lxdyrochford

[lxdyrochford]

jane boleyn-parker + instagram

#tudors.aes #( cruella de vil | muse ) #I have a lot of thoughts on each and every pic but primarily: modern jane wouldn't take your name! sorry george! #jane boleyn #jane rochford #in case anyone else cares about my shitty edits

[lxdyrochford]

With a few glasses of wine inside her, Jane was beginning to feel a little bit giggly.

It was unlike her to drink, but everyone around her seemed well in her cups, so she was allowing herself to get dizzy just this once. After all, with God’s blessing, coronations only came around once or twice in a lifetime; she would likely not see another, and she was determined to enjoy herself. She was not naturally the sort of person who was at home in gatherings like this, too introspective and shy, too easily made grief-stricken by wine, but she had been bouyed up by the crowd. She had been dancing for almost an hour when she finally begged off and collapsed onto a nearby bench, massaging her foot.

“I just don’t understand why men can’t keep to their own toes!” she exclaimed, not looking to see who was around her, but sure, in that way that tipsy women often are, that she liked them very much.

starter for @sarahtalbot

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( sarah talbot ) #the banquet!! #tudors.coronation

[lxdyrochford]

By the time the court was ready to go in for dinner, Jane’s shoulders were aching, but she was carried along by the lightness and cheer around her, and she found even her usually heavy soul lightened by the celebration, by the hoarse cries of the crowd outside the Palace of Westminster that continued outside, by the sounds of laughter and music as everyone filed in to the great hall. Precedence seemed to have been thrown to the wind, except for the royal family, and Jane smoothed down the deep blue of her dress and felt, for the first time in a while, like the fashionable, beautiful woman she had once been.

“Oh!” she gasped, despite herself, as they entered the hall and she saw the gold-and-silver draped walls. For a moment she was a girl of eleven again, being brought to her first court functions by her parents, the daughter of a Baron, not a Viscountess in her own right...speaking of which, where was George? She felt rather lost here without him, despite their differences, and it was while casting around for her husband that she, instead, alighted upon the Duchess of Somerset. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she found it remarkably easy to maintain her courtier’s mask. “Your Grace,” she said, and, despite how it hurt her, she dipped a perfect curtsey.

starter for @alastrinie

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( alastrinie seymour ) #DUN DUN DUUUUHN #finally...worlds collide

[lxdyrochford]

starter call !  for jane rochford. if you want a starter from this weird, introverted, complicated lady, reply w your muse’s name and I’ll get on it !!

#tudors.start #reply don't like tho so I can keep track. I'm an easily confused bean

[lxdyrochford]

adelasiavalencia:

the other woman pulled off grief far better than adelasia could ever hope for, and she instantly felt insignificant next to the great beauty. however, if there was anything dell was good at, it was faking it. “it is awakening to be faced with the touch of death so soon, and to such a powerful man. it often almost seems impossible for a king to pass.” she admitted, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. she pondered the question before nodding slowly. “yes, greatly, i admit. i am not used to the winters, but i cannot deny it is a beautiful view, especially in the early mornings.” she admitted shyly. she was used to the court life, but not english court. 

Jane agreed so strongly with Adelasia that her face actually lit up for a second. “I know,” she enthused, her real feelings, for once, breaking through her courtier’s facade. “He seemed so utterly immortal, and for him to pass so suddenly...” She shuddered a little. She herself was no stranger to sudden death, but to see a man in his prime struck down by such ill luck, after just a fall from a horse; well, it reminded her all too strongly of the fragility of their own feet on the earth. She crossed herself and shook her head “But so the world moves on, and now we have our new King; a new era will come to pass, and we are lucky enough to see it.”

Feeling now that she had shown a little of herself to the young woman in front of her, Jane could be more real, and she let the mask slip a little, offering the girl her arm so they could wander down the long gallery together. She much preferred to move when talking; her brother often teased that she would wear a passage in the floor of her bedroom, when they were children, with the amount she paced. “The winters are certainly not something to boast of,” she said, “but we will be moving into Lent now, and after that comes May, which is my favourite month! The trees will be budding, and we shall have the most wonderful picnics -- especially,” she said wryly, “if His Grace chooses a wife.”

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( adelasia valencia ) #don't ask me why this is so long sjhjsdkf idk what came over me

[lxdyrochford]

georgebcleyn:

It went like this: first provocation, then discontent, then an inarticulate unease that spread throughout his body like ivy blisters. The cascade of emotions sputtered down with the burgeon of canon fire (not that he had ever been on the battlefield - where had he ever been? what had seen yet? other than the weeping of a great queen in a country that would never be his? had he glimpsed upon the tower of italy? the dunes in the orient? the silken roads? had he carried anything in his arms other than stamps and seals, and accusatory, clandestine notes? what right do you have, he wanted to ask himself, as if not he but another impetuous boy made a travesty out of his wife’s heart).

