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theresattrpgforthat · 7 months

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Is there any rpg where you play as the arch-magus of a castle, and the focus of the game are the politics involved in the whole thing? Like, I certainly CAN cast a fog spell to help you in the upcoming battle, but what am *I* getting out of it?

Theme: Magic and Politics

Hello friend. What I’m understanding that you’re looking for is games in which magic exists, but the point of using it is as a political tool, rather than for effective damage. I found a few games that might be in the ballpark of what you’re looking for, but if you want to look at mechanics that do something similar, I’d definitely recommend checking out the Debt system that exists in Urban Shadows 1e. That’s a game all about doing things for favours, and there’s even a Wizard playbook!

Hearts of Magic, by fading roots.

Fey nobility, arcanist-bureaucrats, and anarchist witches falling for their enemies and getting into messy entanglements amid an undeclared war for control of a magepunk city newly inundated with magical energy.

Play as the Lords and Ladies, the fey noble families of the city, using the fey magic of promises, prophecies, and glamours; The Order, using the arcane techniques of ritual, patterns, and the careful and esoteric arrangement of mundane items; or The Witches, teaching The City to channel raw magic and weave powerful spells.

The object of the game is to create messy entanglements. Fall in love with your enemies, ally with your rivals, fight with your friends. Players will create characters, establish their situations in solitaire scenes, and build scenes using the ten included games. Rules are lightweight and simple, and give you all the tools you need to establish and play scenes, even if improvising dialogue is not your strongest skill.

This game is more about the relationships between the characters than the magic itself; the magic is just the means of navigating those relationships. Hearts of Magic is built from Firebrands, which means that you will play a series of mini games in an order that makes the most sense for your characters, to figure out what happens to them. From the overview of the different mini games it looks like your relationships could be flirtatious or fraught with rivalry; how it plays out it up to you.

Interregnum, by vortiwife.

Interregnum is a playing card-based tabletop game of ambition and ruin set against a backdrop of backstabbing and corporate intrigue. As the Inheritors to a vast Empire, the players must navigate a world of cutthroat politics, forge temporary alliances with their power-hungry rivals, and attempt to destroy those same rivals before they get the idea first.

Sell your soul in a doomed bid for power. Shake hands with your rivals while plotting their demise.

Magic doesn’t seem to be a necessary part of this game, but you can certainly include it if you want to. Interregnum is setting-agnostic: the rules use playing cards and concepts familiar to Blackjack to help you determine how your characters jockey for power. Over the course of the game you will create alliances and incur ruin, falling from grace and making deals with your Empire’s biggest threat just so that you can try and stay in the game. This can be humorous or cutthroat, so make sure that if you pick this game up, you agree as a table on the kind of game you want to play.

Come With A Price, by Blue Maelstrom.

Thinking of the final pleas of his dearest friend, the metal man holds out a gleaming purple crystal, gazing expectantly at the wooden heap. Thinking of her family’s pox-ridden faces, the child lifts her gnarled wooden wand, an identical copy of the one her grandparent had once wielded. Thinking of the lord who took everything from her, the brunette raises her crimson dagger to the heavens. Three words are said, and the inert wood instantly bursts into fiery life, an inferno of brilliant blue lapping against the robes of the assembled coven. The First Deal has been made.

Come With A Price is a rules light tabletop roleplaying game, in which you and your friends join together to craft the story of a coven of witches setting out to make their wildest dreams come true. Together, these witches harness nearly unlimited magical power in order to accomplish feats beyond mortal understanding. Magic demands sacrifice, however, and sometimes deals must be struck so that a witch can get what they want. Making bargains, doing the impossible, and reshaping the world: that is the life of a witch.

While this game is flexible in terms of setting and genre, it maintains that regardless of where your story takes place, magic comes at a price. During character creation, as you make your witches, you’ll brainstorm some kind of scenario that interests your characters. All of your witches will approach this scenario with their own goals; whether or not your character will complete their goal will be determined in play.

