#wish they were more talkative tho?
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oasisofgalaxies · 9 months ago
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Ok stopping the halo for tonight but I’ll finish it tomorrow- so far I’m kind of lost? I mean it’s not as much of a train wreck as I expected it to be but it’s still a little weird. I have a few questions but at the end of the day I’m a simple person. I see big robot thing, I think they’re neat.
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mohntilyet · 15 days ago
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Personal headcanon about the "you picked the wrong dellamorte" line, I don't think illario actually likes rook outside the context of them being someone close to lucanis. Like rook on their own isn't much to him, but when they meet it's yet another person talking about his cousin (why isn't he good enough for whatever job they're hiring for?) and on top of that they somehow bring him back from the dead (another whole can of worms for illario). Now he starts turning on the charm, but whether he's actually interested or this is just one more thing his cousin has that he doesn't and it gets under his skin, who knows. Either way, rook ignores illario, the guy who lives off his charm, and is instead interested in the guy who's never even dated before and thinks giving someone a knife is how to flirt. Infuriating
NO THANK YOU !! i am genuinely sorry if i have ever implied illario is into rook like i see some takes about it and unless it like ties into your rook's personal backstory i don't seriously think he's romantically jealous. at all. my enjoyment of that line stems from illario's pathological need to make it about himself and not see his strengths but what lucanis has, and therefore what he doesn't. he's annoyed enough to try and goad you in the middle of a fight about the 'wrong' dellamorte and completely blind to the fact that the venatori are at best, a stupid fucking alliance, and at worst, a cult that will devour the crows from the inside out and illario would have been the one to give them the keys. he sees lucanis make allies, needs his own, and instead of charming the other talons/houses as he should, he (probably spitefully) picks the venatori. or maybe he just thought it would be easier. ugh he makes me want to telekenetically throw him around
#and you raise a very hilarious point too LMFAO#not that he is jealous. just mad as hell its not working <3 I LIKE HIM VERY MUCH AND A NORMAL AMOUNT#to be clear i think his characterisation changed dramatically from wigmaker's job and a lot of his uh#very rash decisions about achieving power feels like they just needed a traitor character for lucanis#to really max out the use of spite. i really wish honestly that there was some canon support for illario#who would probably be a little more liked/popular than lucanis. bc lucanis is respected by the crows#but he's also a very distant 'dellamorte heir' figure. respect is not the same as being liked. so you know#there's the serious assassin with a rep for how good he is at killing#and there's a friendlier assassin with a rep for sweet talking#and neither of those reputations are necessarily true. but i know which one i'd be less afraid of#and i think illario would know that. and be able to use that. BUT WE DONT GET IT. WHATEVER.....#illario dellamorte#veilguard spoilers#answered#also we're introduced to an illario that understands being a crow. and has had all that drilled into him since childhood#why. would he. ally with the venatori.#why would he put himself into a situation that he couldnt control. other than 'the story needs a villain'#what im trying to say. is . there were the makings of a crow civil war here that ends with him tragically dead#if you asked me to expand on this i dont think i could. but like the main issue being the crows not standing together making#the antaam invasion worse (btw regarding this why the fuck were the antaam even invading) so lucanis' quest is#idk. something like uniting the crows together and potentially repairing his relationship w illario#or hardening him and convincing he needs to kill illario#this is me spitballing. dont even mind me#(glances at the 'illario mention' alarm going off in the background)#EDIT: AND ALSO IT JUST CAME TO ME#killing illario as an ending also makes lucanis first talon (oh we're really in the cycles now)#forgiving illario ends with illario becoming 'talon' tho he and lucanis work closely. like a ceo vs cfo#and ends with them repairing their relationship#in the ideal world lucanis would fully leave but im alright with crows making small steps towards becoming a bit healthier
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asurrogateblog · 2 months ago
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The Syd Poll
the topic of this poll is one that is frequently avoided in the pink floyd fandom, but inevitably one we all consider – our individual views on what we think caused syd's psychological struggles (and by extension, led to his departure from the band). I think that – at least in this neighborhood of tumblr – this is a conversation we are capable of having in a way that is civil, nuanced, and at least minimally disrespectful to syd.
