#once a ricardian | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wonder-worker · 2 months

Text

Here’s the thing I need people to understand:

Even if we believe that the (entirely unproven and far too politically convenient) pre-contract story between Edward IV and Eleanor Talbot was true, it doesn’t actually matter. Even if it was hypothetically true, there was still no reason why Edward V – who was already King at that point and was referred to as such – couldn’t have been able to succeed his father regardless.

David Horspool (Richard's own historian) summarizes it better than I could, so I’m just quoting him here:

"[Richard also made] no allowance for any potential solution to the problem that might have re-legitimized Edward V and his siblings. These included securing a retrospective canonical or papal judgement of the invalidity of the pre-contract; an Act of Parliament legitimizing the children of Edward and Elizabeth Woodville’s marriage, as happened to Henry VIII’s variously tainted offspring; or even ignoring the issue and proceeding to the coronation of Edward V, which would legitimize him by making him the Lord’s anointed, and render allegations of his bastardy as newer versions of the old tittle-tattle about his father."

In short, even if Edward IV truly had a pre-contract with Eleanor Talbot, and even if all of his children with Elizabeth Woodville were supposedly illegitimate, it should by no means prevent Edward V from succeeding his father to the throne. If Richard truly wanted to support his nephew, he had a variety of useful and entirely workeable options to choose from. Instead, he officially declared his nieces and nephews (including a literal 3-year-old) illegitimate, kept Edward V and his even younger brother confined in the Tower of London, and declared himself King.

Why didn't Richard take these actions, all of which he would have been well aware of? As Horspool says simply: "that Richard took none of these courses was because he had no interest in doing so."

The ONLY conclusion we can come to based on Richard's actions is summarized most succinctly by A.J Pollard:

"The truth of the matter is that Richard III did not want Edward V to be legitimate because he did not want him to be king."

#r*chard iii #richard iii #my post #edward iv #princes in the tower #imo this is the main crux of the argument #it DOESN'T MATTER if the pre-contract story was actually true #even if it was true there was no actual reason why Edward V couldn't have been crowned regardless if Richard had truly wanted to support hi #sorry I saw something annoying on Twitter and wanted to rant #(I wasn't even searching for it lol it just popped up; it's very annoying)#I saw a bunch of people quoting John Ashdown-Hill (yeah that guy) on the fact that Eleanor chose to deed some of her property to her sister #Elizabeth Talbot during her lifetime rather than leave it to her in her will #and using this to argue that Eleanor considered herself married to Edward and as a married woman unfortunately could not bequeath real #property by will without her husband's consent #which is absolutely ridiculous considering the fact that #A MARRIED WOMAN ALSO COULD NOT DEED PROPERTY WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF HER HUSBAND #Eleanor choosing to deed property to her sister during her life proves that *she did not consider herself married to anyone at the time*#Which ... should be extremely significant and indicative!#and should in fact settle the argument once and for all #I don't know how Ricardians have somehow twisted it and claim the opposite #anyway im done ranting. bye

50 notes · View notes

ecoamerica · 1 month

Text

youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

15K notes · View notes

richmond-rex · 1 year

Note

Hi, I've only recently gotten interested in the Wars of the Roses and since I am unable to find an unbiased analysis, I wanted to ask: what do you think of Eleanor Talbot and the idea that she was allegedly married to Edward IV?

The more I research the claim, the more incredulous I get that it's often taken so seriously, particularly by Ricardian circles. I'm very skeptical about the fact that this supposed marriage was kept secret for ... 19 years? Even more? Logically, it is not possible for a piece of information that explosive and nationally relevant to stay under lock and key for that long, especially considering Edward's political enemies. I've read some pieces on Eleanor and the most any of them can do is theorize that she may have been romantically involved with Edward at some point before May 1464. But a potential affair hardly means marriage; as far as I can tell, Edward IV appears to have had affairs with lots of women, but Elizabeth Woodville was clearly the one he wanted as his wife and queen, and obviously the only one who was acknowledged and honored as such. From what I can make out, I don't think he would have had that much difficulty getting out of the marriage if he particularly wanted to: considering it was very private, his public acknowledgement of it was crucial, and his word would have triumphed whatever Elizabeth or her family would say; people gathering at Reading to find a way to end it or persuade him to end it did not amount to anything; Wake's witchcraft allegations against Jacquetta directly relating to their marriage which were cleared by Edward's council; even the fact that Elizabeth Woodville did not produce a son until 7 years after she became queen. He very clearly wanted to remain married to her even though he did have potential routes out of it. I've also observed that people tend to link the circumstances of his marriage to Elizabeth and alleged marriage to Eleanor and call it a pattern of behavior, without considering the fact that once again, being involved with someone doesn't automatically mean marriage, and that it's very possibly a deliberately constructed pattern/parallel by the people making the allegations.

And it seems awfully, almost embarrassingly convenient that this came up after both parties were dead, when Richard was actively slandering his brother's licentousness, and when he wanted to usurp the throne from his 12 year old nephew when neither he (Edward V) nor his mother (Elizabeth Woodville) were in a position to assert themselves.

Of course, we'll never truly know for sure but ... what do you think?

Hi! To get straight to the point, there is simply no evidence that Edward IV had been married to anyone other than Elizabeth Woodville. You'd think ricardians would be more careful about this claim since they make such a big deal out of the lack of material proof linking Richard to the murder of the princes (actually king and prince) in the Tower, but no. Lack of evidence doesn't work both ways in this case, apparently.

As many historians have pointed out, parliament, which ultimately ruled that Edward IV had committed bigamy and invalidated his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, simply did that on the grounds that it was ‘the common opinion of the people and the public voice and fame is throughout the land’. Although parliament could legislate over the succession of the crown, it had no jurisdiction to invalidate anyone's marriage, since only the Church had authority over those matters at that time. If there were any proof that Edward IV had really been married to Eleanor Talbot/Butler, Richard and his supporters would have called an ecclesiastical court made exclusively of prelates and representatives of the pope to rule over that case based on canon law, as that was the Church's prerogative since the 12th century. A. J. Pollard made a very apt observation about this:

Had Richard lll been the deeply troubled, honourable and honest man we are asked to believe him to be he would surely have followed the course of a properly constituted investigation.

Ruth Mazo Karras has a great book called Unmarriages: Women, Men and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages where she presents many cases of marriages judged by the church to have been clandestine or invalid and actually explains how the Church came to have a monopoly on the legislation of marriages. Jennifer Ward cites an example of an illegal marriage claim taken to the Pope and casts light on how the investigation of an ecclesiastical court should have proceeded in face of the pre-contract allegations made by Richard and his supporters:

This issue of legitimacy and therefore of inheritance was at the heart of the best-known twelfth-century case, concerning Richard de Anesty, dating from 1158-63. Richard claimed to be the heir of his uncle, William de Sackville, on the grounds that William's only child, Mabel de Francheville, was illegitimate. If Mabel had been legitimate, she would probably have inherited her father's land. Richard alleged that William had broken his marriage contract with Albereda de Tresgoz and married Mabel's mother, Adelicia, daughter of Amfrid the sheriff. William and Albereda were said to have expressed present consent, and, according to Richard's account, Albereda asserted that she was William's lawful wife at his wedding to Adelicia, but failed to be heard because of the crowd and because William turned a deaf ear. She was later granted a decree by the bishop of Winchester and Pope Innocent II that William should return to her as her husband. Mabel argued, however, that the marriage contract with Albereda only amounted to betrothal, and that both Albereda and William had agreed to end it; the relationship had never been consummated and William had returned Albereda's dowry. William and Adelicia's marriage had been carried out in the face of the church, and Albereda's father had been present at the wedding feast. The annulment of the marriage by the bishop was null and void. For Alexander III the annulment was the crucial issue, and Mabel was adjudged illegitimate.