The interesting bit that might interest you is the fact that the witches can make deals with other witches to cast the spell for them. When this happens, the spellcaster doesn’t suffer nearly as much from the magic, and the witch who made the deal has to give the spell caster something in return for doing the magic. You’ll likely find yourselves making plenty of deals so as to reduce the toll magic makes on each of your characters - of course, if your witches all have opposing goals, they’ll have to be clever about the deals they make! If you want to hack this game to make it about wizards or magi instead, you probably don’t need to change much.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #magic #politics

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empirearchives · 4 months

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Arrests made during the pro-Napoleon riot in Montpellier

Context: After the defeat and abdication of Napoleon in 1815, the new government made favor of “Bonapartism” a crime and made a series of arrests across the country known as the “White Terror”.

From Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age: A Brief History with Documents, Rafe Blaufarb

———

Charge Sheet against Suspected Bonapartists (January 3, 1816):

Roquier (soldier): said of His Royal Highness the Duke d'Angoulême: “Is that monkey coming? I don't give a damn about our rulers....”

Roche (merchant): repeatedly stated that Bonaparte would soon return....

Etienne (no profession given): wore a blue and white cockade with red thread.

Balp (landowner): said the government is like a bucket going up and down, that having changed 10 times in 19 years, it might well change a dozen more times....

Barban (deserter): cried “Long Live the Emperor” in a billiard hall and insulted the King.

Dejean (ex-soldier): said the triumphal arch erected at Meze for the visit of His Royal Highness the Duke d'Angoulême should be his gallows.

The Quatrefages brothers (court record-keeper): illicit nocturnal meetings at odd hours in their house....

Bertrand (surgeon, intern at the hospital): [found in possession of] a mysterious letter full of effervescences and four other documents, all contrary to Bourbon government and favorable to the usurper.

Carra (wife of Cavanon) and her brother: said the mail of November 26 had not arrived because the Parisians were revolting against the Bourbons....

Bouchoni (no profession): limitless attachment to the usurper's government; participated actively in the unfortunate events that occurred in Montpellier on June 27 and July 2, and signed an innkeeper's register under a false name.

Pau: under an arrest warrant for the disastrous events of Montpellier....

Campan (special commissioner of the usurper): held secret nocturnal meetings, criminal correspondence, and attempts or plots to overthrow the royal government....

Vivier (ex-mayor of Pignans) and son: abuse of power and embezzlement... during the interregnum; moreover, denounced by public rumor.

Favier (second-lieutenant in the Sete customs house) and Fleuran (sergeant in the Angoulême regiment): seditious speech against the government....

Guruoalsac (half-pay officer): peddling seditious writings in suspicious meetings, abuse, vexation, and excesses against citizens.

Fleuri (wife of Clos): cried “Long Live the Emperor” and “To the Devil with all royalists, may the King burn in hell with them.”

Context about the arrest sheet by the author:

‘In late 1815 they rioted in Montpellier to protest the visit of the Duke d'Angoulême (1775-1844), who had led resistance to Napoleon’s return in the south of the country and had encouraged the White Terror. The rising failed, but it induced Bourbon police to arrest hundreds of people on political charges. The following document, a charge sheet drawn up on January 3, 1816, just days after the riot, gives a sense of how the Bourbon authorities construed the crime of “Bonapartism.”’

Charge sheet at Archives Départementales de I'Hérault, 1 M 875.

#napoleon #napoleonic era #napoleonic #Rafe Blaufarb #Blaufarb #napoleon bonaparte #first french empire #french empire #19th century #france #history #Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age: A Brief History with Documents #Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age #sources #archives #ref #references #reference #Duke d'Angoulême

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otemporanerys · 2 months

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Writing Patterns Tag Game

thanks to @cr-noble-writes for the prompt! Rules: list the first line(s) of your last 10 posted fics and see if there's a pattern!

True Blue

Garrus didn’t know why he couldn’t stop banging his head against the wall trying to nail down the Saren case. Everyone was telling him to give it up, calling it an impossible task, and he was just about starting to believe them. His career was hanging on this; the next few days were the most important of his life.

So, really, he should’ve expected her to show up. She always did when something big was about to happen. 2. Life Behind Enemy Lines

“Commander Farvardin,” said the man at the other end of the galaxy, drawing a cigarette to his lips. “Or do you prefer Shepherd?”

