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catofadifferentcolor · 2 years

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Terrible Fic Ideas #14: Game of Thrones, but make it Rhaella

One of the things I find most irritating about GoT is that so often women are nothing more than victims - Rhaella is raped throughout her marriage to her kingly brother-husband and no one interferes; Elia is raped and murdered with her children after being held hostage and abandoned by her husband; &c. It could be argued that this is an artifact of the genre and that such things did unfortunately occur in the Middle Ages, and that for every female victim in the story there is another strong female - Arya, Olenna Tyrell, &c. But I still find it irritating.

So I thought: what would it take to give Rhaella Targaryen a glimmer of happiness? Or, more accurately: what if Jon Snow was Rhaella's son?

Bear with me:

Rhaella's obstetric history, like most everything to do with her life, is tear-jerking. Two stillbirths, three miscarriages, and three infant deaths between the births of three healthy children in 259, 276, and 284. One of those infant deaths, Prince Aegon Targaryen, was born in 272, two months premature, and died in 273.

This being an AU, I figure, what if instead of 272, it was 282, keeping it close to Jon Snow's canon birth year of 283 - and giving him an actual logical reason to be named Aegon.

Just imagine it:

Rhaegar, not putting as much stock in prophesy, crowns his wife Queen of Love and Beauty at the Tourney at Harrenhal. Lyanna is made a lady-in-waiting to Queen Rhaella - part a ploy by the king to check any action by the North and the Stormlands, part a way to give her a chance to know her betrothed before the wedding.

The following year the court finds itself in the Vale, where Robert and Ned are still fostering. Because Lyanna is her lady-in-waiting, Rhaella gets to know young Ned Stark quite well.

It's not a romance. Ned is, after all, four years younger than her oldest son. There is a huge gap of experience between them, to say nothing of the fact that carrying on an affair is not in either of their natures. But a friendship forms - perhaps an odd one, yes, but Ned is chivalrous and kind and a genuinely good man, and Rhaella is beautiful and sad and lonely.

Lord Arryn throws a massive leaving feast. Both parties - perhaps egged on in part by Robert, or particularly strong spirts, or neither being able to hold their liquor - end up blindingly, stupefyingly drunk. Rhaella and Ned sleep together. Rhaella is sober enough to remember, Ned is not.

Jon Snow, aka Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Summerhall, is born nine months later. As historically it was difficult for a woman to be sure of a pregnancy until the fifth month, Rhaella genuinely thinks the child is Aerys' until it is born, full term, when it should be at least two months early. She is lucky she can attribute the baby's dark hair to their grandmother, Betha Blackwood, but knows her luck will not hold out forever.

(She also protests the name Aegon because of their infant grandson, but Aerys will not be swayed.)

By this point two of her ladies are pregnant out of wedlock - Ashara Dayne with Brandon Stark's child, and Lyanna with her son Rhaegar's. For their safety, Rhaella sends all three to Starfall for their protection and tells the world her baby died in the cradle like the others.

The Rebellion still happens. Rhaella still dies in childbed with Daenerys. The difference is that when Ned Stark gets to the Tower of Joy, he finds his sister and her baby dead, Ashara slowly dying from the fever that took her own child, and a reasonably healthy toddler he is told is the lost Prince of Summerhall. Having seen what happened during the Sack, Ned decides to claim Prince Aegon as a bastard sired during his youth at the Eyrie for his own protection. Aegon is rechristened Jon Snow.

It is not until Ned gets back to Winterfell that he has chance to read all the papers he took from The Tower of Joy - including a diary kept by the Queen and a letter for her son explaining why she sent him away - that Ned realizes Jon really is a bastard he sired during his youth at the Eyrie.

The other big difference is that Brandon Stark lives. He marries Caitlyn, becomes Warden of the North, and gives Ned a castle on the northern end of Long Lake.

Things continue apace. Ned is his brother's - and Robert's - lealest lord, but refuses further honors out of a desire to keep Jon protected from those that might harm him or use him for their own ends. As a result he becomes the Stark equivalent of Howland Reed, rarely leaving his lands - though he ends up fostering each of his brother's children in turn as Brandon fears Caitlyn's southron influence. Ned also ends up eventually marrying Dacey Mormont - with the understanding that Jon will remain heir to Long Lake before any of their children together.

Then Jon Arryn dies. Robert comes up to Winterfell to ask Ned to be his Hand. Ned refuses - or, rather, is saved from refusing by his brother Brandon, who makes it clear that the south has taken enough from House Stark, and none of his blood shall travel below the Neck while he has breath his body.

Robert makes someone else the Hand - I'm inclined to go with Mace Tyrell, simply because the Realm is hemorrhaging money and Mace is willing to hand it over for influence - but Cersei's adultery is still found out. Robert still dies. The Hand is still beheaded on fabricated charges. The Seven Kingdoms still devolve into war.

At some point while the North is still gathering banners, Jon Snow makes the comment: what we need is a fair and just king, who will rule in accordance with the law - and within his means.

It is then and only then that Ned tells him the truth - that his mother is Queen Rhaella, but with Viserys dead and Targaryen inheritance putting brothers before daughters, Jon has the best loyalist claim to the throne. (Is he a bastard? Yes, but his mother's husband claimed him as his own, and Rhaella was a Targaryen in her own right.)

Jon doesn't want it, but it is his birthright and his duty. Now just to convince the North that it's the best course to take... and then the rest of the kingdoms.

Bonuses include: 1) Ned turning as white as a sheet when he realizes "his bastard" Jon Snow is actually his bastard and fainting. Then awkwardly having to explain to his Maester how he got the bump on his head alone in his rooms the next day. 2) At least one of the Kingsguard thinking Jon Snow has Rhaella's look - Barristan Selmy probably, but a Jaime who regrets being unable to save Elia and her children would be nice too - and putting two and two together (because she was the queen and somebody had to guard her, even when drunk at feasts. It wasn't their place to stop her - and even if it was the late queen deserved whatever comforts she could get.). This should be the most awkward treasonous conversation ever to occur. And 3) Benjen having known all along, having seen Ned and Rhaella sneak off together at the leaving feast, and having conspired behind the scenes with Maester Aemon to secure their nephew's legacy (i.e., retrieving Dark Sister, gathering supporting evidence with wandering crows in the south, &c).

That's all I have. In truth, I see this as a fic with two distinct parts - Rhaella having a really decent time for once in the Vale, and Ned afterwards raising the child he doesn't at first know to be his and then protecting that child in a way that he, with the burdens of marriage and the North, could not in canon.

As always, feel free to adopt this bun, but link back if you do something with it.

More Terrible Fic Ideas

#got #game of thrones #plot bunny #fic ideas #ned stark x rhaella targaryen #jon snow is a targaryen #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #prince of summerhall #Jon snow #ned stark #rhaella targaryen

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lemonhemlock · 1 year

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https://at.tumblr.com/lemonhemlock/bro-wtf-happened-with-aegon-iii-and-viserys-ii/83go94e2ymsm

Can you please explain what happened to Ageon III and Daenaera’s children?

And Viserys II aswell? What went wrong with them? I just saw the show recently and haven’t read the books so I’m not sure (2/2)

Aegon III and Viserys II together produced 4 boys and 4 girls, enough for 4 exclusive Targaryen matches, should they have wished. Aegon had Daeron (143 AC), Baelor (144 AC), Daena (145 AC), Rhaena (147) and Elaena (150) - my goodness, these birth ages are so close, it's almost like Daenaera Velaryon is just a living womb or smth. 🙄 Viserys started having children earlier - Aegon IV (135 AC), Aemon (136 AC) and Naerys (138 AC).

The most baffling decision in all of this is that Viserys II forced his children Aegon IV and Naerys to marry in 153 AC, when it was clear that they couldn't stand each other. Aegon was generally a vile person, but he absolutely terrorized Naerys. She was uniquely predisposed to be his greatest victim. She couldn't escape him, she was frail, had health issues, was emaciated, repressed, an extremely religious person and would have preferred to become a septa. Failing THAT, Aemon and Naerys were presumably in love and would have probably managed to have a far happier marriage.

I get that, going by Targaryen logic, the eldest son has dibs on the eldest daughter, but Aegon made Naerys' life a living hell. He loathed Naerys, but insisted on having sex with her, just to terrorize her, even though she was obviously very uncomfortable with the concept of sex in the first place AND EVEN THOUGH Aegon already had tens of mistresses and could have gotten his rocks off anytime. Naerys almost died giving birth to Daeron II in 153 AC and BEGGED Aegon to leave her alone, since she had already provided an heir for him. Aegon refused just because he was the biggest arsehole who ever lived. He kept getting Naerys pregnant against her will until she eventually did die in childbed in 183 AC.

Most of this shit was happening when her father was still alive. What did he do about the constant rape and health threats his daughter was subjected to? Not a damn thing. Boneheaded nitwit BAELOR did more for Naerys than her father ever did by sending Aegon to Essos one time after Naerys was recovering from giving birth to twins so he wouldn't get her pregnant immediately again (!!)

Even Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, who was so pressed about his brother torturing his beloved Naerys, was such a fucking beta to this clown. I swear, all this man did his entire life was act like a goddamn cuck for his loser male relatives, even though he was arguably the sanest and the most capable out of all them, but he was too much of a bitch to grow a spine. At one point, two dudes try to assassinate Aegon AND INSTEAD OF LETTING THEM, Aemon saves Aegon and gets killed instead. Aegon kills Naerys a year later by getting her pregnant again. 🤦‍♀️

Anyway, it's not that I would particularly wish to saddle any woman with such a vile worm like Aegon IV, but it seems evident within the text that Daena would have been a far, far better match for him than Naerys. Daena is known to history as "the Defiant"; she had a lively and fiery personality and actually was willing to have voluntary sex with Aegon. Even Aegon seems to have liked Daena, if he was willing to sneak his way into the Maidenvault to get into her pants. They have a bastard son together, Daemon Blackfyre, encumbering House Targaryen with 4 (5?) future Blackfyre rebellions, because, guess what, bastards DO create succession crises in this universe !!!!

What you also need to understand is that the throne passed down like this: Aegon III -> Daeron I -> Baelor -> Daena -> Rhaena -> Elaena -> Viserys II -> Aegon IV -> children of Aegon IV

My favourite part in all of this is when, after Baelor dies, Viserys looks at this line of succession, sees his nieces are in front of him and says "You know what. Fuck that. My mother WAS a usurper" and proceeds to proclaim himself king. Then dies a year later, allegedly poisoned by his own rat of a son.

Aegon IV is such a fucking trainwreck of a king that I won't even attempt to get into it, but probably the worst thing that the does for the ENTIRE realm for generations to come is to legitimize his Great Bastards (i.e. children birthed by mistresses coming from noble houses) and to intentionally spread rumours that his trueborn son, the future Daeron II, was Naerys' bastard fathered by Aemon, just to fuck with Naerys, Aemon and Daeron. Daeron II will later have to deal with the Blackfyre rebellion thanks to his dear old dad.

Aegon IV also was the father of Bloodraven, whom I low-key (high-key) think is evil.

So that's Viserys' side of the family, but first came Aegon's side. Daeron I must have only waited a hot minute after his balls finished dropping, because he thinks that invading Dorne is a fine idea and that he should totally become a great military hero at the tender age of 14. This is not the most celebratory thing, because Dorne doesn't really want to be conquered. They don't want to be part of the Seven Kingdoms. Daeron is, therefore, assassinated, and is followed on the throne by Baelor.

Baelor the Blessed. Yes, that fucking lunatic. What more can I say. Another fucking half-baked idea this family had (Daeron I, it must have been his brainchild) was to wed BAELOR to freaking Daena. The same Daena who craved Aegon IV's musty sausage and "idolized" her brother Daeron. I feel like (??) either of those marriages would have been much better? What on god's green earth was going on in this House of Commons? Similarly, Baelor would have been better paired with his religious sister Rhaena (who later became a septa) or with Naerys herself. So many religious fanatics in this generation for some reason.

Either way, Baelor was a very special type of idiot. He walked all the way to Dorne to secure Aemon's release (who had been captured as a result of Daeron I's assassination). He voluntarily went into a pit of vipers to free Aemon, suspended inside a cage. He felt the gods would protect him, you see. A captive, probably very weakened Aemon had to physically drag this imbecile into the cage with him, so he wouldn't die. Then he had to free his own damn self using the key, climb out of the cage with a blacked-out Baelor on his back and carry him along the road until they reached safety.

Baelor is kind of a mixed bag in the sense that sometimes he pulls some shit out of his arse and you start thinking maybe there is something to this guy, but then he goes and does something norm-defyingly stupid like imprisoning his sisters in the Maidenvault, so he wouldn't be "tempted" to have relations with them, or fasting himself to death because he had "lusts". Even Baelor wasn't immune to the targussy; he just couldn't handle it.

