in the summer of 1940 in the aftermath of a terrible defeat, Bloch looked to an earlier recovery from the edge of disaster for reassurance about the survival of France. If there is a corresponding English myth, it is in the history plays of Shakespeare. The great speeches which he gave to John of Gaunt and Henry V belong to the classic canon of English patriotism. His three plays about Henry VI, a truncated story of discord at home and defeat abroad, never reach the same heights. Yet they serve to remind us that behind the clash of arms and principles were men and women of flesh and blood. I have tried at every page to remember that they were not cardboard cut-outs. They endured hunger, saddle-sores and toothache. They experienced fear and elation, joy and disappointment, shame and pride, ambition and exhaustion. At the level of government, they were trapped by the logic of war, lacking the resources to conquer or even to defend what they had, and yet unable to make peace. It was the tragedy of the English that, after an initial surge of optimism in the 1420s, they realised that the war could not be won, but were forced to fight on by the memory of Henry V’s triumphs and the incapacity of his son, until disaster finally engulfed them.

[stephensmithuk]

The Hound of the Baskervilles: The Curse of the Baskervilles

CW for discussion of crimes against humanity.

Devonshire is a historical alternative name for the county of Devon, these days not seeing that much use. Devon and next-door Cornwall have a friendly rivalry going over various things, including the order in which you put cream and jam on a scone. Cornwall does jam first, Devon cream. Getting it the wrong round in the relevant county can attract disapproving looks.

Mainstream Christianity believes that the only sin that cannot be forgiven by God is "blaspheming against the Holy Spirit", which is a continuous and arrogant rejection of it. It is generally deemed impossible for a Christian to actually do because if you worried that you've done it, you're not rejecting the Holy Spirit.

The Great Rebellion is the then standard name for what is commonly called the English Civil War or less commonly, but more correctly the War of the Three Kingdoms - England, Scotland and Ireland all being their own kingdoms under a single monarch, Wales is a principality. Lasting from 1639 to 1653 and including a whole bunch of conflicts, including two English Civil Wars. Various videos explaining the whole rather complex affair with varying degrees of comedy can be found on YouTube, but the popular version is that a bunch of republicans (Roundheads) with short hair fought a bunch of monarchists with long hair (Cavaliers). To quote Arnold Rimmer, it ended "1-0 to the pudding-basins" and King Charles I ended up losing his head in public.

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, a key member of the governments of Charles I and Charles II wrote some memoirs of the whole period. Initially written between 1646 and 1648 as a defence of the former, his fall from power and exile in 1667 (he was made to carry the can for the English defeat against the Netherlands in the Second Anglo-Dutch War despite having little involvement) resulted in a massive expansion and re-write of The History of the Rebellion, which generally runs to no less than six volumes. One can compare it to Winston Churchill's The Second World War it seems - interesting, but watch for bias.

A yeoman in this context was a commoner who owned the land that he farmed, as opposed to being merely a tenant. Indeed a third of all farmland remains run by tenanted farmers; including much of Dartmoor, which is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the land holdings of a (male only) heir to the throne.

A maiden is traditionally an unmarried girl or young woman, with a strong implication of virginity to boot.

Michaelmas is a Christian festival held on 29 September in honour Saint Michael and all the other angels. It was traditionally associated with the end of harvest and a bunch of other stuff, including the legal calendar. The Lord Mayor of London (not to be confused with the Mayor of London) is elected on this. Traditionally the meal eaten here included goose, but it has very much fallen out of fashion in modern Britain.

A carouse (also a verb) is basically a long drinking and dancing event; "Carouse" turns up as a skill in some RPG systems i.e. the ability to do this effectively without ending up on the floor next to your vomit.

"Terrible oaths" here mean foul language.

A league is three statute miles, so she's got to get nine miles or 14.9 kilometres. That's a rather long way to go, especially in the dark.

A flagon is a large vessel for containing drink, about 2 imperial pints or 1.1 litres in capacity. You can either use it for pouring (in which case it will have a spout) or drinking from directly.

Trenchers were flat wood or metal plates used for serving food. In medieval times, they would be made of stale bread. After the meal, these and the juices, leftovers etc. would be generally given to the poor. Eating the trencher yourself was considered rather vulgar.

"Wench" has had various meanings over the years. In Shakespeare's time, it was a neutral or even endearing term for a young woman. It then evolved into a female server, particularly at a tavern (with the associated sexy costume, although I am not sure when that became a thing) and from there to being a term for a prostitute, with "wenching" becoming a verb to mean using the services of them. With an associated meaning of a promiscuous woman. It is not clear whether the writer is using the term or Hugo is here. I can see the latter using it in a rather venomous way.

A kerchief is another name for a bandana.

The pistols of the period were single-shot weapons requiring reloading with powder, wadding and shot. Even with regular practice like in an army (where this was a major part of drill), you'd be looking at a 15 to 20 second reloading time. It was commonplace to carry two pistols (a brace) as a result, at which point the fight was either over, or it was time to get your sword out. Some went still further - Blackbeard, who was going progressively crazy with syphilis, is recorded as carrying six loaded pistols on him.

There were 16 fatal dog on human attacks in the UK from January to September 2023; a sharp rise blamed on the American XL Bully breed, which was promptly banned in England and Wales as a result.

Providence means God's intervention in the universe.

"Which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ" is a reference to the Commandment about not creating graven images or idols, either the Second Commandment or part of the First depending on your denomination; Anglicans put it as the Second.

"The probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon" is going to form part of a post discussing late Victorian elections, because I could go on all days about those. Central Devon was a narrow Conservative hold in 2024, by the way.

Nouveaux riches is French for "new rich", commonly rendered as "new money". The "aristocracy" on both sides of the Atlantic (see The Gilded Age) looked down on the new millionaires who were being created by the Industrial Revolution, such as railway tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1867, followed by gold at Witwatersrand in 1886, led to a vast boom that turned what would become South Africa from an agricultural economy to a wealthy industrial one... most of that wealth ending in the hands of white people, of course. Indeed, it led to the actual creation of South Africa in the first place.

Inquests are held in England and Wales after any death that is violent, unnatural, a possible suicide or in custody. These were at the time conducted with a jury, but this has become much rarer since 1927, when a coroner can do it on their own in many cases. In the case of a murder, an inquest will be opened and adjourned to allow the police to investigate. This process can take quite a while; after the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017, a full public inquiry into the event was held and following the end of that in 2003, the same judge then conducted an inquest into the death of the bomber himself, as was legally required. No public hearings were held in this case to avoid attention and save public money. The conclusion was officially logged as "suicide while undertaking a terror attack that murdered 22 innocent victims and injured many others", Sir John Saunders clearly that merely putting "suicide" was insufficient.