It went like this: his mouth opened, ajar, not gaping but not able to hurtle syllables into being. Then it closed and a part of him closed with it. The viscount turned away, something nameless pounding in his chest, clawing its way to a light it could not recognize. Like a lion he had seen once, in late Henric’s menagerie, he felt himself prowling and pawing the metal before them even though he did not lift from his seat. Through the entirety of his wife’s outburst (a brief one, merciful like stems cut off from their flowers, which yield not peace but natural order) George remained stolid. It was only at the passing interference (whatever her name is… Seymour) that he dwindled everything within himself so that he could speak out.

“ I will have no more of that. ”

You are my wife and God is playing mummery with both of us, he wanted to utter. How could I change you, whom I had always known? How can I embattle or embrace what I myself cannot understand? That I might have loved you or might even still, but it is like a part I must expunge from my body, like an ailment I must brace? Instead, he leaned in on one leg, presence shifting towards and stealing into her space, then spoke:

“ Whatever bile you drink from your women, I will ask you not to decant my cup with it. The Seymours and our ties with them have nothing to do with this. Do not steep the idea of a grandchild to my father into this venom you seem bent on exploring. ”

“Woman,” she mouthed back at him, silently, as if making any real sound was beyond her. Her face had flamed at such a lash, and she looked away, a single tear caught on her eyelash. She dashed at it with the back of her hand and forced a smile as she caught the eye of one of her fellow former ladies-in-waiting; hopefully, she thought, in that absent way that she did when the pressures of the immediate situation were too much, the King would marry soon, or else there would be no reason for the ladies to remain at court. Then she would have to remain at Hever, and just the idea made her skin itch. She took a sip from her glass, and felt a little more steady.

“It is not my venom you must worry about,” she said, and then she laughed.  The noise sparkled out across the table, and far from attracting attention, only decreased it, as the courtiers near them turned away, satisfied that they were not witnessing an argument, but instead a delightful, if light, conversation. Still with the etchings of humour on her face, Jane ran a finger around the rim of her goblet. “It is your own that spills over me, George.” She put the lightest emphasis on his name, and when she turned away from him, their arms brushed.

“As for the idea of a grandchild,” she said, facing the room, though every pinpoint of her attention was on him, “if you are suggesting that it is my personality that has so damaged our dreams of such a child, I would hope you would take that back, given the experiences we have both had at Hever. At least, you will, if you ever want to be let into my bed again.” She glanced at him sharply out of the corner of her eye. “If that is what you want, of course.”

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( george boleyn ) #the tudor equivalent of do you want to sleep on the couch #I feel like I should tag this with tw miscarriage but it's only lightly implied?? so? idk #ANYWAY. I'M IN PAIN!

[lxdyrochford]

hauntedaughter:

glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the holy spirit. as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. world without end, amen. lips move in silent prayer as tanned fingers grip the beads of the rosary wound around the young woman’s hand. fingers shift only slightly to accompany the next bead on the chain. her pray, though, is interrupted by footsteps. lord, give me strength. this hadn’t been the best place to kneel and pray, but it was the best she could do for she felt a need to speak with her god.   “ i am in the middle of the rosary, ”   she says to whomever is in the room.   “  you have three options. finish the prayers with me, make your business known quickly, or leave until i have the time to listen to whatever you seek.  ”

Jane’s eyebrows rose immediately. Though she was instinctively a shy person, she had been at court long enough to know when to hold her ground and when to bow to outside pressure; she knelt by the stranger. “Perhaps,” she said, softly, crossing herself, “you should not have chosen such a public chapel, my lady. I did not mean to interrupt; by all means, complete your prayers.”

Jane’s faith was a fickle beast, though she would never say so. Her own rosary was smooth under her fingers, but she had been somewhat influenced by her husband’s quiet murmurings and the banned books he kept stored in his trunk, and looking up at the great golden crucifix, she closed her eyes and did not see it. There was no priest to interceed here, so why did she feel so close to God? She crossed herself once more, for the blasphemy, and sat back on her heels, staring unseeing at the altar.

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( isabella de' medici )

[lxdyrochford]

adelasiavalencia:

to say she felt out of place would have been a gross understatement. clad in black, as all polite mourners were, this was one instance where adelasia must grow up and play the part her father had chosen for her. she was the official ambassador of the holy roman empire, and she must act the part. her firey red curls were pulled back into a chic updo, and she curtsied low at the person who had just approached her. “the empire offers it’s sincerest condolences to the crown. he was a good king and a good man.” she said, a sad, polite smile on her lips.