ANYWAY, I'm sure there's stuff I've missed with the Aegserys cousins, but now you have the basics.

#aegon iii targaryen #viserys ii targaryen #aegon iv targaryen #prince aemon the dragonknight #naerys targaryen #daeron i targaryen #baelor i targaryen #daena targaryen #rhaena targaryen #elaena targaryen #asoiaf #house targaryen #ask #anon

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horizon-verizon · 1 year

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Are they trying to force Naerys/Aemon dynamic to Helaena/Aemond in the show🤢? There is absolutely zero hints/implications in the book that Aemond cared about helaena as a sister let alone having a crush on her or something. I'm tired of them trying so hard into forcing "tis a who studied the blade and philosophy" Aemond down on our throats

I mean the show is really trash and they drop the ball when they decided to Whitewash the worst of the greens Aemond/Alicent. If they're are desperately want to make this conflict "grey" they've Daeron/Helaena out there instead they choose Maegor reborn again?!

Yes, they are trying a Naerys/Aemond dynamic on these two. However, Aemond is only like Aemon in that they are both men, princes, Targaryens, and warriors. They have nothing alike personality or motivation wise.

While Naerys and Helaena are alike in that both:

are women married to their brothers in arrangements by their parents

deal with sexual abuse and rape (Helaena in the book even was most likely not always consenting)

are examples of "simple", gender-conforming, "submissive" women for wanting to be in two feudal/patriarchal female-oriented institutions/states: motherhood and nunnery/septahood (religious vocation for women)

These are for how feudal patriarchy makes these women victims, not full characters or persons. Granted, there's nothing much Gyldayn writes about Helaena besides her grief, madness and great fit for motherhood, but that's the fact of Gyldayn. We don't know if Helaena had her own sort of inner strength that was ignored, discounted, or never discovered. (EDIT yes she did) I personally think that there's room for it. And other distinctive traits that could actually make her her own person.

Despite what Aemond says, motherhood does not make one weak. HotD failed to make Helaena into a person, as her autistic-coded self still makes autism a personality trait (when it isn't) with her only ever showing some distinctiveness through it, that part in HotD where she talks about Aegon drunkenly abusing her and ignoring elsewise, and her playing with bugs.

The love for Helaena is mostly about how she suffers and her added, useless-to-the-greens, powers -- not who she is or how it sho s the greens' negligence. Because you will see many fans just take her powers as is

Naerys and Aemon are described in A World of Ice and Fire (written by Maester Yandel) as:

Queen Naerys—the one woman Aegon IV bedded in whom he took no pleasure—was pious and gentle and frail, and all these things the king misliked. Childbirth also proved a trial to Naerys, for she was small and delicate. When Prince Daeron was born on the last day of 153 AC, Grand Maester Alford warned that another pregnancy might kill her. Naerys was said to address her brother thus: "I have done my duty by you, and given you an heir. I beg you, let us live henceforth as brother and sister." We are told that Aegon replied: "That is what we are doing." Aegon continued to insist his sister perform her wifely duties for the rest of her life.

Matters between them were inflamed further by Prince Aemon, their brother, who had been inseparable from Naerys when they were young. Aegon's resentment of his noble, celebrated brother was plain to all, for the king delighted in slighting Aemon and Naerys both at every turn. Even after the Dragonknight died in his defense, and Queen Naerys perished in childbed the year after, Aegon IV did little to honor their memory.

("The Targaryen Kings: Aegon IV")

AND

She had skin so pale that it seemed almost translucent, men said. She was small of frame (and made smaller by having little appetite), with very fine features, and singers wrote songs in praise of her eyes—a deep violet in hue and very large, framed by pale lashes.

She loved Aemon best of her brothers, for he knew how to make her laugh—and he had something of the same piety that she possessed, while Aegon did not. She loved the Seven as dearly as she loved her brother, if not more so, and might have been a septa if her lord father had allowed it. But he did not, and Viserys instead wed her to his son Aegon in 153 AC, with King Aegon III's blessing. The singers say that Aemon and Naerys both wept during the ceremony, though the histories tell us Aemon quarreled with Aegon at the wedding feast, and that Naerys wept during the bedding rather than the wedding.

("The Targaryen Kings: Viserys II")

So we also know little about Naerys but more about her than we do Helaena.

There is nothing to suggest, nor nothing in Aemond's personality that shows he and Helaena would have ever been attracted to each other. I also think if we were to grey-ify anyone it would be Daeron or Helaena, even though Daeron did kill a whole town for Maelor's death when it definitely wasn't it or its lady's faults. Maybe make Daeron promise to be his nephew and niece's protector after seeing and showing how Aegon and Aemond don't care about them, favoring Maelor because of his secondary son status (secondary, not second) and then feeling guilt for their deaths, IDK. Honestly, the jump cut between the 5th and 6th episodes made us lose so much. I already complained about it multiple times, but yeah. Goes to show how much the writers and show runners feel for the side trying to win on the basis of male privilege and greed.

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sheisbeautyweareworldass · 8 months

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sapochnick talking about how the gender violence inflicted by men on women in asoiaf shouldn’t be ignored my brother in christ you ADDED UNEXISTENT GENDER VIOLENCE TO YOUR SHOW. he gave alyssa v’s c-section to aemma because he wanted an explicit childbed death on tv. he aged alicent down so he could have a child bride rape victim. he made daemon choke rhaenyra so he could have an abusive marriage gotcha moment.

yeah the way women were treated should be a topic because the whole dance is based on gender violence. adding sexual, marital violence just for the sake of it just means you’re profiting over these storylines

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aethelfleds · 4 years

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Victims of the Childbed - Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal

In the summer of 1482, the time of Maria’s birth, Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband Fernando II of Aragon were embroiled in a centuries-long conflict with the Emirate of Granada over the remaining lands under Muslim control. The Catholic Monarchs’ efforts to complete the Reconquista had escalated to all out war. They had moved to their fortress of Córdoba to better oversee the fighting. On June 29, 1482, Isabella was in a meeting with her war council when her labor began and she withdrew to give birth to a pair of twins. Thus, Isabella and Fernando’s fourth child and third daughter was born on campaign. She was christened Maria after the Virgin Mary. Her twin was stillborn, a misfortune viewed as a bad omen at such a time.

Infanta Maria and her younger sister Catherine were the last additions to the royal family. Queen Isabella oversaw her children’s upbringing closely and ensured they received an extensive humanist education. Maria and her sisters studied a broad range of subjects including those not thought to be traditionally feminine such as Latin, philosophy, and arithmetic. They became proficient at needlework and household management, necessary skills for future European consorts. All of Isabella and Fernando’s children were witness to their parents’ greatest triumph when they succeeded in taking Granada in 1492. Like her siblings, Maria was indoctrinated into intensely pious faith of her parents, particularly her mother. This religious fervor bore the Spanish Inquisition and resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jewish and Muslim people in Spain in the name of Catholic orthodoxy.

Along with extreme religious devotion, Maria’s parents instilled (or at least attempted to instill) a sense of dynastic duty in their daughters. All four girls were destined for illustrious marriages that would expand Spanish influence to the great houses of Europe. In 1495, King Manuel I of Portugal came to the throne and was offered Maria’s hand in marriage in place of her widowed elder sister Isabel. But Manuel refused and eventually obtained the melancholic Isabel as his consort. Three years later, Isabel died after giving birth to a son who died in infancy, leaving Manuel and the Catholic Monarchs brokenhearted. It was still vital to maintain the blood ties between Spain and Portugal regardless of personal tragedy, so Manuel and Maria were betrothed. They married on October 30,1500 when she was eighteen years old.

Maria took to her role as Queen of Portugal easily, though she was homesick and kept up a long correspondence with her family. She and Manuel got along well and Maria proved herself to be a serious, industrious, and devoted consort. On a few occasions, Maria pleaded with her husband to show mercy to certain individuals, which was a common practice among medieval consorts. As a loyal wife, Maria also supported Manuel’s ambitions for Portuguese imperialism, including furthering the empire through trade and the colonization of the Americas.

Chiefest in Maria’s queenly duties was the bearing and raising of her children. In 1502, to the delight of the Spanish and Portuguese royal families, she gave birth to a son, the future João III. Maria and Manuel would have ten children with eight surviving to adulthood, to whom she was a devoted mother. Manuel showered her with costly gifts of jewelry and clothing during her frequent pregnancies. Typically, Maria would have a pause of just a few months between those pregnancies, with the exception of a gap from 1509 to 1512. She gave birth to her tenth child in September 1516 and became very ill. The baby, a son named Antonio, died the same day. Maria was dramatically weakened and delirious for some time afterwards. Whether it was due to a specific postpartum illness or if it was simply exhaustion, Maria’s health did not recover. Six months later on March 7, 1517 she died at the age of thirty-four.

#childbirth cw #infant death cw #relative to her siblings #Maria seems to have had the most peaceful if not happy life #then Manuel married her niece.....#Maria of Aragon #Manuel I of Portugal #Iberia #victims of the childbed #art #my art

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burninglights · 3 years

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Today on "Em realised that they'll never speak their mother tongue properly and felt Some Type Of Way about it":

It was cloudy, the day I killed her.

(Confession; she was never really alive anyway —

At least not in my mouth — she had been languishing since my birth

Had silently handed me to the foreign mother that adopted me, adopted us all.

As much as one can adopt their subjects.

as much as colonialism can be a mother).

When we set foot on Great British soil,

when I knew the sting of schoolyard cruelty,

I began killing her in earnest.

I scrubbed my tongue of her sunshine, her words from my brain

Sold the words of Fatshe Leno La Rona

to buy Rule Britannia

Boiled away the vestiges of her like

syringes in an autoclave—

And then, one cloudy day I reached for her, and found only

the corpse of how to speak her.

I condemned her to the drawn-out childbed fever

Of loving my mother-country

but hating my mother tongue.

When she died, I did not mourn her.

She has turned me into a sangoma

Petitioning the seething silence of her spirit

Invoking her in the name of resurrection.

I, remorseful victor, stand bloody and begging

over the vessel of the victim of my mother tongue

And the first —last — words she hisses are:

“I will not lie easy on your tongue, blood of my blood —

Resurrection don't come simple.

May I always taste of communion wine gone sour

May my presence in this mouth of yours be

A butterfly's wings beating in a sepulchre.

Remember, you killed me here once.

Why would I make living in my tomb

A pleasant business?”

#em.txt #setswana #colonialism #Rootlessness #The immigrant experience #Hahaha pain.#tw death imagery #Poetry #Words

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“…Since the deaths of individual women during actual battles or sieges were rarely mentioned, accounts of massacres offer some the best evidence as to why women were killed and also serve to illustrate the problems encountered in medieval depictions of violence. We might begin by considering the comparatively high number of massacres perpetrated by the army of the First Crusade, which has led to this crusade being perceived as a particularly notorious case of Christian brutality and religious intolerance.

At first glance, much of the killing seems to have been very indiscriminate and ruthless in nature, affecting men and women alike. Upon the crusade army’s capture of the Muslim city of Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man in 1098, for instance, it was written that the Christians ‘killed anyone, man or women, whom they met in any place whatsoever’. Again, after the capture of Albara that same year Gilo of Paris wrote that old women and young girls were among the ‘thousand [who] were slain in a thousand different ways’. Although these accounts emphasise the slaughter, Hay has argued that chroniclers had reason to exaggerate the extent of the slaughters in order to present the crusaders as purifying and cleansing the Holy Land of the Muslim influence, and that they sometimes failed to distinguish in their narratives between the killing of adult men and non-combatants such as women, when in fact the latter were often held captive instead.

The sources for the Jerusalem massacre of 1099, for instance, describe the brutal and indiscriminate slaughter of its inhabitants once the city was taken and emphasise the extreme nature of the slaughter. This massacre is not itself surprising given that it was standard medieval military practise to kill the inhabitants of any cities which fell by force after a siege. Where the confusion arises is Albert of Aachen’s assertion that another massacre occurred three days later, in which prisoners who had been spared previously for the sake of money or pity, including women of all ages, were executed ruthlessly in order to prevent them rebelling if an external threat to the city emerged.

Although Albert is the only source for this second massacre, his testimony nevertheless suggests that the first instinct of the crusaders may have been to spare the inhabitants rather the kill them outright, despite what the other sources say of the crusaders’ zeal for blood; moreover, it is known that there actually were some captives ransomed at Jerusalem. Similarly at Albara and after the fall of Caesarea in 1101, Hay contends that while some sources ostensibly suggest a total slaughter, the language used by the chroniclers suggests that they were in fact referring only to adult men who were killed, and while some women probably did meet the same end, most of the women and other male non-combatants did not suffer the same fate.