Shepherd’s talons dug into the palm of her hands. She’d really hoped he would be in the room with her – then she’d at least have had the option of attack.

“Shepherd is fine,” she said, with practiced evenness. “What do you want?” 3. Any Port in a Storm

Garrus didn’t know what he was planning to do with the two hours before they hit the Omega-4 relay, but potentially the last thing he expected was a summons to Miranda’s quarters. Actually no, that wasn’t quite the last thing – the very last thing he expected was for her to, without so much as a word of explanation, slam him against the wall and attack him with her mouth. 4. Small Problems

There were two kinds of private libraries in this world: those intended to store books, and those intended to make visitors feel stupid and inferior, and the one Garrus and Shepard were standing in was definitely the latter.

5. Priceless

The most important quality a thief could have – the bit that set apart the professionals from the amateurs – was that you always had to act like you owned the place.

6. Diamond in the Rough

War was really fucking stressful.

7. Bitter Harvest

The forest was quiet and bright; dry leaves crunched under Hastings’s hooves, and the air was pleasantly cool against Anderson’s face. Someone else might have taken pleasure in that rare stillness, but all it did was leave him on-edge. Wariness and suspicion were a witcher’s constant companions, or at least they were for him. 8. In the Bleak Midwinter

No child older than nine had ever survived the Trial of the Grasses, and most potential witchers were brought in younger than that. Most were orphans; some were abandoned; and not an insignificant minority were sold off by drunkard fathers or harlot mothers. The trainees were taken to castles in the middle of nowhere and raised by a group of fatherless whoresons who themselves had been raised by other, older fatherless whoresons.

In short, Shepard’s upbringing had been lacking in a lot of things taken for granted by those raised in normal families; so whenever she entered a town and saw Yule decorations strewn about the place, her first thought was always Oh, great, the inn’s going to be rammed.

9. Bedside Manner

The cave was cold and dirty and dank, and above all it was small.

10. Interregnum

The cost of a day pass at the gym was, frankly, extortionate, but Gareth paid it anyway. It was the closest one to the clinic, he was desperate to hit something, and it was probably better if it wasn’t an orderly. Patterns... I'm very acutely aware of my in media res problem 😅 If anyone spots anything else, let me know! Tagging @kalliesa @angry-jager @dispatchwithlove @dwarrowdams @misseffect @aevallare

#mass effect #fic chat #tag game

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erickthecat · 9 months

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Something fun they did to avoid being sued for the Red, White, and Royal Blue movie:

Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor -> Henry George Edward James Hanover-Stuart Fox

Of course they changed Henry's last names. In the book, he is a Mountchristen-Windsor and in the movie is a Hanover-Stuart.

The actual current royal family is Mountbatten-Windsor.

They would likely not be allowed to use anything close to that (especially as the movie is not kind to the British royals from either Alex or Henry's sides).

HOWEVER!

They did use actual names - just older ones.

The House of Hanover started in 1714 with George I and ended with Queen Victoria in 1901. This might be a bit of a reference to the V&A as well as whatever George Henry happens to be named after.

The much more fun addition is Stuart. As in James I of the House of Stuart, one of the gay kings that Henry is named after. This is an old one (from the reign of James I starting in 1603 and ending with Anne in 1714 (who was the last Queen of England and Scotland and then the first Queen of Great Britain)). [Edit: I am ignoring the Interregnum where there were no kings at all in the middle of the Stuart monarchs and instead just Cromwell being the worst]

[If I'm interpreting him right, the other gay king he's named after is Edward, which is a really, really, really old one - Edward II (1284-1327). He is from the House of Plantagenet and I think it might have been more of a stretch trying to make this into a modern royal name]

(I am a bored historian and I thought that it was an interesting - if annoyingly necessary - change in the transition from book to screen)

(Also, this is later history than I study, so if you have corrections, PLEASE DO)

#i'm not sure if anyone has talked about it yet #but y'know just as an explanation for that particular choice #henry fox mountchristen windsor #henry hanover stuart fox #rwrb #rwrb movie #rwrb spoilers #red white and royal blue #red white and royal blue movie #fandom: history huh? bet we could make some

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tanoraqui · 1 year

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Not A Hero? (also this isn't necessarily in the spirit of the meme, but speaking of your Girl Genius fics, I still reread A Family Reconstructed periodically; was there anything you wrote for that that never got posted?)