The Gypsy and Traveller community have long been associated with horses, with the Appleby Horse Fair being held every June in Cumbria. The RSPCA have a large presence at the event to deal with any animal welfare issues, issuing warnings and will take animals away or prosecute people if required. The 2024 event saw two horses worked to death, the official website posting the RSPCA's request for information on those responsible.

I've discussed Bushmen/San in one of my posts on The Sign of Four.

"Hottentot" is a now-offensive term for the Khoekhoe nomadic pastoralists of Southern Africa, often grouped with the San. Its use in the 1964 Mary Poppins film has seen that movie reclassified in the UK from a U (universal) to a PG.

They are split into the Northern Khoekhoe or Nama, located in Namibia and Botswana, and the Southern Khoekhoe or Cape Khoe found in the SW coastal regions of South Africa. At the time this book was set, these were, respectively:

German South West Africa

Bechaunaland Protectorate (de facto independent until 1891 when the British took active control)

The Cape Colony

Two years after publication, separate Nama and Herero rebellions in the former against colonial rule (the German aim being ethnic cleansing) were brutally defeated, with the peoples either shot dead, driven into the desert or placed into concentration camps. They were subjected to medical experiments, skulls being taken to Germany for use as demonstration of "racial inferiority". The similarities between this genocide and the Holocaust are clear, although the precise connections are debated by historians.

It is estimated that up to 80% of the indigenous population died as a result.

Germany has in the last decade offically recognised this as a genocide, agreed to pay €1.1 billion to the affected communities and has returned the human remains held in German universities or teaching hospitals.

On a final note, Mortimer failing to mention the footprints around the body might be considered perjury.

[noelcollection]

Gothic Literature

As All Hallow’s Eve approaches with much anticipation of costumes, candies, and candles; we are reminded of strange tales that float from ear to ear as the sun sets earlier and the moon rises sooner. Some of the most popular works of literature created the genre of gothic literature, Stoker's Dracula, Shelly’s Frankenstein, and Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.

Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, first published in 1764, is considered to be the first gothic work in literature. The mention of gothic literature brings up images of foggy moors, castle ruins, dark romances, and flocks of black birds. This is due to the major contributors of the gothic literary canon from the early Victorian period from both the United Kingdom and America; Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The gothic literary canon has continued to expand with the works of Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Annie Rice. There is a modern gothic canon that houses authors such as Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Dame Daphne du Maruier. Beyond the illustrations of vampires, night sisters, and dangerous tinctures, what creates a gothic novel? 

There are three main elements that are needed for a gothic novel: an environment of fear, supernatural events, and an intrusion of the past on the present. This differs from traditional fairy tales because the main theme is the present being haunted by the past or past event. The character’s environment contains physical reminders of the past by utilizing dark but picturesque scenery with melodramatic narratives. The central environment can be castle ruins, ancient houses, or encircling forests which all contain some terrible secret. An example of this is Poe’s short story “Fall of the House of Usher.” There are several earlier novels that set the foundation for early gothic literature that were published in the late 1700s. The featured novel The Castle of Otranto by Walpole in 1764; along with other works like Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, (1794), Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), and Charles Brockden Brown’s American tale Wieland (1798). In the case of Walpole’s novel which is considered to be the first gothic novel, the subtitle “a Gothic story” was applied to the second edition.

This is likely due to the setting of the novel being in a haunted castle which is said to be inspired by a nightmare that Walpole had while sleeping in his own gothic revival style home, called Strawberry Hill House, in London. Horace Walople was taken with medieval history. The novel itself deals with a castle lord named Manfred and his family and opens with an ominous wedding. The sickly son of Manfred, Conrad is meant to be marrying princess Isabella but is crushed to death by a large helmet that falls from above him. This event is tied to an ancient prophecy:

“that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it”

The story follows through a series of events that feels reminiscence of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as Manfred attempts to leave his current wife for his son’s betrothed is fear that the prophecy means the end of his family’s line. The full prophecy comes to play out when Manfred mistakenly kills his daughter, Matilda, and a giant ghostly apparition appears to announce that the prophecy has been fulfilled after Matilda’s death and the former peasant Theodore is revealed to be the true prince of Otranto. Manfred repents for his actions and retires to religion alongside his wife, Hippolita.

While much of the story is dramatic, it was well received after its original publication. The portions being featured from the 1800’s edition of Walpole novel with the full title: The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. The title was meant to give the reader’s the impression that the story was much older by seeming that it was found manuscript written in Naples in 1529, to better enforce this notion Walpole chose an archaic style of writing for the novel. The edition in the James Smith Noel Collection also has a frontispiece which is featured with this post.

Walpole, H. (1800). Jeffery's edition of the Castle of Otranto: A Gothic story. Jeffery. https://bit.ly/3rMxwNw

[hezzabeth]

Nano days 10-13

“Of course, it does. Little Habi doesn’t have my figure,” Revati said proudly as the two feral children came bounding around her pink velvet skirts.

There was a quiet, embarrassed shuffling sound. Revati glanced over her shoulder and realized it was the lost boy.

“So, you’re going to steal my shoes and bracelet?” he asked nervously.

“Take the bracelet; we have enough boots,” Revati said, and Aurora timidly walked towards the boy, extending a hand.

“Do I really have to give her my bracelet?” he asked with a small, bewildered smile.

“We could send you back in there! I’m sure Big Hardie is awake and ready to perform,” Revati said, and with a vague shrug, the boy undid his bracelet, handing it over to Aurora.

“Let’s go,” Revati said to Aurora before snapping her fingers again, causing the feral children to fall back in line.

“Now hang on!” the boy cried, chasing after them.

Revati just kept marching on, holding her skirts up above her ankles.

“Look, did you just save my life? Were those actors really going to kill me? That’s a crime!” the boy pointed out, and Revati spun around, examining the boy.

The boy was dressed in a simple yet surprisingly new bright blue jumpsuit. His plastic boots barely looked worn, yet he had calluses all over his fingers. Revati’s eyes trailed upwards, briefly taking in the bruises on his neck.

“You’re on ungoverned territory; everything is legal here, technically,” Revati said ignoring the blood all over the feral children’s clothes.

“Well, that explains the naked people I saw dancing around a burning information screen in the wasteland,” the boy said as Revati and Aurora kept marching on.

“Oh, those are the Luddites! They were actors in the medieval section, and now they reject all forms of technology,” Aurora explained as they continued walking the streets, changing from thatched roof buildings to narrow brick townhouses.

“Medieval section? Where exactly am I?” the boy asked, and Revati snorted.