Furthermore, Strickland has suggested that the First Crusade army must have been aware of the concept of non-combatant immunity that was taking hold in Western Europe at that time (as set forth in the Peace of God legislation), as well as chivalric conventions developed among the Franco-Norman warrior aristocracy which stressed, amongst other things, the taking of captives rather than the outright slaughter of defeated enemies. He does not, however, speculate on whether this had any moderating influence on the actions of the crusade army toward enemy women. In any case, while women undoubtedly made up some of those massacred on this crusade, it is worth keeping these factors in mind when considering the chroniclers’ depictions of wholesale killing.

Nevertheless, even if massacres were sometimes exaggerated, there is no doubt religious differences were still used on occasion to justify the killing of women. Women in heretical movements, such as the Cathar movement that flourished in southern France, were among those massacred by the armies of the Albigensian Crusade after they captured the cities of Béziers in 1209 and Marmande in 1219, as part of efforts to root out the Cathar heresy, although the number of people who died at either city, let alone the number of women, is unclear. Marvin speculates that the number of people killed was in fact not as large as other historians have made out, though he concedes that hundreds, if not thousands, may still have died. Again at Montségur in 1244, women were among the roughly 200 perfecti (the leaders of the Cathar hierarchy who were allowed to preach) massacred by yet another crusade army – gender again being no protection, since all who embraced Catharism were seen as heretics.

Perhaps the clearest statement of religious intolerance, however, can be found in the account, given by the Rothelin continuation of the chronicle of William of Tyre, of a French attack on the Muslim camp at Mansourah in 1250, during the Seventh Crusade:

Our men charged in through the Turks’ quarters, killing all and sparing none; men, women and children, old and young, great and small, rich and poor, they slew and slashed and killed them all. If they found girls or old people it did them no good to shriek and cry and beg for mercy, they were all slaughtered...It was sad indeed to see so many dead bodies and so much blood spilt, except that they were the enemies of the Christian faith.

The author here stresses the brutality and indiscriminate nature of the killing and almost appears to sympathise with the victims due to the scale of the slaughter. Lest he feel any compassion though, the author reminds us of that the victims were not Christians, thereby justifying the slaughter of women as well as other non- combatants. This justification, which simultaneously excuses and explains the violent nature of the attack, suggests that in fact numerous women were killed, particularly as it provoked the Turks into an equally ruthless counter attack on those Franks involved in the massacre after they later became dispersed.

Religion thus appears to have offered one basis upon which the killing of heretical and non-Christian women could be rationalised whilst also avoiding any ecclesiastical censure for not protecting non-combatants from the violence of war (since the Peace of God legislation only applied to warfare between Christians). Aside from religious intolerance, the desire for retaliation against perceived injustices seems to have been another reason why gender offered women no respite from the killing. Pope Urban II’s inflammatory speech at Clermont in 1095, for instance, which sparked the First Crusade, included remarks designed specifically to arouse pity as well as anger for the suffering endured by Christians in the East at the hands of the Muslims, and can, as Asbridge has suggested, help account for the general brutality displayed by this crusade towards the enemy.

In a similar manner, the killings witnessed during peasant rebellions in the fourteenth century did not discriminate based on sex, and were also motivated by the desire to address perceived grievances. Following the Battle of Cassel in 1328, which marked the end point of the peasant rebellion in Flanders against French rule, French cavalry apparently put men, women and children to the sword on a wide scale as revenge for their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Courtrai in 1302. Similarly bloody was the Jacquerie uprising in northern France (1358), vividly described by chroniclers who struggled to come to terms with the violence that was directed against the noble class. Jean Froissart, for instance, included horrific scenes of peasants capturing, killing and sometimes raping the wives and daughters of knights, simply because they were part of the noble class. Froissart clearly had little sympathy for the plight of peasants, and his account was undoubtedly coloured by his class bias, but there is little doubt it was a violent event.

Even in the work of Jean de Venette, who came from a peasant background and generally displayed more sympathy towards the lower classes in his account, peasants are still described as having ‘killed, slaughtered and massacred without mercy all the nobles whom they could find...and, what is still more lamentable, they delivered the noble ladies and their little children upon whom they came to an atrocious death’. Notwithstanding Venette’s obvious disapproval of the slaughter and the likely exaggeration in his descriptions, it is clear that noblewomen were specifically targeted by the rebellion just as much as noblemen.

Finally, women were sometimes simply massacred as part of a broader military strategy of indiscriminate slaughter and general devastation of the land. Such actions were designed to cause economic damage and strike fear into the enemy populace. The Scottish raids on northern areas of England during the twelfth century fit this category; many men and women were killed as a result of these raids, although again in such cases it is hard to separate out the experience of women from that of men. What is evident, however, is the hysteria generated by English chroniclers who saw the Scots as merciless in their treatment of English women. Henry of Huntingdon, for instance, claimed that the Scots ‘ripped open pregnant women’ and killed their children by throwing them on lances.

Similarly, Richard of Hexham, writing around the middle of the twelfth century, asserted that the Scots ‘murdered everywhere persons of both sexes, of every age and rank... [including] women pregnant and in childbed, infants in the womb, innocents at the breast, or on the mother’s knee with the mother’s themselves... [as well as] worn out old women’. Though certainly graphic, passages such as these must be treated with care, for many of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers who wrote of such events seem to have regarded the Scots as little more than excessively cruel and savage barbarians, barely above the level of beasts.

This xenophobia undoubtedly influenced the sensationalised (and most likely exaggerated) descriptions of women shockingly mutilated along with their children. Nevertheless, there is probably some truth to reports of Scottish cruelty in war, for both Richard of Hexham and others such as Jordan Fantosme, who described a separate indiscriminate Scottish massacre in the village of Warkworth in 1174, receive confirmation from other sources. Regardless of how many women were actually killed though, the point is that gender alone was no barrier to a broad strategy of slaughter, just as gender did not prevent women suffering from acts of revenge or religious intolerance.”

- James Michael Illston, ‘An Entirely Masculine Activity’? Women and War in the High and Late Middle Ages Reconsidered

#warfare #james michael illston #history #crusades #cw: islamophobia #cw: rape #peasants #medieval #high middle ages #late middle ages

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taylor14firefly · 3 years

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Sometimes, in the period of normal science, rival paradigms will arise (as in our example of mechanism vs. vitalism). Scientists then choose the paradigm that helps to better explain the phenomena explored by the theory. Scientists like Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Mendel were revolutionaries. The hundreds of contemporary scientists who worked in the normal science mode as puzzle-solvers are much less well known. Revolutionaries make a better story.

As in political revolutions, scientific revolutionaries sometimes end as intellectual martyrs. Such was the case of Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865; see Figure 3), a Hungarian born physician who came to the hospital of Vienna as a trainee in the obstetrics ward from 1844-1848. The hospital had two different birthing wards. The First Maternity Ward was staffed by physicians and the Second Ward by midwives. That said, he was disturbed by the disparity in death rate between the two wards. Women in The First Ward suffered a death rate of 6.8-11.2% due to an infection called Childbed Fever. The Second Ward had a death rate of only 2-2.5% in the same period.

It seemed to Semmelweis that the cause for this could be found and treated. Also, he was certain that the problem represented a difference in the two wards. So, he set about trying a long list of tests. He tried having women deliver on their sides. He changed the route that the priest walked as he went to give last rites to a dying patient (in case the presence of the priest scared the women to death).

He was nearly ready to give up when he went to Venice for a vacation to clear his head and attempt to think through the problem. Upon his return to Venice, he learned that the head of Forensic Surgery named Kolletschka had died of all the symptoms of Childbed Fever. This had come on him after he cut himself with a knife during an autopsy.

Semmelweis reasoned that Kolletschka had introduced cadaverous (dead) tissue into his bloodstream thereby transmitting the disease to him. Similarly, women in the First Ward were attended to by medical interns who had spent the morning dissecting cadavers. If they carried any "cadaverous" material on their hands or under fingernails, they could transmit the disease to women who had given birth. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis instituted a policy of thoroughly washing hands before seeing patients in the First Ward. Quickly, the death rate dropped from more than 12% to less than 2% in the same year.

Semmelweis had pursued a puzzle and solved it. Indeed, he seemed almost revolutionary. However, the physicians were not impressed. By 1848 he was expelled from the hospital, and he finally ended his days in an Insane Assylum where he died. The cause of his death was somewhat mysterious and he may have been the victim of murder.

#ignaz semmelweis #handwashing #women in medicine #midwives #germ theory

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

Text

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n2): Death be Pardoner to Me

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Since the author claims this book is written through her channelling of George Duke of Clarence, I don’t know if I should approach this as a historical fiction review or otherwise. Regardless, well-written and very balanced. The voice throughout was similar to how I pictured the real George of Clarence. Nevertheless, I deduct one star because I have noticed some innacuracies. Whether this discounts the veracity of the author’s claim - I leave it up to you. Despite how dodgy this book may appear, it has gotten very good reviews online and I do assure you it is not trashy or melodramatic at all; it is high quality compared to most modern histfic and other genre fictions in its prose and psychological insight.

Plot: So what essentially happens is, we get a fictionalist account (albeit a very short one) of George’s life. The book’s chapters are split between 1st person (where he (George) intimates what he felt and what thought during an event) and 3rd person limited POV. The author claims that the entire book is told in his own words but I suppose the background descriptions and such in the 3rd person chapters were her own words. We get basically every major event in his life (birth, childhood, marriage, rebellion and death) and some in-between. The in-between moments were by far my favourites as they are what added depth to what is essentially this character analysis (because we all know what he did, we are now interested in why). I was happy to see a lot of little details in this book were confirmed by my research (Caxton dedicating him a book, his penchant for fine clothing, his suffering of headaches (maybe after suffering the recorded head injury at Barnet) etc), his gift for legal arguments (I obviously squealed when I found that out) so I did end up learning something.

On the other hand, I would have wanted an account of the time he spend with Louis XI, Margaret of Anjou, Anne Neville and Jasper Tudor and what he thought and said. I would have also wanted more insight into the whole Burdett and Stacey debacle, not to mention his relationship with Sir Roger Tocotes: the old friend who though was apparently part of the whole poisoning Isabel scheme, Clarence could not bring himself to execute. Warwick surprisingly doesn’t feature very heavily either, nor does Isabel enough. But I’ll take what I can get when it comes to his particular historical figure.

Characterisation/ Historical Accuracy: As I’ve said, since the author claims to be a medium (I shall not comment on this as I myself am undecided on where I stand) any incongruency cannot be taken as merely artistic licence. So, the voice of George (which I suppose has been transcribed into our contemporary speech so we can understand what he says) feels very true to the character. His attitude towards things definitely sounds like a man from the 15th century. He is more reasonable now, than he would be if he were telling us his story during the action itself, because a lot of the book is told through the spirits (?) hindsight. Nevertheless, you do feel as if you were with the character while everything unfolded. The portrayal is more sympathetic than in other novels, nevertheless, he is no Gary Stu or major victim. He is portrayed as someone with genuine principles, intelligence, capable of some love towards other while also being deluded by his own self-importance, sometimes irrational and judgmental. So more or less a real and complex person.

On the other hand, some claims in this novel are quite bold but though unsubstantiated are not strictly speaking innacurate (I won’t spoil here, but if anyone has zero plans of reading this book but regardless wants to know what I mean PM me). One thing that made me deduct one star was this one blatant innacuracy: Ankarette Twynyho’s portrayal as a young woman, when we know that by the time she reached Clarence’s household she had a grandson (John Twynyho who petitioned Edward IV for a posthumous parson). There was also the implausible suggestion that George would not allow for in his household to be said that Richard of Gloucester married Anne Neville for her money (which though spirit George may in retrospect believe he loved her, 15th century George would at worst have been the one starting those rumours and at best, would not have cared). However, the latter unlike the former isn’t disprovable beyond doubt - but still I can somehow feel the Richardianism from the author seep in a bit. It actually has quite blatantly in a couple of instances. For example the suggestion that Richard visited him in the Tower (which I am 90% sure could not have happened). I do believe George and Richard loved each other in some weird twisted way since they were raised together and brothers, but I genuinely don’t believe it was so conscious on either’s part. Also, Isabel Neville was described as very ill from the birth of Richard of Clarence, but as we all know she was actually really well after the birth, she did not die of childbed fever. This is precisely why Clarence thought poisoning could have taken place. Isabel and George’s relationship as a whole was rather sad, and a part of me hopes this is all a hoax just so I can hope they were happier together in real life.

