la dame infortunée

chloe. 30. uk. mainly medieval princesses.

[daewithmon]

Dyanna dearly enjoys visiting Jena.

It is a welcome respite to spend a few days sharing family dinners. The two woman laugh as they watch the children intercept their fathers whilst playing with wooden swords.

Things Dyanna Loves pt2

[mushimallo]

yearning for a soulmate that you've never met

[anneboleynqueen]

“On Sunday morning, accompanied by all the said lords and gentlemen, she went on foot from her lodging to the church, the whole of the road being covered with cloth, and being about the length of the garden of Chantilly. All the bishops and abbots went to meet her, and conducted her to the church. After hearing mass, she mounted upon a platform before the great altar, covered with red cloth. The place where she was seated, which was elevated on two steps, was covered with tapestry. She remained there during the service, after being crowned by the archbishop of Canterbury, who delivered the crown to her, and consecrated her in front of the high altar. That day the duke of Suffolk was Grand Master, and constantly stood near the Queen with a large white rod in his hand. My lord William and the Great Chamberlain were also near her. Behind her were many ladies, duchesses, and countesses, attired in scarlet, in cloaks furred with ermines —such as are usually worn by duchesses and countesses,—and in bonnets. The dukes, earls, and knights were likewise clothed in scarlet robes, furred with ermines, like the first presidents of Paris, with their hoods. The coronation over, the Queen was led back again with the same company as she came, excepting some bishops, into a great hall, which had been prepared for her to dine in. The table was very long, and the Archbishop was seated a considerable distance from her. She had at her feet two ladies, seated under the table to serve her secretly with what she might need ; and two others near her, one on each side, often raised a great linen cloth to hide her from view, when she wished “s'ayser en quelque chose.” Her dinner lasted a long time, and was very honorably served.”

2 June. Camusat, 17. 584. Coronation Of Anne Boleyn. Narrative of the entry and coronation of Anne Boleyn, queen of England, at London, 2 June 1533. from Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII: June 1533, 1-5 Pages 262-275

[bethanydelleman]

Common misconception about Mr. Collins in Pride & Prejudice is that he's sucking up to Lady Catherine to retain his position in the church. This is not true, the living is his for life, he's sucking up for more, as Elizabeth observes: Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to Rosings, and not many in which his wife did not think it necessary to go likewise; and till Elizabeth recollected that there might be other family livings to be disposed of, she could not understand the sacrifice of so many hours. (Ch 30)

It was possible at the time for a rector to hold multiple livings, they would install a curate for about £50/year and pocket the rest of the income.

Also, it was nigh impossible to remove a clergyman once he was installed at a living. This example is from the book Fashionable Goodness, Christianity in Jane Austen's England by Brenda S. Cox (TW: violence against pregnant women):

Dr. Free seduced his housekeepers, resulting in five illegitimate children; caused one of the women to miscarry; let his pigs desecrate the graveyard, and kept cattle on the church porch; sold the lead off the church roof; cut down and sold trees not belonging to him; left the parish for long periods of time; and refused to marry and bury his parishioners. Eventually, when he offended a gentry family over a burial, they lodged a complaint. This led to seven years of expensive trials, at the Bishop of Lincoln's personal expense. Finally Dr. Free was removed from his living, eventual dying as a beggar. (Ch 10)

(And now you can see why Darcy really didn't want Wickham to be given a living!)

Mr. Collins and Charlotte are not being irrational in their devotion to Lady Catherine, a second living could double their income without adding very much at all to their work. Charlotte might have the added benefit of Mr. Collins spending some time at his other living during the collection of tithes. Now I do think Jane Austen found this kind of behaviour repugnant, but it isn't ridiculous, it's highly motivated.