We can make a few observations about this case. First, notice how William's alleged first wife, Albereda, sought the Bishop of Winchester then the Pope himself to protest against William's second marriage and have it annulled. Why wouldn't Eleanor Talbot, the daughter of the Earl Shrewsbury and NIECE of the Earl of Warwick, who had such influence over Edward IV's early reign, be silent about Edward IV's second marriage? It's not like she was a helpless nobody who wouldn't have anyone to vouch for her case in the papal court. Moreover, according to a Burgundian report about the revelation of Edward and Elizabeth's marriage, many dissatisfied lords tried to come up with means to annul the marriage, as anon cited in this ask. Knowing this, and having the possibility to be backed by number #1 dissatisfied noble in the kingdom, Warwick, why wouldn't Eleanor have spoken against Edward and Elizabeth's union at that time?

Second observation: notice how both parties concerning the legitimacy of the marriage of William and Adelicia, namely Richard and his cousin Mabel, had to testify in front of the court and produce witnesses, documents and/or reports that attested to their claim that the marriage was valid or invalid. There was never anything even remotely close to this in the case concerning Edward IV's marriage. Where was the appeal to the Pope? Where were the witnesses of Edward IV's first marriage testifying in a clerical court? In fact, we don't even actually know for sure who claimed to be witness to Edward IV's alleged first marriage. The document approving Richard's rule, Titulus Regius, only claimed that it was 'the common opinion of the people and the public voice and fame' but never actually cited anyone as an actual witness to the alleged first marriage of the king.

No contemporary English source gives the name of a witness. Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, is only cited as the author of the bigamy claim and the only witness of the alleged first marriage in a French chronicle by Philippe de Commynes, a servant of King Louis XI. Commynes goes as far as to call him 'ce mauvais evesque', that is, 'this evil bishop'. That Commynes' claim is plausible comes from the fact that one of Henry VII's first actions after Bosworth was to order Bishop Stillington's arrest. If we accept that Stillington had helped Richard by concocting the pre-contract claim—and ricardians must accept it otherwise there's simply no name to validate their theory—the picture we're left with is not pretty. One, Bishop Stillington had previously been imprisoned by Edward IV in 1478 so Stillington was hardly an unbiased witness against Edward IV.

Two, in 1472 whilst he was still Edward IV's Chancellor, an office Stillington exercised up until 1473, he took part in a ceremony recognising the legitimacy of Edward Prince of Wales as Edward IV's heir. Along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and eight other 'Lords Spiritual' (that is, prelates) and thirty-six 'Lords Temporal' (that is, noblemen) Stillington solemnly swore to Prince Edward that

that in case hereafter it happen You, by God’s disposition, to outlive our said Sovereign Lord, I shall then take and accept You for true, very, and righteous King of England, &tc. And faith and truth to you shall bear.

If Bishop took part in that ceremony knowing the boy was illegitimate, he should have acted so as to either speak against it (admittedly, difficult to do), decline to take part in the ceremony by faking an illness or some other excuse (possible), or seek ways to legalise the king's current marriage by way of appeal to the papal courts, something people in irregular marriage situations did all the time. See to what lengths John of Gaunt went to have his Beaufort children legitimised. It seems scarcely possible that Edward IV, who was careful enough to orchestrate ceremonies to invest his son Edward as England's heir and recognise his authority over charters and conciliar bodies, would have left his heir as vulnerable to the law as ricardians claim he did.

Another point to the whole pre-contract story, is that it seems to have been only a later addition to the reasons Richard 'was offered' the crown. According to Mancini, Richard's affiliates' first idea was to claim Edward IV was a bastard (and his children unable to rule consequently). Ricardians claim Mancini was a foreigner and simply misunderstood the terms that were preached at St Paul's Cross, but The London Chronicler also believed that the first version that was preached was that Edward IV himself was illegitimate. Mancini tells us that the claim was not well received by the audience, so it makes sense that Richard's supporters would have quickly dropped it. The claim is lightly touched upon in the parliamentary act approving Richard's rule in the observation that Richard was his father's undoubted heir and the only one born in England. It alludes, of course, to the fact that Edward IV was born in France and George of Clarence in Ireland, as if subtly casting doubts about their legitimacy.

Lastly, even if the pre-contract story was true, it still by no means should be a definite reason to make Edward V unable to succeed his father. As Horspool has pointed out, solutions to that problem included 'securing a retrospective canonical or papal judgement of the invalidity of the pre-contract; an Act of Parliament legitimizing the children of Edward and Elizabeth Woodville’s marriage, or [...] proceeding to the coronation of Edward V, which would legitimize him by making him the Lord’s anointed'. Hypothetically, if parliament was competent to declare Edward V illegitimate enough to overrule an ecclesiastical court, it was equally competent to declare the boy legitimate. In face of all these possibilities to legitimise his brother's heir, Pollard has the correct assessment of the situation:

The truth of the matter is that Richard III did not want Edward V to be legitimate because he did not want him to be king.

Considering Richard made no effort to sustain his nephews' right to rule, as had been asked of him in his condition as Lord PROTECTOR, the pre-contract allegation must be seen in that light: a poorly sustained, entirely unevidenced excuse to justify an act of usurpation.

#ask #anon #edward iv #eleanor talbot #eleanor butler #ricardians for ts

50 notes · View notes

heartofstanding · 25 days

Note

I want to talk about anne neville and Elizabeth of York. I always thought they knew each other very well. They all have vague personalities in the eyes of passers-by, turbulent fates, tragic experiences caused by their father's death, good relations with husbands who have blood feuds indirectly through marriage, and unstable dynasty rule caused by death ... Because of their vague personalities, both women are easily used by historical authors to express their views, and they also have some connections (such as clothes that are often discussed, Elizabeth once had marriage rumors with Edward and Richard in Lancashire ... Their biographies were also criticized by readers as biased (I think this is because these two women are not extroverted, so the author can only imagine themselves ...)I am very frustrated that historical novels mostly use them to shape the men around them, and rarely pay attention to the inner thoughts of "silent" women. I can see some vivid characteristics of these two women in historical literature. One of my favorite facts about Elizabeth of York is that she arranged for her sister to marry her uncle's former supporters, and had a good relationship with the relatives of the Delapol family, which reminded me of her father's attempt to reconcile with Henry Beaufort. Unfortunately, the novels I read do not describe this at all. The marriage between Anne Neville and Richard III is originally described in the novel as Richard saving her, but from her escape from George's supervision, there is reason to believe that they are in a cooperative relationship, as well as Lancaster. Edward, in the novel, is always just an "evil ex husband..." But I think their brief marriage is not so shallow…

