#this is a henry viii hate blog

[sweetfirebird]

yeah yeah there is no such thing as complete historical accuracy in modern media depicting ye olden times and yeah yeah sometimes shows are more about an aesthetic than any truth but every time I see a glimpse of the Tudors with ever young-looking whathisface as Henry, I feel like that show really, really was doing a disservice to his brides. Like let's bring the horror. And let's show his gross infected pus leg as well in all the sex scenes. just make it clear he stinks of puss, and also that the possible age range for Katherine Howard was I think lowest possible age 15 and highest possible 21 but most place her at about 18 at the time of her death so... 16? when Henry (49) married her. And so on. The Tudors is too kind to that piece of shit man and it's one of the many reasons I hate that show.

[marythequeen]

I am so happy, that there is another blog that defends Mary I, SHe is honestly the most vilified Queen in English history. She was painted as an evil catholic fanatic ruler even though she executed fewer people than her father and sister. She loved her country. She dedicated herself to fixing the things she thought were destroying her country. She faced Scrutiny and persecution because of her faith. What is your reaction when people compare Mary I to her Father King Henry VIII? What does she feel about her father? does she adore him or despise him?

i agree with you wholeheartedly!! and it makes me so happy that more and more people start to learn the truth about queen mary.

now here's my thoughts on your questions. it may disappoint you and others but i always speak my mind. mary had, indeed, inherited some of henry's personality traits (it's a whole another topic but if you want me to elaborate it, i can do it sometime) it's her father after all, we all, unfortunately, take from our parents. however, the people that compare mary to henry, do it in a wrong way or they have simply vicious intentions (i'm looking at the protestant missionaries)

they mostly compare their ruling styles and again, they have some similarities even there BUT mary had never ever had her own people applied certain torture methods, unlike what henry viii (and the other tudor monarchs) had constantly. so when they claim that mary followed her father's way of ruling, i simply want to gag my own eyes and forget i read. if we really want to compare henry viii to someone in his family, it would be his second daughter, elizabeth tudor (again, another topic but i'm open to discuss it)

and your other questions, well, we'll never know exactly how mary felt about her father but we can have strong conjectures. in my opinion, it is clear that mary knew exactly what kind of a man her father was and what he was capable of. she faced his cruelties at a young age and suffered greatly because of him and his actions. and mary wasn't a naive woman. she knew it was all his choice, though he was sometimes influenced by others.

do i think she loved him? yes, i do. do i think she despised him? yes, absolutely! these can happen at the same time. you can love someone and still be aware of their vile personality traits.

considering the reports and mary's own words, i think mary hated him as much as she loved him. she respected him but didn't approve his actions. she took care of him when he was sick. we don't know what was her reaction to henry's death, it wasn't recorded, but we know that she took offense when katherine parr got married so soon as we can read her letter to thomas seymour.

and most importantly, she grieved him and i don't think she did it just because she was expected to do this. it was because, no matter what kind of a shit father he was, he was still her father who once called her 'the pearl of his kingdom'

father-daughter relationships are complex, speaking with experience. at the end blood runs thicker than water.

[elegantwoes]

The only reason why you hate Lyanna is because she wasn’t an obedient and demure proper lady who did her duty and sacrifice by marrying Robert. That’s literally it. You may hide behind the omg we actually only hate Rhaegar because he humiliated his wife, but you don’t even try to hide your disdain for her 😭 You’d rather have her marry Robert (he cheat on her and fathered Bella when Lyanna was allegedly sequestrated) whom she doesn’t want, endure his humiliations, cheating, rape, and beating (Robert would turn towards it the second he could) and given the repeated pattern on here, the fandom think she’s evil because she wasn’t mindful of her duty and wasn’t doing her duty and sacrifice or any other of the conservative ideas. And that's what you expect from women. To submit to their fates, to men. Only those women who stick to the patriarchal norms and perform their patriarchal duties (accepting and silently endure abuse) are worthy of their sympathy. And then yall call yourselves feminists.

Anon are you okay? I haven’t talked about Lyanna in ages. Unless you are counting the one about who my ideal fancast for her is. Secondly you are stupid if you believe I want Lyanna to marry Robert and put up with his degenerate behavior. Newsflash I stan Cersei Lannister. In my opinion killing Robert is easily the greatest deed Cersei ever did. No woman would ever put up with his trifling ass. In fact I would argue that any woman would plot against him to enjoy widowhood and I would cheer each one of them too. And please let’s not act like Rhaegar isn’t the same person like Robert. He’s a rapist just like Robert. As far as I am concerned they are the two sides of the same Henry the Eight figure. Robert fits the more well known side of him:

Fat

Indulges in pleasures way too much

Extremely cavalier to women

A pedophile (ex. Barra’s mother and Catherine Howard)

Rheagar fits the younger version:

Married to a Catherine of Aragorn figure (Elia)

Sees women as incubators

Obsessed with a prophecy just like Henry was obsessed with having an heir, to the point of disregarding their wife so ruthlessly.

Pursues an Anne Boleyn (Lyanna) figure to get a third head like Henry wanted an heir.

Anne Boleyn didn’t want his advances just like Lyanna who probably didn’t want Rhaegar’s advances either

Rhaegar plunged the entire kingdom into a civil war because he needed the third head. Very much like Henry VIII who flipped the bird at the Catholic Church which caused an uproar, all because he wanted a son.

A pedophile (ex. Lyanna and Catherine Howard)

Lyanna wouldn’t be better off with either of them. That’s the tragic part about her story. Her life would be miserable no matter what choice she made.

In this house we despise both Rhaegar and Robert, anon. You would know that if you actually bothered to go through my blog. Most likely this is a copy, paste type of anon hate. Pathetic. Next time be smarter on who you send your garbage to.

A 0/10.

[batbeato]

why i hate six the musical

tldr: milquetoast pop feminism that ends up perpetuating misogyny

...I know this blog is mostly umineko but this musical is so bad I need to share it with everyone. More beneath the cut.

Six is about the six wives of Henry VIII. They have decided to put on a pop concert/competition where they sing about how much their lives sucked in order to determine who had it the worst and should lead their band.

I want to preface this by saying that while I don't think its runtime (about 70 minutes, as it's a one-act musical) warrants Broadway trips / ticket prices, the format of Six is not my issue with it. I love Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which is also a musical in concert(s) format.

I also acknowledge that the creators of Six were university students at the time of first creating this musical and I am not sure that this musical went through much, if any, revisions since then. This does explain some of the issues with this musical, but doesn't excuse them.

I did enjoy a few aspects of the 70 minutes of my life I spent on this musical.

Basing each queen on different pop stars.

Most of the music sounds good and being in a theater getting hyped up over the numbers / audience interaction is probably a blast.

All You Wanna Do is a great musical number and, unlike a single song from Mean Girls, has found a place on my musical theater playlist.

The zany concept. I love that.

I watched a 2022 Broadway production of the musical, and will be basing this post off of that.

Songs

This will be brief because I don't have too many issues with the music. It's a very pop-style musical, but that's a fine choice to make. Some of the lyrics are aggressively modern, which is a bit irksome, but it's mostly tolerable, and some of the too-modern jokes/lingos are a bit funny.

I have two main gripes with the music: one is that Heart of Stone is just... boring. It's very different from the rest of the musical and it falls very flat. It's also a song about abuse apologism that downplays Henry's abusive/shitty tendencies in favor of romanticizing him. The singer also precedes the song by blaming Henry's abuse on the other wives... "raging and storming right back". So the song fails for me on an emotional level while it's at it.