So, to help facilitate this, here are some ground rules:
let's all assume we have a mutual understanding of the complexities of this. syd could never actually be reduced down to a poll, and all of our viewpoints are limited in various ways
the poll options just serve as just a conversation starter, and responses are not necessarily a statement of absolute beliefs
feel free to discuss as much or as little of your own perspective as you feel comfortable sharing.
in the case that debates break out, please try to assume good intent – and also demonstrate it (unless, for instance, someone is being blatantly insulting beyond a misunderstanding that needs correcting)
please do NOT vote if you are not actually a pink floyd fan with at least basic knowledge about what we're talking about here.
The options I've included below are not meant to be exhaustive, they are simply the "theories" that I have seen most commonly circulated. I have also decided not to include combinations. I'm fairly sure we'd all agree multiple factors were involved. Rather than make the poll too complicated, I ask you to instead select the one that you think is the "most" important to your viewpoint, and clarify further in your tags/comments as you wish.
so. here we go.
READ BEFORE VOTING ^^^^
(note of correction: "late-onset schizophrenia" should just be "schizophrenia". the typical timeline for onset of symptoms is late adolescence/early adulthood, so syd would've been well within that period at the time)
#pink floyd#syd barrett#//#I will sacrifice myself and go first with way too much detail. hopefully it will help other people feel more comfortable talking#I chose consensual use of psychedelics. mainly bc I am fairly certain that he suffered from severe hppd#it stands for 'hallucinogen persisting perception disorder' –speaking crudely its 'did too much acid and got stuck like that'#I do NOT expect this kind of oversharing from anyone else but the reason I think that is because -I- definitely have that#its comparatively mild but I notice a lot of the same kind of impacts.#I'm more prone to dissociation and overstimulation. it takes more mental energy to communicate. my perception plays a bit fast and loose.#(again. it's not -that- bad. and NO pity for me this was a completely predictable outcome that I DO think is a little funny) but digressing#I can clearly see how if those symptoms were significantly escalated it would be just like what was described by ppl who knew syd#I think its very unkind to refer to him as a “drug casualty”#but I'm fairly confident anyone who's done acid would say by about hour 8 of the trip “okay. yah. too much of this could do that to someone#in other words –although I'm pretty sure syd was also neurodivergent– I do think its at least possible that the lsd couldve been enough#I'm happy to talk more about any of this in asks/dms if anyone wants. genuinely very cool with discussing it#but anyway. that's my take – obviously based entirely on anecdotal evidence tho so take that with as many grains of salt as you wish
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claire-starsword · 4 months ago
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youtube
OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL THING TO WAKE UP TO
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housecow · 6 months ago
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it drives me absolutely insane that people don’t realize the americas have been populated for over 20k years. like, i’m sorry. every professional, accomplished paleontologist and archaeologist i’ve taken a class from or spoken to treats this as a fact.
but for some reason, laypeople and the public in general refuse to accept it?? every time i see something about those footprints found in white sands, there are random ass ppl talking about the lack of evidence. when there is so much evidence. everywhere!! the gault site in TX is smthn i like to point out. not to mention the countless mammoth kill sites dating to over 15k years ago.
so you heard it from housecow here—the peopling of the americas is NOT as divisive as you’ve been led to believe and it is well known ppl have been here for over 20k years. its the methods of how and why that people are still trying to figure out
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sieglinde-freud · 7 months ago
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they were so insane for this
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nellasbookplanet · 5 months ago
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Fantasy works commonly (though obviously not always, this is a general observation, and I'm more of a scifi enjoyer than a traditional fantasy enjoyer anyway so my pool of reference is limited) place this divide between magic and technology. The two are placed as incompatible to the point that many fantasy worlds are almost stuck in this semi historical setting, not really allowed to grow or evolve past this mythological past, as if we can’t imagine magic and technology mixing. Why would technology evolve if we have magic? The stories I think of rarely outright say this, and I think writers create these types of settings more out of genre tradition than a genuine belief in never mixing magic and technology, but it saddens me that we so rarely see secondary fantasy worlds that are futursitic, or modern fantasy worlds that aren't either an obvious mirror of our present or literally our present but with a secret magical underbelly that has had little to no impact on the evolution of the world at large.
And it just occurred to me that in critical role, the divide is more often placed between magic and the divine, while magic and technology are presented as almost one and the same, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the Age of Arcanum. The magical fey changeling of Avalir was fantasy tv personality!! Magic doesn't hinder growth or trap the world in a medieval state of nature where people become incapable of imagining technological growth due to the convenience of magic: magic is technology. Magic interweaves into their societies, their ways of life. They study it, they grow it, it doesn't hold them back any more than discovering fire or electricity held us back because it’s the very foundation of their growth. How very fitting that Corellon, god of the arcane, takes the mortal form of an aeormaton, a robot, a being we would normally consider the anthitesis of magic, but which here is the embodiement of the sameness of the two.
