#elegabalus

[ancient-rome-au]

[source]

[havesexwithghosts]

Bust of Elagabalus in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen

[apricops]

Short version: holy shit CK3 said trans rights.

Long version: Elagabalus (aka Heliogabalus) was emperor of Rome from 218 - 222 AD. She was assigned male at birth, but wore women’s clothes, preferred being addressed as a woman, and offered fortunes to any physician that could perform sexual reassignment surgery.

(Historians are generally wary about saying some historical figure was trans or queer, and for good reason. Historiography is complicated, and historical records are often very biased — basically every Roman emperor has been accused of being an effeminate buttslut by their detractors. However, multiple accounts of Elegabalus’s reign from different perspectives share these details. In this case, it’s a very safe bet)

So, in the Crusader Kings 3 screenshot, Elegabalus is officially Girl. Now, the earliest start date in CK3 is 876 AD, which you might notice is a long time after 222 AD. The reason Elegabalus is even in here is because there are historical records for certain titles and families. So while the CK3 devs were filling out all the odds and ends for a little feature that most players won’t ever notice, they went “you know what? We’re saying it: Elegabalus was a trans girl.” And that makes me happy.

And if you’re wondering about all the icons under her name, those are her personality traits. From left to right they are Lustful, Lazy, Zealous, a one-star education trait (read: poorly educated), Eager Reveler, and Drunkard. Which, I mean, she rose to power at fourteen. Fourteen year olds do not do a good job of running massive states. (zero stewardship lmao)

[romegreeceart]

Elagabalus

* Antioch, 218-222 CE

* silver

* obverse: "ANTONINVS PIVS FEL AVG" 

* reverse: "SANCT DEO SOLI // ELAGABAL" . A quadriga and the sacred Stone of Baal of Emessa.

https://smb.museum-digital.de/index.php?t=objekt&oges=180592

Source: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Creator: Bernhard Weisser ; Copyright Notice;CC BY-NC-SA  

[bitey-cat]

So the emperor of Rome in the mid-3rd century BCE was a trans girl

She's remembered as Elegabalus and literally all of the histories forever refer to her as a man because she was amab but she literally offered enormous sums of money to anyone who could perform gender confirmation surgery on her IN THE THIRD CENTURY BCE

Also she's alleged to have waxed her body hair, put on makeup and a wig, and gone to brothels to compete with the sex workers there and try to earn more than them even though she was the emperor of Rome and therefore unlikely to be strapped for cash

[the-nettle-knight]

Re: Elegabalus and the she/her museum drama

I thought I would go to the museum it's in to see what all the fuss was about - it wasn't even on display! It hasn't been on display since February, when it was in an exhibit documenting queer history in England. The media outrage around it is literally only based on two paragraphs on their online collections database. You really have to go looking for it to find it. And the museum doesn't even charge to get in, so it definitely wasn't a publicity stunt. Just another case of the media in the UK going out of their way to be transphobic, and outrage farming.

[coolgirlvic]

A trans time traveller goes back in time to the height of Elegabalus' reign and makes diy HRT for her and they fall in love and live in t4t domesticity.

[nothingtosayaboutthat]