The other is that for whatever reason, in the middle of the show, they decide to have a mini-rave with this song called Haus of Holbein to introduce the next queen being from Germany. It adds nothing to any of the characters. This kind of song (a bop / fun to witness but filler) is already bad enough in a normal musical, but in a musical with this short a runtime, you need to make every minute (and every song) count.

Historical Inaccuracy

Musicals are no stranger to historical inaccuracy. I am also no stranger to historically inaccurate musicals. However, the historical inaccuracy of Six undermines its core message, which is that the stories of these women matter and that they should be defined beyond their marriages to Henry VIII.

If the musical itself cannot be bothered to properly relate these women as they were, why should the audience care about these women?

These inaccuracies, combined with the very sexual nature of many of the songs, sometimes even painting these women as shallow and/or catty, completely destroys the musical's intent. Rather than honoring these women, it creates shallow, misogynistic caricatures of them.

I am not a history buff and do not have the energy to go through how each song/portrayal may have butchered each queen. I do think that, for example, portraying Anne Boleyn as a selfie-taking rumor-spreading "I wanna dance and sing / Politics / Not my thing" when a quick google search shows that she did engage with politics, quite a bit... is misogyny. Which, let's get into that.

The Misogyny

So, the premise of this show is that these queens are in a competition. That means that for the entirety of the show, they act very 'catty', they downplay each other's trauma, and they use each other's trauma as a way to insult each other. This is to the point that they start comparing their numbers of miscarriages.

At that point, Catherine Perr tells them they've gone too far, she sings a song about how she had a life beyond Henry (mostly devoted to men with a single verse about her actual life) and then it's revealed that the competition was fake and staged to show the misogyny of such a competition and how defining these women by their husband rather than their actual lives is misogynistic/shitty.

Unfortunately these woman have still spent the past hour tearing each other down and defining themselves solely by their relationships to Henry VIII. The audience has also spent the past hour eating it up and laughing/cheering.

When Samantha Pauly, as Katherine Howard, performs All You Wanna Do, she has a progressive breakdown on stage about the sexual abuse and objectification she experienced over the course of her life. It's an incredibly powerful performance, with a lot of in-character acting/singing as the concert gives way to theater. For a moment, after this very intense song, I felt a lot of emotion about how this historical woman may have been treated. And then the show returned to wisecracking and women being catty.

If SIx had a second act after this twist, where the women support each other and sing about their actual lives, maybe this twist could work. It does not, and so despite this 'message', Six primarily perpetuates what it is trying to deconstruct: erasing the history of women and their many accomplishments in favor of defining them solely by their relationships to men.

The End

This one gets its own section because it pisses me off that badly. You see, after all these historically inaccurate numbers, all of this misogynistic catty banter, all of this sexualization of these dead women for the sake of crowd-pleasing, they have an ending number that amounts to a fix-it fanfiction.

This song is about all of them never getting with Henry (or surviving childbirth) and finding musical careers and forming their band together. They sing the line "Too many years lost in his story" but what is their story. This musical has not shared it with me.

Writing fix-it fanfiction about Henry's wives starting a band together is not how you fight how women have been erased from history. It is not how you recognize the achievements of these women and respect their memories.

What is Six about? It's a musical about how women have been erased from history that erases them further, even as it claims to be about these women speaking their truth and doing themselves justice. That's not feminism. That's fucking misogyny getting a standing ovation from people who don't want to actually unpack the systemic erasure of women from history.

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

Is there any royals that you can't stand?

Cowmilla

Prince Andrew

King Edward VII

Queen Victoria

King Henry VIII

King Charles III

Edwina Mountbatten

~

And I don't completely hate King Edward VII & Queen Victoria, but I definitely think that Victoria wasn't the nicest person, and the only thing that makes me hate Edward is that he was a cheating bastard to his lovely wife.

Also, if you don't like who I chose than you can disrespectfully leave my blog! 😘

[unrepentanthistory]

On This Day in 1536: The execution of Anne Boleyn and Her Influence on England.

She was the queen who captivated a king, but also the one who paid the ultimate price. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife and the mother of Elizabeth I, faced a brutal death on this day in 1536. Accused of crimes ranging from adultery to treason, she was beheaded at the Tower of London in a swift and merciless execution. But who was Anne Boleyn, and why did she fall from grace so dramatically? In this blog post, we will explore her life, her legacy and her role in one of the most turbulent periods of English history.

Catherine of Aragon

Anne Boleyn returned from France in the mid-1520s and caught the eye of King Henry VIII, who was desperate for a son and heir. His first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had failed to give him one, and he wanted to divorce her and marry Anne instead.

But this was easier said than done. Catherine had powerful relatives, like the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who opposed Henry’s plan. And the Catholic Church refused to grant him an annulment, saying his marriage was valid and sacred.

That’s when Thomas Cromwell stepped in. He was a cunning and ambitious politician who helped Henry break away from Rome and create his own church, with himself as the supreme head. This was a radical and risky move that sparked a religious revolution in England. And many people blamed Anne for it, as she was seen as a supporter of the Protestant reformers who wanted to change the church.

Jane Seymour

Anne became queen in June 1533, when she was already pregnant. But she disappointed Henry by giving birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, instead of a son. She also lost two other babies, including a boy, in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Henry had fallen out of love with Anne and in love with her maid, Jane Seymour. He wanted to marry Jane and get rid of Anne, but he couldn’t just divorce her like he did with Catherine. That would make people doubt his first divorce and his new church.

So Henry came up with a shocking accusation: He claimed that Anne had bewitched him into marrying her, and that she had been unfaithful to him with several men. He also told Cromwell, who was now his chief minister and Anne’s enemy, that he wanted to make peace with the emperor, who hated Anne.

Arrest and Imprisonment

Anne had many enemies who wanted to get rid of her. They started a secret investigation and found a musician who said he had slept with her. They also accused her of having affairs with other men, including her own brother.

On May Day, everything changed. Henry was watching a tournament with Anne and her brother, George Boleyn, and his friend, Henry Norris. But he left suddenly without saying goodbye to Anne. He never saw her again.

He arrested Norris and George Boleyn for sleeping with Anne and plotting to kill him. He also arrested two other men for the same reason. And he locked up Anne in her palace at Greenwich on May 2.

Duke of Norfolk

Anne faced her accusers, who included her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. They charged her with “evil behavior” and put her in the Tower of London.

The four men who were accused of being her lovers were tried in Westminster Hall on May 12. They were all found guilty and sentenced to die horribly. On May 15, Anne and her brother, George Boleyn, had their trial in the Tower of London.

The Duke of Norfolk was the judge, acting for the king. The worst evidence against George Boleyn was his own wife’s claim that he was too close to his sister.

Anne was probably innocent of the charges against her. She never confessed to anything, the evidence against her was weak and it makes no sense that she would cheat on the king or try to hurt him, when she needed his love so much.

But Anne and Rochford were still found guilty, and Norfolk sentenced them to death by fire or by the king’s choice.

On May 17, the five men who were accused with Anne were killed on Tower Hill, but Henry was kind to his queen. He sent for a skilled executioner from Calais who could cut off her head with a sword instead of an axe.