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femphrodisiac · 9 months ago
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wore this to a bar and got sooo many compliments hehe!!!
men/feeders/fat fetishists do not reblog like or follow
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akkivee · 6 months ago
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one of the craziest bat bars like actually
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nocinovae · 1 year ago
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I really love the 2nd translator that Baghera uses. It’s in the corner to supplement for the language the in game translation isn’t covering. (It seems like a better translator too ;-;)
I hope more streamers start using this bc it stays on outside of QSMP too! I’d love to be able to understand more of their non-mc streams that don’t usually have the translator!!
And I don’t mean the live caption some of the QSMP streamers have added bc it’s really clunky especially on mobile :/
Also Baghs’ isn’t just a live thing and is part of the stream for both the streamer and audience so it’s up for vods too. She can switch it when everyone is in English so it translates for her too.
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ambibug · 7 months ago
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really random but the one thing that scares me about the escaping peril graphic novel is how chameleon is going to be portrayed….. like what if they just don’t give him his weird snout or make it like unnoticeable….
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razzafrazzle · 1 year ago
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BOO!
[image description: a drawing of two original characters named rowan and gordy. rowan is a medium-skinned thin person with fluffy, brushed-back hair, a large nose, stubble, and yellow-tinted round glasses. he is wearing a yellow turtleneck, orange bellbottoms, white gloves, and black boots. gordy is a fat ghost child with pale blue skin and curly white hair. he is wearing a sailor costume and is drawn to look as though he is flat with white outlines. rowan is looking back at gordy in mild surprise in the middle of walking, and gordy is excitedly floating behind rowan and greeting him. gordy's ghostly tail is also loosely floating around rowan. end id]
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dreamieparadise · 5 months ago
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Can- can I ask about the Somali pirates?
Hi hi, Lili! Yes, of course. Tbh I shouldn't have called them "pirates" they are known as such and treated like villains, but they're more like unofficial naval guard! The official naval guard was disbanded in the 90's due to the civil war that broke out [btw this civil war is why I'm diaspora! My maternal family fled to Djibouti or elsewhere. My dad came to Canada due to it.] Anyway! Other nations took advantage of this as they tended to do and started fishing illegally in the waters! Somali citizens rely on fishing to live [also farming and agriculture bc I also recall there was a drought and famine going on] so they turned to "piracy" to stop these thieves from stealing from them! Of course, these outsiders didn't like it and called it "piracy." they shouldn't be there in the first place!!!
BFJRKRKRKR I TALKED IM THE TAGS AND REACHED THE LIMIT I AM SO SORRY LMAOOOOO
Other than Puntland there is also Jubbaland ok lol I love talking about my people's history too much
#momo's fantastical replies#so anyway I saw other Somali ppl calling them the naval guard and jumped on it#but I have always gotten heated when ppl treated Somali Pirates like villains#but iirc even South Park defended them? lol they even got ppl speaking Somali in it!#talking about how they did this for survival!#lili#lixenn#also yeah sure they fuck ppl up but I consider this a 'fuck around and find out'#stop taking advantage of poor countries!!! especially when they are due to outside meddling forces!!#random but somalia makes me so sad bc of how destablized it is#somaliland is a lot more peaceful and has been but recently its gotten more dangerous due to#Somalia's destablization#djibouti seems fine as ever tho lol happy for them but wish somalia would fuck off already [with somaliland]#lili if you are wondering djibouti/somalia/somaliland and parts of kenya and ethiopoa#ethiopia* are all where Somali ppl are from#the parts of K and E were stolen while Somali ppl were getting colonized [so fuck Kenya and Ethiopia too tbh! who does that?]#but all 5 places are why Somalia's flag is a 5 point star! this siginifies we are all one#its funny bc Somaliland was a country before Somalia but then joined Somalia bc of false promises Somalia made#anyway the false promises was unity but the president/dictator named Mohamed Siad Barre#was all 'we should all band together...and kill Isaaq tribe! true unity after for real though'#and then Darood and I a few other major tribes tried that#Isaaq survived but there was in fact a genocide#they fled to what is Somaliland today! apparently they keep the bullet holes in the structure to remember what Darood/Somalia did#bc to these day these bitches deny it#diaspora somali ppl from somalia are especially insistend of this and im like...you stupid puppet you werent even there#I know this despite being Darood bc my parents arent puppets and also my mom is Isaaq tribe#what else? oh there are other places as Somali ppl within Africa become disapora#so strange right?#there is also Puntland [based off the ancient land that is said to be Ancient Somalia--#fun fact our queen from that time named Queen Arrarwelo was said to be friends with Queen Sheba of ancient Ethiopia]