Someone else asked about Not A Hero, so, I'm VERY flattered that you like A Family Reconstructed so much!

I have exactly 2 paragraphs of the next chapter:

The flaming missile streaked towards the exposed airship and, reflexively, Zanta grabbed Chump’s arm at the same time as he seized her around the waist, and they both pulled each other backwards off the cliff. For just a moment, amid the surprise and fury and sudden rebirth of terror (not for herself, never that, but the Valley and her children)—for a moment, falling just ahead of stony shrapnel and explosion that made her skull rattle, she nearly let out a hysterical giggle for no reason other than just like old times.

Then they hit the Skiff and she lost the air in her lungs and her grip on his arm—which she needed to do anyway, to not be swept away by the current. Ashtara’s Words was not a gentle river.

I did have plans beyond that, I had a whole epic battle idea where the kids, of course, all worked together to save the day. They were in flying machines, and I think use Skifandrian "magic" to put all the invaders to sleep... Unfortunately, I don't remember any more details than that. They might be written in a chat somewhere, but idk with who or on what platform :(

I do, however, have a short sequel, which I think I've put on tumblr before? called "Interregis" (play on "interregnum", meaning "between kings" but the latin is declined differently to mean...to imply conversation one king to another, rather than the time between one king reigning and the next:

also fun intra(post)-fic fic about how Tarvek definitely has a phase where he’s, like, sorta toadying with Gil? Not much, but he doesn’t argue properly, keeps backing down first and going with Gil’s ideas or suggesting activities Gil likes but he doesn’t - and standing up against the school’s social structure, though it’s Tarvek so it’s not “standing up” so much as “manipulating everyone else into stopping.” In fairness, he leads by example. And probably lectures. And mild blackmail. All because, of course, he’s very aware that he’s only alive so far as the Baron trusts him with Gil. So he tries to be the best friend possible, which is good for the social structure but the other stuff leads Gil to thinking something’s wrong but he has no idea WHY, and probably tries to give Tarvek some space? Then Tarvek’s like “oh no he’s ABANDONING me” and gets sorta clingy, and Gil’s like “umm?” and tries to make him feel better, and they end up shouting things (in some crawl space somewhere, of course) like

“Why are you acting so WEIRD?”

“I’m not!”

“You are! You keep- you keep acting like a minion.”

*actual offense* “I have not!”

“Yes you have. You keep doing what I say even when you don’t want to, and not arguing properly, and-” Gil scrambled for other evidence. “You didn’t even complain about playing on gliders yesterday, and you hate flying!”

“That didn’t count,” Tarvek said hotly. “We were still indoors.” In an airship, but Castle Wulfenbach never felt like that. And he didn’t have a less superficial argument. He just hadn’t meant Gil to notice.

“What’s wrong?” Gil demanded, and it was probably the plaintive concern that made Tarvek grind his palms into his eyes and groan.

“Don’t you know anything about politics?”

Gil scowled. “You aren’t acting like a toady just because I’m the Baron’s son. You’re my friend.”

“Yeah, and I have to be,” Tarvek snapped, “because you’re the Baron’s son, and I know.”

Gil stepped back like he’d been punched in the stomach. “You—you don’t want to be friends anymore?”

Tarvek gaped. “No—”

Gil was already out of the crawlspace, a flash of blue scrambling away into the dark.

Tarvek sprinted after him. “Gil, wait! I didn’t mean it—” He jumped over a cable. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

Gil whirled back. His eyes were burning, with spark and tears. “So how did you mean it? Like I’m just someone else you need to get on your side, like Minnie? Or you think I’m like—like Zulenna, and want to boss people around all the time? Except you were yelling at her last week.”