Received message. Here is one possible way to rewrite the paragraph: Anne was probably innocent of the charges against her. She never confessed to anything, the evidence against her was weak and it makes no sense that she would cheat on the king or try to hurt him, when she needed his love so much. But Anne and Rochford were still found guilty, and Norfolk sentenced them to death by fire or by the king's choice. On May 17, the five men who were accused with Anne were killed on Tower Hill, but Henry was kind to his queen. He sent for a skilled executioner from Calais who could cut off her head with a sword instead of an axe.

Anne Boleyn Execution

Anne Boleyn wore a grey dress and a fur cloak as she walked to her death on Tower Green. A few people watched as she spoke to them. She said: “Masters, I obey the law as the law has judged me, and I don’t blame anyone for my offences. God knows them; I leave them to God, asking Him to forgive me.” She also prayed for Jesus Christ to “protect my king and master, the most godly, noble and gentle Prince that is, and may he rule over you for a long time.”

The executioner cut off her head with one stroke of his sword. Anne Boleyn was gone. The next day, Henry got engaged to Jane Seymour; they married soon after.

Jane gave Henry the son he wanted, who became King Edward VI when he was only nine years old. But it was Henry’s daughter with Anne Boleyn who would become the greatest Tudor ruler: Queen Elizabeth I, who ruled England for more than 40 years.

Thank you for reading this article I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. If you want to see more of my work, please follow me on Instagram @unrepentantmasculinity, where I share photos and stories from my travels and adventures. And if you appreciate my journalism and want to support me, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi. Your donation will help me keep writing and exploring the world. Just click on the link below and choose how much you want to give. Thank you for your generosity and kindness. Until next time, stay curious and informed.

[saltirebookreviews]

Book: The Highlander’s Untamed Tempest

Author: Heather McCollum

Series: Brothers of Wolf Isle , Book #5

Release Date: 09/30/2024

Publisher: Entangled 

Book Length: 242 Pages

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars

Blog Rating: 5/5 Sláinte Flags

Isle of Mull, Scotland, 1550

In this final book of the Macquarie Brothers on Wolf Isle you think that the youngest brother Eagan will fall in love and meet his soulmate. Except he has all his bags packed ready to see the world and the last thing he wants is to get married! The  Macquarie clan is cursed by an old crone who is Grissell’s ancestor. As the first Macquarie Chieftain, got a lass pregnant with no offer of marriage and married another due to a clan alliance. Well this lass was so brokenhearted she took her own life but her mother cut the baby out so it would survive. 

So her powerful witch mother cursed the entire Macquarie clan to stop creating illegitimate children forcing them in a cruel world alone. Now they won’t be able to populate and get any lass pregnant, not until the clan really comprehends what true love really is! This goes to everyone on the Isle, even the livestock. Now everyone and their Uncle knows of the curse and the stipulations. Naturally every unmarried woman and their mama are offering their daughters or female relations on a silver platter to Eagan. If Eagan leaves or gets a lass pregnant out of marriage the clan will be cursed forever!

Everything changes when Eagan has to help a midwife who is a French woman, Claudette Tempest Ainsworth known as Tessa. A woman who was hidden on wolf isle for the past year by Grissell whose ancestor committed the curse on the Macquarie family. She had been teaching Tessa how to care for the orphans she cared for, even the animals too. Eagan and Tessa fall for each other quickly nor realizing that danger is centering around Tessa and the man she loves.

Now Tessa is missing her sea captain father who promised to come retrieve her. Of course she is also falling for the youngest Macquarie. Something Tessa has never felt especially from her mother who never trusted any man and for good reason too! Tessa is wonderful with animals, children and is a healer too. All of Macquarie's instants fall in love with this lass from her beautiful singing voice to her dance instruction being a midwife and her other healing talents. 

However one mother whose child was not born perfect is accusing her of being a witch due to a birthmark. Sadly it is when a witch hunter from Edinburgh comes to Wolf Isle just to start trouble for innocent young women. Will Tess be tortured and executed too? Especially now when she has fallen in love for the first time! Everything changes for Eagan when meets the bonny Tessa and all his careful plans are swept out the window! He is being swept off his feet, feeling things he has never felt for any lass ever before! However he also sees a threat and like all Macquarie men. They will do anything for the woman they love. 

When you think of the mid sixteenth century you think of  a “Rough Wooing.” It was a series of wars where England wanted to force a marriage between Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots…well we know France won that wooing war! Also Witch hunts began in Scotland around 1550, and the Church of Scotland's view of witchcraft as a threat to Christianity heavily influenced the witch hunts. So if any of the farm animals or even if there was an illness among the villagers they would blame it on witchcraft and innocent women were executed! It was a very horrific time for women in this time period.

As always my go-to-author Heather McCollum pens another beautiful story. I especially loved how all the issues in this series were tied up in perfect bow. A very satisfying conclusion to the series finale where all the brothers are in this book with the women who captured their hearts! As much as I hate when a series I have enjoyed so much ends I loved how this author wrapped all the loose ends up perfectly. You can read any of the books in this series as a stand alone book, but I highly recommend every book in this series as they were all brilliant! I also loved the story of Eagan and Tessa so much!

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader’s copy from Entangled Publishing. I voluntarily agreed to do an honest, fair  review and blog through netgalley. All thoughts, ideas and words are my own.

[thepromisedbride]

A few people seem to be saying that Henry should get a role in the musical so here’s my suggestion!! A cutout of him is brought on, after the show’s over. The queens take turns throwing things at it. After they’re done they stand back and it explodes into glitter and confetti. Everyone’s happy

[sweetfirebird]

I saw an article about that new Catherine Parr movie that was like, "Jude Law's Henry VIII is a Henry for the Me Too era." And... no Henry was always like that.

[animeandcatholicism]

I think for a hot second that the English are sane and rational people and then remember they abbreviate mathematics to maths.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Lol I was watching the series finale of The Tudors with someone and we reached the scene where Henry said goodbye to Catherine Parr and his daughters and as soon as he’s gone Elizabeth just walks off.  And my friend was like “oh, she’s sad”.

And like...  I never interpreted that as sadness?  I mean, the girl who played Elizabeth on The Tudors was Not Good by any stretch of the imagination, but I kind of interpreted that scene as Elizabeth being like “WELL HE AIN’T GETTING ANY DEADER” and dropping the pretense of the loving daughter as soon as he was out of sight.  (Whereas Mary actually did love Henry on the show--in part, I’m sure, because as much as he abused her she had memories of him as a loving father, whereas Elizabeth pretty much just treated like shit starting from that time he killed her mom and declared her a bastard when she was a toddler.)

Obviously, Elizabeth I likely had very conflicted feelings about Henry irl; but the cynic in me, the part of me that always tends to remember that our concepts of emotion and familial love didn’t necessarily apply to peoples of the past, tends to wonder how much Elizabeth’s public feelings towards her father corresponded to her private emotions.  Elizabeth is famously for that Tudor temper, for losing it every now and then in fits of anger towards Robert Dudley or Lettice or whoever was annoying her at the moment.  But ultimately, many of these incidents were often highly performative--people didn’t see Elizabeth bursting into tears or getting into a catfight.  They saw Elizabeth shouting at people--as her father did--because she was a sovereign and she was not just acting in anger, but displaying authority (often accompanied by actual political acts of authority).  Things like that famous portrait ring might hint at Elizabeth’s private feelings towards people, but it’s not as if she wrote a grand diary full of her honest to God emotions.  Elizabeth PERFORMED as the daughter of this sort of Tudor lion she built Henry up to be, because she inherited the throne as HIS daughter first and foremost.  Anne’s family certainly didn’t help her claim to the throne, and at any rate, regardless of Elizabeth being restored to the succession, her parents’ marriage was iffy in the eyes of... most of Europe, at some point or another.  She could at least trumpet her status as a LEGITIMIZED daughter of a king--which was still questionably to many, of course--if not her status as a princess born legitimate.  That status relied entirely on her father, and not at all on her mother.