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herrscher-of-boyfailing · 7 months ago
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mr loverman has literally been stuck in my head for the past many weeks and anime gayboys are to blame
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jayswing101 · 19 days ago
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ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ,ᓄᓇᕗᑦ — Iqaluit, Nunavut
September 30th to October 5th, 2024
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wonder-worker · 1 year ago
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Queen Margaret (of Anjou) had written to the Common Council in November when the news of the Duke of York's coup was proclaimed. The letter from the queen was published in modernised English by M.A.E. Wood in 1846, and she dated it to February 1461 because of its opening sentence: ‘And whereas the late Duke of N [York]...." However the rest of the letter, and that of the prince, is in the present tense and clearly indicates that the Duke of York is still alive. The reference to the ‘late duke’ is not to his demise but to the attainder of 1459 when he was stripped of his titles as well as of his lands. If the queen’s letter dates to November 1460, and not February 1461, it make perfect sense. Margaret declared the Duke of York had ‘upon an untrue pretense, feigned a title to my lord’s crown’ and in so doing had broken his oath of fealty. She thanked the Londoners for their loyalty in rejecting his claim. She knew of the rumours, that we and my lords sayd sone and owrs shuld newly drawe toward yow with an vnsome [uncounted] powere of strangars, disposed to robbe and to dispoyle yow of yowr goods and havours, we will that ye knowe for certeyne that . . . . [y]e, nor none of yow, shalbe robbed, dispoyled nor wronged by any parson that at that tyme we or owr sayd sone shalbe accompanied with She entrusted the king's person to the care of the citizens ‘so that thrwghe malice of his sayde enemye he be no more trowbled vexed ne jeoparded.’ In other words the queen was well informed in November 1460 of the propaganda in London concerning the threat posed by a Lancastrian military challenge to the illegal Yorkist proceedings. Margaret assured the Common Council that no harm would come to the citizenry or to their property. Because the letter was initially misdated, it has been assumed that the queen wrote it after she realised the harm her marauding troops were doing to her cause, and to lull London into a false sense of security. This is not the case, and it is a typical example of historians accepting without question Margaret’s character as depicted in Yorkist propaganda. Margaret’s letter was a true statement of her intentions but it made no impact at the time and has made none since. How many people heard of it? The Yorkist council under the Earl of Warwick, in collusion with the Common Council of the city, was in an ideal position to suppress any wide dissemination of the letter, or of its content.
... When Margaret joined the Lancastrian lords it is unlikely that she had Scottish troops with her. It is possible that Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, sent men from Wales but there was no compelling reason why he should, he needed all the forces at his disposal to face Edward Earl of March, now Duke of York following his father’s death at Wakefield, who, in fact, defeated Pembroke at Mortimer’s Cross on 2 February just as the Lancastrian army was marching south. The oft repeated statement that the Lancastrian army was composed of a motley array of Scots, Welsh, other foreigners (French by implication, for it had not been forgotten that René of Anjou, Queen Margaret’s father, had served with the French forces in Nomandy when the English were expelled from the duchy, nor that King Charles VII was her uncle) as well as northern men is based on a single chronicle, the Brief Notes written mainly in Latin in the monastery of Ely, and ending in 1470. It is a compilation of gossip and rumour, some of it wildly inaccurate, but including information not found in any other contemporary source, which accounts for the credence accorded to it. The Dukes of Somerset and Exeter and the Earl of Devon brought men from the south and west. The Earl of Northumberland was not solely reliant on his northern estates; as Lord Poynings he had extensive holdings in the south. The northerners were tenants and retainers of Northumberland, Clifford, Dacre, the Westmorland Nevilles, and Fitzhugh, and accustomed to the discipline of border defence. The continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle, probably our best witness, is emphatic that the second battle of St Albans was won by the ‘howseholde men and feyd men.” Camp followers and auxiliaries of undesirables there undoubtedly were, as there are on the fringes of any army, but the motley rabble the queen is supposed to have loosed on peaceful England owes more to the imagination of Yorkist propagandists than to the actual composition of the Lancastrian army.