Jane curtseyed in return. It was easy for her to play the part of grieving courtier; she had always worn black well, and there was a hint of the melancholy about her anyway, whatever the circumstances. Besides, she did miss the old King; she had known him for almost her entire life, a constant figurehead, and it felt odd and unbalancing to have him absent. After-all, she owed him everything; her title (her husband’s title, she corrected herself), her livelihood -- her life, sometimes.

“He was both,” she said, with a delicate incline of her head, “and will be much missed. But we must all face our mortality soon enough, my lady. Is it strange to be so far from home?”

Jane had made the court her home since she was five years old; she rarely missed her father’s manor in Norfolk, and as for Hever castle -- well, it contained too many bad memories, and the graveyard too many ghosts, for her to truly feel comfortable there.

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( adelasia valencia )

[lxdyrochford]

georgebcleyn:

He had his mind set on remaining silent, which was not mutiny as much as it was compliance with an innate pull. The meanders they were both in abidance to were elusive ones, tactical if not farcical, unheeded to the very last. And how strenuous could tonight’s silence prove? He only had to endure this for one, maybe two more chimes from the Viennese clock late Henry dotted upon. Endure it ‘til the new Henry - for that was the Cinque Pas nowadays, one eponym carrying into another - would send a hand-carved piece from his venison to their table. One could not leave before that; it was the ultimate faux, and he had seen men tumble down from celestial outskirts for less. So drink it, George, he chuckled sourly in the confines of his mind. Drink it to the dregs.

His hand toyed with the cutlery, inching it ever deeper into the table’s mantel, its prongs leaving traces like dunes in the birchwood. Oh, how craven he felt. How jagged and foreworn about something he usually galloped right into, rattling the frameworks of courtesy and chatter to their bones. By God, man, he urged himself, speak anything that mind mend this. Even for the hour, even for the night - any smooth-tongued veil to cover the rends. But he saw her pinion fingers on the table, sundering it like a glyph of all he could not do. And before he could see it through, he began talking:

“ Did you ever halt to ponder what might have happened, had Anne married your brother first? Had she not gotten herself mingled in that Percy mess and then shipped off to France? I doubt even my father could have secured a papal dispense for such a high-born family falling into the levirate. Thus… thus, we would have never been wed. ”

It wasn’t misery that she felt when she was near George; often, it was far from it. That horrible mixture of love and desire and desperate longing for approval and affection twisted in the base of her ribcage like someone was tugging hard at her heart. It would have been better, she always thought, if he had never shown any affection towards her; she told herself she would’ve been contented, then, to move on, to treat this like the business arrangement it had always been. But the memory of the way they had once been -- it was that that tortured her.

At his words Jane looked up in surprise, and for a moment there was a real spark in her eyes. She rarely confronted him; she had not been raised that way, and besides, she often felt that her fragile heart couldn’t take it. She was quiet unless she was entirely comfortable, and her sharp tongue came out only in those moments. But the idea that he was wishing to be rid of her; that spurred her to irritation. “Just think who else you could have had,” she said, somewhat sharply, though she kept her voice low under the hum of the other courtiers. That their marriage was not happy was quite well known -- how could it not be, she thought, a little bitterly, with George’s affairs -- but she didn’t want to air their laundry. They were not George’s uncle and his wife, having screaming rows in Hampton Court. She would not give him an excuse to pack her off to Hever; however much court life frightened her sometimes, it was all she knew.

“I often wonder,” she said, knowing she was being needlessly cruel, but unable to help herself, pent-up venom, “why your father doesn’t simply find a dispensation for us. Surely the great Thomas Boleyn must be impatient for a grandchild by now. You should ask him to find you a better wife -- it wouldn’t be too difficult, I’d imagine. Perhaps whatever her name is...Seymour. Two dispensations: not much harder than one.”

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( george boleyn )

[lxdyrochford]

Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world.

Hilary Mantel, ’Wolf Hall‘

#( cruella de vil | muse )

[lxdyrochford]

I had prepared and longed for this day ever since I was a little girl. To be Queen of an exotic country – and honor and love my husband unconditionally. Christian was said to be charming, interested in art and literature – and even fond of acting. I could not imagine a more perfect husband.

#( evil queen | mirror ) #q

[lxdyrochford]

georgebcleyn:

“ Yes, dear, it sure is crammed in every blessed corner of this palace. ”His tongue dove into wine in the hopes of extinguishing its ire - as was the custom, the damned, God-forsaken pattern he could not figure out, Jane always reduced him to an array of archetypes. The undeservedly cold husband, the irritated carouser, the reprobate; and he loathed all of them with a sensuous, visceral intensity, one that rose him to heights and depths of emotion he never otherwise comprehended. He remembered the first time he had seen Francois I, when he was but a boy, prone to idolatry and gyrating towards the sun… and the moment that magnificent king sent his wife crying to the matrimonial room. Claude’s chiseled shoulders wrecked in intermittent, suffocated sobs, that was what he recalled. And he said to himself, then, what is a man? What is a man that does this? Not much man in him at all. Now, years later, here he was. A decade into a marriage where for the first five years a topological ocean spread between them, and for the next five, a genealogical one. They were like victims of all the earth’s sciences, vying against a moment where they might have gotten some sense of what happened to them.