The fact is that no matter what public displays of affection Henry showed to Elizabeth when he felt like it, he put her in a constant place of political and probably emotional turmoil beginning when she was little more than a baby.  He came dangerously close to denying paternity of her altogether.  He killed her mother, destabilized her life--as a king’s bastard, she was even more dependent on his favor than she had been as a princess.  Legitimate members of the royal family had rights that bastards lacked.  No matter what sort of different responses to emotion people in Tudor England may have felt compared to those of the twenty-first century, Elizabeth would have grown up well aware of her status as a living reminder of Anne Boleyn; that’s something she would have had to fight against if she wanted her father’s favor.  And whether or not she wanted to be a daddy’s girl in private is irrelevant.  She needed to be Henry VIII’s daughter in public, even after he died.  Before she was queen, she had to curry favor from two siblings connected to her through a shared father--one of which had many reasons to hate Elizabeth’s mother.  If Mary I had been able to prove that Elizabeth wasn’t Henry’s daughter; well, what would have happened then?

This idea of Elizabeth as a daddy’s girl in private is ultimately a bit irrelevant, because we’ll never get to know what her private feelings were.  Even the words of her close companions are ultimately secondhand pieces of information that could very well serve as political propaganda.  If you played with Elizabeth, even as one of her ladies, you were a political person.  She WAS politics embodied, as a ruling queen.  Therefore, I feel as if the myth of Elizabeth as Henry’s loving daughter--his proud daughter--must be acknowledged as a myth, and separate from whatever she felt about him in private.  Maybe she loved him.  Maybe she didn’t.  It seems more likely to me that Mary I would have had reason to feel close to her father on an emotional level in real life--as I mentioned regarding her Showtime portrayal above, she actually lived a portion of her childhood as a beloved princess, whereas Elizabeth likely had few memories of that.  For that matter, Elizabeth seems to have been much better at keeping her emotional truths close to the vest than Mary I--who, let’s be real, perhaps suffered from mental illness--and Mary Queen of Scots.  It’s harder to discern what her private emotions were.  

No doubt, she was proud of being a Tudor.  (The status her father tried to rob her of.)  Being a Tudor let her be queen, after all.  No doubt, she was proud of being the daughter of a king.  But was she proud of being the daughter of Henry, the man?  I don’t know.  I’m not sure about the degree to which she would have thought about it.  Perhaps she was genuinely sad when her father died--she had good reason to be genuinely sad and concerned for herself.  But there’s a part of me that just can’t help but love the idea of a young Elizabeth putting on the :( at hearing of her father’s death, only to :| once the courtiers disappeared.

[heartofstanding]

Defaming the dead and other historical fiction problems...

(cw: discussions of misogyny, homophobia, rape, ableism, slut-shaming, xenophobia, incest, abuse, child sex abuse and grooming. If a shitty histfic novel has invoked it, I'll probably mention it. also some hyperbole.)

The "Don't Defame The Dead" movement/campaign was pretty strong in the early 2010s and came as a response to some... pretty horrendous historical fiction, probably best typified by Philippa Gregory and her imitators. You know, the protagonist is a saint and anyone who opposes them is horrifically evil and the (typically female) protagonist is subjected to torture porn and forced into a Madonna/Whore, Good Girl/Bad Girl dichotomy with another woman?

Mostly, "Don't Defame The Dead" was invoked in reviews and discussions but there were also a handful of blog posts that featured memes in which the "defamed" historical figure answered back to these "accusations" via the means of an memed ecard, like so:

For a time, I was fully on board with it. I had the same frustrations with bad historical fiction. A novel would take a historical figure I was interested in and make them into the irredeemably evil baddie and I hated it. Here was a way to answer back that was used by some of the people I respected most in the histfic circles I was lurking in. And the edits framed the movement in easy terms. It was a matter of historical accuracy. It was all lies. It was also a matter of morality. The dead can't answer back and how would we feel if we were depicted like that?

But then I got off the Don't Defame The Dead train and started thinking it through and I didn't like it.

So, couple of things:

I'm probably exaggerating the size and strength of the "Don't Defame the Dead" campaign. It did have a big impact on me, though.

I certainly understand the logic and motivation behind it. I'm not by any means defending the shitty novels that inspired it or saying that they're OK and the anger/disgust/upset caused by them isn't real.

Because this is tumblr, yeah, legally speaking, you can't defame the dead. No one ever claimed it was a legal argument. It was probably the best snappy one-liner around.

Don't Defame My Favourite Dead Guy

We’ve all got historical figures we’re attached to enough that a "bad" or offensive depiction is upsetting. It's natural that there are some figures we're going to be far more sensitive about and figures that we don't like and don't care if they're beaten with the villain stick within an inch of their lives. And obviously, how well someone picks up on whether a figure is "defamed" is going to be dependent on how well they know that time period and how much they care. Someone who is in the weeds of the reign of Henry VIII is going to have a lot more opinions about what counts as "defamation" in a novel about Anne Boleyn than they would in a novel about the Roman Emperor Nero. And, depending on who their favourite wife is, what they think happened and how much they buy into the six wives stan wars, they're going to have a different idea of who is defamed, how badly they're defamed and how they're being defamed. I'm not above the feeling either: you can beat Cardinal Henry Beaufort to a second death with the villain stick and I won't even blink. But so much as raise the villain stick vaguely in the direction of Mary de Bohun and my hackles will start to rise. The point is, it's all understandable and natural to have these kind of reactions.

But it's hard to take "don't defame the dead" seriously when you see this kind of reaction in the very people promoting it. If "defaming" the dead is as immoral as they say, they should be up in arms about all "defamation", not just when it's their fave or reflects badly on their fave. And yet you could see the same bloggers basically renacting the "I can excuse (blank) but I draw the line at (blank)" meme. I can excuse misogynist vitriol against Margaret of Anjou but I draw the line at depicting Richard III being anything but a smol bean. I can excuse slut-shaming Katherine Howard but draw the line at slut-shaming Anne Boleyn. I can excuse Hugh Despenser being depicted as a rapist but I draw the line at Edward II being complicit in it.

(yes, this is a real Don't Defame The Dead card, I didn't make it.)

How does one "defame the dead"?

If it's not already clear, I'm not exactly comfortable with labelling bad depictions as "defamation". It's a term meant to induce an emotional response, a sense of this is serious but I don't think it always is serious. I'm sticking with the terminology though because that's what the campaign used and I can't think of a snappier replacement.

But if we're worried about the defaming the dead, how do we define defamation and who decides what is or is not defamation?

Period-attitudes? Because while we might not have an individual's own feelings and thoughts on the matter, we can use the general attitudes of the period to assume how they would have reacted? Um, no. It's a stupid-ass approach. Firstly, we rarely know how closely an individual hewed to societal conventions and beliefs. Secondly, period-typical attitudes usually contain masses of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, classism, homophobia and other biases. That way lies "well medieval anti-sodomy rhetoric means saying Richard II was queer is a smear!" and worse.