[targsource]

Princess of Dragonstone

by zacckiell on twitter

[wonder-worker]

"Regardless of the fact that she wrote the Humayunnamah under Akbar’s orders, for him and his vizier, Gulbadan makes it clear that a female reader was involved in creating the Humayunnamah. Gulbadan’s repetition of “Hamidah Begum says” (Hāmidah Bānū Bīgum mīgūyand) throughout the Humayunnamah shows that Hamidah was a secondary source substantiating the authenticity of various events. Hamidah’s role as a reader, fact-checker, and even one of the Humayunnamah’s main characters allows us to see the different ways Mughal women both preserved and enriched their medieval predecessors’ mirror for princesses legacy."

— Amanda Caterina Leong, "“I’d rather be married to someone I can control”: Female Javānmardı̄ in Gulbadan Begum’s Humayunnamah as a Mirror for Princesses", Iranian Studies (2024)

[bedupolker]

Opposable thumbs are handy

[margaritiques]

Mary Boleyn was among the young ladies who would accompany Princess Mary Tudor as one of her maids of honour. She was not, however, appointed as one of the chamberers, as has been suggested. Chamberers were servants of the lowest social standing among the Queen’s women, whose chief responsibilities were to clean and refresh apartments in the morning, arrange bed linen and serve midday meals. Mary, who was a granddaughter of the Duke of Norfolk, served in the capacity of a maid of honour, as is evident from the original document preserved in the British Library. The original document listing ‘gentlewomen which were appointed to have abidden in France with the French Queen’ names Alice Denys and Anne Jerningham as chamberers. Two women, ‘M. Boleyne’ and ‘M. Wotton’, are listed on the right side of the document, opposite ‘Dame Guildford, Lady of Honour’, ‘Lady Elizabeth Grey’, ‘M. Elizabeth Ferrys’, ‘M. Anne Devereux’ and ‘Grey of Wilton’.

On Mary Boleyn serving as a maid-of-honour in the household of Mary the French Queen.

Excerpt from Mary Boleyn: The Queen’s Slandered Sister by Sylvia Barbara Soberton, published 2026.

[alaynesansa]

"winter kiss" by bubug (Magdalena Korzeniewska)

pt. I & pt. II on insta (@bubug_)

[edwardslovelyelizabeth]

Stained glass: Catherine Woodville and Jasper Tudor (left), Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (center), Richard III and Anne Neville (right). Cardiff Castle, Wales

[margaritiques]

But for María and the other Spanish women, Richmond must have felt like a gilded cage. Their household was kept in comparative isolation even from others living in the palace, and there was little to do but wait for the tides of fortune to turn. Not surprisingly, she was desperate to return home. She reminded her brother-in-law Ochoa repeatedly that she had no intention of remaining in England after her mistress’s marriage, and declared that ‘this is not a land to stop [in] unless necessary’. She was so unhappy that she could not bear to contemplate the glory of going home in case it did not come true: ‘I want my departure so much that I cannot receive it except as a mockery.’

On María de Salinas' desire to leave England and return to Spain once her mistress Katharine of Aragon remarried.

Excerpt from The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens by Nicola Clark, published 2024.

[wonder-worker]

"The feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist being appointed as the day upon which the coronation of the king [Edward V] would take place without fail, all both hoped for and expected a season of prosperity for the kingdom."

— Excerpt from the Croyland Continuator / David Horspool, Richard III: A Ruler and Reputation

Even though Edward IV’s death was unexpected, after twelve years of peace there need not have been too much of a sense of foreboding about the succession. The great dynastic wound from which the Wars of the Roses had grown had not so much been healed as cauterized by the extinction of the House of Lancaster. There was no rush for London, as had happened in earlier, disputed successions. The royal party didn’t set out from Ludlow for ten days after hearing the news of Edward IV’s death, while Richard took his time, too. And the new king had [his mother the dowager queen and] two uncles to support him: his mother’s brother, the sophisticated, cultured, highly experienced Earl Rivers; and his father’s, the loyal and reliable Duke of Gloucester, to whom Edward IV had entrusted unprecedented power and vital military command.

