Hii!!
Welcome to my blog, I post my own art probably every other week maybe, but sometimes more. I will most likely only be posting my drawings here, I love drawing my favorite historical figures the best. I mostly draw historical figures doing silly stuff, but I am educated on these people, and intend to keep learning about them.
I donât glorify the historical people I post about!!
anywho, my pronouns are they/them, you can refer to me as tags. Also my asks are open guys⊠you can ask for doodles and stuff⊠just sayingâŠ
hereâs my strawpage!! Iâm also pretty active on Pinterest so you can find the link to that in my strawpage,,
â While on a reconnaissance mission near the village of Rippach, he was killed by a cannon ball that tore off his left arm, pierced his torso and tore open his right side. â
happy pride! remember that being a transgender is everything but fiction. there are so many real historical figures from every century about whose transgenderism we aren't even aware of
on this picture i drew Alexandr Andreevich Alexandrov - cavalry officer of the russian imperial army that participated in napoleonic wars. people persistently keep on misgendering mispronounsing deadnaming and calling him a crossdresser although alexandrov clearly stated that he didn't want to be called by his deadname and being treated like anything but a man. that's an interesting historical figure and i wanted to draw attention to his person. i can't tell everything about him in only one post so i recomend you to read about alexandrov by yourself
also be proud of yourself and remember that you're valid! đłïžâđđłïžââ§ïž
The main example of Junotâs possible bisexuality is his close attachment to Napoleon, however I would like to put forward the possibility of him experiencing attraction to other men as well. Out of all the men who knew Junot the best, such as his aides-de-camp or his valet Heldt, none of them left any memoirs or written sources about Junot, and so his personal relationships with men are ultimately a mystery. His childhood friend Marmont wrote a memoir, but Marmont writes little about their friendship and is furthermore an unreliable author due to his tendency to alter events to depict himself in the best possible light. However, there are a few sources from men who knew Junot that indicate that his possibly fruity behaviour was not limited to his feelings for Napoleon. Decades after Junotâs death, Marshal de Castellane wrote of him:
In a book published in 1882, âCeux qui mangent la pomme: racontars parisiensâ, the author Philibert Audebrand recalls his acquaintance with an elderly war veteran named Bonaventure who had known Junot in Egypt. Naturally this source can be doubted since it was written over 80 years after the Egyptian campaign and is based on oral transmission of the events, but it is nonetheless noteworthy that in Audebrandâs conversation with Bonaventure he was struck by both Junotâs devotion to Napoleon and Bonaventureâs devotion to Junot:
â"Ah! "My friend," added the invalid (Bonaventure), "never attach yourself to a man, especially to a great man!"
"Very well," I (Audebrand) replied; "but you, who tell me this, confess that you have never been able to detach yourself from Junot, and I see that you do not pass a day without thinking of him."
"Not a single day. You are telling the truth."â
Lastly, in Ida Saint-Elmeâs account of Junotâs complete mental breakdown in Illyria, she mentions that he formed a very close attachment to a local man who was also suffering from mental illness:
âHis (Junotâs) heart, naturally benevolent and affectionate, had even immediately formed a bond there, perhaps the last that would ever keep him in life, and to which he attached more value with each passing day. By a comparison more natural than one might think, but which strangely leaves one to reflect, he had made his Pylades out of a fool of fairly good family, and of fairly innocent morals, so that no one opposed his actions, but endowed moreover with a satirical and buffoonish mind, which exercised itself without scruple on all estates. The burles, sometimes facetious, sometimes bloody, of this Diogenes of Istria, alone had the privilege of enlivening the gloomy worries of the fallen hero; and the latter took an indescribable pleasure in seeing ridiculed all the greatness of the society which he had so dearly conquered, and which he was to enjoy so little.
It was above all in the burlesque imitation of the pomp of the governors and the very French elegance of the intendants that the wicked fool excelled, and it was then that the joy he knew how to inspire in his poor and illustrious friend knew no bounds. It was in one of these fits that the enthusiastic Duke of AbrantĂšs threw himself into his arms and invested him with the noble insignia of the Legion of Honor, himself passing the grand cordon over to him. I saw, upon my return to Goritzia, Monseigneur's fool still grotesquely adorned with these attributes, which only the will of the Emperor could remove from him, and whose bizarre legitimacy our French authorities were obliged, if I am not mistaken, to recognize.â
It is worth noting that Ida Saint-Elme compares Junot to Orestes and his friend to Pylades: in Greek mythology, Orestes was a prince driven mad by the Furies and Pylades was his cousin and best friend. Their mutual devotion to each other in Greek tragedies led some ancient authors, such as Lucian of Samosata, to interpret them as lovers.
And now for the part I imagine youâve all been waiting for: Junot and Napoleon. Laure Junot writes in her memoirs that Junot loved Napoleon more than he loved her, but since Laure isnt always the most trustworthy source letâs look at some other primary sources! From the very beginning of his career, Junot was noted for his extraordinary devotion to his general. A French newspaper from 1798 described him as
âthe brave Junot, that aide-de-camp so devoted to his country, so tenderly attached to his generalâ.
In one of Junotâs few surviving personal letters, written to his father from Egypt in 1798 and published in a Burgundian newspaper, he expresses his admiration of Napoleon:
âAs we were returning to Cairo, well satisfied with our expedition, we heard the terrible news of the defeat of our squadron. This irreparable loss has afflicted us; but we will be able to get out of the situation, the fortune and genius of our leader are better than ten French squadrons.â
In Egypt, Junot got into a duel with another man, Lanusse, after Lanusse insulted Napoleon. Many years later when Junot angrily shouted at Laure after she insulted Pauline Bonaparte, Laure rightly deduced that this outburst meant that Junot was still in love with Pauline, and so we know that fighting to protect somebodyâs reputation was one of the ways that Junot expressed his romantic feelings.