What about historical accuracy and most likely scenarios? Is that a good guideline? Well, yes and no (I talk about the evidence problem a lot more below). What about the author's intention, does that matter? Or is the reader the arbitrator? If so, how do we get past the problem that everyone will have a different idea of is "historically accurate" and what counts as defamatory? What if what is called "defamation" is just a way of the reader expressing their own bigotry and/or bias?

This one of the cards made by Edward II historian Kathryn Warner, referring to the trope first popularised by Braveheart in which Edward III is a ~secret bastard~ of an affair Isabella of France had, though who the "real father" is varies. It's a stupid trope, based in homophobia (because a gay king couldn't possibly father a warrior king) and sometimes misogyny (Isabella is reduced to the vehicle through which Wallace avenges himself on England in Braveheart or depicted as a slut). But most often, it seems to be intended to show Isabella acting with agency, forging her own path in attempt to find happiness despite an unloving husband and, in some measure, triumphing over the Patriarchy™ because her son by choice ends up as the next king. If intention matters, then it's not meant to be "defamatory" to Isabella. It's still grossly homophobic, dumb and defamatory to Edward II. But Isabella? No.

The same logic that Warner argues makes it defamatory to Isabella could also be applied to some of Warner’s own arguments to other women. She speculates that Edward II had an incestuous affair with his own niece but doesn't seem to be upset about the possibility of Eleanor de Clare's adultery (it's also interesting to compare her neutrality on uncle-niece incest with her her older posts where she declares how disgusting Philippa Gregory's depiction of Anne Boleyn committing incest with her brother is). Elsewhere, Warner argues that Joan of Kent did not marry Thomas Holland before she married William Montagu but fell in "love or lust" with Holland during her Montagu marriage, had an affair with him and together cooked up an plan where they would both untruthfully claim to have married earlier so her marriage to Montagu would be annulled and she could safely hook up with Holland. Therefore, the annulment was never legitimate, she was never legally married to Holland or to the Black Prince and her children with both these men were all bastards, including Richard II.

Therefore Warner’s Joan is an lying adulteress who foists a bastard onto the throne. The evidence for such a claim is lacking and seems largely based on the confused anecdote that Holland may or may not have served Montagu as a steward at a time Joan may or may not have been living with Montagu and that it’s “odd” that neither Joan or Holland spoke up about their marriage before her Montagu marriage. Warner’s intention with this is ostensibly to show Joan as a strong woman acting with agency to get what she wants – the same intention that seems to be at the core of depicting Isabella as an adulteress. Why is one defamatory and one not? Yes, the traditional view of Joan is disturbing for its depiction of a love story between a 13 year old girl and a 26 year old man but it’s a bizarre choice to “correct” this fucked up over-romanticism by arguing instead that the woman who would otherwise be the victim of CSA just lied about her experiences and was actually an adulteress who foisted a bastard on the throne. Because it's "odd" she didn't speak up by her Holland marriage earlier or that Holland not speaking up is out of character from a man who was the "furtherest thing" from a coward. All of this could be explained by the fairly well-known dynamics of child-grooming and abuse but apparently it makes more "sense" for Joan to be an lying adulteress.

And that's not defamatory to Joan at all. Right? But making Isabella an adulteress is defamatory. Right?

Right?

R-E-S-P-E-CT.

"Don't Defame The Dead" frames “defamation” as first and foremost disrespectful to the dead people involved and that alone makes the depiction irredeemably offensive and immoral. But to me the real issue with bad depictions is not whether they're "disrespectful" to the person or that it treats them "offensively" but the way they often perpetuate narratives of misogyny, racism, classism, xenophobia, antisemitism, fatphobia, transphobia, body shaming, ableism, slut-shaming and so on. Or that they use rape and abuse as a cheap plot device and/or titillation, or that they use past tragedies and oppression as a cheap points-scoring device.

And of course all these things can intersect: Depictions of Margaret of Anjou usually heavily emphasise her identity as a Frenchwoman (xenophobia), the way she is a subversive woman who doesn't know her place (misogyny), and her dangerous sexuality (slut-shaming). Depictions of Eleanor Cobham keep the misogyny and slut-shaming but swap out the xenophobia for classism (she's a gold-digging slut who won't stay in her rightful place, which is typically defined as Catherine de Valois's vast social inferior).

The most offensive and harmful thing about the idea that Edward II ‘let’ Hugh Despenser rape Isabella of France is not that it’s disrespectful to any of the parties involved but the homophobia in depicting a queer man as a sexually depraved rapist and the salacious, cheap use of rape. By a similar token, what is most offensive and harmful today about the idea that Margaret of Anjou’s alleged adultery and Edward of Lancaster’s alleged bastardy is not what it says about Margaret, Edward or Henry VI but the misogyny involved in depicting Margaret as a sex-hungry and power-hungry slut and hypocrite and the ableism involved in presenting Henry VI as being incapable of fathering a child and lacking in awareness to realise what Margaret has done (it is possible to write this scenario in a "good" way (i.e. a choice made by Margaret and Henry together) but afaik no one has ever written it). Edward II, Despenser, Isabella, Margaret, Henry and Edward of Lancaster are all long dead. But issues like ableism, misogyny, homophobia and the salacious use of rape still cause massive harm today to living people and these depictions reinforce these ideas.

The “don’t defame the dead” campaign also frequently framed the defamations as bad by asking how “you” would feel if these things were said about you. Well, yeah, it would be incredibly hurtful for myself and my loved ones to be the subject of these defamations. But the comparison is inherently a false equivalency. The campaign was primarily about individuals in the medieval and early modern periods. Everyone is long dead. Everyone who ever knew them to care about their feelings have been dead for centuries. What does it matter how they would feel about how they're depicted or what's said about them and the people they knew? They're beyond knowing or caring.

To frame bad depictions as a matter of respect requires a question: why should we respect the dead? I’m not saying that there are not historical figures worthy of respect because there absolutely are but instead querying the basic idea that being dead makes you automatically worthy of respect. The campaign argues that the dead should not be disrespected or “defamed” because that every single one of them was human, that we should think about how we would feel if that was us and that they’re dead and unable to answer back.

Sure, we should remember when we’re writing historical fiction that everyone was human, not cartoon caricatures and cardboard cut-outs, but the idea that being human or dead makes someone deserving of respect is... nope. There are people who deserve exactly zero respect, whether living or dead, and I'm fucked if I'm going to give it to them.

Don't Do That.

I realise by framing this as "it doesn't matter what's said about the dead, what matters is the harmful ideas behind it", I am inviting a never-ending piss-contest about which "defamation" actually perpetuates the most harm. Don't do that. That's fucking stupid. It only makes the Ricardians vs Tudorite wars worse to make it about ableism vs xenophobia. I don't even belong to the Tudor fandom but I've seen it descend into this shitfuckery.

It's entirely possible to recognise the harmful rhetoric at play in "bad depictions" without making it a pissing competition about which historical figure has it worse and which prejudice is worse and that prejudice is worst than the other which means the other doesn't really matter. It is possible to hate both the xenophobia underlying depictions of Margaret of Anjou and the classism in bad depictions of the Woodvilles without wanking over which one is worse.

