Tag: ask meme: unpopular opinions

Unpopular opinion: even if KoA was childless by the great Matter, she would have still fought to remain queen bc it was as much about her pride and want for status as defending Mary’s rights. (Not my opinion, but one I’ve seen kicked around.)

Hmm…yeah, I’d say I don’t know about this, honestly?

I actually think for KoA it was more about her pride and the feeling that she deserved her status, that it was her right to be Queen (it wasn’t like…her birthright but you know, she’d been anointed by holy oil at her coronation so ostensibly, that which is God-given can’t be taken away), than it was about or ‘for’ Mary but at the same time…

Without Mary she wouldn’t have had much of a case; her sort of counterargument to the whole Leviticus thing was like ‘if our marriage is so punished by God, and it says if I consummated the marriage with Arthur we’d be cursed with no children, then doesn’t Mary prove that I didn’t’; also ostensibly in the future Mary could wed herself and secure the line by having her own male heir. 

IIRC, Henry’s counterargument to that was, if I’m not mistaken, that the Hebrew translation specificed ‘sonless’ rather than ‘childless’ and I’m not a theologian/linguist/expert so idk if that was true but anyways;

I guess I’d say I disagree with that; I don’t think she would fought it to the same extent if she’d have no living children by Henry (actually, I think if she’d had no living children by like….1520, that probably would’ve been around the time he’d have asked for an annulment instead, so it might have been a moot point). I think also she might not have fought it as much because she probably wouldn’t have had the same foreign support despite her familial connections; it would have seemed more reasonable to annul a childless marriage had that been the case.

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Parallels/similarities between Henry VIII and Elizabeth I abound, tbh? Not sure why people are not fond of that, I think they’re very interesting and every time I find one I find another. I think there’s this urgency to put her on a pedestal, and conversely to with Henry…do whatever the opposite of ‘put on a pedestal’ is (lol!!) that makes people balk at doing so.

One of the most amusing ones to me (and God, I’m gonna get booed so hard for this but idc fkjsdkfjdslk) is that Elizabeth’s most passionate romantic relationship was with someone that was a masculine version of her mother in a lot of ways (namely, a Mr. Dudley) and that Henry’s most passionate romantic relationship was with someone that was a feminine version of his father in a lot of ways  …

And also that they were both similarly unrealistic about these relationships in ways…I mean Elizabeth was more realistic and pragmatic about hers I think, she never married him even when she technically could have (after his wife’s death, after he was cleared of suspicion…legally/officially, anyway). But she DID order her council to name him protector of the kingdom when she had smallpox and she thought she would die and that’s like?? Wild, tbh….like did she think anyone would actually…?

Also Henry named Anne absolute regent and governess of their children in the event of his death in 1534. Like…know ya love her, boo, but did you think that’d like?? Work?? She wasn’t exactly universally popular; I could see her possibly being regent if Henry died after she had a son but otherwise I don’t think she’d have near enough support to sustain that position (He maybe did this in the hope that she would; I think he might have during her pregnancy that year but?? Still.)            

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Hm, I’ve talked about it before but I’ll expand in that I think… both H7 and H8 were more similar than they were different (or, at least more similar than many are willing to admit– most historians try to dissociate them from each other). Even in decision-making, and I think they both kind of fuqued up re: setting precedents that were like…not great tbh. Even though I understand the political motivations behind them, there were also aspects of them that were kind of like…politically dumb. 

And we see this really early in their respective reigns (we see this in like…the ‘first day’ of H7′s and within the first year/s of H8′s).

So, H7′s first boo-boo I will tackle, and that is in the treatment of the corpse of Richard III.

Like…I get it. It’s not morally upstanding for sure, I’ll shade over it forever, but I do get like…the motivation. To treat the body honorably could potentially be dangerous because it implies that his death was regicide. And for his foundations, he can’t say R3 was ever king; rather an usurper. 

At the same time I think it made him look…kind of petty, tbh. And even if we have to go with Richard the Evil Usurper angle (which, you need to, to have ground to stand on as the one that overthrew him etc. etc.) so he was never king etc. he was still, at the very least, a duke? A member of the nobility? Brother of the last ‘rightful king’ (and he had to be, for his respective children to be relegitimized and the marriage alliance to EoY to work out)? 

Granted, shady and illegal things happend in the WoTR to members of the nobility, executions without trial re: Edward IV’s father (whose head was put on a spike) and of course Owen Tudor’s. But this wasn’t that…Richard was slain in battle. He was greatly loved in York. To treat his corpse with disrespect didn’t, in general, set a great precedent for English noblemen that had died in battle. It just added insult to injury, it made him look gloaty. 

And H8′s was the executions of Empson and Dudley. I get the motivation behind these too; I’ve talked about them in detail both here and here, so I won’t repeat myself. 

It wasn’t totally without precedent, I think many kings of the same era would have done the same. But at the same time this did set a problematic precedent  that we see later on– that if there is enough popular discontent for a king’s advisor… it has the power to eventually influence, perhaps even guarantee, their death. I’m sure this remained in the memories of the commons…particularly because the revolts in the North that happened later in Henry VIII’s reign did not call for his deposition– but rather, the head of Cromwell. They seemed to believe that this was a reasonable and achievable goal, and to me it’s little wonder that they did. 

unpopular opinion: daniel was just as much at fault as charlotte for their relationship not working out and while he meant well, he put a lot on her emotionally really fast and it’s understandable she got scared off

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

tbh honest…..he did come on a little strong. not to say i think she was totally closed/unresponsive to it/him, but there’s some middle ground between that and being totally open and he either ………. hm……. didn’t read that well or did and kind of ignored it because he was hopeful. 

the ‘let’s run away together’ vibe is romantic on the surface but can def be overwhelming, esp. for someone with trust issues and esp. considering they had like…kind of just met (i think? the timeline of this show is like a zipline tbh sksksksks)

unpopular opinion: tumblr callouts are almost always a bad idea, and it’s not uncommon for the things in them to be untrue and/or the people in the callout to not deserve a callout

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

i honestly haven’t seen enough to be able to judge……i’ve seen some that are valid and some that are stupid, lol. in general people could probably do with just blocking and carrying on more often; but i get how it’s frustrating to have someone block you and then continue to reblog your content lmao (that’s happened to me and it’s like …….. wyd……also you literally can’t message them to be like ‘stop reblogging my stuff pls’ as you’re blocked so in that scenario it’s the only way to plausibly get them to stop)