“I don’t have time to explain a confusing and contradictory society to you! Over there is one of the theme park's maps,” Revati snapped, gesturing to an old, large poster framed in cloudy glass.

The investors and creators of Olde Landon split each park section into separate areas. Each area was designed to be a tiny fun-filled replica of a “romantic” time period.

There was Shakespeare Lane that consisted of the theatre. It also contained abandoned rides such as “Hamlet’s haunted house” and “The Tempest Shipwreck adventure”.

To the left lay Medieval Faire. Medieval Faire’s most popular attractions were the giant jumping castle, clockwork-powered metal horses, and the tofu turkey leg stands.

Revati herself lived in Victoriana, which was mostly “true crime and mystery” themed. Revati’s street alone had two abandoned “murder mystery” dinner theaters.

Finally, there was “Whistleton”. Revati despised Whistleton. Whistleton, where the only thing to drink was old stale tea, and the food was always some form of bland cake. Whistleton, where every actor over the age of eighteen had to be “matched and married” by the end of September. Those who remained single were banished to the wastelands. Aurora, realizing she never wanted to marry anyone, had defected to Victoriana when she was twelve.

Whistleton, where the tourists who were trapped in that section ended up becoming indentured servants. Revati could see one of them now scrubbing at a cobblestone with a toothbrush.

Whistleton was the only part of the park with a connection to the outside world. A tenuous, terrifying connection Revati hated to think about.

“Oh, I see! This is one of those historical reenactment fun parks! We have one of those on my space station called Millennial land,” the boy remarked, turning away from the sign.

“I've heard of Millennial land; isn’t that the place with the museum holding the only remaining iPhone thing?” Revati asked as they turned the corner, entering Mayfair Street.

Unlike the rest of Olde Landon that was slowly rotting, Mayfair Street gleamed. Each of the white mansion facades had been trimmed with buttery gold paint. Glorious flowers grew in hanging pots from the street signs. Fashionable actors, wearing carefully taken care of costumes, strolled happily, taking in the jasmine-scented night air.

“Now isn’t this lovely?” the boy remarked, and Revati glared at him.

“Why are you still following me?” She asked coldly.

“Honestly, I have nowhere else to go! Look at those Persian buttercups! They’re the size of my fist,” the boy remarked, walking towards one of the hanging baskets.

One of the actors peeled away from her partner and glided towards Revati.

“So it was your Auntie who messaged us," and Aurora blushed, nodding.

“Mrs. Danfront,” Revati said with a small, curt nod.

Mrs. Danfront was a middle-aged, plump lady spilling out the front of her empire-cut baby blue gown. A lace-trimmed bonnet had been fastened onto her peach-pink corkscrew curls.

“Miss Revati! I see you and my niece are following the dress code! Delightful,” Mrs. Danfront smiled, snapping her fan open.

“Last time I visited wearing pants, you tried to lock me up; you said I had female hysteria,” Revati smiled back, and Mrs. Danfront chuckled.

“And you kicked the door down! You’ve always been so entertaining, Miss Revati,” Mrs. Danfront smiled.

Revati merely tied the children’s leashes to one of the lamp posts to prevent them from running away.

“I don’t have time for chattering and social pleasantries; I’m here for my sister,” Revati shot back, and Mrs. Danfront’s smile fell slightly.

“Ah yes, as my Aurora would tell you, I’m not normally one to mess with matters of the heart,” Mrs. Danfront said as she stepped over one of the children to link her arm with Revati’s.

Revati breathed in deeply, reminding herself that this was something all women did in Whistleton; it was as if they were incapable of walking alone.

“No one could ever accuse you of caring about a person's heart,” Revati replied smoothly as they began to stroll.

Here's the corrected version of your text:

That was another thing about Whistleton; one of the key forms of entertainment seemed to be mindless strolling.

“In this situation, however, I found myself having to throw discretion to the wind! Your sister has somehow managed to set her cap at the Duke of Io,” Mrs. Danfront gasped, covering her fan with her mouth.

“Amma said her boyfriend is some sort of charity aid worker! The sort who drops medical supplies on us from the sky once a month,” Revati replied as they passed the boy, who was now examining a bush filled with roses.

The air droppers were really the only people who cared about war refugees. No one knew which charity they represented, and they did have a tendency to drop off useless things like old t-shirts and near-expired food.

“He wants people to think that, but we all realized who he was the minute he landed! Mint skin and pale blue hair? So obvious,” Mrs. Danfront said.

So obvious. Revati hadn’t seen much of the outside world, but even she knew what the Io royal family looked like. The Io royal family's skin color was caused by an ancestor genetically splicing themselves with a houseplant. The pale blue hair was a popular color all royalty embraced.

“He could just be a rich danger tourist,” Revati pointed out.

“Oh no, he looks just like his great-uncle! Before you girls were born, the King of Io was forever in the papers! People thought he was having an affair with the lost princess,” Mrs. Danfront gossiped.

“And you said she was heading to the west parking lot?” Revati asked as they stopped strolling, reaching the end of Mayfair street.

Before them stood a cream sandstone building with a large domed copper ceiling. The steps were already crowded with young people, mostly the children of older actors. They were all dressed in the finest satins and velvets the park's costume department had to offer. Several of them shot Revati and Aurora filthy looks.

“Keep your eyes to yourself; we’re not here to steal your future spouses,” Revati smirked at one red-headed girl in green who was downright glaring.

“They’re mad at your sister, dear. It’s not often we get new people here! Everyone wanted a chance to snatch the Duke,” Mrs. Danfront remarked.

“Probably because without new blood, this entire place will descend into incestuous chaos,” giggled Aurora nervously, and her Aunt glared at her.

“Ladies discuss the weather and fabrics, not science,” she said, scolding her admonished niece. Then her eyes trailed behind Revati.

The boy was still following them in a vague sort of way, holding a red rose in one hand.

“Speaking of new blood, who’s the boy? I haven’t seen hair like that in over a decade! And he’s short! He must be off-world,” Mrs. Danfront remarked, examining the boy who had caught up to them.

“I have no idea who he is; the Habri boys picked him up in the wasteland, and now he’s following me,” Revati said, and the boy nodded at Mrs. Danfront, smiling again.

“Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Brigadeiro Bun! And you’re right, I am from another world,” he said to Mrs. Danfront.

“Really! How delightful, and how on earth did you get here, Mr. Bun?” Mrs. Danfront giggled, and Revati sighed, rolling her eyes.

“We don’t have time for this! You need to get me into that ball right now,” she said, and Brigadeiro Bun turned to Revati.