And for love of god, we need to stop conflating "I don't like/agree with this thing" as "and therefore it is morally wrong" or "and therefore it is more morally wrong than the things I do like/agree with".

The Get Out Of Defamation Jail Free Card

Do you have evidence for your depiction of that person? No? Go to Defamation Jail. Go directly to Defamation Jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Now think about how you would feel if that had been you depicted like that.

Oh, you do have evidence? Well, let's see, I care about the person you defamed so I'm going to go over it with a fine-toothed comb. I'll hit the archives if I must.

Actually, I don't care and I don't know much about the person, I just need to see a citation and you're good to go.

So, if evidence gets you out of Defamation Jail, what counts as evidence and who decides if it counts as evidence or not?

Is it enough to have the work of a historian as the basis behind your depiction? That can be evidence. But what if the work is outdated or not widely accepted or written by a crank? Does someone writing a novel about Elizabeth Woodville based on John Ashdown-Hill's biography of her, dripping in virulent misogyny and bizarre and unevidenced claims as it is, get a pass for defaming the dead? After all, a historian wrote the book they're working from. The answer, btw, is "oh my god, no". But that supposes I know enough to know how vile the biography is. Suppose I don't and I assume he's a reliable, non-biased historian? I'd probably go "ok, well, I guess that's what she was really like".

And what if the evidence that a historian's work can provide is in an entirely different context? If someone is consistently described as violent and vindictive in his role as a landowner but there's no evidence of his relationship with his family, is it defamatory to depict him as abusive to his wife and children? I don't have evidence that he was... but I also don't have evidence that he wasn't... and do we really expect to have evidence of this? ...the evidence does suggests he was a quite a nasty man... but I can't defame the dead...

Well, what about historical records? Is that enough to clear an author of a charge of defamation? Again, it really depends on whether the reviewer has enough knowledge to judge whether the record has issues or not: is it a sceptical report that's treated as 10000% legitimate? Hagiography? Propaganda or counter-propaganda? Do we contend with the fact that a lot of historical records were written by educated, religious white men, that women's own writings were a comparative rarity and (until relatively recently) often filtered through a man (i.e. a transcriber, a publisher, an editor), that marginalised identities are often treated as a curiosity or moral lesson?

And is OK to depict women like Alice Perrers, Eleanor Cobham and Margaret of Anjou as evil bitches because chroniclers universally dunked on them, never mind the misogynist, classist, xenophobic and/or factional bias in the records, and only a few historians - often in academic circles - have been interested in trying to challenge these interpretations while many, many more have uncritically regurgitated them up and ladled on more misogyny, classism and xenophobia?

What about the reviewer/blogger's own biases? The Don't Defame The Dead crowd were big on historical accuracy. Things had to be "accurate" or, failing that, the most likely scenario, which typically meant Occam's Razor and statistical likelihoods were to be used. But the thing is, while useful tools, history and individuals are never just what statistics and Occam's Razor would tell us they were. It also means marginalised lives or marginalised parts of life tend to stay in the margins because we lack "proof" that they existed. Statistics are also not as infallible as they might seem. Are we applying them or an individualistic or population basis? And modern population statistics are based on modern ways of categorising and identifying people. To project it back at the past means we assume that the past had the same categories and identities that we do and that's not always the case.

New discoveries and research can undercover things that utterly destroy what is considered the "most likely scenario". The histography of Tutankhamun is full of this but perhaps the most dramatic is this: until his tomb and mummy were discovered in the 1920s, it was believed he was an older politician who came to the throne after the main dynasty had gone extinct. It was not considered likely he was the son of one of the preceding pharaohs. A novel written about him pre-1922 according to what was "most likely" would now be considered laughably inaccurate. A novel written today based on what's viewed as "most likely" would be considered laughably inaccurate back then.

Murder at the Defamation Court

Let's say I want to write a novel about the murder in the Princes of the Tower. I already hear some Ricardians hissing because I said they were murdered, not they escaped or were spirited away somewhere safe and that's defamation enough. But I need to decide who murdered them. Even I don't end up revealing whodunnit in the novel, I should probably know for the sake of writing a good mystery novel.

I first circle over to Richard III as the culprit. I've got a few historians who say he did it, a few more that say he is the most probable murderer and a few more that say he must have been complicit in the murders, whether or not he did it or not. I've got some contemporary-ish writers who report that it was widely believed that Richard was behind it. Ricardians would say, despite it all, I've bought into Tudor Propaganda™ and I'm defaming Richard III. It might make a good story (just ask Shakespeare) but the defamation makes it a no-go (just ask the Shakespeare professionals getting hate mail from Ricardians).

I discard him as a culprit and start examining the other suspects, put forward by Ricardians (some of them good historians, some of them cranks, but, whatever, a citation is a citation). I examine Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII, the Duke of Buckingham, Jane Shore and a bunch more. But the historical evidence just isn't there. All the theories are just based on evidence that basically requires you to build a castle in the air out of speculation. One of the alternatives might make a good story but there's no evidence for it.

In short, there's not enough evidence to convict Richard III, Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII or Buckingham etc. etc. for murder but there is enough to convict me of defaming the dead.

In desperation, I ponder whether it's possible to write this novel without accusing anyone of murder. I hit upon the solution. What if the Princes aren't murdered after all? Maybe rocks fall and they die. Or what if I create an entirely fictional character to commit the murders though? The dead won't be defamed and with a fictional character, I can make up whatever motivation I want.

But isn't that kind of a bad story telling choice? If you read a good novel about a historical murder mystery and you believed the solution, wouldn't you feel absolutely cheated if you came to the author's note and found out a large part of the book - a vital part, some would say - were entirely fictional because the author couldn't dare to defame the dead?

What we require evidence of.

A decent amount of the cards focused on depictions of historical figures as rapists and abusers. To be perfectly clear, I’m not defending those depictions, I haven't read them all but I suspect most of them have as much sensitivity as a sledgehammer. I've talked about the depiction of rape in historical fiction in-depth before here so I'm not going to make this post even longer by summarising that post. The point is: historical fiction has a massive problem with depicting rape. And of course no one wants to see their favourite dead person depicted as unforgivable rapist or abuser.

But I don't think the right solution to this problem is to demand that an author either has evidence (and clear, definitive evidence - if it's speculative, we must give the dead "the benefit of the doubt") or else never depict rape or abuse in their historical fiction novels.

Look, we know the issues about "proving" rape and abuse in our own modern society with all the benefits of progressive social movements and modern medicine. We know that the stricter gender and/or class roles, the commonality of violence and concepts like "the marital debt" in historical times would have further stifled discussion of rape and abuse. We also know that very few in society had the means or ability to record their story. So we shouldn't necessarily expect to have evidence of rape, much less clear and definitive evidence.

And we need only look to to the appalling ways some Chaucer scholars have talked about Cecily Chaumpaigne or Warner's treatment of Joan of Kent or the Gille de Rais apologists to see the ways in which evidence of rape and abuse is challenged and dismissed, even by historians presenting themselves as progressive (the Chaucer-Chaumpaigne case turned out not to have been about rape at all but is a very, very recent discovery).

There is also important work being done by scholars on rape and abuse in history (for the medieval period, see Carissa M. Harris, Caroline Dunn and Dyan Elliott) and no doubt what they uncover is just the tip of the iceberg. Some recent work on medieval mistresses takes the time and care to point out the massive power differentials between a mistress and her noble lover and how, while we can sometimes have a good idea at how her lover felt about her, we have no idea at all how she felt about him or her situation.