“I need the Baron to think I’m on his side,” Tarvek said desperately. There were tears behind his eyes, too, but he had enough self-control not to let them out. “I need him to not see me as a threat, or he’ll kill me.”

Gil balled his hands into fists. “He wouldn’t.” But he didn’t say it with much conviction.

“Of course he would,” said Tarvek. “He took me to Skifander when he found out I knew, and the only reason he didn’t throw me off the ship halfway there was that he was so worried what they might be doing to you.”

“But you’re not a threat,” Gil insisted. “Even to me. He’s Baron Wulfenbach.”

Tarvek felt a bit nettled. “Yeah but—” he started to say hotly. Then he stopped. Then he closed his eyes. Secret for secret. That was what real friends did in stories. He opened them again. “But I’m the Storm King.”

They stared at each other for a moment, breathing hard; Tarvek in nervy anticipation, Gil in mostly dumb silence.

Gil broke it. “You’re nine.”

Tarvek rolled his eyes. “I’m not Andronicus Valois. But I am descended from him, directly. Through my mother.” He jutted his chin a little. “The Fifty Families will back me.”

“Huh,” said Gil. He studied his friend. “And the Baron knows?”

Tarvek started to pick at a soon-to-be-fraying hem on his sleeve. “I think so. I’m pretty sure he saw my notes, the ones I made when we were flying to Skifander. I was breaking through; I wasn’t…smart. I wrote some stuff about…stuff. Coronation plans.”

Gil came a little nearer, but only to stab a finger at his chest. “So you were just faking it when you told Zulenna it wasn’t fair to boss people around just because they weren’t as noble?”

“I—” This sleeve was very fraying. Tarvek forced himself to meet Gil’s eyes. “She does have a right, sort of. It’s proper.” He thought about hanging upside-down off the end of a bird-like flyer, Zedmara holding his belt so he could grab Zeetha’s ankle so she could clutch Gil’s and all together they could save the barbarian valley. Tarvek conceded, “But maybe ‘proper’ is overrated. And she didn’t have to be mean.”

Gil crossed his arms, staring in a way that reminded Tarvek suddenly of the way the Baron had stared at him in Sturmhalten. Judging. Tarvek tried to wait it out, but then he thought Gil didn’t want him to act meek like that, but then he realized it was too late because he was already starting to bristle sparkily (what right–)

Then Gil smiled, and just like that he was Gil again, scuffmarks and all. Sunshine, not storm. He clapped Tarvek on the shoulder. “I guess we’ll have to rule the Empire together then.”

“What?”

“Yeah!” Gil was starting to light up with the idea, like he always did with something new. “The stuffy people will trust you in charge, and the smarter people will trust me in charge—”

“Hey!” said Tarvek, but Gil rolled over him.

“—and they’ll think we’re going to fight, but really we’ll work together to make Europa the peacefulest it can be!”

Tarvek smiled. It was a good thought. If he was really, really good, he should let Gil keep thinking it.

“It doesn’t always work like that,” he said instead. “It usually doesn’t. Ever. There’s a lot of—of extra things.” Like the chapel in the library at home. That was maybe a secret for another day.

Gil scoffed dramatically. “Nothing we can’t handle. And we can call Skifander for back-up.” He bit his lip. “And if the—if my father decides you’re too dangerous, I’m sure my mother will yell at him again.”

. . . . . . . .

They were lying in the rafters between the ceiling of the third starboard mess hall and the floor of the hydroponics bay, which had small holes in it for water filtration that looked like stars if you squinted and hung a sheet of clear plastic to keep off the dripping. There were views of real stars outside the windows all over the ship, including from the actual observatory, but this was a uniquely Castle Wulfenbach planetarium, and nobody else ever tried to use it.

Tarvek had his hands behind his head, as a pillow. “Hypothetical:” he proposed, and only his tight tone gave away that this wasn’t just the start to another scientific abstraction. “If you had a secret, that was yours but also really not yours, and both the revelation and the keeping of it could be incredibly important…what would you do?”

