#she 💜

[wonder-worker]

"In the early 1360s Edward III took as his mistress Alice Perrers, the daughter of a London goldsmith and widow of one of the King’s jewellers, Janyn Perrers. Alice’s opponents would later viciously exaggerate her low birth—Thomas Walsingham claimed that her father was a thatcher—so it has only been in this century that her true identity was revealed by Mark Ormrod and Laura Tompkins. Alice became one of Philippa’s demoiselles, but supplemented her income from Philippa with a role as a moneylender to merchants and gentry. During Philippa’s lifetime she began investing her wealth in property that, Tompkins has estimated, would eventually approach £2000 per annum in value—an income that exceeded that of some earls.

Alice bore the King a son, John Southeray, in about 1365 and from 1367 she received a number of royal grants. Her name is notably absent from the list of Philippa’s ladies who received bequests in the Queen’s will. Philippa died in 1369 and, unlike other widowed kings of the later Middle Ages, Edward III seems to have made no attempt to look for a replacement queen. Alice then emerged as a public figure, richly rewarded by the King, and sought out by courtiers for her influence over him. In 1373 Edward gave her a collection of the queen’s jewels and the following year the Pope himself included her among those he petitioned to influence Edward III to engineer his brother’s freedom from captivity. Alice subsequently stole the show at a royal tournament at Smithfeld when she dressed as “the Lady of the Sun.” Her choice of outft was probably a deliberate spin on Edward III’s own sunburst emblem.

Alice was indubitably a skilled businesswoman with an impressive grasp of property law, but she was also abusing her closeness to the King in order to build up her wealth. Moreover, contemporaries identifed her as the heart of a disruptive and malign court clique. Tompkins has argued that Alice’s powerful and self-serving influence over the King was perceived as “inverting queenship.” During the Good Parliament of 1376, Alice was condemned for the use of maintenance, accused of taking thousands of pounds from the Exchequer, and ordered to stay away from the court, under threat of banishment.

Thomas Walsingham reported that at this time her accomplice in seducing the King was also arrested, a Dominican friar who was an “evil magician” and had used wax effgies of the King and Alice to enable her to “get whatever she wanted from the King.” There is no corroborating evidence for this story of arrest, but the idea that low status women could only attract the admiration of kings or nobles through witchcraft was a pervasive one, especially apparent in Elizabeth Woodville’s story [...], and probably also in that of a later quasi-queen, Eleanor Cobham [...].

Just months after the Good Parliament, the King had pardoned Alice, but he died the following year. At some point in the 1370s she had taken a second husband, Sir William Windsor, who spent most of his career in Ireland. In the autumn of 1377, Alice was accused of having persuaded Edward III to countermand an order to investigate charges against Windsor the previous year and to pardon one of her business associates. Alice was sentenced to banishment and forfeiture of all goods and lands. Although this banishment was revoked in 1379, her subsequent attempts to regain her possessions were consistently frustrated. She died in the winter of 1401–1402, bequeathing her “usurped” lands to her two daughters by the King. Their son had predeceased her.

Unlike the later quasi-queens, Alice’s position came from sharing a king’s bed and was thus closer to that of an actual consort. By contrast, her low social status and ineligibility to produce an heir to the throne made her less like a queen consort than her successors. She was thus better physically positioned to exert influence but ideologically wholly separated from any authority to do so."

— J.L Laynesmith and Elena Woodacre, "The Later Medieval English Consorts: Power, Infuence, Dynasty", Later Plantagenets and Wars of the Roses Consorts

[lady-corrine]

Despite the conviction of earlier scholars, like Jourda, of Marguerite's lack of political interest, she was one of the few women ever to become a ducal peer in France. The king explicitly gave his sister the duchy of Berry as a ducal peerage, and made it clear that she was given all the traditional rights held by any male duke, and in one acte explicitly stated that Marguerite was to hold all the traditional ducal powers in Alençon, adding that this included authority over the ducal exchequer.

A close look at Marguerite's correspondence with various parlements and other government officials, as well as some of her own actes, demonstrates that Marguerite was active in the administration of her territories, and also that she was a strong proponent on behalf of the nobility within those territories, operating as a powerful patron on their behalf. I argue that rather than holding titles and territories only in an honorary way, Marguerite was given and fully exercised wide political power within her territories, and at times this led to confrontations with the king about the extent of monarchical authority over that of the upper nobility.