I think your frustration with the way Anne Neville and Elizabeth of York are written about is very justified. I'm not very knowledgable about their lives (honestly, I'm a little confused why you sent this to me) but even from a distance, I think they must have been a lot more complex that historians, commentators and novelists typically suppose they were. I think they largely serve as Ricardian mouthpieces now - Anne as Richard III's one true love, tragically lost and Elizabeth as his chief mourner and as another victim of Tudor rule - but it's also very easy to turn them to mouthpieces for Lancaster and Tudor, which was the image that dominated in Tudor times - Shakespeare's depiction of Anne as the chief mourner for Henry VI, the story Richard murdered Anne in order to forcibly marry Elizabeth, the depiction of Elizabeth as purely the idealised, virtuous and dutiful prop for her husband's rule). I think that, because there's a lack of information that lets us build up a more detailed idea of either women, they tend to be written in a way that expresses how the author really feels about the events and personalities of the Wars of the Roses. I can understand this impulse but I wish this impulse was focused more on them as individuals and less on being mouthpieces for the author's feelings about Richard III or Henry VII.

#i feel like both women have always been what their interpreters have wanted them to be #and i get it because like we don't know what mary de bohun #(another example of a 'silent woman' and one known far less than either of these two)#was really like so i write her how i wish her to have been #but i also have feelings about her as an individual and try to understand she's not a stock character #i do see similarities in how eoy is used as a way for ricardians to express grief and anger over r3's death #and how isabelle de valois is used to express their grief and anger over richard ii's deposition and death #except there is actual evidence of isabelle being angry and upset about what happened to richard ii #but the novels where isabelle is perennially in romantic love with richard ii where even on her deathbed she's longing for him...#and wishing she could have been his wife in deed as well as word...#(which honestly creep me tf out given how young she was when he died and how much older than her he was)#all give me big 'eoy being romantically hung up on her uncle and wishing for his incest baby long after his ~tragic death' vibes #asks #anon #long post #anne neville #elizabeth of york #i don't profess to being an expert on the ricardian and tudor phases of the wars of the roses #but i do know what i don't like and its ricardian bullshit or the same old repeated tropes #text posts

3 notes · View notes

edmundhoward · 4 months

Note

2, 3, 10, 12, & 13 😈

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

katherine howard stands out in basically all of her relationships as dominant/forthright in what she wants, with a sharp turn of phrase that suggests that while flirtations were fun for her, she had a capability to be mean when she willed it. she comes across as genuinely charming and charismatic, with a consistent attentiveness, but she also reliably has an edge to her in her relationships — she was arguably callous with dereham, and criticised culpeper repeatedly while also mocking bess harvey. i don’t generally like the way g.russell talks about her wrt her relationships, but i do like the way he described katherine as proud and proud and enjoying “one-upmanship in her flirtations”. do with that what you will.

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you ve seen on tumblr

not going to screenshot but there are soo many that are frankly baffling. the first to come to mind is the claim that poor henry viii must’ve been so offended by coa and her camp publicly dragging his baby brother’s name through the mud/throwing arthur under the bus. which begs the question: what, exactly, prompted coa to do that, pray tell? i really would love to know! very wilfully obtuse considering she was called to discuss the validity of her first marriage because henry viii disregarded the dispensation from the pope, and (arguably unnecessarily) made consummation a fundamental point of contention in annulling her second. that's on him. frankly, the whole ‘she used arthur’ argument really relies on an assumption that coa was lying about her sexual history when it suited her — as opposed to her being forced to once more defend her honour. (i guess it’s not surprising seeing as i have also seen posts insinuating that she had an inappropriate relationship with her confessor). moreover, why should we care if she was lying, or if she used arthur? atp, everyone involved is bones, and personally, i don’t give a single solitary shit if her defending herself denied henry from having a male heir, because monarchy is actually bullshit ❤️ it’s definitely not the worst but it’s so stupid and so funny to me.

10. worst part of fanon

the white feminism (read as: racism) lol.

this answer is definitely prompted by trastamara fandom’s disregard for poc/iberian muslims, but to bring it back to the tudors (and because i am dedicated to e1 stans catching strays) whatever the fuck certain elizabeth i stans have going on is rancid. the whole argument about whether or not elizabeth i should be held accountable for funding three slaving voyages was a profoundly bleak period in fandom, and seeing someone argue that it was “only three slave ships”… well. i hate it here, i absolutely hate it here.

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

i don’t know if he counts as unpopular, but he’s not popular and the level of vitriol aimed at him relative to actual surviving historical fact makes me want to say henry vii, to be honest? the man was fascinating and generally successful in a way others compared against him (r3, h8) can’t always claim to be. regardless of whether or not people like him, how strongly some people hate him is wild. i’ve seen people claim he “inherited his rapist tendencies from his father” — an insane thing to say, not least because there is no evidence of rape connected to him. it just exposes the terminal brainworms and cringe that ricardians and h8 stans have… sad sad tears of a clown, truly. the fact that pointing out the very real, repeatedly historically recorded trend of calling henry vii ‘y daroganwr’ in multiple awdls got dismissed as “lionising” him… genuinely think people who actively dislike henry vii are stupid, end of discussion.

13. worst blorboficiation

at the moment, eustace chapuys is coming to mind. the tudors making him this sort of paternal figure, and moral crusader fighting for mary (and coa) was well done — but wildly inaccurate. the fact that his misogyny shapes and colours our perception of the tudor court world really must be recognised. if nothing else, i think recognising chapuys as a flawed, inconsistent and hypocritical figure makes him significantly more interesting. this is the man who belligerently called anne boleyn a whore, “concubine”, and the “english messalina”, and dismissed elizabeth as a bastard — to the point of having egregiously violent fantasies about them — whilst having an illegitimate son, himself. it’s very difficult to read his dispatches (many of which are often easily disproven and full of erroneous claims) and not be struck by the constant stream of potent and constant misogyny.

#💌

5 notes · View notes

edwad · 1 year

Note

What do you now find less valuable in the critique of political economy? Relating that to some of my impressions of your ideas: you once seemed attracted to the idea that many of CoPE's flaws come from Marx's "incomplete break" with political economy. You seemed optimistic about it, if the break could be "completed". What's your current attitude? Completing break harder than expected? Or was this the wrong diagnosis of Marx's flaws? Maybe you think you got this exactly right? Or something else?

i don't think the portrait of political economy which he uses as his object ever really existed -- even in some ideal sense as a kind of average across the theoretical field -- which makes the critique basically fall flat. his attempt to critique both the system and its corresponding theory on this basis loses all immanence (immanent to what?), and his ability to account for political economy in thought as made epistemologically possible by the system itself loses all meaning when the historical mode of thinking he tries to connect to that system (or at least his understanding of it) is basically a false one. political economy for him is just a theoretical zigzag within constantly shifting parameters, slowly grasping toward his scientific categories because he measures the science's successes against his own.

it's a bit silly really and at its best only partially reconstructs a one-sided image of political economy. this might be impressive enough if it weren't for the fact that this "side" is totally shaped by the debates which the "scientific" representatives (ie the ones marx likes) were engaged in, especially in their theoretical struggle for the foundations of the discipline. this is what the disintegration of the ricardian school was all about, but it didn't just collapse overnight (as marx knew! he wrote what is probably the earliest "intellectual history" of its downfall as a quasi-paradigm). these differences had deep roots which he doesn't account for, he simply dismisses them or displaces them to a different level of epistemological possibility than he does for the guys he admires most.

eventually i'll probably write something more substantial about all of this but for now this ought to work as a sort of summary of my frustrations.