Gil considered for a moment, then rolled up onto one elbow, facing his friend in the dim light filtering down from the hydroponics’ artificial sun. The rafters were relatively slimmer than they had been four years ago, when they first found this place, but both boys had enough balance training that it didn’t matter. “I think that my father has known for years that your family is hiding more than the Storm King thing,” he said seriously. “And if you’re tacitly confirming it to me, when you know I won’t help you hide anything if it’s a real threat to the Empire, then you’re ready to tell him yourself. And you know it.”

Tarvek sighed, not quite like a highwayman resigned to hanging but pretty close. “Yeah.”

It had gotten less intimidating to speak to Baron Wulfenbach in the years since breakthrough and Skifander. It was never an issue when Tarvek was in the madness place—then, the challenge was to keep his tongue to himself. Perhaps the shift was derived from the accumulated time they had spent in fugues together, the Baron training him and Gil in secret laboratories late at night—Gil because the Baron insisted his spark and identity remain secret, Tarvek because he seemed to have given up trying to prevent him from tagging along. More likely it was due less serious moments, here and there—the pickling juice mess, or the time the Baron let them stay for breakfast waffles. It was difficult to be afraid of a man you’d seen meticulously spread butter on every plane of a stack of waffles and then eat them with his fingers. Very difficult.

Tarvek managed it, however, despite the memory of waffles and the royal blood flowing through his veins, because the man in question was Baron Wulfenbach, conqueror of a continent (Tarvek’s continent—and they both knew it). The Baron had never lost the knack of glowering at Tarvek through storm-grey eyes like he was judge, jury, and executioner, and not particularly pleased with what he was seeing.

Even Gil, sitting seeming-carelessly on the edge of his father’s desk, legs dangling, didn’t ease the tension in the Baron’s office. He was assistant justice as much as advocate today, because Tarvek wasn’t sure he could do this twice.

He kept his shoulders firm and put his hands behind his back, pretending it was part of recitation posture rather than an excuse to twist them nervously together. “First, I want remind you that I’ve kept Gil’s secret for nearly five years, and Skifander, and everything I know because of those. When I could have told it all to any one of the eight people I know on this ship who would be sure to get the information back to my father or one of your other enemies, who would arrange an assassination. And you only know seven of them. And I could’ve gotten away with one of the teleports before you even knew the spy was gone.”

The Baron glowered darker—glared, standing (looming), hands dangerously flat on the desk. “Is that a threat?”

“No!” Tarvek didn’t try to hide his horror—as much of what the Baron might do if he believed Tarvek a danger as at the idea that it could easily be true. Two minutes in and he’d already miscalculated. “No, I was trying to establish trust! So you remember I’m– you can—”

“Why do we need to remember that?” Gil asked, prompting and prosecutor. Tarvek wished Gil hadn’t learned how to be so neutral.

He stilled the hands he’d started openly wringing, and kept his chin high. “Because in another minute you’re going to want to stop, and I don’t want you to.”

The last part slipped into a whine, despite Tarvek’s best efforts. But Gil’s eyes crinkled in sympathy, so maybe it was okay.

“What exactly do you have to say, Sturmvarous?” demanded the Baron, with no sympathy at all.

The difference between a common soldier reporting and a lord surveying, Tarvek’s governess used to say when he was five, was in the chin and the eyes. She said it whenever he slouched in a lesson, with liberal prodding from her silver-tipped cane to emphasize the point.

Tarvek took a deep breath, hands at his side—visible, not a threat—and raised his chin to meet the Baron’s stormy eyes. “I don’t know everything, but the Other is Lucrezia Mongfish and my father and the Knights of Jove have been working with her for years, even before she destroyed Castle Heterodyne. She wasn’t really kidnapped.

#girl genius #my fic #ask meme

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the-paintrist · 1 year

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William Dobson - Group portrait of Prince Rupert, Colonel William Legge, and Colonel John Russell - ca. 1645

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

William Dobson (4 March 1611 (baptised); 28 October 1646 (buried)) was a portraitist and one of the first significant English painters, praised by his contemporary John Aubrey as “the most excellent painter that England has yet bred”. He died relatively young and his final years were disrupted by the English Civil War.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, KG, PC, FRS (17 December 1619 (O.S.) / 27 December (N.S.) – 29 November 1682 (O.S.) 9 December 1682 (N.S)) was an English army officer, admiral, scientist, and colonial governor. He first came to prominence as a Royalist cavalry commander during the English Civil War. Rupert was the third son of the German Prince Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King James VI and I of Scotland and England.

