Tag: history-be-written

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angel haze > azaelia banks 

reign > the vampire diaries (honestly what was even…going on, there? reign was batshit but at least it stayed entertaining,) 

that scene in tudors where henry rips up the papal bull and it transitions to one of anne’s ladies tearing a sheet during anne’s labor > almost every other scene transition ever, um…on that show. 

hi yes i will happily enable you : 👑

So all the…”X was an usurper” (this isn’t shading for any figure in particular, this is me regarding all the figures of this era)…rhetoric…and I just say…

Who care? WHO care? Who c a r e s ???

I mean as far as analyzing which prominent people of the time viewed X as an usurper, sure, it’s important but as far as like……”I myself think they never should have ruled because they were an usurper”, uh:

a) It was such a mutable definition, it depended on who you asked at the time, and who was around when you asked them, and who won in a battle, and who had more people on their side, and like a myriad of different factors but basically…it was down to who you asked (’is X the rightful ___ or nah?’, that is) 

b) ‘Divine right’ is uh…..like…….they made it up?? Like they very much believed in it but also it was not…real. 

I’m hoping we know by 2018 that no one deserves to rule a country just for being born to two specific people.

And you know that Facebook Group that’s like “if a witch eats the president, the witch should become that president” ?

“If a contender for the throne kills the king, that man should become king.”

Me, a 24-year-old peasant about to die: “That sounds wrong, but I don’t know enough about the Bible to dispute it…”

c) Starkey has said R3 was an usurper. He’s also said H7 was basically an usurper. 

R3 may have taken the throne, but it was technically by legal methods (excluding the executions of Anthony Woodville etc. and I’m def not saying legality equates morality but there is that).

H7 won it in battle. 

So by that definition, if we want to trace back, would Edward IV also not technically be an usurper? He wasn’t born king, that was Henry VI. 

I literally don’t have much of a POV re: preference between these three (actually…Edward IV but also see above what I just said…also all three of them had some sort of blood claim to the throne as well), I’m just using this is an illustrative point in that the word is basically kind of … meaningless.

In that you can apply it to anyone/ anything you want, if you delve into technicalities/precedent deep enough. 

I’ll also see it with COA vs. Anne Boleyn discourse so like….far reaching enough to even apply the term of ‘usurper’ to Queen Consorts (usually applied to Anne), which is very odd. It’s one thing to say “COA believed it was her divine right to be Queen” (true!) another thing to say “it WAS her divine right.”

Like…it wasn’t. See above: they made it…..up.

It wasn’t any more Anne’s, either, although she seemed to believe this as well– she said to a Venetian diplomat that God had inspired Henry to marry her.

Tl;dr, we should all find it very convenient that anyone that sat on a throne essentially said they were there “because God said so.”

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In some nonfiction works (usually where the author or the historian is especially sympathetic to COA), I’ve read the take that Henry’ VIII’s acknowledgement and ennoblement of his son was unconscionable and/or unconscionably cruel. 

Now…I don’t think this was particularly a considerate thing for him to do concerning his wife, obviously (although the adultery itself is…more so, I would think? the pregnancy and child was simply the result/proof of it).

And I’m wondering what, conversely, these writers think he should have done instead? Because usually it seems less like they’re implying “well, he just shouldn’t have committed adultery in the first place” (which tends to be…an argument not made often, because what is ‘shouldn’t’ to a king, esp. when it’s kind of de rigueur) and more like “it’s fine to commit adultery, but he should at least have to decency to conceal it/lie about it” and I don’t really think that makes it, like……better….

So, yeah, conversely he was supposed to…what? Be like “good luck with all that” to Bessie Blount? Pull an #IDon’tKnowHer ?

Because the ennoblement and acknowledgement certainly wasn’t, like I said, considerate to COA. But I don’t think it was “unconscionable”– what would’ve been more so would be, actually, to do the opposite of what he had done: not acknowledge him, not title him, not extend lands/incomes, not arrange a noble marriage for his former mistress, not grant her property, etc. 

I’ve also read that if she’d had a daughter, he never would have acknowledged her, and that he only acknowledged Henry Fiztroy to “rub salt in [COA’s] wounds for not having had a living son yet”.

While I’m sure they read his secret diary and thusly know all his motivations behind every decision, I don’t have this diary and so…don’t know.

But also? We don’t really know that, because that isn’t what happened. He may well have acknowledged an illegitimate daughter (although people say one of Mary Boleyn’s was his, and a few other women’s daughters were his, there’s no definitive proof), although I don’t think he would’ve titled a potential bastard daughter by Blount as “Duchess of Richmond”– hereditary titles/peerages weren’t typically given to even women of legitimate birth (besides the Countess of Salisbury in 1512, and later the Marquess of Pembroke for Anne), much less illegitimate ones. He was probably far too much of a traditionalist for that [which, you know, he was…….save for the whole Thousand Year Break With Anglican Tradition to Marry ‘The One’ (of Six) thing].