... [Richard of Gloucester] had achieved his goal by a mixture of luck and ruthlessness, and if he made it appear, or even believed himself, that destiny played a part, this only made him a man in step with his times. Modern historians have no time for destiny, but sometimes the more ‘structuralist’ interpretations of the events surrounding the usurpation can come close to it. When we read that ‘the chances of preserving an unchallenged succession were . . . weakened by the estrangement of many of the rank-and-file nobility from . . . high politics, which was partly a consequence of the Wars of the Roses and partly of Edward IV’s own policies’, it is hard not to conclude that an unforeseeable turn of events is being recast as a predictable one. But without one overriding factor – the actions of Richard, Duke of Gloucester after he took the decision to make himself King Richard III – none of this could have happened. That is, when the same author concedes ‘Nor can we discount Richard’s own forceful character’, he is pitching it rather low*.

Edward IV had not left behind a factional fault line waiting to be shaken apart. Richard of Gloucester’s decision to usurp was a political earthquake that could not have been forecast on 9 April, when Edward died. After all, Simon Stallworth did not even anticipate it on 21 June, the day before Richard went public. We should be wary of allowing hindsight to give us more clairvoyance than the well-informed contemporary who had no idea ‘what schall happyne’. This is not to argue that Richard’s will alone allowed him to take the Crown. Clearly, the circumstances of a minority, the existence of powerful magnates with access to private forces, and the reasonably recent examples of resorts to violence and deposition of kings, made Richard’s path a more conceivable one. But Richard’s own tactics, his arrest of Rivers, Vaughan and Grey, the rounding up of Hastings and the bishops, relied on surprise. If men as close as these to the workings of high politics at a delicate juncture had no inkling of what might happen, the least historians can do is to reflect that uncertainty [...].

*The historian who Horspool is referencing and disagreeing with is Charles Ross.

[alexandrajodhaa]

This is interesting and informative (as always)! Thanks for posting @wonder-worker 💖

[isadomna]

Catherine of Aragon and her father’s betrayal

                                               1514

On two occasions she had been able to blind herself to her father’s treachery, and to persuade herself to accept his excuses so that she could persuade Henry to accept them. This time she could not. She had married in England to serve Spain, but not to be a partner in swindling her husband. Catherine loved her father and she believed in the Ferdinand’s good faith. A betrayal from her dear father was unthinkable for Catherine, but the harsh reality and the advices of her confessor and María de Salinas made her open her eyes. She had to choose between her father and her angry husband. So Catherine chose to support Henry. She did not attempt to dissuade him from his pro-French policy. She let her humiliation at the part she had played, her disappointment and indignation be clearly apparent. Catherine told the Spanish ambassador, coldly, that she had nothing to discuss with him, did not wish to see him, and refused to intervene in any way in Spain’s behalf. If she wrote any line to her father, it was not a message Ferdinand cared to keep.

She would never forget Spain, but she had now lived thirteen years in England, five as England’s Queen. In the seclusion ofher widowhood she had preserved much ofher Spanishness, but her life since had opened new windows. There were only a few Spaniards left in her suite; except for her confessor and her favourite lady in waiting, Maria de Salinas, most of her daily contacts were with the English. Though she never lost a faint trace of foreign accent, she was beginning to talk, write, think like an Englishwoman. For five years she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to the activities and interests of her husband’s land; she had made a widening circle of English friends, and during the last year she had felt the thrill of national leadership in a crisis. It still pleased her, on occasion, to talk Spanish and to hear news of her native land. She had believed, she was to believe again, that the true interests of England and Spain were one, and that in fostering the alliance between them she was serving both. But she was Queen of England; she had no doubt, she was never again to show any doubt, where her final allegiance lay. 

Some time in December Catherine gave birth to a boy. Tragically, however, her misfortune at childbirth continued. The baby arrived a month early and, ‘to the very great grief of the court’, was either stillborn or died soon after birth. When the news reached Peter Martyr in Spain, he thought he knew why this had happened. ‘The queen of England has miscarried, as a result of her upset at the quarrel between her father and her husband, the pain of which provoked her to give birth prematurely,’ he said. ‘Her husband was upbraiding the innocent queen with the desertion of her father, and held against her his anger and complaints.’ Grief, he believed, had driven her to miscarry.  