The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre, Barbara Stephenson

[flying-cat]

I love u Castorice

[liquidstar]

If my mom sees a significant amount of blood she gets lightheaded, and has fainted on some occasions. Once it happened when we were kids, I wasn't there to witness it but I heard the story from my dad. Basically my brothers, around 7 or 8 at the time, were playing outside while my mom was making their lunch, and she accidentally cut her finger. It wasn't anything serious, but it drew a fair bit of blood and she passed out. My dad saw this and rushed over, but he didn't really know what to do so he just sort of started slapping her to wake her up (not recommended, but he had no idea and panicked)

At that exact moment my brothers both came in from playing, and all they saw was our mom unconscious on the floor and our dad slapping her. So, like, without even saying a word to each other they both just INSTANTLY start whaling on him, like, full blown attack mode to defend our mom. Which obviously didn't help the situation, but she did wake up and everything was fine.

Now our dad says that he's actually really glad they attacked him over what they thought was going on, because it means he raised good boys. And I still think that's true, they're very good boys.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Would yall pat SOTM Jackie on the head?

[lavender-bea]

[blondeaxolotl-twstocs]

Mama eel and her annoying ass twins

[waterlilyvioletfog]

Currently imagining Trinity Santos trying to bring a girl home for the night. Girl walks in and sees the scrungliest little white dude in the world. shes like what IS that. Santos says yeah. that there’s huckleberry. hes from nebraska. bit of a runt. he catches rats. Whitaker says gee sure is nice to meet one of Dr. Santos’s friends! Do you also know Mr. Krav Maga? Haha why are you putting a sock on the door knob

[yashley]

#I just want to see Imogen happy

[malsorie]

Nightwarden.

[wonder-worker]

"What is remarkable, however, is not the amount of land [Alice Perrers] received passively as gifts of the king, but that she actually acquired the majority of her estate through her own initiative. Of her total landholdings, she independently obtained forty-three manors and twenty-seven other properties compared to the twenty-five manors and twenty-five other properties she received directly from the king. In terms of cash outlay, Alice spent an impressive £3,360 purchasing just fourteen properties. Moreover, because a large number of the lands from the king were granted as part of wardships, the number of manors therefore represents a much smaller number of individual grants. In contrast to this, each of Alice’s own acquisitions generally encompassed only one or two manors and associated properties at a time. Many of these lands were not held or acquired by Alice directly. Instead, she employed the legal mechanism of enfeoffment-to-use, whereby a select group of loyal men owned and disposed of the property on Alice’s behalf, taking the profits to her use. This process could be extremely complex, and in theory meant that the landowner could avoid feudal incidents from the crown and loss of land through forfeiture. Undoubtedly aware of the vulnerable position she would find herself in following Edward III’s death, Alice used enfeoffment-to-use on no fewer than seventy-eight occasions to either acquire or transfer property. Unfortunately for her, however, the greatest testament to Alice’s use of this device is the fact that the terms of her forfeiture were specifically expanded to cover property held in this form, something which set a precedent for all future parliamentary forfeiture and attainders. Although Alice undoubtedly used her position as Edward’s mistress to her advantage in these transactions—in terms of both influence and resources—this proactive, independent, and intelligent acquisition and management of her estate is, therefore, nonetheless remarkable for any individual, male or female, of her time."

— Laura Tompkins, '"Edward III's Gold Digging Mistress": Alice Perrers, Gender, and Financial Power at the English Royal Court, 1360-1377'", Women and Economic Power in Premodern Courts (edited by Cathleen Sarti)

[lady-corrine]

“When critics accuse Roxolana of manipulating and plotting against her harem rivals — Gulbahar, Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, Prince Mustafa, and Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha — they tend to overlook the fact that she had to fight for her own survival and the survival of her children in the very competitive world of the imperial harem, which was populated by hundreds of beautiful women and able men and ruled by the fratricide law. Hurrem was thus unjustly and harshly judged by her contemporaries for surviving and doing so brilliantly. Her rise was not only the result of Suleiman's love and benevolence, but also the result of her own intelligence, effort, and extraordinary political skill.”

Galina Yermolenko — Roxolana: “The Greatest Empresse of the East”

[snarkspawn]

I'm blaming @hijennyt for this particular existential crisis I had at around midnight last night

[paradoxx046]

Revamped her a little! Still needs a name though, poor girl

Going through old sketchbooks and omg SHE!!! We stan the HTTYD self insert

[chloesimaginationthings]

Cassie's FNAF birthday wish came true,,

[qaanngi]

get ready... fight! 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛ [full comic under cut; 12 pages/long post]