It's absolutely important to talk about the way histfic uses rape and abuse in cheap, ugly ways and it's absolutely justified to be upset by it. But I don't think the answer is to demand an author either has perfect evidence or never write about rape or abuse. There are plenty of novels that do depict rape and abuse sensitively and I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. If someone wants to write a sensitive, thoughtful depiction of what it would be like for a person - even a real medieval monarch or noble - to be the victim of abuse or rape, I don't think we should demand they bring "proof" of their depiction or not write it all. And I say that meaning: yes, even if it makes one of my faves a rapist or abuser. I don't have to read that book. I might be mad about it but I don't have to read it.

Writing While Not Defaming The Dead

The whole “don’t defame the dead” campaign is understandable and was an attempt to address an issue with bad historical fiction. But it doesn't really work. I don't know if I respect any medieval king - I can feel sympathy for them, I can get annoyed by bad depictions of them, I can be fascinated by them. But I don't know if I respect them and I don't know if "respect" is a good thing for an author or historian to have if it means they hold their subject in awe and try to find a sympathetic explanation for everything they do, especially if it negatively affects how they see their subject's contemporaries.

It gives a seemingly rigid rule for storytelling when things are much more shakier than it seems. What counts as defamation? What counts as evidence? What sort of evidence is enough? Who gets to decide what is accurate and what is defamation? And the thing is: sometimes the stories we want to tell are bigger than what the historical record gives us evidence for. Sometimes the stories we want to tell are more important than the reputation of a dead person.

And using it as a guide for writing, some of it is good advice (a reminder that they were all human and real - fairly basic but then historical fiction fails this one fairly often) and some is not necessarily good advice.

No, I don't know what Edward II and Isabella of France's sex life was like. No one does. I know this is referring to various homophobic, misogynist and grotesque depictions of their sex life and it's fair to be upset about that. But it's weird to see a post primarily about historical fiction frame it "don't pretend you know" about their sex life. I'm a fiction writer, my job is pretending to know.

Sure, authors shouldn't publish a sex scene they've written with their hand down their pants* and they should be careful about how they approach depicting sex. Sure some sex scenes can be "disrespectful" (i.e. written with hands down pants) or bad but they're not all horrific. And no, I don't count rape scenes as sex scenes. But it's kinda their job as an author of fiction to work out their characters' sex lives (if their characters are having sex), even if they're based on real historical people. It's their job to work out the bits of their characters for which there is no evidence to tell. Sex is a normal, everyday part of life for a lot of people, past and present. It shouldn't be scrubbed out of historical fiction because it might lack "evidence" and we can't "know" what happened or it be construed as "disrespectful" to dead.

But despite all the words I've written criticising the concept of Don't Defame the Dead, I can't quite let go of it. There are times where I've read a shitty histfic novel and wanted to stamp the words all over the book. I don't want to be an author that causes a reader to have that reaction. I also know it's inevitable I will.

As a writer myself, I think about things. I find myself going in directions that would be considered "defamatory". Wouldn't it be cathartic if I wrote a novel about Eleanor Cobham as a good, perfect, sweet woman who is mercilessly menaced by Catherine de Valois in revenge for so many Catherine novels that demonised Eleanor? What if I depict a character's father as abusive when I don't have evidence he was? What if I decide to explore the issues around consent that a mistress might face even though we have no idea whether she consented freely or not? And apart from the first one (it's kinda baked into the concept - "write a shitty histfic novel in revenge for other shitty histfic novels" and anyway I've abandoned that impulse), I know I would handle these subjects sensitively, that I wouldn't make it a case of bogeymans and perfect victims. But in the back of my head, I hear DON'T DEFAME THE DEAD. And I wonder if I should and ultimately suppress the urge.

*unless it's on AO3.

Postscript.

Where we encounter historical fiction also primes us for how we react to it. I react very differently to someone writing whump or smut fic and posting it on AO3 or tumblr than I do encountering something that is basically whump fic or smut in a historical novel. So I feel like it needs to be said that it's absolutely okay to write whump and/or smut. They can be fun and cathartic or just plain hot. It's absolutely OK to share it on tumblr or AO3. But it's another thing to publish them in a "serious" historical fiction novel and go around talking about how the novel is based on serious research and absolutely what happened and also they're empowering feminist stories that are oh so important.

[voluptuarian]

So like not really a "worst history" post, but rather an examination of one of the most bizarre history blogs I've encountered and which I felt like I had to share. I want to study this blog like a bug

So they're basically a fan blog for historical/fantasy shows that have a major female rivalry (Magnificent Century/The Tudors). All their interests seem to be rooted in madonna vs. whore-ing female characters. But beyond all that they're a Anne Boleyn anti.

I'm not making this up. Whoever runs it is just, up their own ass about Anne. This is literally their blog description

They seem to just watch tv so they can pit female characters against each other, and to rate their morals (not even kidding, they have lists of characters ranking them by goodness and badness, which is... interesting) They apparently watch HOTD for just this reason

But most of their content is about historical figures, and the vast majority of that is anti-Anne Boleyn, Anti-Elizabeth I, or both. And, as in their blog profile, these are all either a. interpreting the motivations behind factual events in the worst possible way b. referencing Spanish/Catholic propoganda or just blaming Anne for shit Henry did c. just not true

Like the aforementioned "seducing Henry VIII with witchcraft"

(Like, dear blog-owner. It is 2021. Are you blogging from the Renaissance somehow?)

Here are some examples

First off I love the idea that Elizabeth had Essex killed because he saw her without makeup. Like, the man was so closely tied to his rebellion against Elizabeth that it's fucking named for him. Clearly that had nothing to do with his execution. It was because Elizabeth was Big Mad about her looks.

(Also the idea of Anne-- who had to work hard to appear legitimate both personally and as a supporter of Protestantism-- calling herself "harlot", "whore", etc. is always so comic, like that Definitely happened)

But secondly

like. You passed over serial killers. Nazis. child-murderers.

Ok.

(Like I'm legitimately wondering if OP is Catholic. The obsession with these 2 in particular just seems so perplexing, I'm like... are you butthurt about Anglicanism??)

But maybe my favorite part of this is the multiple posts they reblogged from Tudors/History confessions that are anti-Anne Boleyn, and all marked by the same, let's say... awkward English? as op's own. So they're very clearly submitting stuff to these blogs and then reblogging it to make it look like someone else agrees with them. (And being hella obvious about it). And none of their own posts has more than like 5 notes-- desperate behavior.

This whole blog is so fascinating, like who is out there so annoyed by a historical figure to do the whole fandom-anti-hysterics angle over them? (And if you really were so bothered by Anne, wouldn't you be more concerned with Henry-- give us a Henry VIII hate blog, that would be much more fun). I'm convinced op is actually Ambassador Chapuys, reincarnated in the 21st century as a tumblrina...

[nightnightsweetprince]

@darcylightninglewis

Woodcut print showing a caricature of Henry VIII (1491-1547) surrounded by his six wives, ca. early 19th century. Harry Beard Collection.

Source

[dry-valleys]

“When all England is aloft Where so safe as in Christ’s croft? Where do you suppose Christ’s croft to be, But between Ribble and Mersey?” Anon, quoted by J.A. Hilton.