Prose: You may be surprised to know that the prose is actually still better than the vast majority of historical fiction novels. It flows well throughout, the dialogue is engaging and realistic, the descriptions of places and things (what in my opinion is essential for a period novel) is really well done but not too embellished. Certain scenes seriously gave me the feels (happens rarely), but then again it is hard to know if my reaction is more to do with the draw I have towards George in general than the author’s craft - regardless, I still think it is better literary wise than anything Weir or most popular histfics ever wrote, though obviously does not hold a candle to Jarman, Lytton-Bulwer or Scott. But then again, this was not even intended to be a novel in the classical sense. This is where half of the stars come from whereas the others come from insightfulness (as it did give me some avenues of research). There is also a semi-mystical theme throughout (as you would expect from a medium) but it is very subtle and not at all TWQ-esque, an honestly - it is plausible as we do need to keep in mind that medieval people did all believe in Angels, spirits and such. I think this added a nice flavour in some scenes.

Overall, this novel believable or not was much-needed. Too much is written about Richard III and the others. When a mutual told me of it I obvs could not resist haha. Since it was so short (around 200 pages with fairly large font) I think I might go ahead and purchase her Anthony Woodville one too (imagine my luck: two of my favourite historical figures got books).

#lady-plantagenet’s book reviews #death be pardoner to me #the wars of the roses #george of clarence #george duke of clarence #the white queen #dorothy davies

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moonlitgleek · 5 years

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Is it Martin's intention to make fire and blood a critique of misogyny?

This is a point of discussion in the F&B post that I’m still working on so I don’t know how exhaustive this is going to be. But I’ve received many variants of this same question and I don’t want to put it off for too long.

I obviously can not speak to GRRM’s mind, but I personally don’t see how Fire and Blood can be constructed as a critique of anything. Leaning into sexist tropes in not a critique of them. Doubling down on existing problems like death by childbed, child brides and the use of sexual violence as a plot device is not a critique of them. Depicting any problematic element isn’t inherently critical just because said element exists in your world. You’re not inherently critiquing rape just because you’re using it in your story. You’re not inherently critiquing racism just because you have people being racist in your story. That stuff needs to be called out, or it’d only function as an embellishment or a plot device or an uncritical use of established tropes. What distinguishes showing misogyny and critiquing misogyny is the presence of a challenge to prevalent problematic tropes and to in-universe misogyny. If that challenge does not exist, then what’s the difference between problematic material and critical material? It’d all look the same.

But even if I allow that this book was meant as a critique of misogyny, it didn’t work. Martin often nails it when he wants to critique something or deconstruct a trope or interrogate a bias. Think Cersei’s walk of shame. Think Arianne’s struggle against the possibility of being replaced by her brother. Think Catelyn’s refusal to allow that having an emotional response hinders a woman’s judgement. Martin’s critiques are often loud and clear. They allow for the bias of the in-universe characters but include a resounding rebuffs to it, whether by proving them wrong or deconstructing the bias itself. That rarely happens in F&B, and when it does, it’s often undermined simply to tell us that the men involved are sexist, which tells us nothing new about any of them. F&B could have included a real critique, even allowing for the in-universe author’s prejudices. It didn’t. It minimized dynamic and strong women instead and treated us to a parade of broken and/or sexualized bodies in the name of so-called historical accuracy and making a point about the awfulness of male characters, at least according to Elio Garcia.

And that is the argument being offered for F&B being what it is. Neither Martin nor Garcia tried to say that this book was meant as a critique of misogyny as far as I know, only that these things did happen in medival times and that the intended point was to show the prejudice and villainy of male characters. So Alysanne is victimized and silenced to tell us that Jaehaerys is sexist and cruel. Alyssa is victimized and silenced to tell us that Rogar is sexist and cruel. Unwin Peake’s 12-year-old daughter is victimized and silenced to tell us that Peake is sexist and cruel. Coryanne Wylde and seven Lyseni slaves are victimized and silenced to tell us that Rogar and/or his brothers are sexist and cruel. Numerous girls are married off too young to tell us that their fathers and husbands are sexist and cruel. Numerous women are sexualized to tell us that Gyldayn is sexist and a pervert. One question though: why do all these women need to be sacrificed for the characterization of male characters? Why is women’s sexual suffering the most convenient plot device Martin can find to frame Westerosi misogyny? What does that tell us about Westeros that we don’t already know? What’s the upside of any of it? Because that upside is the only reason Martin’s narrative doesn’t devolve into a grimdark world. His challenges to the dark, the unjust, the nihilistic and the cruel are what makes reading this series worthwhile. F&B sorely lacks that. For god’s sake, This is a book that took “are there no true knights among you?” and made it about Maegor. From Duncan the Tall and Baelor Breakspear to Maegor. Think about that for a second.

It’s a fundamental misunderstanding to think that we’re arguing that Martin totally intended for us to take Gyldayn’s biases at face value because that’s not the issue at all. We’re questioning the necessity of making Gyldayn a sex-obsessed pervert which unavoidably mars the depiction of female characters in the only material we’re ever going to get about them. I’ll allow that this was supposed to make a deliberate point about biased PoVs or how prejudice affects historical accounts on women …. first off, to quote @pretenderoftheeast, deliberate doesn’t necessarily mean good (or, you know, critical). So Martin wanted to show us that Gyldayn’s misogyny has affected how he portrays women. Fine. It remains that the only account we’re ever going to get on so many women was filtered through the lens of a dismissive, misogynistic, victim-blaming, sex-obsessed maester who centered the personhood of multiple women on their sexuality and/or fertility. That so-called critique doesn’t change the fact that we’re never getting any characterization for many of these women. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s built on furthering the dismissal of women as little more than sexual objects and/or walking wombs. It doesn’t change the fact that many women exist in the narrative to give birth, be abused and die. It doesn’t change the inherently gendered method of death and/or abuse.

Furthermore, whether the argument for F&B holds to the idea that Gyldayn’s position as unreliable narrator offers a critique of misogyny in and of itself, or to the idea that Gyldayn’s prejudices shouldn’t be taken for the narrative’s own and thus as an authorial problem, the fact that none of the problems of F&B are new and that there is no conceivable way to hold Gyldayn responsible for some of the problems in the book undermine both arguments. Gyldayn is not the one who decided to kill off 12 women in childbed, nor was he the one marrying off all those child brides. There is something to say about Gyldayn’s perspective in reporting on Jaehaerys’ dismissal of Alysanne’s wishes but he isn’t the one who made Jaehaerys do it in the first place. Gyldayn didn’t make Maris Baratheon join the silent sisters as a punishment for her words to Aemond. He didn’t make multiple women isolate themselves to grieve, leaving behind their kids, their political duties and even their own war councils, while the men proved proactive or vengeful. He didn’t make jealousy a main element in several women’s relationships. And that’s besides the fact that Gyldayn is GRRM’s creation so he is only what Martin wrote him to be. To what purpose, I have no idea.

The crux of this issue, to me, is that F&B is a historical book that relies information to us through Gyldayn making him the source of any information that we have. His own characterization matters only insofar as his function as an in-universe tool of authorial exposition. In making him so overly misogynistic and sex-obsessed then using his characterization to justify the problems in the narrative, GRRM not only crippled our knowledge of a slew of more narratively important women and deprived them (and us) from getting a sense of their personhood, he also prioritized Gyldayn’s characterization over these women, despite the fact that it’s their stories and their conflicts that drive the narrative forward. I’m not sure how I can see that as a critique of misogyny.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #misogyny in asoiaf #asoiaf criticism #GRRM #gyldayn #fire and blood volume 1 #Anon asks #ask box

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princess-of-france · 5 years

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18-22 for Charles?

Hello! Thank you so much for this lovely ask about our darling boy. :) I’m just sorry you had to wait like a thousand years for a response!! ♥

18. Things they’ll never admit

The only reason he shed any tears when his father was assassinated was because of the effect it had on his mother.

Witnessing Valentina, once the tallest, brightest, strongest woman on earth, seemingly the queen of all France and the wisest woman in the kingdom, collapse into a sobbing, choking, blotchy-faced heap on the stone floor of the palace hallway broke 13-year-old Charles into a thousand ice-cold pieces. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life, nor had he been so afraid. Despite all the pain Valentina endured as Louis’ wife, she always loved him fiercely and supported their family with the valor of King Charles’ bravest knights. The sudden loss of her warm, comforting guidance made Charles painfully aware of his vulnerability as a newly minted, prepubescent nobleman. What were he and his younger siblings supposed to do with a dead father and a spiraling mother? He didn’t feel old enough to inherit the title, “Duc d’Orléans,” let alone the responsibilities of a father.

Not that his father had been a paragon of Fatherhood. Hard-faced, tight-lipped, sharp-spoken politician, Louis had been more of a statue than a parent in Charles’ childhood. A stoic, marbled monument to power and military strategy, not a living, breathing source of love, like Valentina. He sternly disapproved of the halting, clumsy lines of poetic verse Charles used to scratch onto scraps of parchment and vellum, and he never made any secret of his extramarital pursuits. Therefore, Charles’ grief, when it came, had been a spluttering little flame of sadness that flared and died in a matter of moments. But his mother’s pain…that was a wound that opened inside him and bled and bled until he could barely stand up straight. Charles cried that night, and all week, all month…he cried at the funeral and at the burial and at the banquet that followed…he cried until his throat dried up and his nose became raw from blowing. He cried because he finally understood the horrible truth that death is not something happens in a vacuum. Death has tentacles, and those tentacles stretch far. There is always, always more than one victim.

Years later, he would think about the many fingers of death when Izzy passed away, sallow and shrunken on a bed of dark brown stains, and Charles’ primary pain was once again not for himself, but for his day-old, newly motherless daughter.

19. People they’ve hurt or indirectly killed, and how it affected them

Charles internalizes SO MUCH GUILT and it hurts me. He blames himself for his mother’s death because it came less than a year after he assumed his father’s title and he feels he should’ve tried harder to protect her. He blames himself for Jean’s abduction and captivity at the hands of the English because it happened under his leadership as duke. He blames himself Izzy’s death because it was brought on by childbed fever and they had been husband and wife (at least for one night). He blames himself for Joan’s isolation after he himself is captured by the English at Agincourt, because if only he’d been a bit quicker, a bit braver…

For someone who always means well, Charles is an endlessly fatal figure. And that just breaks my heart.

20. What-ifs/Alternate Timelines

The only one I’ve really developed is the one in GHP, which is partly informed by Shakespeare, but also fueled by my own imagination. In the 2H5-universe, Charles is unequivocally in love with Charles d’Albret and not at all with his wife, Bonne (whom he sees as more of a loyal, compassionate sister). This puts extreme pressure on their marriage before Charles is called away to fight in Calais. And it creates a lot of tension in Act 5, when Bonne has to grapple with sort-of losing a sort-of husband who never really felt like a husband in the first place. But it also gives Charles the chance to be a poet and a soldier at the same time, and I think that duality is one of the most interesting things about him (both as a historical figure and as a character onstage).

21. Turning points in their life

Everything I’ve mentioned above, plus any and all bouts of Charles VI’s madness; d’Albret’s death at Agincourt; Joan’s birth; and his marriage to Bonne. This boy lived through more chaos before the age of 25 than many people experience in a lifetime. My darling. 3

22. People who’ve influenced them greatly

His mother (for better)

His father (for worse)

John the Fearless (for Worst™)

All his siblings (especially Dunois)

His braggarty cousin, Louis (the one obsessed with his horse)

Duc d’Armagnac (the necessary ally)

King Charles VI (the loose canon)

Queen Isabeau (the one holding France together with two hands)

Catherine (who looks like Izzy but smiles like the sun)

Charles d’Albret (who never smiles, but fights for those who do)

Christine de Pizan (the woman who told him to trust women, always)

Isabelle (the one he failed)

Bonne (the one he misses)

Joan (the one he’ll never stop loving until the day he dies)

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bookgeekgrrl · 7 years

Quote

I feel very strongly that if historical romance can give women a happy ending, it can give queer people a happy ending. M/f historical romance doesn’t tie itself in knots over the likelihood of the rake having syphilis, the terrible dentistry, the lice, the prolapsed uterus after multiple pregnancies, the prospect of death in childbed, or the horrifying legal discrimination against married women. We don’t close the book on the wedding scene reflecting that the heroine can now be legally raped, has just lost all her property to her husband…and would be vanishingly unlikely to obtain a divorce. Historical romance readers aren’t stupid; we know this stuff, but we choose to believe our heroine will be one of the lucky ones. And I don’t see why we can’t extend that happy glow to other stories, too. If women’s lives don’t have to be blighted by social oppression in romance, neither do those of people of color or queer people. Moreover, human nature doesn’t change. A lot of what we read about LGBT people in history is appalling because the records we have are the legal documents, the newspaper reports, the accounts of people who were victimized. We don’t generally have the hidden stories of the people who lived under the radar…. But we know…people we’d now call gay, bi, trans have always existed and [that] as a matter of statistics plenty of them must have lived and died without ever coming to the law’s attention. Which is not to hand-wave the horrors of the past but only to say that horror isn’t the only story, and it’s not an acceptable reason to deny marginalized people their happy-ever-after.

