XXIII; Veritas Temporis Filia;
amazinglycuriousgal; very liberal; rationality>>>
avid Ottoman history buff (ain't Turkish fwiw);
I take my sweet time to answer asks
Sorry guys for not answering many of your questions/asks yet! They're genuinely very fun and thank youuuu for giving me more chances to blab about one of my most passionate hobbies presently!
I'm admittedly busy with my coursework and, my course is actually Accounting/Finance/Business-oriented, so yess, it's not even remotely related to my hobby.
Also, I am a perfectionist, so I want to give the best answers possible from a variety of sources and it takes time (sometimes a lot) because I only study Ottoman History in my free time (which is increasingly getting less as of now) especially when it's so susceptible to misinformation and disinformation (and I REALLY try to verify everything before publishing any answer with primary sources directly, as much as is possible).
With this, I also apologise for my tardiness as well, in conjunction to these aforestated primary factors!
There are also some asks from last year when I had gotten hospitalised, so I couldn't answer them and honestly, as quite the verbose person I have so much to say too, otherwise I get anxious for excluding this or that and not giving the most enriching and well-rounded answer, so yess that's the case...
get to know me: characters {2/?} | anne boleyn
“I know how I got there. And it was not all you. It was not all you or Norfolk or George or any other man you want to name! It was also me. He fell in love with me, he respected me and my opinions.”
On July 11, 1991 a total solar eclipse occurred and was visible from Mexico, Hawaii, Central America, Colombia and Brazil. From Mexico, the Sun stood nearly overhead during the total phase which lasted nearly seven minutes.
use snapchat like once a month to talk to one person but today they sent a notification that was like "agree to our new terms and conditions or your account will be disabled" and i was like damn if it's that serious let me read them and they were talking about how my camera feed will be sent to advertisers like not even the pictures of my cock and balls and hole that i actually take but just anything i point my camera at will be sent to a cloud somewhere? panopticon ass world obviously snapchat's always been of the devil but that's just crazy
Mary I and Katherine of Aragon by @francy-sketches
Guys. I have not been so excited for a commission in my life. I know it’s not ASOIAF so definitely not as anticipated among my friends, but it’s just so well done. I adore Katherine and Mary and this turned out so beautifully. I cannot sing Francy’s praises high enough; after the initial reference pictures I sent her, I did not need to correct anything at all, she completely got the vision.
As anyone who has ever encountered me before will have known, I am incredibly particular about commissions and therefore very involved. I usually like to give pieces I pay for extra thought and historical authenticity. For this piece, I went and looked for available quotes and contemporary accounts of Katherine’s fashion choices. I wanted to make sure from the base of the dress (the farthingale underneath) to the jewelry were all as accurate as was reasonably possible. I did even learn a thing or two, despite my initial intention of just checking to make sure everything I had previously believed was true. For example, I learned that Katherine sometimes wore a flemish hood, which I wouldn’t have thought that would align with her fashion sense; I was proven wrong. I have seen practically all the artworks available to the public that have been confirmed to be Katherine, so I had already guessed black was her favorite color to wear. But I did learn that her other favorites were purple and red. I decided to keep it simple with the black. It’s elegant and regal, black was an expensive color but still is not obnoxiously ostentatious. The jewels around her neckline as taken directly from portraits of her. The pearls seem a mainstay for her, but I did learn that her dresses had many other colored jewels tied into them. I just thought black looked the best. Her dresses were fur-lined, although I would definitely say we took some liberties on what the fur looked. The fur she wore was pretty much exclusively ermine. The sleeves also have true gold, which Spanish royalty traditionally loved (for hundreds of years, by this point, at least). Katherine’s Spanish outfits, of which she had many, definitely collected dust in favor of more traditional English outfits. There’s no indication that she was forced into this, as she did sometimes dress in the Spanish style when it struck her fancy, but it was important for her to present herself as English with English loyalties and priorities in mind. That being said, something as innocuous as gold embroidery, which was not completely foreign to the English court, was definitely something she could implement from back home without seeming like a foreigner. I have pomegranate embroidery on her sleeves, which is more of symbolism rather than something accurate. There’s no proof she ever wore pomegranate embroidery on her sleeve, but her official symbol was of a pomegranate, so I figure that was something important to her.
Katherine’s necklace is obviously a direct copy of the necklace she wears in several of the contemporary artworks depicting. This is pure speculation, but I personally believe that this necklace could have come from old English jewels that had been melted down and repurposed for her. Generally, people weren’t as sentimental in the same way we are today, nor worried about these aspects of preservation, so jewels were melted down and used for other purposes all the time. She also usually wore many strings of pearls, but it just would have looked like too much and would take away from the piece overall, so we decided just to do the necklace. Her gabled hood is also directly taken from her contemporary portraits, the gold and black with the red jewels was what she usually wore. She has a girdle belt with a long string of pearls. Sometimes she would wear a cross at the end or some black jewels that matched her necklace. What’s depicted in this is actually a pomander that turns into a rudimentary clock when it is opened. Katherine is recorded as having one of these; I thought that was very cool. I also asked for her to have some rings. She did have a wedding ring, but I found no description of it, so the artist just did basic gold. She’s wearing two which I think is pretty funny considering she was married twice, of course she wouldn’t have worn two wedding rings, but imagine if she did have the audacity to. Katherine had so much jewelry, more than any of Henry VIII’s wives. She had the royal collection available to her, pieces from Spain, and gifts from Henry specifically made for her. She usually decked herself out as expensively as possible.