... Two differing accounts of the Lancastrian march on London are generally accepted. One is that a large army, moving down the Great North Road, was made up of such disparate and unruly elements that the queen and her commanders were powerless to control it.” Alternatively, Queen Margaret did not wish to curb her army, but encouraged it to ravage all lands south of the Trent, either from sheet spite or because it was the only way she could pay her troops.” Many epithets have been applied to the queen, few of them complimentary, but no one has as yet called her stupid. It would have been an act of crass stupidity wilfully to encourage her forces to loot the very land she was trying to restore to an acceptance of Lancastrian rule, with her son as heir to the throne. On reaching St Albans, so the story goes, the Lancastrian army suddenly became a disciplined force which, by a series of complicated manoeuvres, including a night march and a flank attack, won the second battle of St Albans, even though the Yorkists were commanded by the redoubtable Earl of Warwick. The explanation offered is that the rabble element, loaded down with plunder, had descended before the battle and only the household men remained. Then the rabble reappeared, and London was threatened. To avert a sack of the city the queen decided to withdraw the army, either on her own initiative or urged by the peace-loving King Henry; as it departed it pillaged the Abbey of St Albans, with the king and queen in residence, and retired north, plundering as it went. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently intact a month later to meet and nearly defeat the Yorkist forces at Towton, the bloodiest and hardest fought battle of the civil war thus far. The ‘facts’ as stated make little sense, because they are seen through the distorting glass of Yorkist propaganda.
The ravages allegedly committed by the Lancastrian army are extensively documented in the chronicles, written after the event and under a Yorkist king. They are strong on rhetoric but short on detail. The two accounts most often quoted are by the Croyland Chronicle and Abbott Whethamstede. There is no doubting the note of genuine hysterical fear in both. The inhabitants of the abbey of Crowland were thoroughly frightened by what they believed would happen as the Lancastrians swept south. ‘What do you suppose must have been our fears . . . [w]hen every day rumours of this sad nature were reaching our ears.’ Especially alarming was the threat to church property. The northern men ‘irreverently rushed, in their unbridled and frantic rage into churches . . . [a]nd most nefariously plundered them.’ If anyone resisted ‘they cruelly slaughtered them in the very churches or churchyards.’ People sought shelter for themselves and their goods in the abbey,“ but there is not a single report of refugees seeking succour in the wake of the passage of the army after their homes had been burned and their possessions stolen. The Lancastrians were looting, according to the Crowland Chronicle, on a front thirty miles wide ‘like so many locusts.“ Why, then, did they come within six miles but bypass Crowland? The account as a whole makes it obvious that it was written considerably later than the events it so graphically describes.
The claim that Stamford was subject to a sack from which it did not recover is based on the Tudor antiquary John Leland. His attribution of the damage is speculation; by the time he wrote stories of Lancastrian ravages were well established, but outside living memory. His statement was embellished by the romantic historian Francis Peck in the early eighteenth century. Peck gives a spirited account of Wakefield and the Lancastrian march, influenced by Tudor as well as Yorkist historiography. … As late as 12 February when Warwick moved his troops to St Albans it is claimed that he did not know the whereabouts of the Lancastrians, an odd lack of military intelligence about an army that was supposed to be leaving havoc in its wake. The Lancastrians apparently swerved to the west after passing Royston which has puzzled military historians because they accept that it came down the Great North Road, but on the evidence we have it is impossible to affirm this. If it came from York via Grantham, Leicester, Market Harborough, Northampton and Stony Stratford to Dunstable, where the first engagement took place, there was no necessity to make an inexplicable swerve westwards because its line of march brought it to Dunstable and then to St Albans. The Lancastrians defeated Warwick’s army on 17 February 1461 and Warwick fled the field. In an echo of Wakefield there is a suggestion of treachery. An English Chronicle tells the story of one Thomas Lovelace, a captain of Kent in the Yorkist ranks, who also appears in Waurin. Lovelace, it is claimed, was captured at Wakefield and promised Queen Margaret that he would join Warwick and then betray and desert him, in return for his freedom.