KJ Charles (Library Journal interview)

#yes yes yes #so much this #everyone deserves romance #we've always been here #you just only hear about the unhappy endings #queer erasure #stop straightwashing history

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lexvide · 3 years

Text

Full Backstory.

Warning: Contains mentions of parent death, sibling death, child neglect, murder, abuse, torture and mental health stigma. While the following story is not overtly dark throughout, the above subject matters are strong underlying themes. You have been warned.

Growing up.

Valere was born in Calais on February 22nd, 1752. He was born to a Catholic family and was christened Valere Étienne Pierre Lavigne.

He was born to Etianne Céline Claire Forté, the daughter of an upstanding middle-class family from the French commune of Villefort, and Claude Pierre Lavigne, a born and bread Parisian who had recently relocated to Calais.

Etianne and Claude married for mutual benefit and stability. However, it wasn’t until after their marriage that Etianne would discover Claude’s deception, by which he grossly exaggerated his wealth. While he had once come from a wealthy family, he had recently been estranged and cut off and acquired sizeable debts. This resulted in Etianne and her family having to be the soul financial supporters of the marriage.

During their marriage, Claude used their allowance to open an export branch of Calais lace. He christened his company Lavigne Lace and at first, things seemed to be going well.

However, it didn’t take long for customers and competitors alike to become wary of Claude. Lavigne Lace was quick to garner a reputation for shady production and shoddy quality, along with rumours of overcharging and client’s money mysteriously disappearing.

Claude obsessed over Lavigne Lace, seeing it as get-rich-quick scheme and a way to spite his estranged family.

Meanwhile, Claude and Etianne’s children were born. Laurent came first in 1740, followed by Valere six years later and finally, Céline three years after that. Sadly, Valere’s time as a middle child was cut tragically short after his little sister, Céline, died of childbed fever, leaving behind just him and his older brother.

Claude disliked children in general. His motivation for having them in the first place was financial as he was in need of an heir to inherit his precious business.

As such, Valere was much closer with his mother during the first years of his life. She was a gentle woman who did anything she could to protect her two boys against Claude’s temper, which worsened once the children came along.

When Valere was six years old, Claude had taken Laurent out of town to coach him on business matters, as he so often did. During this time, Etianne contracted a severe case of cholera. With Claude being too stingy to pay for domestic help, the young Valere was left alone with her.

He tried his best to nurse her but ultimately didn’t know what to do. All he knew was that drinking water was important when treating fever, unaware that the water had caused the problem in the first place.

Etianne was dead within hours.

This left Laurent and Valere alone with Claude, who took care of the matter swiftly. The Coroner confirmed the cause of death and she was buried within days. They never spoke of the incident again.

In the years following, Laurent, who had dreams of becoming a painter, was stuck as the unwillingly heir to Lavigne Lace. As the first born, he was the more favoured of the two while Valere was more or less considered ‘the spare part’.

While endless pressure was forcefully placed on Laurent, Valere was neglected entirely. Laurent grew to deeply resent his father’s business and would practice his artwork in secret. Meanwhile, Valere, who was academically inclined, grew equally resentful as he watched his brother seemingly squander opportunities that he could only dream of.

While he had no more interest in his father’s shady business than Laurent did, he did feel that he was much more equipped to make use of the expensive education Laurent was receiving. While Laurent disliked what was being forced on him, Valere became increasingly embittered from envy of it.

Laurent did what he could to protect his little brother in the absence of their mother, with Valere often being used as a household lackey and an outlet for Claude’s temper. However, despite Laurent’s best efforts, Valere’s hurt and jealously caused by their father’s treatment of them eventually drove a wedge between the two brothers.

During all this, while Valere and Laurent were growing up, Claude was imprisoned multiple times for crimes such as debt, fraud and embezzlement, during which time the task of bailing him out would fall to his two sons.

While Laurent was content to leave him locked up, Valere was usually the one who would through on this task. Not because he particularly wanted him out anymore than his brother did but more because he saw these incidents as an opportunity. They were the only chances he ever got to flex his smarts a little, as well as learn and apply a wealth of new skills.

Pulling strings through the use of his father’s pre-established business connections, Valere found ways in which to acquire large sums of money in short amounts of time. During this time, he learned the ins and outs of basic business and accounting skills. Also not wanting to make their family situation any worse, he supplemented these skills by reading up on the law so as to complete these tasks in as legally sound a manner as possible.

By the time he was eighteen years old, Valere was able to manipulate the system with such dexterity that it would doubtless provoke envy from even the most upstanding of lawyers.

Shortly after Valere’s nineteenth birthday, however, Claude Lavigne got himself into a situation that neither of his sons could weasel him out of. He was charged with mass embezzlement, robbery at knifepoint and the subsequent murder of two of his victims, both of whom he owed money.

His trial was held the very next week, in which he was convicted of all charges and sent to the scaffold shortly after.

To this day, neither of his sons know whether or not the conviction was truly correct.

Freedom.

Following their father’s death, both sons left Calais. Valere took what savings he had and left for Paris more or less immediately, while Laurent stayed behind for a short while so as to formally shut down Lavigne Lace for good, before also leaving Calais to go travelling.

With all that had happened, upholding justice and fairness had become something incredibly close to Valere’s heart. He burned to acquire the wealth and success his father dreamed of for himself. However, as someone who had grown to detest unfairness, he wanted to attain success the opposite way in which father had attempted to do so. Valere vowed to himself that he would live fairly and justly and be much better off as a result.

Eager to pursue this legacy, Valere decided that law was his calling and removed all obvious connections between him and his scandalised father, so as not to face any prejudice upon entering the profession - the last thing he needed was any more obstacles. And so, just before leaving for Paris, he legally removed Lavigne from his name and replaced it with Forté, his mother’s maiden name and the name of a just and respectable family. That and truth be told, he just liked that name a great deal better. For many reasons.

For the time in their lives, both sons were free...

Rise.

Upon his arrival in Paris, Valere found employment with a Parisian law firm as a clerk and courtroom scribe. Placing all his passion and fervour into his new employment, he climbed the ladder rapidly and within two years, he had gained official advisor status.

Despite achieving this huge career leap at such an uncommonly young age, Valere wasn’t even close to being satisfied. He continued to work relentlessly and slowly but surely, his name became more and more known within the industry. He gained a regular clientele who became increasingly widespread and upstanding the more Valere’s reputation grew. At last, Valere was seeing the fruits of his labour, earning good money, a good name and finally, a training contract from his law firm with which to become a fully licensed solicitor.

As he became more and more known throughout France, news of the audacious newcomer eventually reached Versailles. Intrigued, King Louis requested to meet him, an opportunity that Valere grasped with both hands.

During his visit, Valere turned up the charm, his time spent around the bourgeois in recent years having taught him a great deal in terms of courtly etiquette.

Several members of the aristocracy took an immediate liking to him, which in turn gained him an entirely new clientele. Now with a name not just throughout France but within the Royal Court, Valere eventually gained the ultimate prized client; the King himself.

As a result of his association with the Royal family, Valere’s fame and reputation doubled, as did his fortune. Within five years of leaving home, he had acquired wealth and success beyond his father’s wildest dreams and had done so via just causes.

As time passed, Valere continued to work hard and gain favour within the Royal Family.

For his services, the King awarded Valere the title of Valere de Villefort, after the place from which Valere had claimed to have come from, alongside the rest of the Forté family. This was a lie put in place as a further precaution against his unfavourable past, now fearing association with the Lavigne family more than ever.

Shortly after this triumph, the King, now considering Valere a valued member of his court, announced that he was to be matched with Lady Charlotte Howard, the daughter of an English aristocratic family.

This marriage had been arranged as a minor political statement; a way of trying to improve Anglo-French relations by show of a union.

Valere was full of reservation upon hearing this news. This was partly a result of fear due to his latent homosexuality (of which he was vaguely aware but had always tried to put out of mind). Nevertheless, he agreed to match anyway, thinking it the best thing to do given the circumstances.

Despite the marriage having been decided for them, Valere and Charlotte took full advantage of the courting period. Over time they found they complimented one another well and very much enjoyed each other’s company. The two of them grew close and each came to love the other a great deal. Although neither party ever conveyed just how terrified they were of the wedding night, each for a very similar reason.

Alongside this, it is arranged that Valere would be royally knighted and acquire the official aristocratic title of Chevalier de Villefort, as well as being offered the job of the King’s right-hand advisor once his solicitors license was finalised.

At this point, it seemed that life for Valere was a bed of roses.

Fall.

During his time at court, Valere crosses paths with a professional rival by the name Gustave Beaumont. While rivalry isn commonplace within the competitive worlds of both law and court life, Beaumont stands out.

There was something about him that made Valere uncomfortable and he had been aware since their first meeting that Beaumont had he taken a disliking to him. However, Valere decided to pay him no mind. He stayed out of his way as much as he could and was civil when their meeting was unavoidable.

Beaumont was nearly two decades older than Valere and had been working to secure the position of right-hand advisor to the King. Having been in the business far longer than Valere, he viewed him as little more than a young upstart and was not in the least bit concerned of ever being overtaken by him.

One can only imagine the shock he felt when he one day woke to discover that Valere had done exactly that; livid would have been a gross understatement.

Unable to accept the loss, Beaumont deliberated for weeks on what to do. He did what he could to try and sway the King’s opinion and overturn the decision but ultimately failed. Exhausted of options, he eventually settled upon the most simple yet most risky solution for dealing with Valere; he would simply have to get rid of him.

To do this, he would have to change tactics. Rather than trying to convince the King of his own merit, Beaumont would have to instead convince him of Valere’s faults.

Through both bribery and exploitation of professional jealousy among some of his other piers, Beaumont gathered together a small group of allies who set about the task of researching Valere’s history, trying to dig up any dirt they could to help bring about his fall from favour.

This being one of the oldest tricks in the book, they didn’t hold out much hope; this was merely a place to start.

As such, they were left very pleasantly surprised when they discovered a dubious connection between Valere and a painter named Laurent Lavigne. A little more digging and Valere was quickly connected to a shady export company named Lavigne Lace.

From here, Valere de Villefort’s upstanding persona crumbled piece by piece. With one connection leading to another, Beaumont gathered himself of goldmine scandals and unfavourable incidents, many of which would malleable to his will. After all, the very best lies always contain little fragments of truth...

Blissfully unaware of Beaumont’s proceedings, Valere was summoned to court a few months later. He was lead into a room attended by the King, the royal family and piers of the realm, in the middle of which he was ordered to kneel. Confused, Valere obeyed.

It was here that Beaumont presented his case. He began by exposing the various scandals of Valere’s biological family, from the mass embezzlements to the eventual murder trial. Using little nuggets of innocent truth, he was able strongly fabricate Valere’s involvement with his father’s criminal activities and the methods with which he acquired the money frequently used to bail him from the debtors prison.

From here, Beaumont painted a grim picture of Valere as a pathological liar, who was masterfully deceptive and doubtlessly malevolent in his intentions.

This alone was a huge blow to Valere’s reputation and yet Beaumont still wasn’t done. Having spent the last months weaving together a complex but convincing narrative via grossly twisted evidence, he was able to convincingly accuse Villefort of murdering his mother when he was a child.

In doing this, Beaumont had finally hit the King’s weak spots. A paranoid, melancholic and somewhat naive individual, a case such as this was exactly the thing needed to finally sway the King’s mind.

Sure enough, sucked in by Beaumont’s unbridled charisma, the King became convinced of his arguments and was heartbroken by the supposed betrayal.

Furious, he refused Valere a fair trial and convicted him on the spot.

Usually, a case such as this would result in one being sent to the scaffold. However, due to the worst of the proposed crimes having supposedly occurred during Valere’s childhood, paired with the Royal family’s sentimentality towards him, the King thought twice before sending Valere to his death.

Despite feeling fury and heartbreak towards the young man, he was unable to accept that someone he had trusted so entirely could possibly have been an inherently evil individual; the one thing at which Beaumont had failed to convince him.

He proposed that the crimes committed were “not a result of evil nature but rather of being under the influence of evil; a possible demon of the mind that may well be expunged with proper treatment”.

Valere was exempt from the death penalty and instead sentenced to being involuntarily committed to the ‘House Of The Insane’, the period of which was indefinite.

