Oh… the historic RPF community… I need to edit this [on mobile]; so bear with me,
There’s a lot of ‘well, figure X’ (incidentally– or not really– always the person’s Fav) ‘did this because they HAD to do this.’
The ‘this’ being something like…horrible and violent.
And the X is usually a monarch.
But monarchs literally never had to do anything– sometimes they had few alternatives, and you can say ‘they had to do X if they wanted to maintain A’ (ex. ‘Henry VIII to execute Thomas More to make it clear to his subjects that all had to sign the Supremacy Act, no exceptions’); but to say they ‘had to’ point-blank is just not true.
This would be one thing, if they said it for all monarchs (it would still be incorrect, but at least equitably so).
But what’s frustrating is that people tend to say it only for their fav. They will criticize monarchs they don’t like for doing the same thing their Fav did; or at least something very similar (or sometimes their Fav, in a comparable example, reacted to the same thing in an even more extreme/violent matter than the same monarch they’re deeming ‘ghastly’, ‘evil’, ‘without a conscience’, etc.)
And it’s so egregious and obvious; to the point where sometimes I just wanna go:
“Your high horse is a Shetland pony.”
Also– the same standards of discussion of people that are dead, and decency, should still apply and people act like they don’t?
I don’t care if you’re talking about a historic figure (because, let’s face it, you think that’s an easy target and no one will criticize you), it’s still not okay to:
make jokes about sex work and/or sex workers
mock someone for having (or allegedly having) an STI, claim it proves they were ‘immoral’
claim someone’s disability or health condition proves they were ‘immoral’
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