In 1811, terrible misfortune struck when Junot was shot in the face in a skirmish in Spain, and complications related to this injury later caused the sharp decline of his mental stability. The wound also robbed him of his famous good looks, and his son Napoleon Junot later recalled how deeply his father was hurt when the Emperor called him ugly:
âAt the circle, one day, he (Napoleon) said aloud to him (Junot):
"My God, Junot, how ugly this wound has made you!"
My father made no answer the first time; but, when he returned home, he wept bitterly over these harsh words spoken by him whom he loved so much! He didn't even tell my mother about it.
At the next circle, the same compliment from the Emperor, and as one may imagine, even more acute grief on the part of my poor father. This time only did he not have the strength to keep her to himself, and he poured out his sorrow in my mother's bosom.â
In Laure Junotâs memoirs she blames Napoleonâs harsh treatment of her husband in 1812 for his eventual madness and death, and in a letter written to Berthier about the bulletins in which Napoleon had denounced Junot she wrote:
âThese Bulletins advanced the life of the unfortunate duke... He talked about them constantly in his delirium.â
To conclude, the nature of Junotâs relationships with men is really up to personal interpretation, but I hope this post has made clear why, in my opinion, his feelings exceed what was considered appropriate for platonic friendships of the time.
Lastly I would like to share a drawing of Ganymede by Michelangelo that Junot kept in his private art collection, and which could certainly be interpreted as homoerotic. But Iâm putting it below the cut so please only look if you are comfortable with artistic nudity đ
Mostly physical drawings,, then some bessimu sillies bellow that I made.. for some reason.. itâs based off happy tree friends fanart that my friend showed me đ
I really donât know WHAT possessed me to make these,,
Rant: What constitutes a âgoodâ historical fandom?
I suppose everybody has their own different definitions of fandom ingrained within them â for some people, it's simply a community to share their interests with; for others it might be a place where some buffonery is expected and where memes and jokes and silliness are part of the fun..
Some people approach fandom almost academically, others emotionally, others creatively, others socially
Honestly I don't think any of those approaches are inherently wrong on their own
And I suppose at the end of the day there is no single objectively âcorrectâ answer to what fandom SHOULD be, though the answer may seem obvious to some,, depending on how strongly they feel about it.
I am aware that when you slap the word âhistoricalâ in front of fandom, however, it changes the connotation and expectations slightly for many people â because, obviously, these were real human beings and not fictional characters written solely for consumption
These were people who lived, suffered, contradicted themselves, made choices, hurt others, loved others, participated in systems larger than themselves, and were shaped by circumstances we can never fully reconstruct.
So naturally, treating them EXACTLY like fictional dolls can become uncomfortable for some people in ways that aren't necessarily present in fully fictional fandoms
At the end of the day, it's my personal opinion that the best historical fandoms are the ones that still attempt to honor â or at the VERY least retain some recognizable degree of continuity with â the actual people and historical realities that inspired the creativity in the first place
And I think that's where a lot of my frustration with certain fandom trends comes from..
Not because I think people should never joke, never make AUs, never project, never exaggerate dynamics, never meme-ify figures, never ship, never get emotionally attached, etc. That would be unrealistic and honestly hypocritical because fandom itself is inherently transformative (plus I do it all the time)
Humans naturally reinterpret things through emotion, humor, aesthetics, projection, and personal interest.. That's just how creativity works
But i do think there is a point where transformation starts and ends up becoming a sort of. total replacement
Where the historical figure gradually stops functioning as a complicated person shaped by a historical world and instead becomes a fandom construct wearing their face (an original character of sorts)
And once that happens, it can begin creating this weird situation where the fandom version ends up replacing the actual historical memory, while aesthetic motifs become more important than actual relationships; ships overtake ideology, memes overtake material reality, and complexity slowly collapses into a handful of socially dominant character archetypes
So for myself, it's not really fandom that bothers me; but what ends up mutating from it?
Because to me, the most fascinating thing ABOUT history is precisely the complexity.. The contradictions.. The inability to sort everyone neatly into modern categories or simplistic morality narratives.. The instability.. The humanity
The French Revolution is interesting because it was full of people who fundamentally disagreed with each other while all believing themselves to be saving France
The Napoleonic era is interesting because it contains ambition, idealism, ego, nationalism, reform, violence, charisma, catastrophe, mythmaking, and human contradiction all tangled together into one gigantic historical knot
Flattening all of that into
âgood revolutionaryâ
âevil dictatorâ
âsoft boyâ
âcrazy guyâ
âboywifeâ
âevil monarchistâ
etc.
just makes history feel smaller
coughss
to me
I think one of the healthiest things a historical fandom can do is remain consciously aware that there is a difference between âthis is my interpretationâ and âthis is the historical person in their entirety.â
Because we ALL know that interpretation itself is not the enemy, and neither projection nor creativity is the enemy
Unselfaware flattening is
And I think fandom spaces become far more interesting when people allow multiple forms of engagement to coexist..
serious research
emotional attachment
humor
art
analysis
AUs
critical discussion
speculation
historiography
personal interpretation
WITHOUT immediately trying to socially monopolize the âcorrectâ way to engage with the period or the figures within it
At least to me, the best historical fandoms are the ones that keep history feeling alive rather than simplified
Not sterile
Not flattened
Not reduced to discourse templates