And so, having only recently acquired his much sort after solicitor’s qualification and with less than a fortnight before his wedding was due to take place, Valere carted away to the so-called ‘hospital’, where he was locked up, abused and tortured alongside hundreds of other unfortunate patients who were deemed ‘unsound of mind’.

Wishing simply to move on and not dwell any further on the matter, the King decided against making any public announcements regarding Valere’s situation.

This worked to Beaumont’s advantage. He had his allies spread the gossip that Valere had been charged with matricide and, while trying to resist arrest, had fallen into the Seine and drowned.

Despite Valere not receiving the death penalty as Beaumont had hoped, he was nevertheless confident that his false death in the public eye would be more than enough to keep anyone from looking any further into the matter.

Valere de Villefort was dead and that was that. Nothing more to say.

The Coroner Calls.

Eleven months after Valere’s detainment, Versailles received a letter from Calais.

Beaumont, now having taken the place of the King’s official right-hand advisor, was the first to read the correspondence. And its contents shook him to the core.

The letter was from a Coroner named Jaques Monet, the very same Coroner who had examined the body of Etianne Céline Claire Forté Lavigne.

Having heard the rumours behind Valere’s death, Monet had written in to reconfirmed that cholera had been the direct cause of Etianne Lavigne’s death, owed to an undetected sewage spill and subsequent build-up within the water system.

In his explanation, Monet placed strong emphasis on the fact that Madame Lavigne had not been the only one in the area to have either died or become severely ill as a result. With everything backed by records, Monet stated at the end of his letter that he would willingly testify the information if necessary and as such, it was strongly advisable that the late Monsieur Forté be granted a full, posthumous pardon.

Made both terrified and furious by Monet’s letter, Beaumont announced that he would travel to Calais immediately and track down the Coroner, so as to ‘deal with him swiftly and appropriately’. Meanwhile, Beaumont ordered one of his old co-conspirators, Blaise Dupont, to the hospital in order to ‘take care of Forté in the very same fashion’.

Equally frantic from fear of his own involvement in the lie being exposed, Dupont agreed and left immediately for the hospital, only to be ruefully informed upon arrival that the staff had lost the patient in question.

Assuming this meant Valere had succumbed to the brutal ‘treatments’ to which patients of these facilities were frequently subjected, Dupont left the hospital in a state of relief, glad that they now had once less thing to deal with.

Terrified of the repercussions, the hospital staff allowed this to play out, deciding not to clarify precisely what they meant by their use of the word ‘lost’...

To be continued...

Upcoming Verses:

In between.

Resurgence.

Vive la Révolution~!

#(( ;; Full Backstory ;; ))#;; ~ About ;; Valere #;; ~ About ;; Laurent

0 notes

joannalannister · 7 years

Text

The Dead Ladies Club

“Ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.”

The Dead Ladies Club is a term I invented** circa 2012 to describe the pantheon of undeveloped female characters in ASOIAF from the generation or so before the story began.

It is a term that carries with it inherent criticisms of ASOIAF, which this post will address, in an essay in nine parts. The first, second, and third parts of this essay define the term in detail. Subsequent sections examine how these women were written and why this aspect of ASOIAF merits criticism, exploring the pervasiveness of the dead mothers trope in fiction, the excessive use of sexual violence in writing these women, and the differences in GRRM’s portrayals of male sacrifice versus female sacrifice in the narrative.

To conclude, I assert that the manner in which these women were written undermines GRRM’s thesis, and ASOIAF -- a series I consider to be one of the greatest works of modern fantasy -- is poorer because of it.

*~*~*~*~

PART I: WHAT IS THE DEAD LADIES CLUB?

Below is a list of women I personally include in the Dead Ladies Club. This list is flexible, but this is generally who people are talking about when they’re talking about the DLC:

Lyanna Stark

Elia Martell

Ashara Dayne

Rhaella Targaryen

Joanna Lannister

Cassana Estermont

Tysha

Lyarra Stark

the Unnamed Princess of Dorne (mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn)

Brienne’s Unnamed Mother

Minisa Whent-Tully

Bethany Ryswell-Bolton

EDIT - The Miller’s Wife - GRRM never named her, but she was raped by Roose Bolton and she gave birth to Ramsay

I might be forgetting someone

Most of the DLC are mothers, dead before the series began. I deliberately use the word “pantheon” when describing the DLC because, like the gods of ancient mythology, these women typically loom large over the lives of our current POVs, and it is their deification that is largely the problem. The women of the Dead Ladies Club tend to be either heavily romanticized or heavily villainized by the text, either up on a pedestal or down on their knees, to paraphrase Margaret Attwood. The DLC are written by GRRM as little more than male fantasies and tired tropes, defined almost exclusively by their beauty and desirability (or lack thereof). They have no voices of their own. Too often they are nameless. They are frequently the victims of sexual violence. They are presented with few or no choices in their stories, something I consider to be a particularly egregious oversight when GRRM says it is our choices which define us.

The space in the narrative given over to their humanity and their interiority (their inner lives, their thoughts and feelings, their existence as individuals) is minimal or nonexistent, which is quite a shame in a series that is meant to celebrate our common humanity. How can I have faith in the thesis of ASOIAF, that people’s “lives have meaning, not their deaths,” when GRRM created a coterie of women whose main if not sole purpose was to die?

I restrict the Dead Ladies Club to women one or two generations back because the Lady in question must have some immediate connection to a POV character or a second-tier character. These women tend to be of immediate importance to a POV character (mothers, grandmothers, etc), or at most they’re one character removed from a POV character in the main story (AGOT - ADWD+).

Example #1: Dany (POV) --> Rhaella Targaryen

Example #2: Davos (POV) --> Stannis --> Cassana Estermont

*~*~*~*~

PART II: "NOW SAY HER NAME.”

Lyanna Stark, “beautiful, willful, and dead before her time.” We know little about Lyanna other than how much men desired her. A Helen of Troy type figure, an entire continent of men fought and died because “Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna”. He loved her enough to lock her in a tower, where she gave birth and died. But who was she? How did she feel about any of these events? What did she want? What were her hopes, her dreams? On these, GRRM remains silent.

Elia Martell, “kind and clever, with a gentle heart and a sweet wit.” Presented in the narrative as a dead mother, a dead sister, a deficient wife who could bare no more children, she is defined solely by her relationships with various men, with no story of her own outside of her rape and murder.

Ashara Dayne, the maiden in the tower, the mother of a stillborn daughter, the beautiful suicide, we get no details of her personality, only that she was desired by Barristan the Bold and either (or perhaps both) Brandon or Ned Stark.

Rhaella Targaryen, a Queen of the Seven Kingdoms for more than 20 years. We know that Aerys abused and raped her to conceive Daenerys. We know that she suffered many miscarriages. But what do we know about her? What did she think of Aerys’s desire to make the Dornish deserts bloom? What did she spend 20 years doing when she wasn’t being abused? How did she feel when Aerys moved the court to Casterly Rock for almost a year? We don’t have answers to any of these questions. Yandel wrote a whole history book for ASOIAF giving us lots and lots of information on the personalities and quirks and fears and desires of men like Aerys and Tywin and Rhaegar, so I know who these men are in a way that I don’t know the women in canon. I don’t think it’s reasonable that GRRM left Rhaella’s humanity virtually blank when he had all of TWOIAF to elaborate on pre-series characters, and he could have easily made a little sidebar on Queen Rhaella. We have a lot of dairies and letters and stuff about the thoughts and feelings of real medieval queens, so why didn’t Yandel (and GRRM) give us a little more about the last Targaryen queen in the Seven Kingdoms? Why didn’t we even get a picture of Rhaella in TWOIAF?

Joanna Lannister, desired by both a King and a King’s Hand and made to suffer for it, she died giving birth to Tyrion. We know there was “love between” Tywin and Joanna, but details about her are few and far between. With many of these women, the scant lines in the text about them often leave the reader asking, “well, what does that mean exactly?” What does it mean exactly that Lyanna was willful? What does it mean exactly that Rhaella was mindful of her duty? Joanna is no exception, with GRRM’s teasing yet frustratingly vague remark that Joanna “ruled” Tywin at home. Joanna is merely the roughest sketch in the text, seen through a glass darkly.

Cassana Estermont. Honestly I tried to recall a quote about Cassana and I realized that there wasn’t one. She is the drowned lover, the dead wife, the dead mother, and we know nothing else.

Tysha, a teenage girl who was saved from rapers, only to be gang-raped on Tywin Lannister’s orders. Her whereabouts become something of a talisman for Tyrion in ADWD, as if finding her will free him from his dead father’s long, black shadow, but aside from the sexual violence she suffered, we know nothing else about this lowborn girl except that she loved a boy deemed by Westerosi society to be unloveable.

For Lyarra, Minisa, Bethany, and the rest, we know little more than their names, their pregnancies, and their deaths, and for some we don’t even have names.

I often include Lynesse Hightower and Alannys Greyjoy as honorary members, even though they’re obviously not dead.

I said above that the DLC are either up on a pedestal or down on their knees. Lynesse Hightower is both, introduced to us by Jorah as a love story out of the songs, and villainized as the woman who left Jorah to be a concubine in Lys. In Jorah’s words, he hates Lynesse, almost as much as he loves her. Lynesse’s story is defined by a lot of tired tropes; she is the “Stunningly Beautiful” “Uptown Girl” / “Rich Bitch” “Distracted by the Luxury” until she realizes Jorah is “Unable to support a wife”. (All of these are explained on tv tropes if you would like to read more.) Lynesse is basically an embodiment of the gold digger trope without any depth, without any subversion, without really delving into Lynesse as a person. Even though she’s still alive, even though lots of people still alive know her and would be able to tell us about her as a person, they don’t.

Alannys Greyjoy I personally include in the Dead Ladies Club because her character boils down to a “Mother’s Madness” with little else to her, even tho, again, she’s not dead.

When I include Lynesse and Alannys, every region in GRRM’s Seven Kingdoms has at least one of the DLC. That was something that stood out to me when I was first reading - how widespread GRRM’s dead mothers and cast off women are. It’s not just one mother, it’s not just one House, it’s everywhere in GRRM’s writing.

And when I say “everywhere in GRRM’s writing,” I mean everywhere. Mothers killed off-screen (typically in childbirth) before the story begins is a trope GRRM uses throughout his career, in Fevre Dream and Dreamsongs and Armageddon Rag and in his tv scripts. It’s unimaginative and lazy, to say the least.

*~*~*~*~

PART III: WHO ARE THEY NOT?

Long dead, historical women like Visenya Targaryen are not included in the Dead Ladies Club. Why, you ask?

If you go up to the average American on the street, they’ll probably be able to tell you something about their mother, or their grandmother, or their aunt, or some other woman in their lives who is important to them, and you can get an idea about who these women were/are as people. But the average American probably won’t be able to tell you a whole lot about Martha Washington, who lived centuries ago. (If you’re not American, substitute “Martha Washington” with the name of the mother of an important political figure who lived 300 years ago. I’m American, so this is the example I’m using. Also, I can already hear the history nerds piping up - sit down, you’re distinctly above average.)

In this same fashion, the average Westerosi should (misogyny aside) usually be able to tell you something about the important women in their lives. In real life history, kings and lords and other noblemen shared or preserved information about their wives or mothers or sisters or w/e, in spite of the extremely misogynistic medieval societies they lived in.

So this isn’t “OMG a woman died, be outraged!!1!” kind of thing. This isn’t that.

I generally limit the DLC to women who have died relatively recently in Westerosi history and who are denied their humanity in a way that their male contemporaries are not.

*~*~*~*~

PART IV: WHY DOES IT MATTER?

The Dead Ladies Club are the women of the previous one or two generations that we should know more about, but we don’t. We know little more about them than that they had children and they died. I don’t know these women, except through transformative fandom. I know a lot about the pre-series male characters in the text, but canon gives me almost nothing about these women.

To copy from another post of mine on this issue, it’s like the Dead Ladies exist in GRRM’s narrative solely to be abused, raped, give birth, and die, later to have their immutable likenesses cast in stone and put up on pedestals to be idealized. The women of the Dead Ladies Club aren’t afforded the same characterization and growth as pre-series male characters.

Think about Jaime, who, while not a pre-series character, is a great example of how GRRM can use characterization to play with his readers. We start off seeing Jaime as an asshole who pushes kids out of windows, and don’t get me wrong, he’s still an asshole who pushes kids out of windows, but he’s also so much more than that. Our perception as readers shifts and we understand that Jaime is so complex and multi-layered and grey.