His name didn’t suit him at all. Brigadeiro sounded like the sort of grand name that belonged to a master swordsman with knee-high boots and a black velvet cape. And Bun... Bun sounded like it should belong to a cheerful grandmother in a bakery with flour up to her elbows.

Brigadeiro Bun was smiling at her, that same baffling, gentle smile.

“I was traveling during my gap year when I heard a story about solid diamond roses growing in the wasteland outside BritinduSarvadharma,” he smiled.

“So you’re an idiot then,” Revati pointed out as they approached the pantheon’s front doors.

An elderly man dressed in a three-piece suit was standing behind a small podium.

“I prefer to think of myself as an adventurer,” he replied, and Aurora squawked with laughter.

The elderly man’s saggy face shifted like an avalanche when he realized who was approaching.

His lips pursed together, and he shook his head like a tyrant deciding the fate of an entire galaxy.

“Oh no, Mrs. Danfront, I told you before, this ball is for the gentry and their guests,” he said, and Revati rolled her eyes, pulling out her solar gun.

“Just let us in already, Nuisanceworth,” Revati said.

“It’s Nancyworth, no invitations, no entry! You can kill me, but it won’t change anything,” Nancyworth replied, raising his thick eyebrows in a devastating display of power.

“You were always so droll, Nancyworth! Now, normally I wouldn’t ask you to make exceptions, but we do have a delightful guest with us,” Mrs. Danfront giggled.

“We do?” Revati asked, lowering her gun slightly.

“This is Mister Brigadeiro! And he is fresh blood,” Mrs. Danfront said, gesturing to Brigadeiro, who waved nervously with a small smile.

“Is he married?” Nancyworth asked, and Brigadeiro dropped his hand.

“I’m only seventeen,” he said, sounding faintly startled.

“So not married then, and what are your prospects? Are you a scavenger? A rebel? A psychotic killer?” He asked, and Brigadeiro’s eyes widened with horror.

“No! I just finished school, and next month I will be starting my Botanical genetics degree at the University of Sustainable tourism,” Brigadeiro explained.

Revati, who had only ever attended lessons in her kitchen, rolled her eyes.

“And your parents?” He asked.

“Well, my dad’s a tree splicer, and my mama is a flower surgeon,” Brigadeiro said, still looking faintly confused.

“Well, I suppose it’s better than working in trade! Fine your party may admitted, and your guest will be allowed to propose to any young lady below level three,” he said, allowing them to pass.

The opening foyer of the Pantheon had been carefully painted in shades of baby blue and tan. Vending machines that used to sell drinks had been turned into shelves holding salvaged fine china.

Severe posters of ancient members of both the British Monarchy and the Wadiyar dynasty hung from the walls.

“What’s that old lady holding? Some sort of shoe?” Brigadeiro remarked as he paused in front of a painting of Queen Lilibet the second.

“It’s a dog, a creature that existed before all animals vanished six hundred years ago,” Revati explained with annoyance as she brushed past him.

.

[arcticdementor]

Every time the subject of a possible US civil war or national divorce comes up I hear the same micron deep takes. America couldn’t break up because the division isn’t by state, its Urban Vs. Rural. Or that Urban vs. Rural isn’t the divide, even then people of different politics are mixed up together. Or that for every clear red or blue state there’s a purple state. None of which is in any way relevant to anything until you recognize the naïve mental model many of these people are working on... These takes betray a belief that a second civil war would be some kind of conflict between coherent independent states who’ve started identifying with/against the idea of union such as happened in the 1860s… or that somehow there’d be a series of tidy Quebec style referendums resulting in a clean division such as exists in so many meme maps:

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The truth is any post-breakup map of America would not resemble an electoral map following state lines, nor even a redrawing of state boundaries, such that the fantastical greater Idaho or Free State of Jefferson might exist as part of a wider Confederation of Constitutional Republics, or a Breakaway Philadelphia city-State join a Union of Progressive Democracies…  No. It’d be nothing so comprehensible or easily mapped to modern politics. A post breakup America would probably look closer to this:

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(I really do apologize for all I’m going to have to digress) For our purposes we can broadly divide history into 2 types of period… Periods of Centralizing trends, and periods of Decentralizing trends.

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Centralizing Eras are consistently defined by big Heroic (classical sense of the word) figures that lead great armies or great nations and either win and centralize control under themselves or lose and get centralized under another. Alexander, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, Agustus, Wolfe, Horatio Nelson, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Grant, Lenin, Trotsky, Woodrow Wilson, Mussolini, Hitler, Rommel, Churchill, Montgomery, FDR, MacArthur, Stalin, Zukav, Mao… On and on we could list the names.

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Normandy and England’s William “The Conqueror” captured England (but not Wales, Scotland or Ireland) creating a unified kingdom on both sides of the English channel…in a feat every English schoolboy has memorized ever since (1066 and all that)… And William’s total Domain was less than 1/20th what Alexander had achieved 1300 years before. Likewise Shakespeare immortalized Henry the 5th as the very avatar of Mars…Achieving the English dream and conquering France! Only to die of dysentery within the year and have his territorial gain be entirely lost within a generation. Likewise Charlemange’s 8th and 9th century unified empire of France and Germany broke apart within a generation. And as late as 1718 Charles XII’s extraordinary military victories and revolutionary tactics couldn’t save the Swedish empire’s decline from great power status.

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Centralizing eras are marked by finicky, barely technological, advances that A) are not evenly distributed and allow the powers which have them to dominate the powers that don’t, and B) require vast numbers of hierarchically organized people working together in sophisticated coordination to make it work at all, often with extensive infrastructure than can only be worked by such a bureaucracy. Napoleonic Divisions, 5000 man Aircraft Carriers, trans-Continental railway or telegraphs, and massive continent severing canal systems (Suez/Panama) are prime examples. Decentralizing eras are the opposite. Decentralizing eras are defined by sophisticated capital and skill intensive weapons that can be utilized by relatively few people, and which are widely distributed (it being far easier to get even ridiculous amounts of money to invest in tools or skills, than it is to get 10,000+ all obeying at once you). We “sea” this with the very first decentralizing era: The bronze age collapse.

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the medieval era is defined by 3 iconic technologies:  Heavy warhorses with advanced stirrups, castle/keeps (and the ranged weapons such as crossbows that lose most of their effectiveness when not defending them), and the Knights armor.  This is the iconic image of the medieval period. All three are capital intensive technologies wielded by small numbers of wealthy men. Later Castles could be held against a force of hundreds by a mere dozen men, warhorses and advancing armor made knights sometimes 10-20 to 1 more effective than ordinary footmen. Within the span of 500 years major historical battles went from 100s of thousands of people in great migratory armies crashing against empires of millions, to 20-60 incredibly wealthy men, all named in the record, facing off against a similar force. Hell individual duels often decided the fates of vast swathes of country side. This is how totally heavy cavalry, armor, and castles just destroyed the very possibility of large complex states and the attendant armies. Now ask yourself… Which type of era are we in?