Lt. Colonel Bume, in a rare spirit of chivalry, credits Margaret with the tactical plan that won the victory, although only because it was so unorthodox that it must have been devised by a woman. But there is no evidence that Margaret had any military flair, let alone experience. A more likely candidate is the veteran captain Andrew Trolloppe who served with Warwick when the latter was Captain of Calais, but he refused to fight under the Yorkist banner against his king at Ludford in 1459 when Warwick brought over a contingent of Calais men to defy King Henry in the field. It was Trolloppe’s ‘desertion’ at Ludford, it is claimed, that forced the Yorkists to flee. The most objective and detailed account of the battle of St Albans is by the unknown continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle. The chronicle ends in 1469 and by that time it was safe to criticise Warwick, who was then out of favour. The continuator was a London citizen who may have fought in the Yorkist ranks. He had an interest in military matters and recorded the gathering of the Lancastrian army at Hull, before Wakefield, and the detail that the troops wore the Prince of Wales’ colours and ostrich feathers on their livery together with the insignia of their lords. He had heard the rumours of a large ill-disciplined army, but because he saw only the household men he concluded that the northerners ran away before the battle. Abbot Whethamstede wrote a longer though far less circumstantial account, in which he carefully made no mention of the Earl of Warwick. … Margaret of Anjou had won the battle but she proceeded to lose the war. London lay open to her and she made a fatal political blunder in retreating from St Albans instead of taking possession of the capital.' Although mistaken, her reasons for doing so were cogent. The focus of contemporary accounts is the threat to London from the Lancastrian army. This is repeated in all the standard histories, and even those who credit Margaret with deliberately turning away from London do so for the wrong reasons.
... The uncertainties and delays, as well as the hostility of some citizens, served to reinforce Margaret’s belief that entry to London could be dangerous. It was not what London had to fear from her but what she had to fear from London that made her hesitate. Had she made a show of riding in state into the city with her husband and son in a colourful procession she might have accomplished a Lancastrian restoration, but Margaret had never courted popularity with the Londoners, as Warwick had, and she had kept the court away from the capital for several years in the late 1450s, a move that was naturally resented. Warwick’s propaganda had tarnished her image, associating her irrevocably with the dreaded northern men. There was also the danger that if Warwick and Edward of March reached London with a substantial force she could be trapped inside a hostile city, and she cannot have doubted that once she and Prince Edward were taken prisoner the Lancastrian dynasty would come to an end. Understandably, at the critical moment, Margaret lost her nerve. ... Queen Margaret did not march south in 1461 in order to take possession of London, but to recover the person of the king. She underestimated the importance of the capital to her cause." Although she had attempted to establish the court away from London, the Yorkist lords did not oppose her for taking the government out of the capital, but for excluding them from participation in it. Nevertheless London became the natural and lucrative base for the Yorkists, of which they took full advantage. The author of the Annales was in no doubt that it was Margaret’s failure to enter London that ensured the doom of the Lancastrian dynasty. A view shared, of course, by the continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle, a devoted Londoner:
He that had Londyn for sake Wolde no more to hem take The king, queen and prince had been in residence at the Abbey of St Albans since the Lancastrian victory. Abbot Whethamstede, at his most obscure, conveys a strong impression that St Albans was devastated because the Lancastrian leaders, including Queen Margaret, encouraged plundering south of the Trent in lieu of wages. There must have been some pillaging by an army which had been kept in a state of uncertainty for a week, but whether it was as widespread or as devastating as the good abbot, and later chroniclers, assert is by no means certain. Whethamstede is so admirably obtuse that his rhetoric confuses both the chronology and the facts. So convoluted and uncircumstantial is his account that the eighteenth century historian of the abbey, the Reverend Peter Newcome, was trapped into saying: ‘These followers of the Earl of March were looked on as monsters in barbarity.’ He is echoed by Antonia Gransden who has ‘the conflict between the southemers of Henry’s army and the nonherners of Edward’s. The abbey was not pillaged, but Whethamstede blackened Queen Margaret’s reputation by a vague accusation that she appropriated one of the abbey’s valuable possessions before leaving for the north. This is quite likely, not in a spirit of plunder or avarice, but as a contribution to the Lancastrian war effort, just as she had extorted, or so he later claimed, a loan from the prior of Durham earlier in the year. The majority of the chroniclers content themselves with the laconic statement that the queen and her army withdrew to the north, they are more concerned to record in rapturous detail the reception of Edward IV by ‘his’ people. An English Chronicle, hostile to the last, reports that the Lancastrian army plundered its way north as remorselessly as it had on its journey south. One can only assume that it took a different route. The Lancastrian march ended where it began, in the city of York. Edward of March had himself proclaimed King Edward IV in the capital the queen had abandoned, and advanced north to win the battle of Towton on 29 March. The bid to unseat the government of the Yorkist lords had failed, and that failure brought a new dynasty into being. The Duke of York was dead, but his son was King of England whilst King Henry, Queen Margaret and Prince Edward sought shelter at the Scottish court. The Lancastrian march on London had vindicated its stated purpose, to recover the person of the king so that the crown would not continue to be a pawn in the hands of rebels and traitors, but ultimately it had failed because the Lancastrian leaders, including Queen Margaret, simply did not envisage that Edward of March would have the courage or the capacity to declare himself king. Edward IV had all the attributes that King Henry (and Queen Margaret) lacked: he was young, ruthless, charming, and the best general of his day; and in the end he out-thought as well as out-manoeuvred them.