17 notes · View notes

ecoamerica · 2 months

Text

youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

15K notes · View notes

fromtheboundlesssea · 2 years

Note

I don’t know about Becoming Elizabeth and why it’s trending, so I decided to do some research.

Becoming Elizabeth focuses on exploring the young future queen’s relationship with the older Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of her dad’s third wife, Jane Seymour, and the uncle of King Edward VI, who went on to marry Henry’s fourth and final wife, Catherine Parr. Elizabeth and Seymour were said to have had a romantic affair while the future queen lived with Catherine, who became Elizabeth’s guardian after the King’s death. On the show, Thomas is often seen hopping into Elizabeth’s bed, tickling her, and undressing her in front of the royal servants—all of which was documented in letters Reiss had read in preparation for the show. — The True Story Behind Starz’s Becoming Elizabeth

Are they romanticising Thomas Seymour and Elizabeth? I thought she was young at that time.

Thomas Seymour engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth, including entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her, and slapping her on the buttocks. Elizabeth rose early and surrounded herself with maids to avoid his unwelcome morning visits. Parr, rather than confront her husband over his inappropriate activities, joined in. Twice she accompanied him in tickling Elizabeth, and once held her while he cut her black gown “into a thousand pieces”. — Elizabeth: Apprenticeship, p. 69

Elizabeth was 14-years-old. OH MY GOD. Also, she didn’t like his advances. If she liked it, why would she surround herself with maids every time he visits?

I’ve watched the STARZ’s The White Queen and I shipped Richard III and Anne Neville. They’re the only reason why I watch the show. And what did they do? Make Richard sleep with his niece, Elizabeth of York -- which is based on a rumor that he intended to marry her because his wife, Anne Neville, was dying and they had no surviving children.

In reality, King Richard III only loves his wife. Why else would he renounced Warwick’s land to George?

In order to win George’s final consent to the marriage, Richard renounced most of the Earl of Warwick’s land and property including the earldoms of Warwick (which the Kingmaker had held in his wife’s right) and Salisbury and surrendered to George the office of Great Chamberlain of England. — Richard the Third

After her death, he negotiates a double marriage with King John II of Portugal -- Richard with Joanna (Joan), and Elizabeth with their cousin Manuel.

Soon after Anne Neville’s death, Richard III sent Elizabeth away from court to the castle of Sheriff Hutton and opened negotiations with King John II of Portugal to marry his sister, Joan, Princess of Portugal, and to have Elizabeth marry their cousin, the future King Manuel I of Portugal. — “The Portuguese Connection and the Significance of the ‘Holy Princess’,” The Ricardian, Vol. 6, No. 90

They always do this, ruining real history for the sake of drama.

I think so many of us hoped that because Becoming Elizabeth wasn’t based on a PG novel and the show was not headed by Emma Frost that things would be different.

Apparently we were asking too much for Elizabeth’s abuse by Seymour when she was freaking fourteen to not be romanticized.

#keep the asks coming #becoming elizabeth

17 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 2 years

Note

Hi! I just read all this new information coming out about Richard III possibly NOT killing the prince's in the tower and that they might have been smuggled out instead. (John Evans in Devon) It's absolutely fascinating and idk if this is your area of history but I was just curious to know what you think of all this? I'm a total history nerd (even though I flunked my a levels in it lolol) and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Aha, yes. Full disclosure, I have not read any of the so-called new stuff (if indeed it is new), but this theory has been around for quite a long time -- decades at least -- and periodically resurfaces in various formats. To make it brief: the extant evidence points solely (indeed overwhelmingly) to Richard III as having killed them, there were no other credible suspects considered at the time and for many years after, his perceived (and indeed, probably actual) culpability in the event helped the future Henry VII rally support prior to the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, and... yeah, he done did it beyond almost all reasonable doubt. However, the Ricardians (partisans of Richard III) and the White Rose Society and the Yorkist sympathizers have felt for a long time that he was done dirty by Shakespeare, he was actually a misunderstood underdog and a capable ruler fed up with the womanizing and spendthrift nature of his older brother Edward IV, and thus was... actually secretly too noble to kill his own nephews, or something. But even if all these things were true (and Shakespeare certainly did a number on his reputation, especially since he was writing at the court of the Tudors, better known as the family that defeated Richard in battle and thus had an interest in seeing their fallen foe represented as a bestial hunchbacked psychopath), that a) does not exclude the strong likelihood that he did in fact kill his nephews as a realpolitik decision to shore up his throne, and b) has to ignore, undermine, selectively cherry-pick, or otherwise deal with the evidence in a way that, on overall scrutiny, just... doesn't work.

Pet theories that certain English monarchs didn't actually die when they were believed to (such as Ian Mortimer and his hobby horse about Edward II supposedly not dying in 1327 and being "smuggled out" to a similar quiet retirement) have been popular for a very long time, including in their own contemporaneous period, because obviously they represented serious questions of power, authority (legitimately gotten or otherwise), allegiance, and the "body politic" of who, if any, ruler the common people should be loyal to. And indeed, the "princes in the tower were secretly smuggled to safety and reappeared to claim the crown back from their wicked uncle" theories started very soon after the event. Indeed, they resulted in the appearance of two well-known pretenders to the throne, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, who both claimed to be the miraculously-escaped, not-actually-murdered princes. They were eventually both exposed and discredited, but this goes to show that if there was any remote likelihood that the princes were still alive, they would almost surely have reappeared. They were too valuable as political hostages and potential pawns to just... disappear and live out their days in obscurity, or whatever nice end people would like to imagine for them. As well, if they were alive somewhere, all Richard III had to do was order them brought back and displayed at court, which would have ended all questions and suspicions as to whether he had done them in. The fact that he was unable to do that once more points to the fact that, uh. They were dead.

Aside from the fact that two boys' skeletons matching the ages of the young Edward V and his brother Richard were excavated from their burial in the Tower, and the fact that nobody else at the time considered anybody but Richard III to be responsible for their deaths, I have never seen the Ricardian/revisionist historians as doing anything but vainly trying to write their own personal likes and dislikes into the historical record, while ignoring the evidence that does exist and having to construct convoluted conspiracy theories to propose an alternate version. If you have to argue against, discredit, flat-out ignore, or otherwise fabricate the evidence to support your claim, you're not really doing history, you're doing fiction and trying to pass it off as history. Contrary to public perception, historians don't study "what really happened in the past," because, uh, we can't. We can only study what people wrote down about it, with their accordant beliefs, biases, preferences, and agendas, and this is the case until almost the mid-19th century, when alternative real-time techniques like cameras, newspapers, and other forms of media began to be used more widely. Before then, all our knowledge relies on what someone (usually male, religious, and educated, at least in the West) decided to tell us about it, and that is a practice that requires careful training and study to understand.