Unfortunately, there is basically no information on how Mary dressed as a child. We know her mother dressed her and was having the clothes ordered herself, but beyond that, there’s really nothing available that I could find. I felt that Mary would be dressed similarly to her mother, but I wanted to give her a purple dress because purple fabric was generally the most expensive thing you could buy. I wanted to illustrate how loved and well taken care of she was. She has matching rings with her mother, but no girdle belt or necklace because I’m envisioning her as being 6-9 in this, so I wanted to give her something she could play in. She’s wearing a French hood. Katherine ordered her one in 1520, when she was four. My references on how hers should look is from portraits of her aunts Mary and Juana. I felt that Katherine would probably want to buy a style she was familiar with. Mary’s embroidery is of the Tudor rose. It turned out so beautifully. Similarly to Katherine, there’s no evidence that she actually wore that embroidery, but I wanted some symbolism in there.
My intention with this piece was to show the closeness between Katherine and Mary. Katherine loved Mary with all her heart and showed no outward indication of disappointment that Mary was a girl. She spent more time with Mary than any other highborn individual in this time period that I know of. I wanted to show that Katherine is someone that Mary deeply and completely trusted, even when court could be over the top and crowded, frightening for a child. I feel as if people other themselves from people in the past. People often feel as if people 500 years ago did not care as deeply about their children or weren’t attached to them. I believe this is true in some instances, but generally we are more like the people of the past than we like the believe. As far as any research I’ve done has shown, Katherine loved Mary as much as any mother of our time loves her children.
I believe Francy did a beautiful job, so all compliments go to her, I hope everyone checks out her page to see her amazing work. The caliber of this is unlike the commissions I’ve done in the past. I cannot thank her enough.
I hope this ended up being relatively historically accurate, I’m sure someone will let me know if it’s not haha.
Look I get the urge to vote for one of his wives (especially one of the first three), but I don’t think he really loved them. I think he loved his idealized version of some of them at different points of his life but never really them.
Marrying Catalina de Aragón was the ultimate younger sibling takes everything the older sibling had (was to have). Henry gets the throne, crown, power, and wife that was all supposed to be his older brother. He was also told not to marry her at various points between Arthur’s death and their eventual marriage. Sibling rivalries can be intense. Especially when, just due to birth order, one is destined to always be better and get better than you.
Anne Boleyn may have haunted him later in life after her death and had she been able to plead her case to him might have been able to spare her life. But you don’t kill a woman you love. He might have thought he was in love, but his actions show he wasn’t.
I think after destroying his first two very intellectual, politically involved wives and given his history with advisors he didn’t want such wives and preferred more “traditional” wives.
Jane died giving birth to a son. He turned her into a saint and had she lived he probably would have treated her well. He honored her after death. But she did what a wife should do (and then conveniently—for him—died before she could do anything to anger him).
Anne of Cleves was a political marriage and an easy excuse for his declining sexual health. He _might_ have been happy with her and post annulment they seemed to have a good friendship and while there probably never would have been romantic love between them it could have been a decent marriage.
Catherine Howard was ill equipped to be queen. Her life and death is a tragedy. She was 100% his middle age crisis wife.
I think we all know that his marriage to Catherine Parr wasn’t a love match for either of them. She was politically savvy much like his first two, but unlike them she knew his history and was able to avoid death. But you don’t act as Henry did with someone you love.
He was infatuated with his mistresses but he didn’t not have a lifelong love affair with any of them.
Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell were trusted advisors until they angered him, displeased him, weren’t what he wanted at the time (even if he regretted what he did to them later). But much like his wives, he treated them as disposable when he was displeased with them.
What is interesting, is that Charles Brandon of all the people in Henry’s court managed to stay in favor throughout almost all of Henry’s reign. And even when Brandon commits treason by marrying Mary Tudor, Queen of France—he isn’t executed. When you think of who all Henry killed for much less (or threatened with execution), it’s a miracle he survived. In part perhaps due to Henry’s love for his little sister, but I believe in greater part due to Henry’s love for Charles Brandon.
Charles Brandon is the only (non family member) Henry VIII ever loved.
happy publication day to elizabeth norton and her jane seymour: patronage, material culture and image crafting!!
“To write the book, I went back to the archives, trying to build up an evidence-based picture of this elusive queen. You'll find a new birth year (she's several years younger than usually supposed), details about her relationship with Henry, her stepdaughters and her birth family, as well as her political role, household, finances and religion. I also look at her memorialisation, both official and unofficial. Jane's material culture is a big part of the book, looking at her dress, items she owned and other items with a connection to her. It was such an opportunity to write this book and finally put the myth of 'Plain' Jane Seymour to bed.”