Sources:

Garrett Mattingly, Catherine Of Aragon

Giles Tremlett,  CATHERINE OF ARAGON Henry’s Spanish Queen

[catalinadearagonsblog]

The first concerns Catherine’s near fanatical devotion to her husband: duty to him, enjoined by God, came before her duty to her father – and that order of priorities too was enjoined by God. She was indeed so careful in her behaviour in this respect that, by December 1514, the Spanish ambassador to the Provincial of Aragon was complaining that the Queen of England needed some discreet and intelligent person to point her in the right direction – towards the interests of Aragon: ‘The Queen has the best intentions, but there is no one to show her how she may become serviceable to her father.’ Fray Diego was criticized for telling her (although it should surely be held in his favour) ‘that she ought to forget Spain and everything Spanish, in order to gain the love of the King of England and of the English’. Queen Catherine, encouraged also by Maria de Salinas, was said to be so set on this pro-English course that nothing would make her change it.

Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII

By that December, as a heavily pregnant Catherine once more went into confinement, Ferdinand’s ambassador Caroz complained that she was ignoring him completely. ‘The queen of England greatly requires a discreet and able person who can take care not just of her soul but also of the government of her house and person, above all so that she can best serve our own king,’ he wrote to Friar Juan de Eztuniga, provincial of Aragon. ‘The reason the queen is behaving so strangely is that her confessor, Friar Diego, has told her to act as though she has forgotten Spain and everything Spanish in order to win the English king’s love and the love of the English. She has become so accustomed to doing this that she will not change.’

Catherine’s few remaining Spanish friends had also turned rabidly pro-English, especially her beloved María de Salinas (now Lady Willoughby), who had become her closest friend. ‘María de Salinas has shown herself to be our enemy,’ wrote Caroz, who suspected her of plotting with the family of Catherine’s old lady mistress, Elvira Manuel. ‘You can see how [little] use I can make of the queen in my negotiations.’

Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon

[catalinadearagonsblog]

There is no mention of a project for divorce but the letter is taken to prove that Henry’s rage at Ferdinand extended to Catherine. The miscarriage referred to would be the stillborn (?) child of late November. Peter Martyr is writing from Spain, of course. In Spain it was only beginning to be clear how deep Henry’s resentment against Ferdinand was. But Henry had known of Ferdinand’s desertion by April and was deep in negotiations with France by June. He would not have waited until the following November to assail Catherine for her father’s treachery. Peter Martyr is obviously misinformed, as he often was about such affairs in England. Caroz’s letters not only contain no reference to such a quarrel but distinctly imply that none occurred, and that Catherine fully shared Henry’s feelings about Ferdinand’s conduct.

- Garret Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon

[margaritiques]

Detail of a stained-glass window depicting Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, which forms part of a set also depicting Margaret's brother Henry VIII, and Henry's wife Katharine of Aragon.

Perhaps designed by Bernard van Orley, made by Flemish glaziers. At the chapel of The Vyne, Hampshire, England, c.1520s.

[earlofwiltshire]

Historical events contrived to limit Elizabeth's ability fully to exploit her position as head of a princely household. No sooner had she left her teens—turning twenty in September 1553—by now beyond doubt mature enough to rule her household and stabilize her estates, than she found herself deprived of her household. Queen Mary suspected her sister's complicity in the Wyatt rebellion of January-February 1554, and imprisoned the princess throughout 1554, firstly in the Tower and later under strict house arrest. Thereafter, Elizabeth was kept under less strict conditions, but was not officially in command of her household until the end of Mary's reign in November 1558. Although Elizabeth's freedom of movement was more constricted than Mary's had been when she was Edward VI's heir, I argue that she was still able to exploit the same household assets—display, corporate identity, and affinity—that Mary employed so successfully in the summer of 1553.

Elizabeth's Shadow Court: July 1553–November 1558

[thecollectibles]

Artemis Leading the Hunt — MTG Style by Ivana Abbate

[anneboleynqueen]

Merle Oberon as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIIl (1933)