With dead pre-series male characters, GRRM still manages to do interesting things with their stories, and to convey their desires, and to play with reader perceptions. Rhaegar is a prime example. Readers go from Robert’s version of the story that Rhaegar was a sadistic supervillain, to the idea that whatever happened between Rhaegar and Lyanna wasn’t as simple as Robert believed, and some fans even progress further to this idea that Rhaegar was highly motivated by prophecy.

But we don’t get that kind of character development with the Dead Ladies. For example, Elia exists in the narrative to be raped and to die, and to motivate Doran’s desires for justice and revenge, a symbol of the Dornish cause, a reminder by the narrative that it is the innocents who suffer most in the game of thrones. But we don’t know who she is as a person. We don’t know what she wanted in life, how she felt, what she dreamed of.

We don’t get characterization of the DLC, we don’t get shifts in perception, we barely get anything at all when it comes to these women. GRRM does not write pre-series female characters the same way he writes pre-series male characters. These women are not given space in the narrative the same way their male contemporaries are.

Consider the Unnamed Princess of Dorne, mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn. She was the only female ruler of a kingdom while the Robert’s Rebellion generation was coming up, and she is also the only leader of a Great House during that time period that we don’t have a name for.

The North? Ruled by Rickard Stark. The Riverlands? Ruled by Hoster Tully. The Iron Islands? Ruled by Quellon Greyjoy. The Vale? Ruled by Jon Arryn. The Westerlands? Ruled by Tywin Lannister. The Stormlands? Steffon, and then Robert Baratheon. The Reach? Mace Tyrell. But Dorne? Just some woman with no name, oops, who the hell cares, who even cares, why bother with a name, who needs one, it’s not like names matter in ASOIAF, amirite? //sarcasm//

We didn’t even get her name in TWOIAF, even though the Unnamed Princess was mentioned there. And this lack of a name is so very limiting - it is so hard to discuss a ruler’s policy and evaluate her decisions when the ruler doesn’t even have a name.

To speak more on the namelessness of women... Tysha didn’t get a name until ACOK. Although they were named in the appendices in book 1, neither Joanna nor Rhaella were named within the story until ASOS. Ned Stark’s mother wasn’t named until the family tree in the appendix of TWOIAF. And when will the Unnamed Princess of Dorne get a name? When?

As I think about this, I cannot help but think of this quote: “She hated the namelessness of women in stories, as if they lived and died so that men could have metaphysical insights.” Too often these women exist to further the male characters, in a way that doesn’t apply to men like Rhaegar or Aerys.

I don’t think that GRRM is leaving out or delaying these names on purpose. I don’t think GRRM is doing any of this deliberately. The Dead Ladies Club, imo, is the result of indifference, not malevolence.

But these kinds of oversights like the Princess of Dorne not having a name are, in my opinion, indicative of a much larger trend -- GRRM refuses these dead women space in the narrative while affording significant space to the dead/pre-series male characters. This issue, imo, is relevant to feminist spatial theory, or the ways in which women inhabit or occupy space (or are prevented from doing so). Some feminist scholars argue that even conceptual “places” or “spaces” (like a narrative or a story) have an influence on people’s political power, culture, and social experience. Such a discussion is probably beyond the scope of this post, but basically it’s argued that women/girls are socialized to take up less space than men in their surroundings. So when GRRM refuses narrative space to pre-series women in a way that he does not do to pre-series men, I feel like he is playing into misogynistic tropes and tendencies rather than subverting them.

*~*~*~*~

PART V: THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER

Given that many of the DLC (although not all) were mothers, and that many died in childbirth, I want to examine this phenomenon in more detail, and discuss what it means for the Dead Ladies Club.

Popular culture has a tendency to prioritize fatherhood by marginalizing motherhood. (Look at Disney’s long history of dead or absent mothers, storytelling which is merely a continuation a much older fairytale tradition of the “symbolic annihilation” of the mother figure.) Audiences are socialized to view mothers as “expendable,” while fathers are “irreplaceable”:

This is achieved by not only removing the mother from the narrative and undermining her motherwork, but also by obsessively showing her death, again and again. […] The death of the mother is instead invoked repeatedly as a romantic necessity […] there appears to be a reflex in mainstream popular visual culture to kill off the mother. [x]

For me, the existence of the Dead Ladies Club is perpetuating the tendency to devalue motherhood, and unlike so much else about ASOIAF, it’s not original, it’s not subversive, and it’s not great writing.

Consider Lyarra Stark. In GRRM’s own words, when asked who Ned Stark’s mother was and how she died, he tells us laconically, “Lady Stark. She died.” We know nothing of Lyarra Stark, other than that she married her cousin Rickard, gave birth to four children, and died during or after Benjen’s birth. It’s another example of GRRM’s casual indifference toward and disregard for these women, and it’s very disappointing coming from an author who is otherwise so amazing. If GRRM can imagine a world as rich and varied as Westeros, why is it so often the case that when it comes to the female relatives of his characters, all GRRM can imagine is that they suffer and die?

Now, you might be saying, “dying in childbirth is just something that happens to women, so what’s the big deal?” Sure, women died in childbirth in the Middle Ages at an alarming rate. Let’s assume that Westerosi medicine closely approximates medieval medicine - even if we make that assumption, the rate at which these women are dying in childbirth in Westeros is inordinately high compared to the real Middle Ages, statistically speaking. But here’s the kicker: Westerosi medicine is not medieval. Westerosi medicine is better than medieval medicine. To paraphrase my friend @alamutjones, Westeros has better than medieval medicine, but worse than medieval outcomes when it comes to women. GRRM is putting his finger down on the scales here. And it’s lazy.

Childbirth, by definition, is a very gendered death. And it’s how GRRM defines these women - they gave birth, and they died, and nothing else about them matters to him. (“Lady Stark. She died.”) Sure, there’s some bits of minutia we can gather about these women if we squint. Lyanna was said to be willful, and she had some sort of relationship with Rhaegar Targaryen that the jury is still out on, but her consent was dubious at best. Joanna was happily married, and she was desired by Aerys Targaryen, and she may or may not have been raped. Rhaella was definitely raped to conceive Daenerys, who she died giving birth to.

Why are these women treated in such a gendered manner? Why did so many mothers die in childbirth in ASOIAF? Fathers don’t tend to die gendered deaths in Westeros, so why isn’t the cause of death more varied for women?

And why are so many women in ASOIAF defined by their absence, as black holes, as negative space in the narrative?

The same cannot be said of so many fathers in ASOIAF. Consider Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion, but whose father is a godlike-figure in their lives, both before and after his death. Even dead, Tywin still rules his children’s lives.

It’s the relationship between child and father (Randyll Tarly, Selwyn Tarth, Rickard Stark, Hoster Tully, etc) that GRRM gives so much weight to relative to the mother’s relationship, with notable exceptions found in Catelyn Stark and Cersei Lannister. (Though with Cersei, I think it could be argued that GRRM isn’t subverting anything -- he’s playing into the dark side of motherhood, and the idea that mothers damage their children with their presence -- which is basically the flip side of the dead mother trope -- but this post is already a ridiculous length and I’m not gonna get into this here.)

*~*~*~*~

PART VI: THE DLC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Despite his claims to historical verisimilitude, GRRM made Westeros more misogynistic than the real Middle Ages. Considering that the details of their sexual violence is the primary information we have about the DLC, why is so much sexual violence necessary?

I discuss this issue in depth in my tag for #rape culture in Westeros, but I think it deserves to be touched on here, at least briefly.

Girls like Tysha are defined by the sexual violence they experienced. We know about Tysha’s gang rape in book 1, but we don’t even learn her name until book 2. So many of the DLC are victims of sexual violence, with little or no attention given to how this violence affected them personally. More attention is given to how the sexual violence affected the men in their lives. With each new sexual harassment Joanna suffered because of Aerys, we know per TWOIAF that Tywin cracked a little more, but how did Joanna feel? We know that Rhaella had been abused to the point that it appeared that a beast had savaged her, and we know that Jaime felt extremely conflicted about this because of his Kingsguard oaths, but how did Rhaella feel, when her abuser was her brother-husband? We know more about the abuse these women suffered than we do about the women themselves. The narrative objectifies rather than humanizes the DLC.

Why did GRRM’s messianic characters have to be conceived through rape? The mother figure being raped and sacrificed for the messiah/hero is an old and tired fantasy trope, and GRRM does it not once, but two (or possibly even three) times. Really, GRRM? Really? GRRM doesn’t need to rely on raped dead mothers as part of his store-bought tragic backstory. GRRM can do better than that, and he should do better. (Further discussion in my tag for #gender in ASOIAF.)

*~*~*~*~

PART VII: MALE SACRIFICE, FEMALE SACRIFICE, AND CHOICE

Now, you might be asking, “It’s normal for male characters to sacrifice themselves, so why can’t women sacrifice themselves for the messiah? Isn’t female sacrifice subversive?”

Male sacrifice and female sacrifice are often not the same in popular culture. To boil it down - men sacrifice, while women are sacrificed.

Women dying in childbirth to give birth to the messiah isn’t the same thing as male characters making some grand last stand with guns blazing to give the Messianic Hero the chance to Do The Thing. The male characters who get to go out guns blazing choose that fate; it’s the end result of their characterization to do so. Think of Syrio Forel. He chooses to sacrifice himself to save one of our protagonists.

But women like Lyanna and Rhaella and Joanna they didn’t get a choice, were afforded no grand moment of existential victory that was the culmination of their characters; they just died. They bled out, they got sick, they were murdered -- they-just-died. There was no grand choice to sacrifice themselves in favor of saving the world, there was no option to refuse the sacrifice, there wasn’t any choice at all.

And that’s key. That’s what lies at the heart of all of GRRM’s stories: choice. As I said here,

“Choice […]. That’s the difference between good and evil, you said. Now it looks like I’m the one got to make a choice” (Fevre Dream). In GRRM’s own words, “That’s something that’s very much in my books: I believe in great characters. We’re all capable of doing great things, and of doing bad things. We have the angels and the demons inside of us, and our lives are a succession of choices.” It’s the the choices that hurt, the choices where good and evil hang in the balance – these are the choices in which “the human heart [is] in conflict with itself,” which GRRM considers to be “the only thing worth writing about”.

Men like Aerys and Rhaegar and Tywin make choices in ASOIAF; women like Rhaella don’t have any choices at all in the narrative.

Does GRRM not find the stories of the Dead Ladies Club worth writing about? Was there no moment in GRRM’s mind when Rhaella or Elia or Ashara felt conflicted in their hearts, no moment they felt their loyalties divided? How did Lynesse feel choosing concubinage? What of Tysha, who loved a Lannister boy, but was gang-raped at the hands of House Lannister? How did she feel?

It would be very different if we were told about the choices that Lyanna and Rhaella and Elia made. (Fandom often speculates about whether, for example, Lyanna chose to go with Rhaegar, but the text remains silent on this issue as of ADWD. GRRM remains silent on these women’s choices.)

It would be different if GRRM explored their hearts in conflict, but we’re not told anything about that. It would be subversive if these women actively chose to sacrifice themselves, but they didn’t.

Dany is probably being set up as a woman who actively chooses to sacrifice herself to save the world, and I think that’s subversive, a valiant and commendable effort on GRRM’s part to tackle this dichotomy between male sacrifice and female sacrifice. But I don’t think it makes up for all of these dead women sacrificed in childbirth with no choice.

*~*~*~*~

PART VIII: CONCLUSIONS

I hope this post serves as a working definition of the Dead Ladies Club, a term which, at least for me, carries a lot of criticism of the way GRRM handles these female characters. The term encompasses the voicelessness of these women, the excessive and highly gendered abuse they suffered, and their lack of characterization and agency.

GRRM calls his characters his children. I feel like these dead women -- the mothers, the wives, the sisters -- I feel like these women were GRRM’s stillborn children, with nothing left of them but a name on a birth certificate, and a lot of lost potential, and a hole where the heart once was in someone else’s story. From my earliest days on tumblr, I wanted to give voice to these voiceless women. Too often they were forgotten, and I didn’t want them to be.

Because if they were forgotten -- if all they were meant to do was die -- how could I believe in ASOIAF?

How can I believe that “men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” if GRRM created this group of women merely to be sacrificed? Sacrificed for prophecy, or for someone else’s pain, or simply for the tragedy of it all?

How can I believe in all the things ASOIAF stands for? I know that GRRM does a great job with Sansa and Arya and Dany and all the other female POVs, and I admire him for it.

But when ASOIAF asks, “what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?" What is one life worth, when measured against so much? And Davos answers, softly, “Everything” ... When ASOIAF says that ... when ASOIAF says that one life is worth everything, how can people tell me that these women don’t matter?

How can I believe in ASOIAF as a celebration of humanity, when GRRM dehumanizes and objectifies these women?