The thing is, I can pick just about any historical event and construct a detailed and plausible explanation for what "could" or what "might" have happened instead, but that doesn't mean that is what actually DID. Despite all their passionate insistences, the Ricardians have never produced any evidence that believably and powerfully contravenes the existing record, and the argument that "Richard III insisted that he didn't do it, so we should trust that he didn't" is frankly, extremely weak. Honestly, are we going to take any politician at their word when they insist that they didn't do something that was advantageous for them, broke the rules, and which they didn't intend to get caught doing, but then they did, and oh, shit? Richard III had means, motive, and opportunity to kill the princes, and his own contemporaries had no doubt whatsoever that he did. And as noted, they were too valuable to just disappear. Henry VII's claim to the throne was through a woman (his mother, Margaret Beaufort), considerably distant (Margaret was the last living descendant of John of Gaunt, Edward III's son, and Edward ruled from 1327-77, over a century previously) and his father was a Welshman. All of that means that if someone could have produced the real Edward V to challenge him (as Simnel and Warbeck tried to pose as), they would have done so. Instead, Henry married Elizabeth of York, the princes' older sister, to re-unite the rival royal bloodlines, since the two-toned Tudor rose was created by combining the Lancastrian (Henry) red rose and Yorkist (Elizabeth) white rose.

Basically, the theory of the princes' ~secret survival~ and/or Richard III not killing them has never held evidentiary water, it requires the invention of too many other contingencies and now-conveniently-disappeared source material, it doesn't fit with what Richard's contemporaries and chroniclers overwhelmingly believed, no plausible alternate suspect has ever been put forward or stood up to scrutiny, nobody except Richard really had a motive to get rid of the chief threats to his position, the physical evidence of the boys' skeletons in the Tower, and the fact that he was ubiquitously believed to have done it (and was never able to prove that he hadn't by the simple method of producing his nephews) helped rally support for his downfall in 1485: yeah. It doesn't work. The theory will continue to enjoy support, no doubt, but it's not history, just wishful thinking.

Thanks for the question!

#history #medieval history #richard iii #wars of the roses #hanaasbananas #ask

67 notes · View notes

baeddel · 3 years

Note

how was what marx presented as the goal of communism realized by capital? i'm honestly befuddled by that quote. care to share some of the author's reasoning?

i should have provided some context. perhaps the name of the text and its author, so you could investigate it yourself (you're responding to a quote i posted in 2016; these days i include links and page numbers, and now everyone knows why!). anyway, now that i have tormented you, i will present the context:

this quote appears here, in a gnomic paragraph replying to a gnomic quotation of Marx. the rest of the chapter is about making this argument clear. Camatte writes:

The proletariat is the great hope of Marx and of the revolutionaries of his epoch. This is the class whose struggle for emancipation will liberate all humanity. Marx's work is at once an analysis of the capitalist mode of production and of the proletariat's role within it. This is why the theory of value and the theory of the proletariat are connected, though not directly:

he quotes from Engels' preface to the Poverty of Philosophy:

The above application of the Ricardian theory, that the entire social product belongs to the workers as their product, because they are the sole real producers, leads directly to communism. But, as Marx indicates too in the above-quoted passage, formally it is economically incorrect, for it is simply an application of morality to economics. According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, therefore, never based his communist demands upon this, but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever greater degree. . .

so Camatte says,

Marx did not develop a philosophy of exploitation

this is a point that would be important in Neue Marx-Lekture, Wertkritik and to people like Moishe Postone, who would minimize the importance of exploitation to stress the importance of things like Value and its twofold nature, or socio-cultural domination in Postone. Camatte is criticing the same 'traditional marxism' (as Postone calls it) when he goes on to say that

After Marx the proletariat was retained as the class necessary for the final destruction, the definitive abolition of capitalism, and it was taken for granted that the proletariat would be forced to do this.

but this is where he departs from marxists. in Camatte's reading of Marx,

Marx left us material with which to overcome the theory of value, and also material necessary for overcoming the theory of the proletariat.

he then outlines what he sees as breaks or inconsistencies within Marx's theory, especially within the three volumes of Capital and the Grundrisse and the Critique of the Gotha Programme. the gist is that Camatte sees in the Grundrisse an argument that capitalism is revolutionary, and that the misery of the proletariat will push it to "liberate whatever is progressive in this mode of production, namely the tendency to expand productive forces." yet in the first volume of Capital, on Camatte's reading, the proletariat no longer has this role; it is instead an integrated working class "engaged in revolutionary reformism: struggle for wage increases, struggle against heavy work imposed on women and children, struggle for the shortening of the working day"—Althusser makes the same point in his preface, saying that "a class struggle which is deliberately restricted to the domain of economic struggle alone has always remained and will always remain a defensive one, i.e. one with no hope of ever overthrowing the capitalist regime. This is the great temptation of the reformists, Fabians, and trade unionists whom Marx discusses" (1969), and is made much earlier by Sam Moss in his criticism of pro-revolutionary groups: "the fact is that the workers as a mass are conservative. It is assumed that the class war aims directly at the weakening of capitalism, but the fact is that [...] it is directly aimed at the position of the workers within the society" (1939). Camatte says that at the end of the first volume Marx describes how the working class will become the revolutionary proletariat, characterizing it as an "increase of misery which will force the proletariat to rise against capital." Camatte continues,

In the third volume, and also in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx does not describe a real discontinuity between capitalism and communism. Productive forces continue to grow. The discontinuity lies in the fact that the goal of production is inverted (after the revolution; i.e., the discontinuity is temporal). The goal ceases to be wealth, but human beings. However, if there is no real discontinuity between capitalism and communism, human beings must be wilfully transformed; how else could the goal be inverted? This is Marx's revolutionary reformism in its greatest amplitude. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional phase [...] is a period of reforms, the most important being the shortening of the working day and use of the labor voucher. What we should note here, though we cannot insist on it, is the connection between reformism and dictatorship.

the argument in short: according to Camatte, Marx identifies communism with the liberation of the same productive forces which have so far been developed by capitalism. thus the proletariat is needed "to guide the development of productive forces away from the pole of value toward the pole of humanity." now the gnome at the beginning makes sense to us: the "dialectic of the development of productive forces" which Marx identifies with communism was in fact realized by Capital, which has "outflanked" proletarians, meanwhile proletarians, because they were organized around the liberation of the productive forces, turned out "only trying to manage [the capitalist mode of production] themselves."

Camatte might not be totally fair with Marx. i believe that the feeling today is that Marx sometimes takes this view of the productive forces, and sometimes takes this view about humanity, but elsewhere he takes different views. there are discontinuities within Marx when it comes to things like Value, development and so on. but one need not be befuddled by Camatte's criticism, anymore than one should be befuddled by Capital itself.

29 notes · View notes

theculturedmarxist · 3 years

Link

[lots of useful graphs and images omitted]

These notes were based on an interview with me by Swiss-based journalist Thomas Schneider in German in early May.

https://www.facebook.com/klaus.klamm.9235/

A sugar rush or economic recovery?