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None of our leaders are analogous to the great conquerors. Rather they are like the Persian and Lydian kings and courtiers of the Pre-Alexandrian period, or the late Roman Emperors and generals, or the thousands of European kings and Courtiers, endlessly fighting grinding wars that achieve remarkably little. Their ultimate achievement being that they might be mostly forgotten as merely mediocre… instead of screwing up monumentally and going down in history like Varus, or Commodus, or Croesus of Lydia whom the oracle told he’d “destroy a great empire”… but whose wars only destroyed his own. These are the kinds of people our elite are doomed to be remembered as… if they’re remembered. McNamara’s tenancy as Secretary of Defence isn’t remembered for him creating a fighting force to rival the Myrmidons or Napoleon’s old Guard, he’s remembered for McNamara’s Morons (Decent Review). . If current trends continue we’re on a fast track to eventually hit the apex of decentralization: Neo-Medievalism.

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The above is a map of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the Successors to Charlemagne’s empire which, depending on the dating, lasted from about 800ad-956ad (its very debatable when you date the “start” of the empire) to its final dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Meaning it lasted longer than the original Roman Empire… Naively we might think this empire is a great counter example to my “decentralizing eras” thesis… Except for one thing: This was never “THE MAP” of the Holy Roman Empire. The above map comprises every territory that was ever part of the “Empire” none of which were ever all in it at the same time… And none of which were ever really part of the same political unit… Its really hard to know if there was even a single year every polity nominally within the empire recognized each other, or were even meaningfully at peace. Indeed the “Holy” in the name was a source of countless wars and conflicts, given It was adopted and maintained (grossly simplifying) as part of a double play, the Emperor at various points wanting to use his title as “Holy” Emperor of Rome to annex the Papal States and assume authority over the Catholic Church, and various Popes aspiring to use their religious authority to place their chosen allies in control of the “Empire”. The Emperor bounced back and forth between being God’s appointed supreme ruler on earth, literally crowned by the Pope, and being the Supreme enemy of the Pope in turn. Its a mess.

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You know how everyone gets confused by the electoral college or how American senators worked before they were elected… imagine that confusing mess x100, and the results determined who’d be civil waring with who, whether you’d be going to war with the Pope under the banner of the Antichrist, and later whether Protestants or Catholics would be going under the boot. So Voltaire’s quip that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire” was very bitingly true… it often warred with the Popes, far from being Roman on at least one occasion it invaded and sacked Rome, and far from being an empire it was more a loose federation that elected its “Emperors”… But even that’s a simplification because at various points the pope was literally crowning the emperor, Rome was part of the empire, and the Crown was hereditary! It simultaneously was and wasn’t Holy, was and wasn’t Roman, and was and wasn’t an Empire. Seriously, this is the map without any simplifications:

Now tell me, is there another 3 word national title that’s hotly debated? To what extent is the USA really United? States? or America? The meaning of all 3 have shifted massively since the founding… the Union is unrecognizable from what the founders envisioned: becoming a Nation after the civil war, instead of the loose federation they set out to create. The states have gone from being almost fully sovereign republics to interchangeable imperial provinces, and are now again asserting increasing amounts of that lost sovereignty. And of course “America” neither comprises the whole of the Americas.. nor is it wholly within the Americas. ( we cannot forget Hawaii) Might there come a day we quip the USA is/was neither United, nor States, nor America? Hold that thought.

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The reason the HRE is so confusing and the reason most Medieval and early modern history is so confusing, is Medieval states… really aren’t states. Fans of Game of Thrones or Shakespeare understand the concept of feudalism and the military hierarchy of Knights answering to lords answering to kings, and Hollywood has taught most people to appreciate how that chain of command can become very conflicted and prone to rebellion or schemes, especially around a succession crisis (do you support the old King’s son, brother, or cousin to succeed him? Well who’s going to give you the better deal?) These stories make great hour and half dramas… But even as all these dynamics did happen, the actual medieval system was vastly VASTLY more complex.

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Multiple factions and entities within the same very small stretch of land might all wield some form of sovereignty and ability to make laws or rules, formal and informal, and enforce them with violence… all commanding some version of legitimacy. An individual town might have: 1. a Mayor or sheriff elected by some fraction of the propertied townspeople able to pass laws and have them enforced, even to the point of violence or death sentences;  2. An ecclesiastical order empowered to enforce its own laws upon the members of its order, maintaining armed retainers, and empowered (depending on the era) to root out and deal with heretics, (also at various points they owned and/or regulated brothels and vice crime);  3. local lodges of various guilds that variably are empowered to enforce their monopolies, collect debts, and deal with thieves, fraudsters and embezzlers in their midst, possibly including networked merchant guilds that across their various lodges might have more armed men than all but the largest individual towns; 4. Noble families that maintain arms and loyal retainers, with ancient rights and customs, including discretionary power to deal out violence to those who intrude, insult, or otherwise conflict with them… including dueling with their equals, or just brutalizing members of the lower class who insult them (imagine the brawl that starts off Romeo and Juliet, or the internecine fighting throughout, and how restricted The Prince is in setting any consequences for the Capulets and Montagues for their semi-open warfare); 5. A Knightly Order that maintains oaths, loyalties, obligations and interests distinct and separate form the nominal official chain of military command (think Templars, Hospitallers, Teutons); 6. An individual ward which a powerful alderman runs as a fiefdom/racket with a very reliable collection of thugs at his call; 7. All of the Above all over again multiple times, because we’re talking about a city that’s a conglomeration of smaller towns such as London, and the whole thing’s still organized as if it were 7 distinct entities. 8. The actual lord or governor who “rules” the town and answers to the king… on days he feels like it, and all the retainers and support people he uses to “govern” the place. There is no coherent unified monopoly on violence like we imagine the state to hold in this situation. Instead various factions and institutions have all amassed various forms of legitimacy: cultural, political, and practical…and have all carved out their little niche in which they can deal their own version of law, violence and justice. If you are a lawyer or have to deal with politics or government, or regulation, you might already be starting to see why I’m predicting this for the future but for those who are less versed in American governance:

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But they were both of them deceived. For neither the English or French monarchies truly understood the power they had wielded, nor whom had granted it to them: It was not the Crown itself that wielded absolute power, but rather the central government, and the central government was not a collection of neat hierarchically delegated power… the lawyers and bureaucrats were not gaining their power from the crown, the crown was gaining its power from the lawyers and bureaucrats. And as soon as the crown was impeding the Lawyers and bureaucrats centralization and concentration of power in their class, the bureaucrats and upstarts rebelled… Thus the English and French revolutions. Thus the state consumed the sovereign, great men were still able to wield the state like Napoleon or later Hitler, Stalin, FDR, Churchill and Moa… But the leaders now needed to appease the state, not the paper pushers the other way… then by the 1960s it had become basically impossible for even great men to control the bureaucracies beneath them. Stalin may have been killed, Kennedy was killed, Kruschev and Nixon soft couped… And no nation has had a great man leader since… the most successful leaders have been those who most effectively surrendered the last rememenants of their executive power… The executive branch and the “office of the president” is more powerful than it has ever been. The executive branch has never employed more people, nor the Whitehouse. The PERSON of the president though has never been weaker.  Trump was besieged unable to fire any of his “executive” branch “employees” and now Biden physically embodies the state of things… The man who sits in the oval office is puppeted by the Whitehouse, and the Whitehouse by the executive branch… a complete inversion of how the organization is supposed to work.

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Whilst there have been many unitary states in history for whom any and all power and authority, at least officially, formally, came from one centralized institution and myth, Whether that be absolute monarchism, where it is concentrated in one person, or Unitary Republics where the “voice of the people” is 100% and only concentrated in one single assembly, The US is slightly more… sophisticated.

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This balance of powers is not dissimilar to how hard it was for a duke to control or discipline a petulant lord... Sure there was some hypothetical mechanism to remove him or wage war… but the incredible effort required means you’d rarely if ever do it for any except the worst offender. But all this becomes fractally more complicated when we zoom out. The US federal government receives its authority officially from the constitution… where does the constitution receive its authority? In an absolutist monarchy or French/Russian style revolutionary “republic” the origin of political power would be simple. The king or Director would answer to “God” or “The People” and it would be understood that the government’s continued existence meant God and “the People” were pleased and not to be consulted further on the matter. But when the American Constitution says “We the people” it actually refers to bodies and organizations entitled to represent them and give consultation. Namely the states, who all have their own assemblies, governors, courts and constitutions.

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But even this only scratches the surface because there are also hundreds of territory holding recognized sovereign nations within the US. Namely the 326 federally recognized Tribal Indian reservations each of which have their own treaties establishing rights and semi-sovereign powers derived not from the constitution, but from their own pre-existing sovereignty (if they didn’t have this congress wouldn’t have made treaties with them… they’d have just unilaterally passed a law). And these are real powers… they have armed native police, perhaps 10s of thousands of armed men collectively, who answer to the Band Councils alone.

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Is it any wonder the bureaucrats have been able to carve out such scrutiny free power for themselves? but of course informally for most of its history the map of real power looked nothing like this.

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Remember those 377 officially recognized top level governments with constitutional sovereignty in America alone?  Forget that, that’s a fiction… The real number that exercise violent power, Ie. Real Political Power, is somewhere in the thousands if not tens of thousands. The City of New York is not included on that list (officially it is answerable and dissolvable by the state of New York, LOL)… and the city of New York has 36,000 armed and ready police officers at it’s beck and call (as many as Napoleon had when he invaded Italy). Likewise every dinky little city and county has its own police departments, often with elected sheriffs who functionally have independence that rivals state governments, and are only really removable by a process of impeachment at the state level. And this is before we get into the Cartels, militias, ideological movements, and collections of friends who are all shockingly armed and in many cases better trained and versed in infantry and low intensity warfare than about 90% of military personnel or police.

…

I’ve by no means covered everything I want to on this topic. Mapping out the future of what a Neo-Medieval post national regime, and how we’d get from here to there is likely to be my life’s work. Both in that I’m going to be writing about it for the rest of my life and that we’re going to be living it. But one of the thing’s I want to emphasize as it would be a mistake to think of these developments as merely the rise of a “Mad Max” warlord driven world. Far from it, whatever successor institutions, aristocracies, and duchies devour the modern welfare states in a orgy of map redrawing and private fortune making will probably find that there is a great deal of economic and technological low hanging fruit just lying about. I doubt it will offset the scale of the disruption globally, but things like Cheap automobiles, cheap bush planes, cheap housing construction, low taxes, no DEI mandates, and a whole host of other things now criminalized by “Democracy” will suddenly be opened up and we’ll probably see a massive change in settlement patterns and ways of living as a result.

…

We are seeing the inevitable conclusion and failure of the “Liberal Democracy” born into the world around the French Revolution. “Democracy” has expanded to the point where more people have a hypothetical right to vote than exist in the country and governments import them to vote which way the state likes, whilst “Liberal” civil rights have expanded to the point where everything is a right: Healthcare, Schooling, to get hired for jobs, to have your feelings defended… Everything is a right… Except for any of the liberties actually established in and of the founding documents or revolutions of the 18th century. Those are now forms of hate and terrorism. To speak your mind is no longer a protected right, but to be protected from someone speaking their mind about you demands the full armed response of the state.

…

This is an introductory essay. A justification for my ideological projects to come. What is going to happen is largely inevitable but how long we live through the chaos of the fall or how quickly we settle on the equilibriums that will hold with the new balance of powers will be a matter that could take a 30 or 100 years war… or it could wrap up into a stable equilibrium in 5-15. I hope by digging deeper we can shorten that window, speedrun the new order, and limit the damage these abominations of governments can do on the way out.

[humanpurposes]

I read something about GRRM being inspired by The Wars of the Roses/British history and it’s common for women of that time period to have been accused by men of bewitching people or being sorceresses (not really surprising but that usually stemmed from deep misogyny/envy). So it is a bit funny when people take the accounts of the maesters at face value when f&b plays around with people’s perceptions and builds a very narrow view of who these figures are.

I'm about to jump on this ask as an excuse for a fun lil history rant :) (apologies if that's not what you were signing up for but what else am I meant to do with my degree??) But I'll be merciful and put it under a read more.

Yeah! So GRRMs influences from English medieval history are evident, asoiaf is meant to be inspired by the Wars of the Roses and he has said the Anarchy was the inspiration behind the Dance of the Dragons. But you could draw similarities between the Wars of the Roses and the Dance as well.

What we see a lot of the time with medieval Queens and female figures around the middle ages is that they have been villainaised by their contemporaries, historians, and in the public memory in general. Helen Castor explains the stories of several Queens in She Wolves, which also has a documentary, so would highly recommend that. Essentially, women have traditionally been held to much harsher scrutiny for displaying any kind of ambition or agency when compared to men.