Whalley Abbey was built between 1283 and 1296 by Cistercian monks from the failed Stanlow Abbey, sponsored by Norman baron Henry de Lacy. They had a solid if uneventful life, serving God and man well in a pious, rural and conservative county.

This was all to change in 1536, when Henry VIII took an axe to this and other institutions as part of a landgrab and to fuel his wars, dressed up in the language of the new Protestant religion.

Throughout Lancashire and other rural areas a movement called the Pilgrimage of Grace arose to defend the old religion; while it’s questionable how big a threat this was to Henry and how important Whalley was to the rebellion, the monks and Abbot John Paslew were blamed by the Heinricians, who defeated the rebels, executed Paslew and shut down Whalley in 1537. It was sold by the crown to Richard Assheton.

Lancashire, as Hilton has painstakingly chronicled, was one of the areas where Catholicism was strongest in the centuries after the Reformation, not (as is popularly believed) as a dying faith clinging on but in its dotage, but a strengthened popular faith fed by the Counter-Reformation in Europe and its links to Ireland (I will be sharing much more about this later).

Despite the relative strength of the old faith, even here it was only followed by a minority; the diehard recusants who defied church and state for their faith, and the ‘church papists’ who were outwardly Anglicans but believed in the old faith in their hearts; while obviously no friends to the new Puritan movement, these were also not going to fight for Catholicism in any meaningful way.

So it was that William Blundell, from nearby Crosby, one of many Catholic gentry still living in Lancashire, rued:

“The time hath been we had one faith And strode aright one ancient path, The time is now that each man may See new religions coined each day”.

What fragile peace there may have been in Lancashire between 1536 and 1642 was shattered when the British Civil Wars broke out in 1642; for obvious reasons, Catholics were overwhelmingly loyal to King Charles I, fearing and hating the Puritans whom they found on the other side; even though they were mistrusted by royalist leaders who saw them as a liability.

Like the beleaguered Christians in Syria today the Catholic cavaliers (including William Blundell, son of William Blundell) stuck with a leader for whom they had no love rather than a rebel movement which openly hated them.

The cause which Catholics overhwelmingly supported ended up losing, of course, and Charles was deposed and executed in 1649, replaced by a ‘protectorate’ led by Oliver Cromwell (1649-58) and after his death his son Richard (1658-60), before Charles II, son of Charles I, ousted Richard (who ended up living until 1712, though as a powerless individual) and became king in 1660.

None of this furthered Whalley’s cause. It was used as a private home by Ralph Assheton, the member of Parliament for Clitheroe (a fine town which I’ll blog about later) who knocked down the monastery largely out of spite (he was a staunch Protestant who had opposed Charles I in the civil wars, though he was not punished by Charles II, to whom he was no serious threat).

Ralph Assheton, a descendent of that Richard who had bought the site in 1537, built the house, which still stands, but deliberately did little with the monastery; it can be seen (1) as it was in 1811 when JMW Turner came here and painted it. Throughout this time, little of note happened at Whalley, which was largely as it was at Ralph Assheton’s death in 1680, but decayed.

In 1923, it was bought by the Church of England, who sponsored an excavation which has made Whalley what it now is, a picturesque ruin (in the Forest of Bowland AONB, which as you’ll see I thoroughly explored). with a still standing and still useful 17th-century house, which was done up in 2005 and is now used by the church as a conference centre.

So although we’re living in a world that John Paslew would have found baffling and reprehensible, I hope some of the monks would have appreciated that God and man are still being served here.

[bforbetterthanyou]

I don’t know if you’ve been asked this before but who do you think Anne would’ve married if she hadn’t married Henry VIII? Do you think she would’ve married James Butler like she was supposed to? Or maybe Henry Percy?

I definitely have and I tried to search for it on my blog but Tumblr likes to hide my own posts from me for some reason. Also, I think it’s been a really long time since I was last asked this anyway.

I don’t think she would’ve married James Butler. I heard a theory that I find very compelling that Wolsey never really intended for the marriage to go through and he just wanted to keep James in England as, like, a hostage basically. I don’t know why, but it’s Wolsey, y’know? He was always planning and scheming. But yeah, I think that betrothal was always going to fall through.

I also don’t think she would’ve married Percy pretty much for the same reason that she didn’t in real life: Percy’s father didn’t approve and he had to marry Mary Talbot—that had already been arranged before Percy and Anne met.

Honestly, I think a very likely candidate is Edward Seymour. In real life, Edward Seymour married firstly in 1527 (to a woman who was born in 1507) so timing-wise, it fits perfectly. Also, I think he and Anne actually had a lot in common. They were both reformers and they both spent many years on the continent (Edward even spoke French). The only impediment is that, in 1526/27 when they could’ve gotten married, Anne’s father was a Viscount whereas Edward’s father was a mere knight and I do think Thomas Boleyn would’ve preferred Anne to marry someone of higher rank like an Earl or Marquess. Although, Edward was pretty ambitious so I think he would’ve risen on his own merit regardless of if his sister became Queen or not so perhaps he wouldn’t have stayed a knight’s son forever.

Other than Edward, it’s possible she could’ve married on of her Howard relatives. One Howard relative who would’ve been age-appropriate for her was William Howard, son of the 2nd Duke and his second wife who was born in 1510. William was technically Anne’s half-uncle but this was the 16th century and people only cared about incest when they wanted to get a divorce. None of the children of the 3rd Duke would’ve worked because even the oldest son, Henry the Earl of Surrey was born in 1516 which is too young for Anne. Also, considering how the 3rd Duke hated Thomas Boleyn, I don’t think he would’ve allowed a marriage to happen anyway.

If we think Thomas Boleyn would’ve held out for someone of higher rank, that’s when things get kinda tricky. She definitely wouldn’t have married a Duke because, in the late 1520s there were only 3 Dukes in England: the Duke of Norfolk (her uncle), the Duke of Richmond and Somerset (Henry VIII’s bastard), and the Duke of Suffolk (Charles Brandon—still married to Mary Tudor). There were 2 Marquess’ in the 1520s, the Marquess of Dorset and the Marquess of Exeter but neither of them could really be marriage contenders because, at the time Anne would’ve been of marriageable age the Marquess of Dorset was held by Thomas Grey who was born in 1477 (literally the same year as Thomas Boleyn) and he was married; and his son, who succeeded him, was born in 1517. The other Marquess was the Marquess of Exeter which was created for Henry Courtenay in 1525...except he was also already married. Then we get to the earls; there were 3 in the 1520s. There was Francis Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury who was born in 1500, but he married in 1523 and also he remained Catholic. There was also Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby born in 1508, however, in real life, Stanley was under the wardship of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk who, as we already discussed, hated Thomas Boleyn so it’s doubtful he would’ve consented to a marriage with Thomas Boleyn’s daughter over one of the many eligible Howard girls. Then we have George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon—born in 1488 and married in 1509.

There weren’t many Viscounts (the title seems to have been rarely given to a man in his own right, usually it was a subsidiary title for the son of a nobleman with a higher rank like Earl or Duke). I didn’t really look into the barons of the period because it’s late and I’m tired and I know there were a lot more barons than any of these other titles and I just don’t feel like looking through all of them—but I might later and make an edit to this...

So yeah, if Thomas Boleyn was willing to settle for someone of lesser rank, I think Edward Seymour would’ve been a pretty strong contender.