It cannot be argued that no damage was done by the Lancastrian army. It was mid-winter, when supplies of any kind would have been short, so pillaging, petty theft, and unpaid foraging were inevitable. It kept the field for over a month and, and, as it stayed longest at Dunstable and in the environs of St Albans, both towns suffered from its presence. But the army did not indulge in systematic devastation of the countryside, either on its own account or at the behest of the queen. Nor did it contain contingents of England’s enemies, the Scots and the French, as claimed by Yorkist propaganda. Other armies were on the march that winter: a large Yorkist force moved from London to Towton and back again. There are no records of damage done by it, but equally, it cannot be claimed that there was none.
-B.M Cron, "Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian March on London, 1461"
#*The best propaganda narratives always contain an element of truth but it's important to remember that it's never the WHOLE truth#margaret of anjou#15th century#english history#my post#(please ignore my rambling tags below lmao)#imo the bottom line is: they were fighting a war and war is a scourge that is inevitably complicated and messy and unfortunate#arguing that NOTHING happened (on either side but especially the Lancastrians considering they were cut off from London's supplies)#is not a sustainable claim. However: Yorkist propaganda was blatantly propaganda and I wish that it's recognized more than it currently is#also I had *no idea* that her letter seems to have been actually written in 1460! I wish that was discussed more#& I wish Cron's speculation that Margaret may have feared being trapped in a hostile city with an approaching army was discussed more too#tho I don't 100% agree with article's concluding paragraph. 'Edward IV did not ultimately save England from further civil war' he...did???#the Yorkist-Lancastrian civil war that began in the 1450s ended in 1471 and his 12-year reign after that was by and large peaceful#(tho Cron may he talking about the period in between 61-71? but the civil war was still ongoing; the Lancasters were still at large#and the opposing king and prince were still alive. Edward by himself can hardly be blamed for the civil war continuing lol)#but in any case after 1471 the war WAS believed to have ended for good and he WAS believed to have established a new dynasty#the conflict of 1483 was really not connected to the events of the 1450s-1471. it was an entirely new thing altogether#obviously he shouldn't be viewed as the grand undoubted rightful savior of England the way Yorkist propaganda sought to portray him#(and this goes for ALL other monarchs in English history and history in general) but I don't want to diminish his achievements either#However I definitely agree that the prevalent idea that the Lancasters wouldn't have been able to restore royal authority if they'd won#is very strange. its an alternate future that we can't possibly know the answer to so it's frustrating that people seem to assume the worst#I guess the reasons are probably 1) the Lancasters ultimately lost and it's the winners who write history#(the Ricardians are somehow the exception but they're evidently interested in romantic revisionism rather than actual history so 🤷🏻‍♀️)#and 2) their complicated former reign even before 1454. Ig put together I can see where the skepticism comes from tho I don't really agree#but then again the Yorkists themselves played a huge role in the chaos of the 1450s. if a faction like that was finally out of the way#(which they WOULD be if the Lancasters won in 1461) the Lancastrian dynasty would have been firmly restored and#Henry and Margaret would've probably had more space and time to restore royal authority without direct rival challenges#I'd argue that the Lancasters stood a significantly better chance at restoring & securing their dynasty if they won here rather than 1471#also once again: the analyses written on Margaret's queenship; her role in the WotR; and the propaganda against her are all phenomenal#and far far superior than the analyses on any other historical woman of that time - so props to her absolutely fantastic historians
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