In the Wars of the Roses specifically, Elizabeth of York and her mother Jacquetta of Luxembourg were rumoured to practice witchcraft after Elizabeth unexpectedly married Edward IV and their family rose to prominence. On the Lancaster side, Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI is remembered by Shakespeare as the "She-Wolf of France" for attempting to assert her own power as Queen when her husband was incapable of ruling, and for defending her son's claim to the throne. And then we have Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, who orchestrated her son's rise to power and is also portrayed quite negatively in various historical fiction novels and TV shows.

It's only recently that we've begun to question these interpretations of female historical figures, and we see similar patterns in Fire and Blood, not just with Alys but also with Rhaenyra and Alicent. And this is because patriarchy loves to condemn women who step outside of traditional gender roles. This is why, historically, a woman's right to rule has been so contested, because in a system of personal monarchy, it matters what kind of person the monarch is. They have to be able to lead, to fight and defend their realm, they have to be intelligent and commanding, all attributes a medieval society believes women incapable of possessing. I've gone really off topic but my point it, it's important to understand the universe these characters are operating in. If they act in an unconventional way, they will be scrutinised for it, by their enemies, by those recounting the narrative in F&B, and apparently, by fans as well. Why do we think GRRM wrote F&B as a fictional history? The book itself is a comment on historical biases and unreliable narrators.

And to be fair, I'm not saying all these women are saints who are incapable of wrongdoing, fictional or historical, but I think it's incredibly reductive to blindly idolise or vallainise female characters and political players. We all know who the real enemy is that is MEN :) (not my man Aemond though, he's a feminist prrrr)

[winterlogysblog]

So... I've binged watch Wei's Genshin Theory Videos and my messed up brain thought of something.

So in Wei's video. He talked about the possibility of Teyvat being in a Samsara.

This theory on its own is quite interesting and makes a while lot of sense. Good watch tbh.

So let me add on to it.

Mona being an Astrologist can read people's fate by looking at their constellations, one would argue that vision wielders have a constellation because having a vision is essentially a means to ascend to Godhood as the people would like to believe. But to constellations aren't restricted by visions or anything. The Traveler has one even Dainsleif has one (it's officially revealed to be an Ouroboros snake) (a snake eating itself in case you didn't know) Which means it isn't unlikely that everybody has their own constellation which translates to everyone has their own fate. Fate is sealed tight shut. There is no changing it, there's no escaping it.

This talk about fate, their lives being set in stone. Loops in what might Happen in Fontaine, The Abyss and the loom of fate, and Kaeya's Hangout specifically the Sumeru route and him literally quoting Shakespeare.

"The world's a stage and all men are merely players."

This is also quoted in the freaking 4.0 livestream maybe it's just quoting Shakespeare for the sake of quoting Shakespeare because ✨️Plays✨️ ✨️Theatrics ✨️ ✨️Drama✨️ and all that good stuff that's gonna happen in Fontaine so who knows.

Now, going back to the Samsara thing. If Teyvat really is in a Samsara of sorts. When does it begin and when does it ends?

It could possibly have started either when the Primodial One casted upon the Celestial Nails or the Cataclysm (for the sake of storytelling let's say it's the day before the Cataclysm). How it ends? I really don't know, there aren't any candidates for it, but it very much could be after a devastating war which isn't an unlikely scenario for there are certain for this. The Abyss and the Tsaritsa are just two of them and who knows what else.

The constellations would make even more sense in this case because, we can look at a person's constellation as their script. A script handed to them as they live/act their lives over and over and over again. Like a play.

Now, what could possibly have caused the Samsara?

Well... let me put on my tin foil hat for a second. Because this is where I went off the rails. This is pure speculation and bullshit fuckery at this point.

The Samsara is caused by a Stellaron. (Yes, I'm bringing Star Rail into this)

I know, crazy, but here me out. In Jarilo VI, Cocolia was corrupted by the Stellaron so maybe, just maybe the Stellaron managed to corrupt Celestia as well and ended up plotting the destruction of Khaenri'ah.

Do I have evidence? No.

Is it crazy? Yes

Is it a possibly? Maybe not.

If ever, Star Rail comes to a point where they're gonna visit Teyvat. The Samsara is a perfect explanation on why Teyvat is the way it is. Compared to Star Rail, the world of Genshin is... let's say primitive. Mondstadt is medieval Germany, Liyue is China, Inazuma is edo-era Japan, Sumeru is if South Asia and Middle East had a baby, Fontaine seems to be the Renaissance period of France. It's definitely primitive compared to the sci-fic aspect of Honkai.

It's honestly just cool to think about. This concept can truly establish the Hoyoverse. Just culminating the games in one singular universe, and with the popularity the Star Rail has, it's perfect.

That is all folks. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[justgottafinishthischapter]

So glad I found your blog! I like your posts. Can I ask for some advice on Historical Fiction?

I'm going to write a historical fiction novel, my first time. I'm not very good at research - in general. I just don't know what to look for.

All I know is the story will take place somewhere in Italy during the Renaissance. I'm having trouble narrowing it down, since I don't know much about the Renaissance, and I have no clue where to start on research.

I can handle learning about daily life, fashion, diets, etc. when I start writing, but my problem is with how the period affects the plot and characters. Also, if there was anything going on that would have a huge impact (aftermath of a war, a revolution, etc.), even though I don't really want to focus on that stuff.

I'm just stuck in the beginning because I need to know a little bit so I can have a fitting plot for the period (if I was doing Regency I would probably follow Bridgerton's example with Suitors, courting, Viscounts, Dukes etc.).

Once I have that sorted, then I'll be more than comfortable to deep dive into research. My story has no "agenda," btw. It just simply takes place during the Renaissance.

I hope this makes sense?

Any generic advice on starting a historical fiction is helpful, too.

So sorry for the long ask - I've been stuck for days and any article I find on google is a bit too vague to help.

Thank you!