The IMF foresees a strong economic recovery. The assumption is that the virus can be controlled to such an extent that lockdowns and social distancing are no longer necessary. This is mainly due to the vaccination campaigns.

It looks like an upswing, at least in the G7 countries, this year most major economies, at least in advanced countries, are likely to (more or less) reach the real GDP level of the end of 2019 by the end of this year. Europe is forecast to lag slightly behind, while the US is developing more strongly. However, the situation in the so-called Global South, or ‘emerging economies’, is different. India and other countries are in a terrible situation.

The US, along with China, is one of the countries that seems to be recovering most quickly. That’s partly because of the Biden administration’s big fiscal packages, which have reduced income losses and provided money to companies. The big question, however, is how effective and sustainable this will be.

If the IMF now says that we will have strong growth, it is mainly due to economies opening up. If a substantial part of an economy has been closed and can now reopen, there will obviously be a strong bounce back. But this pace will not be sustainable. It is really like a sugar rush and as you know, once the sugar is consumed, you feel a little sleepy and down afterwards.

The Biden administration is passing a huge infrastructure program through the US Congress to boost the economy and create jobs. Two trillion dollars sounds like a lot of money at first glance, but if you spread it over five to ten years, the stimulus then amounts to just half a percent of US economic output each year.

So Biden’s package will give the US economy an early rush, but it’s not enough to boost long-term growth. The low pre-pandemic growth rate will resume; and with it, productivity-boosting investment will be weak, wages will not grow much and jobs will remain precarious for a large part of wage-earners.

The scarring

The pandemic slump has been over two years in which there have been huge losses in production, resources, income and jobs, many gone forever. Globally, the slump has pushed some 150 million people further into the most abject poverty, who were otherwise seeing some improvement. These two years have been a huge disaster. The loss of the two years will never be made up again. It’s like an abyss, down one side and up the other, but the abyss is still left behind.

Profitability and growth

The global economy was already growing very weakly in 2019, which is likely to be the case again after the rapid recovery in 2021. That’s because capitalism grows sustainably and strongly only if profitability increases. However, average profitability was already very low before the pandemic, and in some countries, it was at the lowest level since the end of the Second World War.

The investments now being made to boost employment and income will not restore this profitability. Profitability will improve compared to the bottom of the pandemic, but it will not go above the rates of previous years. That means that investment and growth will not improve in the longer term. In capitalism, profitability determines economic development. Investments must pay off accordingly. If we had a different economy, we wouldn’t have to worry about that.

At the moment, we see in that around 15 percent of GDP is productively invested by the capitalist sector, ie not in property (4-5%) and financial speculation. By contrast, public investment is low: it contributes just 3 percent of GDP a year to productive investment, and Biden’s packages will increase that by only 0.5 percent, as above.

This will not be decisive for economic development over the long term. Indeed, even the U.S. Congressional Budget Office expects long-term average real GDP growth of only 1.8 percent per year in the US for the rest of this decade, based on its forecasts of productivity and employment growth. That rate is even lower than in the last decade.

Zombie companies and debt

Profitability would only increase if some rotten layers of capital were removed. There are, for example, the so-called zombie companies, which make little profit and can only just cover their debts. In the advanced economies, we are now talking about 15 to 20 percent of the companies that are struggling in this situation. These companies keep overall productivity low, hindering the more efficient parts of the economy from expanding and growing.

The zombies reflect in the enormous increase in debt, especially in corporate debt, globally. Debt levels are the highest since World War II in most developed economies. Interest rates are at historic lows, but the sheer mass of debt is still weighing on firms’ ability to invest productively.

The immense debt also gnaws at profitability. When profitability falls in the productive sector, capital flees into financial speculation to make more profits. In the COVID slump, the super-rich have done so well!

When there is a financial crisis, there are defaults and devaluations, but there is no economic downturn if the productive sector is healthy. But the financial crisis can trigger a production crisis if it is combined with low profitability in the productive sector, as we saw in 2008.

Creative destruction

The burden of debt and low profitability can be overcome through so-called “creative destruction”, as Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called it. This is also the perspective of Marxian economic criticism, which Schumpeter had read very carefully. Through the devaluation (writing off) of capital and, in particular, the liquidation of inefficient, indebted companies, profitability can be raised. But that means a huge devaluation, in order to create the conditions for a new upswing.

So far, there has not yet been much destruction of capital because it is a grisly thought for governments and decision-makers – instead, bankruptcies of weak firms have been very low. Governments fear the political consequences and so are forced to continue with the big credit/money glut to keep companies running even if their productivity and profitability growth

Inflation

Many people have suffered severe hardship in the pandemic slump, but others have also saved money that could now be spent as economies open up. This will lead to a sharp increase in demand for all kinds of goods and services. Probably the supply side will not be able to keep up with that. So there could be stronger inflation over the next six to 12 months, especially in import prices, as international supply chains are still weakened. We could therefore see a rise in prices over a period of time.Inflation in the late 1980s was immense. In most advanced countries, it was in the double-digit percentage range. Over the last two decades, inflation in these countries has, broadly speaking, been around 2%. But perhaps we will see inflation for the next 12 months until production can catch up with increased demand.slows.

The monetarist theory that an increased money supply must lead to inflation has been proven wrong. Central banks have spent vast amounts of money and supported banks and firms without prices rising. While the sum of money has increased, its orbital speed has decreased. Instead, it was parked at the banks, which did not lend it onto companies. The big firms often did not need the money, the smaller ones were cautious about borrowing even at low interest rates. So the banks put the money into financial speculation. There was also an unprecedented rise in the price of financial assets. But will it continue?

The answer is complex, but there are certainly two factors that are decisive. On the one hand, how much value is present in economies, how much flows to the capitalists as profit, and how much goes in wages to the workers. The development of these variables determines demand. The capitalists drive the demand for capital goods, the wage-earners for consumer goods. The level of wages and profits is therefore central, but the supply of money also plays a major role, because this is intended to compensate for weak profits and thus to stimulate demand.

In Marxist theory, there is a strong argument for a long-term decline in inflation. Rising productivity means that less investment is made in labour power and more in means of production, which also leads to an increasing organic composition of capital. As a result, both sources of demand are undermined: wages and profits (new value) growth slows. Capitalism therefore has a tendency towards disinflation when there are no counter-measures involved. Central banks have been trying to reverse the disinflation trend with money injections for about 30 years, but with little success.

The Keynesian notion that higher wages drive inflation is not supported by the evidence. Marx had once conducted a discussion with Thomas Weston, a trade union socialist of the Ricardian school. Weston claimed that the fight for higher wages must also lead to higher prices. Marx replied that this did not have to be the case, since the higher wages would likely come at the expense of profits. Inflation only needs to occur when wages and profits rise at the same time and then demand increases, while investment remains relatively low due to low profitability. It depends on the combination of these factors.

Golden Years and neoliberalism

The golden years of post-World War II capitalism were an exception, at least for the advanced economies: near full employment, rising living standards, high profits in advanced economies, and expansion of trade. If you look at the history of capitalism, you don’t find many such periods. The closest is probably the “Belle Epoque” from the 1890s to the 1910s. The big question is: why didn’t these phases last?

