#the original post was written as a drunken shitpost but it's still 100% true
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something I find especially entertaining about Edward IV's reign is how Scandalous™ it was lol
he married a woman “whose origins broke all established conventions for English queenship” in a secret ceremony without consulting any of his lords and then made it everyone else's problem. he committed regicide, he committed fratricide; he was accused of bastardry, he was accused of bigamy and a 19-year-long sham marriage, he was accused of using necromancy against his subjects, he was accused of being enchanted by witchcraft by both his wife and his mother-in-law (multiple times). his own mother was said to "rule the king as she pleased" in the early years of his reign. he knew he was hot and actively milked it for money. he was vain as fuck: “he was wont to show himself to those who wished to watch him, and he seized any opportunity that the occasion offered of revealing his fine stature to onlookers”. he knew everything about everyone. "he was more favourable than other princes to foreigners". he was “fond of boon companionship, vanities, debauchery, extravagance and sensual enjoyments”; he was "thought to have indulged in his passions and desires too intemperately”; "it was ever feared he was not chaste”. his subjects publicly gossiped about his sex life, his doctors thought he was insane. NOBODY understood how he was still competent despite all this.
honestly, who was doing it like him?
#(the quote is by J.L. Laynesmith)#Edward IV#my post#the original post was written as a drunken shitpost but it's still 100% true#henry viii could NEVER. Even Humphrey of Gloucester pales in comparison I'm sorry to say#(EW was also accused of controlling both Edward and the country but I don't want to get into the propaganda against her right now - however#true or false it may have been in reality - so I didn't include it. HOWEVER it's absolutely true that Edward gave her a great deal of#unconventional authority by appointing her in royal councils for the heir and spare in her own right during her tenure as queen. So there#was an existing basis for the accusations against her even though they were obviously ultimately extremely unfair and prejudiced#and meant to denigrate her)#Elizabeth Woodville#Cecily Neville#english history
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