The treatment of these women undermines ASOIAF’s central thesis, and it didn’t need to be like this. GRRM is better than this. He can do better.

I want to be wrong about all this. I want GRRM to tell us in TWOW all about Lyanna’s choices, and I want to learn the name of the Unnamed Princess, and I want to know that three women weren’t raped to fulfill GRRM’s prophecy. I want GRRM to breathe life into them, because I consider him to be the best fantasy writer alive.

But I don’t know that he will do that. The best I can say is, I want to believe.

*~*~*~*~

“Ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.”

But I sing of them. I do. Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story...

*~*~*~*~

PART IX: FOOTNOTES AND MISCELLANEOUS

**I am 90% certain that I am the person who invented the term “Dead Ladies Club”, but I am not 100% certain. It sounds like a name I would make up, but a lot of my friends who I would talk to about this on their blogs in 2011 and 2012 have long since deleted, so I can’t find the first time I used the term, and I can’t remember anymore. Some things that should not have been forgotten were lost, history became legend, legend became myth, y'all know the drill.

To give you a little more about the origins of this term, I created my sideblog @pre-gameofthrones because I wanted a place for the history of ASOIAF, but mostly I wanted a place where these women could be brought to life. During my early days in fandom, so many people around here were writing great fanfiction featuring these women, fleshing out these women’s thoughts and feelings, bringing them to life and giving them the humanity that GRRM denied them. I wasn’t very interested in transformative works before ASOIAF, but suddenly I needed a place to preserve all of these fanfics about these women. Perhaps it sounds silly, but I didn’t want these women to suffer a second “death” and to be forgotten a second time with people deleting their blogs and posts getting lost in tumblr’s terrible organization system.

Over the years, so many other people have talked about and celebrated the Dead Ladies Club: @poorshadowspaintedqueens, @cosmonauthill, @lyannas, @rhaellas, @ayllriadayne, @poorquentyn, @goodqueenaly, @arielno, @gulbaharsultan, @racefortheironthrone and so many others, but these were the people I remembered off the top of my head, and I wanted to list them here because they all have such great things to say about this, so check them out, go through their archives, ask them stuff, because they’re wonderful!

#asoiaf meta #the dead ladies club #rhaella targaryen #elia martell #lyanna stark #joanna lannister #asoiaf #feminist spatial theory #lynesse hightower #lannister thoughts #gender in asoiaf #ashara dayne #cassana estermont #tysha #the princess of dorne #the unnamed princess of dorne

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qqueenofhades · 7 years

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I have a somewhat historical question I guess that I was wondering if you knew anything about. A common trope I see in any media taking place in any time period before early to mid 20th century is the mother dying in childbirth thing? And I was just wondering (even just in regards to the time period of your expertise) what we're the mortality rates for women in childbirth?

Heh. Well. (This is probably going to be way more than you wanted to know, but I believe in being thorough.)

First, childbirth has always been risky (women still die from it in modern countries in modern hospitals with all of 21st century medicine behind them, and it’s still a major health concern for countries in the developing world – Sierra Leone in Africa has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world, with up to 1,360 deaths per 100,000 births, or a 1 in 17 chance). So childbirth in the pre-modern era, without possibility of surgical intervention (unless to save the baby and kill the mother), painkillers, modern hygiene, X-ray/ultrasound equipment, and sterilized hospital settings, was dangerous. Ignaz Semmelweis and Alexander Gordon, two 18th/19th-century obstetricians who investigated the causes of puerperal fever or childbed fever, and concluded that it could often be prevented by the doctor just vigorously washing his hands between deliveries (and not, you know, performing an autopsy on a dead body and going straight to deliver a baby) were treated with complete ridicule by the scientific establishment and branded as charlatans. (This, as you may notice, will become a theme.) Modern germ theory and sterile instruments weren’t established until the late 19th century. So yes, the risk was very real, and noble and common women alike died in childbirth. We obviously don’t have anything resembling detailed demographic information, but we can conclude the rate would be similar to a developing country today.

However, this is very far from saying that no kind of maternal or prenatal care or practice existed. This is once again where we discover how terrible the late medieval/Renaissance era was for women’s rights/education/professional liberty/basically everything (seriously, Renaissance, your art is nice, but otherwise you can fuck off). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the famed medical university at Salerno, in Italy, fairly freely accepted female students and professors, and their most famous professor and scholar on women’s health was Trota of Salerno, who gave her name and a good deal of her own experience to the three texts known as the “Trotula.” These were each written by a different author under Trota’s supervision and authority, and the first two books, “Book on the Conditions of Women” and “On Treatment of Women” represent a detailed gynecological handbook with advice on all kinds of pregnancy/childbirth-related ailments – uterine prolapse, perineum tears, medicines, and other solutions from a practitioner who, unlike her male counterparts, could actually touch and study her patients’ bodies. Trota is referred to as a “magistra” (the female form of Latin magistro or master) and her work was widely circulated and read in England and Normandy as well as Sicily (which was under Norman rule itself from about the mid-eleventh century). So she was a famous doctor and scholar in her own day (until, of course, she was obscured/changed to male/ignored/nearly forgotten until the twentieth century). Another “magistra”, Hersend of France, accompanied Louis IX on crusade in the thirteenth century and treated both the king himself and the female members of the crusade contingent.

Of course, ordinary women would not have had access to these highly trained female physicians, and most midwives had no special or formal training aside from their own practical experience. As well, almost everyone writing medical texts was (shockingly!) a man, making it nearly impossible to know much about these actual practitioners. Since pregnancy was, of course, a result of sex, the church had plenty of opinions on it as well. The suffering of childbirth was supposed to be the proper punishment for original sin, so anything that dulled the pain was frowned on, and when actual training of midwives was instituted in the later medieval era, the concern was mostly on whether they knew how to perform an emergency baptism for the child’s sake, rather than any care of the mother. (Wow…. this sounds… awfully familiar, doesn’t it?) Nonetheless, there are literally dozens of texts from antiquity to the Renaissance, representing folk/informal recipes and methods for contraception and abortion. We don’t know how well any of these worked, if at all, and they were usually (again) written by men trying to tell women what to avoid (but having the effect of also giving them the information if they wanted it). But there was a vast and probably at least somewhat effective corpus of traditions/medicines/rudimentary contraceptive methods available and transmitted through female practitioners.

None of this was ever taught to men, naturally, and the universities, as they became more established, did their damndest to stamp out “unlicensed” practitioners, which really meant women. The 1322 trial of Jacoba Felicie, a female doctor in Paris, is basically representative of the later medieval pushback against women practitioners. Jacoba’s patients, both male and female, testified that she was a highly skilled doctor and they had gotten better after visiting her – but the court’s judgment was that since she was a woman, she couldn’t possibly be as good a doctor as a man, and she was barred from practice. (If this post was Misogyny, Take a Shot, I think we would all be hammered by now.) That decision also led to legislation to keep women out of universities/medical school in France (in 1421, Henry V also banned them in England). So once again: You Suck, Renaissance!

This also involves questions of medieval sexuality, religion, and general hygiene/attitudes toward cleanliness and medical care. First, aside from the texts mentioned above that discuss folk remedies for contraception, a medieval woman had various strategies to space her children that didn’t just rely on hoping her husband didn’t rape her too much (as I have ranted about before). Also, it’s worth pointing out that children were a natural and expected part of medieval marriage, and most couples would be more interested in ensuring they had children, rather than preventing them – limiting family size to the average 2.5 children is a modern conceit once more linked to capitalism and the de-coupling of marriage/family/household from its function as a unit of economic production, as I wrote about here. Children were valuable as heirs to noble families or working members of a lower-class family, and with likewise high infant/child mortality, you could sometimes have a number of children and hope that one or two of them made it to adulthood.

However, that didn’t mean that all medieval women just pumped out babies until they couldn’t have any more. The third-century Roman physician Galen’s theory of female orgasm being necessary to conceive was considerably well-known in the medieval era. While this backfired on rape victims, as it was figured they couldn’t have gotten pregnant if they didn’t enjoy it (paging Todd Akin… wow, this is depressing, isn’t it?), it also meant that your average medieval married couple would have believed that the woman, not just the man, experiencing pleasure was necessary to have children. Cue the church clutching its pearls in the background, but the official Catholic theology and teaching of sexuality was, again, mutable. The thirteenth-century sect of the Cathars viewed all sex, married or otherwise, as evil, so in response and opposition to them, the Catholic church began glorifying marital sex to some degree. There was a recognition that both spouses owed each other sexual availability and pleasure, and marriages could be dissolved if this wasn’t upheld on either end.

As well, since close to half the days of the year (Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays, Lent, Advent, holy days, six weeks after childbirth, etc) were regarded as impermissible for sexual activity, that meant couples (if they were religiously observant, or if they just wanted to avoid the possibility) had the option of spacing out procreative sexual activity. There wasn’t any institutional or official acceptance of sex outside marriage (though oh boy, it happened – up to 30% of brides were pregnant at their wedding), but there was also a lot of argument about what constituted marriage. It could just be as simple as saying “I take you as my wife/husband” without any church framework or institution whatsoever, and then having intercourse. (See chapter three, “Sex and Marriage,” in Sexuality in Medieval Europe.) The church viewed these couples as fornicators if they hadn’t been married formally, but what we would consider cohabiting unmarried couples (similar to a couple living together before actual marriage today) were fairly common. Noblewomen in particular were expected to give their husbands heirs, but after that, if they didn’t like each other much, he would have mistresses and she could be excused from it. The noble couples we know of with a high number of children seem to have been the ones who genuinely liked each other/had happy marriages anyway, and thus continued having sex even after the succession was secured.

Plus, the ideal of chastity, both inside and outside of marriage, was very socially influential. The late medieval English mystic Margery Kempe managed (after having fourteen children with her husband) to get him to agree to a chaste marriage (we have him sadly asking her if she would prefer to kill him with a hatchet rather than letting them have sex again – which, after fourteen kids, she might). Women who chose to be virgins or abbesses or nuns were also excused from childbirth, although they sometimes faced pressure from their families to marry and continue the line. But chastity was admired in both men and women, and considered a prerequisite for holiness, so it was a way to avoid sexual activity (and thus more children) as well as getting in the church’s good books.

Lastly, there’s the general idea that people in the medieval era were filthy, dirty, foul-smelling, had rotten teeth, etc. Medieval people probably had structurally better teeth than we did (though obviously without modern dentistry/orthodontics) albeit worn down from grit/particles, because processed sugar wasn’t part of their diet. Next, while obviously they did not know about germs/the root causes of illnesses, they logically associated filth and bad smells with disease. Most cities had ordinances about where you could dump your waste and strict punishment for litterbugs. Full-body bathing was rarer than today, because of how much time and effort it would take to fill a whole tub, but they washed hair, hands, faces, etc regularly, and bathhouses were a part of medieval town culture. They prized sweet smells and perfumed/fragrant herbs, so while they would obviously have more body odor than we do with daily showers/soap/deodorant/etc, they wouldn’t be some strange shit-smeared, rotten-toothed rustic barely one step above a caveperson. In the 1400s, we find the Hotel-Dieu, the major hospital in Paris, believing that pregnant/postnatal women should have three baths a week and their linen washed regularly (that whole article is worth a read – said hospital was also entirely staffed by women/religious sisters).

Since this has gotten super long (as I said, more than you want to know), allow me to summarize. Midwifery/women’s health care has (surprise!) a very long history and was intentionally destroyed/excluded from male-dominated university curriculums, medieval women giving birth did die but not outlandishly/without any treatment at all, and the presence of women in medical school/practice was increasingly restricted up to and around the Renaissance. (It’s a subject of debate how many midwives were targeted in witch hunts, but some of them definitely were.) This also connected to medieval attitudes about sexuality, procreation, religion, and women, and the options that medieval women had for controlling the number of children they had or didn’t have, and their relationships with their husbands and what was expected of them as a result.

I will also note in closing that the “dying in childbirth” thing in historical fiction is a way to easily invoke the ever-present Dead Mother trope in a historically plausible, if rather lazy, way. Since everyone knows women did die (and do die) in childbirth, it becomes an easy way to kill off the protagonist’s mother or to make some point about The Dangers Of Women’s Lives Back Then (whether in-universe or intended for the modern audience). All of which is absolutely the case, but which ignores, as usual, the complexity of the ways in which premodern medicine for women, and women themselves, created a corpus of knowledge and treatment that remains unacknowledged, overlooked, dismissed, or otherwise intentionally destroyed by a patriarchal, misogynistic system.

/takes a bunch of shots

/falls over

#history #medieval history #women in history #history of sexuality #history of medicine #anonymous #ask

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