Neither mainstream economists nor most left-wing theories have an answer to this question. The latter claim that the post-World War II phase was over because of the departure from Keynesianism – because governments stopped spending enough money and stopped managing the economy. The follow-up question arises: why did they stop? The answer is found in economic development itself, the declining profitability of large capitals. This led to a decline in investment, to which Keynesian macro management did not find an answer. Thus the big capitals put pressure on governments to take a neoliberal path.

The law of value and profit

The central argument of Marxian criticism is based on the law of value. This roughly means that companies only invest if they can make a profit. Profit is the centre of their actions and not the needs of the people. These are only considered important so that the products can be purchased. Profit, however, comes from the exploitation of the labour force in the production process. Labour produces goods and services that can be sold but in constant competition with other capitalists. This means that companies are constantly looking for better methods of exploitation, new technologies and new methods.

For mainstream economists, profit simply does not matter. But even among the left-wing Keynesians, profit hardly appears. For them it is all about ‘demand’, about ‘speculation’ or about ‘financialisation’. These things all play a major role, but profit is the key category for understanding the capitalist process of production and accumulation. And it is important to put it in relation to a company’s investments: the rate of profit is the key to understanding how healthy an economy is. And profitability has tended to fall over the last 50 years, not linearly, but in a wave-like movement.

The high profits of tech companies such as Amazon, Apple or Alphabet are hiding the problem of profitability across the whole capitalist economy. There are a lot of unprofitable zombie companies and for most profit rates have fallen. We need to look at how this has affected investment. This is the central aspect that Marxian economic criticism can bring to the debate on the world economy.

Empirical evidence supports Marx’s law of the tendency to fall in the rate of profit. There are the counteracting factors to this law, but the law is the dominant factor. As far as we can measure the data, they suggest that there is a long-term trend towards falling rates of profit in the major economies. Every eight to ten years, capitalism plunges into crisis. We must continue to learn why these crises take place and what the political consequences.

#economics #economy #marxism #marxian economics #covid news #covid-19 #amazon #apple #alphabet #neoliberalism #capitalism #neoliberal capitalism

2 notes · View notes

ricardian-werewolf · 8 days

Text

So my proper Nikolai Lantsov x Princess! OC fic is a go.

For context, the Princess:

Kate Beckinsale as Princess Cecily of England, in an England from 1995's Richard III. (Yes, sorry, Ricardians. Selling myself out by writing THAT version of Richard, except it's not wholly shakespeare but also not wholly Ricardian either.)

BUT: She and Nikolai have been in an arranged betrothal since they were children, and somehow Nikolai managed to KEEP that betrothal intact for a whopping 15 years. Now, in 1931, Cecily goes off to Ravka for the first time.

Think Bridgerton season 2...

OH, and Richard isn't too happy when he finds out the marriage's going positively. No one is, actually. Wagers abounded for an awful courtship.

Anyways. I'm open to anyone doing manips or moodboards if you get the inspo.

Excerpt:

Maybe no one assumed Father would remember it’d be a thing he would bother to keep in his head once he got corrupted by the desire to kill his brothers?

Cecily shook her head. Her father was a murderer and power-hungry, but he wasn’t stupid. His bloodthirsty behavior masked a cold and calculating mind that could turn entire armies to fleeing the battlefield with their tails between their legs. He’d been the first to use mustard gas on the Lancastrian forces in the wake of the Great War, but since the Lancastrians mainly polled from men not drafted into the BEF, no one had any idea of the ways gas could be combated. Yorks’s army of veterans slaughtered the Lancastrians at Barnet Heath easily enough.

But now the Wars of the Roses had come to a bloody and frightening end. Cecily rubbed her arms with her palms, and stripped off the gloves. Casting them into the rubbish bin across her solar, she picked up the letter, kicked her heel-clad feet up onto the desk, and began to read the letter from one Nikolai Lantsov.

#wyn rambles #Richard iii #Nikolai Lantsov #shadow and bone #the white queen #Nikolai Lantsov x OC #OC: Cecily Plantagenet

0 notes

wonder-worker · 4 months

Text

I really dislike (the second half of) David Baldwin's biography of Elizabeth Woodville, tbh. It's the first modern biography of her, and probably the most "academic" one out there till date, but it's unfortunately heavily flawed.

He takes Elizabeth and her family's "general unpopularity" as a given.

He wrote that after Edward IV's death, "Elizabeth allegedly urged Rivers to bring the young King to bring the young King to London as quickly as possible and with as large a force as he could muster...There can be no doubt that Elizabeth wished to see her son crowned before anything could frustrate it." In Baldwin's view, it's only after Hastings expressed reluctance that she decided to act as a "peacemaker" instead. How on earth is this any different from what Ricardians have said about Elizabeth during this time?

He claimed that after Richard of Gloucester seized 12-year-old Edward V - against his will, I might add - "The Woodvilles [Elizabeth and Dorset] tried, unsuccessfully, to raise an army to recover the initiative", referring to her unpopularity as a reason for why she wasn't successful, and incorrectly states that both Croyland and Mancini refer to this. They don't - only Mancini does. Croyland, on the other hand, does not write of any Woodville attempt to raise arms, but does write that after Elizabeth sought sanctuary, adherents gathered under Westminster "in the queen's name". Mancini presents Elizabeth as aggressive and unpopular, Croyland presents her as understandably worried and widely supported.

He believed that Elizabeth of York genuinely wanted to marry her brother-vanishing uncle Richard III and quoted George Buck's letter on this.

Even worse, claimed that Elizabeth Woodville "approved and encouraged" her daughter in this, because she was "cynically hoping that a marriage between King Richard and her daughter would restore her [meaning EW] to her position at the centre of affairs". Like. Do I really need to say anything?

And lastly, he believed that Elizabeth genuinely plotted against Henry VII and her own daughter in Simnel's Rebellion due to her own desire for power and prominence, along with "resentment" towards Margaret Beaufort, and was subsequently imprisoned and deliberately depowered for it.

While Baldwin certainly gives credit and sympathy to his subject, his biography of Elizabeth during Richard's usurpation and Tudor rule is effectively no different from the way Ricardians and other general histories write about her. He is inconsistent, objectively incorrect, and never once questions the blatantly propagandic narratives (both misogynistic and classist) that were spread about her. Some of the things he said about her in his book "The Kingmaker's Sisters" aren't expecially great either, but I'll leave those out for now.

Again - this is the most academic biography of Elizabeth till date, and this is the crap it said about her. That's literally how bad historical studies of her have been till date.

This epitomizes another problem I have with most - tbh, pretty much all - of Elizabeth's historians. They focus primarily on contradicting post-contemporary rumours and accusations about her (Thomas Cook, the queen's gold, the Earl of Desmond's death, etc). It's understandable to an extent: these are "safer", less contrary, less disruptive. They probably won't offend most of their readers. But when it comes to actual contemporary accusations? Every single historian till date has been utterly lacking and disappointing. This applies to both Warwick's rebellions and Richard III's usurpation. They never question the fundamental narrative of 1483. If they do focus on propaganda, it's the more overt ones (eg: Richard's letter accusing Elizabeth of treasonable necromancy). And even then, they never acknowledge - let alone emphasize - the true extent of what was said about her, and how much of it was very unprecedented when it came to queens.