He did not turn to her after he uttered his distant remark. He could smell the faint, pressed-flower smell that always clung to her clothes, something verdant but also long lost, suspended in paper. He could see how much effort, diligent exertion, went into the little details that upheld her appearance. It might have broken his heart if he had not kept it reined in between his teeth.

Jane’s feelings for her husband were so complex that she often didn’t know where to begin with them. She remembered her brother had sat her down, once, a few years into their marriage - her kind, smart, somewhat terrifying brother, his hat askew, his eyes dark - and had asked her, does he make you this miserable, Janey? The answer was -- yes, and no, and yes again.

There was always something heavy and strange between them. There was rarely any comfort or ease, except in moments that Jane snatched at, open-handed. It was almost more frustration she felt than grief; she could be witty, be clever, be polished, when she was in the right mood, but George tongue-tied and knotted her until she was undone. She looked up at his profile, and felt him not look at her.

“I suppose better here than Hampton Court,” she said, glancing around at the new, unfrayed tapestries, the glossy stonework. Whitehall had only been completed six years ago, and didn’t yet show the wear-and-tear of court life. She found the small-talk unbearable; but she always had, with George. She almost envied those maids in the late Queen’s rooms who had wept over unrequited love; unrequited love outside of marriage, she thought, taking a small breath, was so much better than unrequited love inside a marriage.

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( george boleyn ) #lads. LADS. this is UNBEARABLE.

[lxdyrochford]

bellaharcourt:

“nor i! whitehall is very much suited to its purpose, but even so… it is a little stifling at times. perhaps some will grow bored and leave early, though i should hope there will be little room for boredom.”

“I know that it’s always been one of the smaller palaces,” Jane said, fanning herself a little as the heat of so many bodies in one room brought a flush to her skin. She smiled a little at the thought. “I can’t imagine the more elderly members of the court will be able to handle this crush for long!”

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( isabella harcourt )

[lxdyrochford]

ofxvalois:

You have not seen Paris, Madeleine thought, and a grip of sorrow and longing tightened her throat. Court back in Paris was enormous and splendid and, in her eyes, english court did not come close to it, even during as important event as coronation. “ You are right, the place is quite crowdy now. Is there any possibility to meet with his majesty before the coronation? What do you think, lady… “ 

“Lady Rochford,” Jane said, dipping a curtsey. The girl’s French accent was very noticeable, and Jane’s eyes widened a little as she realised who she must be -- the little French Princesse. If only she had a talent for languages to rival George’s; her own French was rudimentary at best, so she would have to soldier on as best she could in English. “Your servant, your highness. I should think that his Grace will certainly frequent the court before the coronation, but he will be in mourning for his parents, of course.”

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( madeleine de valois )

[lxdyrochford]

cfnorfolk:

    -    “ We are witnessing the rebirth of our world, my lady, my heart almost weeps for any whom fail to see it with their own eyes. There are opportunities at every turn, are you excited by thus? ”

Jane smiled at the younger Duchess. “A rebirth,” she echoed. “You know, I think you are quite right. We should attempt to see it as a change, if not for the better, then at least towards something -- a crowd can’t take away from that excitement!” No matter how anxious, she added silently to herself, such a crowd made her feel.

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( mary fitzroy )

[lxdyrochford]

clcmence:

               the lady’s comment seemed somewhat misjudged. clemence could not possibly fathom how someone could be so naive to think that a royal court could not hold so many people !  she almost rolled her eyes, but forced herself to stop. the duchess of suffolk would be ashamed to see her daughter act in such a way, a lady of royal birth.  clemence was in no mood to listen to the grumblings of her mother. ❛   is this your first time at court ?   ❜

Jane couldn’t help but be offended. Did she truly look so countrified as to be mistaken for a newcomer -- and by a girl as young as this? She had been at the court of Henry VIII in various capacities since she was six years old, and her comment had been born out of idle surprise rather than any real confusion. “Not at all,” she said, with a small amount of irritation. “Indeed, I remember the late King’s coronation, though I was very young at the time. It was only thinking that I’m surprised Whitehall can hold us all.”

#( maleficent | interactions ) #( clemence brandon )

[lxdyrochford]

“You know, I never would’ve thought the court could hold so many people. I suppose that everyone wants to be in place before the coronation, but even so !”

#tudors.start #( maleficent | interactions ) #SHRUG EMOJI