Italy is not a country whose history I am well-versed with, and my studies were more on Medieval History as opposed to the Renaissance, but the best direction I can steer you towards is the Medici family. They used marriages and their masisve wealth to stick their fingers in several pots, including the Pope. I'm not saying your story has to be about the Medicis, but they are certainly a prolific family from the region and time period. It's also worth looking into the social climate of Venice in this era, as this is the period of Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and others. I also have a post on courting that applies to a large swath of human history. As for learning the political system: watch Game of Thrones. It's a mastercraft of showcasing Feudalism in action. How I mean by this is imagine actually living in Westeros. If a conflict were to arise on Bear Island, the dispute would be put before the Mormonts: the lords of Bear Island. But if the dispute were larger than the Mormonts could handle, then that dispute would be brought before Ned Stark as the Warden of the North. Only in the event that Ned could not handle this issue would it then reach the king's attention in King's Landing. A Lord handles local affairs, a count handles county-wide affairs, and a king handles kingdom-wide affairs. As most historical romances are among nobility, it is prudent for you to research the roles and positions of the servants in a noble house in the time. Laws that may have been present. By the renaissance, knights have disappeared. You won't find any knights still fighting in full plate on horseback. Look at the literature from the era. What themes and ideas rose in this era? Classicalism exploded, causing a massive interest in Greco-Roman mythology. How many paintings must there be of lovely Venus, clever Minerva, and splendid Juno competing over the golden apple? What were the everyday struggles of the working class? What were they fighting for? What conditions did they live in? What were a woman's rights, duties, and allowances? The renaissance predates the Golden Age of Sailing, but it does loom on the horizon, as it's the era that follows the Renaissance. Other movies and shows worth watching are The Tudors, Romeo and Juliet, Ever After: A Cinderella Movie, and any other historical fiction you can get your hands on set in the Renaissance specifically. I do hope you found this helpful, and if you have any more specific questions, I can't promise to have the answers, but I can try my best to lend a hand wherever possible.

[mediaevalmusereads]

Penguin's Poems for Love. Penguin Books, 2009.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Genre: poetry

Series: N/A

Summary: Here are poems to take you on a journey from the 'suddenly' of love at first sight to the 'truly, madly, deeply' of infatuation and on to the 'eternally' of love that lasts beyond the end of life, along the way taking in flirtation, passion, fury, betrayal and broken hearts. Bringing together the greatest love poetry from around the world and through the ages, ranging from W. H. Auden to William Shakespeare, John Donne to Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning to Roger McGough, this new anthology will delight, comfort and inspire anyone who has ever tasted love - in any of its forms.

***Full review below.***

Since this book is a collection/anthology, my review will be structured a little different from normal.

I picked up this book after hearing it recommended by a YouTuber whose opinions on poetry I respect. As an English PhD, I'm fairly fond of poetry, and I was looking for a good collection that varied in both style and time period in which it was composed.

This collection was charming in part because it chose romantic love as its theme (the intro affirms this). Under that umbrella of romantic love, the book was divided into sections loosely defined by adverbs: suddenly, secretly, passionately, etc. It didn't make for rigid distinction between the poems, but I actually liked how nebulous each section was and that the arrangement wasn't imposing a particular reading of the poems on me.

Within those sections, there were a number of familiar names and some that were new to me. I was glad to see poets such as Sir Philip Sidney mixed in with more modern writers, as it gave me the opportunity to revisit old favorites alongside new discoveries. And as am avid lover of "old stuff," I very much appreciated the range of poetry from varying time periods, medieval to modern.

However, I do have my criticisms. For one, there were selections that I thought were incredibly odd; for example, Barber chose to include the passage from Paradise Lost in which Eve falls in love with herself and runs away from Adam. She also included a passage from Goblin Market (though not the one where Laura and Lizzy kiss). These selections sometimes made me feel like Barber was trying to force some of the heavy hitters from English Literary canon in the collection, rather than choosing poems that fit but were less popular.

For two, there were not a whole lot of prominent POC or queer poets (though there are some), which meant that the collection felt more heavily weighted towards the established canon. Maybe Barber was limited in what she chose based on copyright, but even so, it felt like some poets (such as Shakespeare, Donne, and the Brownings) were overly represented. But I should give Barber some credit; she did choose some poets who would be less familiar to an audience with a poetry background, so for that, I'm grateful.

Still, I do think this is a solid volume for anyone who might want to get into poetry for the first time or who might want to read more (if they aren't already a poetry fan). There's enough variance in style and subject matter for readers to discover their own poetic preferences and tastes, and most selections are taken from well-established poets with a lot of technical skill.

[kittttycakes]

Thank you for your detailed thoughts on Hob’s opinion of Shakespeare! I agree that Grace is smart by removing herself from any Shakespeare adaptation situations!

And thanks for the info on Grace’s nemesis, he sounds like a proper toad.

Any chance we could get some more details on Grace’s publications?

Is Grace’s Mum the sort of person who would be open to accepting that the supernatural or otherworldly?

Have you seen the Disney/Short Story candles? They have a Nightmare before Christmas one, and I feel like if there was a Morpheus was a candle, it would look like that. Definitely scents of petrichor and ozone for sure!

How’s your writing going? If you need some procrastination you should check out (if you haven’t already heard of it) Pika La Cynique’s Girls Next Door webcomic on Deviant Art. I’ve been reading it since 2007 when it first started and even though updates are sporadic now, I kinda feel like it’s something you might enjoy! (from memory Morpheus doesn’t appear, but I think there’s a cameo or two from Death).

I have made the cardinal error of giving Grace expertise and a degree in a time period that is several hundred years removed from my own, but with that said, I also really love medieval literature and I would love to talk about what I think some of her potential publications are!

Grace strikes me as someone who primarily publishes articles and has possibly contributed a chapter or two to a critical collection, but who has not, at this point in her life and career, written a book of her own (unless we’re counting her dissertation). It’s on the to do list, and I imagine she has some ideas, but she expends a lot of her focus on teaching and everything that goes with it, and the writing sometimes goes by the wayside.

As to what she writes: her dissertation was focused on the creation of medieval romantic love in literature as a genre or concept and how we came to have the idea of it that we do now, especially in the age of more modern, vaguely medieval fantasy romances on the page and on screen. After that, I think she pivoted just a smidge and wrote a few articles about courtly love and the bending or perversion of it in literature and what function that serves, including the way The Green Knight queers that system. Just a little before meeting Morpheus for the first time, she was really starting to get into monster theory and its possible applications to monsters and creatures of medieval lit, as a sort of fun little side project and a break from the romance side of things.

Grace’s mum is an altogether lovely woman who would come around to the idea of the supernatural, with time. This is the woman who told Grace most of the fairy stories she knows, after all, and Grace gets a lot of her personality from her. A big part of Grace hesitating to tell her mother is how much of a burden it would place on her, not just to not reveal the knowledge that she has now, because who does she have to confide in besides Grace?, but because it would be so difficult to know how much longer her daughter was going to outlive her.

I hadn’t seen that candle before but it looks so cool! For sure how the exterior would look, I love the crystals on top!

I also hadn’t heard of that webcomic, but I’ve looked it up and this is extremely relevant to my interests! I am definitely going to be making my way through this. Who among us didn’t have a Labyrinth phase? And I’ve been a Phantom fan for ages.

Thank you so much for your ask!!