The greatest irony is that it's two of Richard III's historians - Rosemary Horrox and A.J Pollard - who have done a better job highlighting the extent of Ricardian propaganda (reflected by Mancini, an innocent newcomer, who unknowingly painted Elizabeth and her family as aggressors and Richard as a victim of circumstance forced to defend himself). Of course, while Horrox and Pollard analyzed this mainly from Richard's perspective, with little attention given to Elizabeth herself, the mere acknowledgement is still somehow better than anything that any of Elizabeth's historians have ever done till date. That's a shame, tbh.

#elizabeth woodville #arlene okerlund's is better in the sense that she doesn't repeat such trash but hers is very generic and in some places equally frustrating #is routledge making a biography of her? I remember reading it somewhere but I've lost track...if they are I really hope it's good

45 notes · View notes

richmond-rex · 3 months

Note

I was wondering what the tag Ricardians for ts means?

I’ve seen it a few times, however I haven’t been able to figure out what it means. You wouldn’t mind please telling me what it means, would you?

Hello! 'for ts' is an old tumblr expression for tagging content that might be annoying or triggering — 'for ts' literally means 'for tumblr savior', a tool to hide posts which contain certain words or phrases once you have them saved in your settings (like you can do on XKit). I tag ricardian discourse as 'ricardians for ts' so people who are not interested in the discussion or are annoyed by it can have their eyes spared. It's simply an old tagging convention on tumblr for aiding people who want to avoid certain content.

#ask #blueberry-bubbles130 #ricardians for ts

3 notes · View notes

heartofstanding · 2 years

Note

Ooops sorry for the misunderstanding, I actually wanted to know about Richard II

Oops, okay! Well, like I said in the post, it's hard for me to talk about the common/public image of Richard II since I was so utterly unfamiliar with him until I started getting into the history and not reading a lot of pop history that features him. From what I've seen, the general image has become this sort of bratty to psychopathic child-king who is spoilt, sadistic, self-absorbed and Causes Problems On Purpose. These takes usually zero in on the first decade of his reign, especially around the Peasants Revolt in 1381, rather than his deposition nearly twenty years later which is what Shakespeare focuses on. There is also a tiny Ricardian-style narrative that insists, just like Richard III, history has lied to us about Richard II and he was an awesome, sweet, pacifist king who was forced off the throne once Big Bully Henry IV bullied the entirety of England into making him king. Some people say Shakespeare whitewashes Richard II or that he slanders him but that's really, really dumbing down the play and what Shakespeare is doing.

So the influence on Shakespeare on his public image is pretty minimal at the moment. But like I said, I'm not the best person to talk about Richard II's current image. @shredsandpatches is probably the person to ask.

#asks #selkiesstories

38 notes · View notes

thisbluespirit · 4 years

Note

hello! saw you posted the fanfic meme - here's some asks :D H: How would you describe your style? Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects? S: Any fandom tropes you can't resist? Y: A character you want to protect.

H: How would you describe your style?

I think that’s hard for me to do myself - probably pretty straightforward, terse to a fault sometimes, despite the fact that when I wasn’t so ill, I tended to default long.

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

Yes, lots! I have a whole bunch of Doctor Who stories I was working on before I got ill that are never going to see the light of day. I have various things longhand in notebooks that I ended up not typing up, although one or two of those, I think about still. (Fun fact: I have never actually typed up my first proper Sapphire & Steel fic, which was a Doctor Who crossover.) I have a lot of first paragraphs of S&S stories, heh. I might go back and steal some of the ideas - some of them already got reused.

And then I was once going to write a piece of crack in which Elizabeth of York was a vampire slayer and Richard was a sparkly vampire (look, it was TWQ’s fault; he was clearly a sparkly vampire in that; it was the only explanation) and Henry VII refused to believe in vampires anyway. I even typed up the beginning and still have it somewhere, but I’ve come to accept that a) have no idea about the middle of it, and b) I don’t understand why I have notes about giant frogs in France in the margins and c) also probably ricardians would eat me alive or something and I wouldn’t be able to cope. But mainly because I don’t remember what the hell I was on that day. I think it was for a trope_bingo square and I was a bit feverish or something. I sometimes wish the fever had lasted long enough to make the fic happen, though.

Y: A character you want to protect.

Lol, as I already said, suffering for all! They can have the comfort as well, though, that’s fine, I’m not an unreasonable author. (I say that; my AO3 freeform tags say that I write gen and fluff and crossovers the most so...) I have to say that I don’t have any characters I want to protect when writing and I find it off-putting when reading as well, if I get that vibe from an author (to me, it seems to skew characterisation sometimes).

That said, I hate the Silver-is-evil theory so much, I will be upset for days if I stumble over it in the wild. (But that is clearly incorrect anyway in canon, and in all other regards, Silver is hardly in need of my protection. I’m pretty sure any attempt to protect an element would not go well for me! They certainly wouldn’t appreciate it very much.)

#asks #replies #captain-aralias #fanfic #writing

8 notes · View notes

edwad · 3 years

Note

so if marx was struggling to escape being part of the political economy he was critiquing, would you say that the scholars who try to read him as a "radical ricardian" like robert paul wolff are half-correct?

i would say there's something to it, but i think this reading is a result of taking all of marxs ambivalences and reducing him to a much more one dimensional thinker in order to ultimately fall back on the ricardian paradigm. for people like rp wolff, marx is just a weird ricardian and all that stuff that confuses him is simply residue from a particularly bad case of hegelianism which marx never fully recovered from. i think this is a bad way to approach marx because then you can't actually see what's new or the potential for what can be done with his work.

the opposite side of this is the attempt made by some (even by people i mostly like, such as chris arthur and hans-georg backhaus, although the latter eventually abandoned this) to "reconstruct" marx, as if there's some True Marx out there hiding in the manuscripts somewhere and once we've arranged them in the correct order we can finally understand him despite all of his misleading popularizations etc. this treats marx as someone that had already figured everything out and was simply struggling to present his findings to people. i think that is a matter of faith and not scholarship, and the scholarship (as well as common sense) suggests that marx had not answered every problem which could ever be posed.

marx himself said that beginnings are difficult in every science, and he definitely saw his work as a kind of scientific endeavor of sorts, but he was also struggling with the difficulty of where and how to start. the fact that he couldn't complete such an ambitious project doesn't make him fully ricardian (he did a lot toward overturning ricardo in his work and we can see that as a very productive angle to pursue further) but he also didn't completely break with the field of political economy, which means there are still unresolved problems to think about. some of these i think we can address in more or less adequate ways, or at least improve on marxs own answers, but other things are still debatable and frequently debated -- not because this is some purely academic affair but because it often has important political stakes regarding what we allow to pass through the door to communism, what certain kinds of struggles can or can't work with the limits of the system, etc. trying to understand the system and the stories it tells about itself is an important task which we shouldn't treat as a completed project.

#communism

10 notes · View notes