Prince Rupert had a varied career. He was a soldier as a child, fighting alongside Dutch forces against Habsburg Spain during the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), and against the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War, becoming the archetypal "Cavalier" of the war and ultimately the senior Royalist general. He surrendered after the fall of Bristol and was banished from England. He served under King Louis XIV of France against Spain, and then as a Royalist privateer in the Caribbean Sea. Following the Restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a senior English naval commander during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and Third Anglo-Dutch War, and serving as the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. He died in England in 1682, aged 62.

Rupert is considered to have been a quick-thinking and energetic cavalry general, but ultimately undermined by his youthful impatience in dealing with his peers during the Civil War. In the Interregnum, Rupert continued the conflict against Parliament by sea from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, showing considerable persistence in the face of adversity. As the head of the Royal Navy in his later years, he showed greater maturity and made impressive and long-lasting contributions to the Royal Navy's doctrine and development. As a colonial governor, Rupert shaped the political geography of modern Canada: Rupert's Land was named in his honour, and he was a founder of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert's varied and numerous scientific and administrative interests, combined with his considerable artistic skills, made him one of the more colourful public figures in England of the Restoration period.

William Legge (1608 – 13 October 1670) was an English royalist army officer, a close associate of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

John Russell (1620-1687) was an English soldier and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1641 to 1644. He fought in the Royalist army in the English Civil War.

Russell was the third son of Francis Russell, fourth Earl of Bedford, known as the "wise earl", and his wife Catherine Brydges, daughter of Giles Brydges, 3rd Baron Chandos. He was a wealthy man with estates at Shingay, Cambridgeshire.

In 1641, Russell was elected Member of Parliament for Tavistock in the Long Parliament after his brother William Lord Russell inherited the peerage. Russell served in the King's army and was a member of the Sealed Knot. The family had divided loyalties in the Civil War. His father had been a champion of the parliamentary cause and his brother changed sides twice. He had many aristocratic equally vacillating connections among his brothers-in-law: the Parliamentarians, Lord Brooke and Lord Grey of Wark, the turncoat Earl of Carlisle and the Royalists Lord Bristol and Lord Newport of High Ercall. Russell commanded Prince Rupert's blue coated regiment of foot, and was disabled from sitting in parliament in 1644. He was prominent at the storming of Leicester in May 1645, was wounded at Naseby and was in the Oxford garrison before its surrender.

After the Restoration Russell was commissioned colonel and captain of John Russell's Regiment of Guards which became incorporated into the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards, or later the Grenadier Guards. He commanded the regiment until 1681. He enjoyed dress, dance, and music although his taste belonged to the fashion of an earlier generation.

#William Dobson #uk #portrait #prince rupert #william legge #john russell

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radiofreederry · 2 years

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The Kingdom of Gobasch is a hilly realm in northern Kalasha which is home to the goblins, a collection of ethnic groups bound by cultural, linguistic, and historical links. There are five goblin races, recalled by the five gems on the arms: the "comely" or "fair" goblins, resembling tall, sharp-eared and toothed humanoids with olive to green skin, which are the most populous and politically-dominant group; the orcish goblins of the northern mountains, who are broad and stocky, and still organize themselves into clans; the hobgoblins of the river vale, short and quick of foot; the red goblins of the desert whose pacifism sets them apart and makes them objects of ridicule in Gobasch; and the salty goblins of the north coast, famed as seafarers and possessing pale greenish-blue skin.

Gobasch was united as a kingdom in the Wars of Goblin Unifcation some six hundred years ago. Before that, many petty kingdoms dotted the goblin lands, fighting and allying amongst themselves, uniting only to stand against Srintalon or Aevumite expansion, or to repel or prosecute an invasion against the goblins' ages-old enemies, the dwarfs to the east. The enmity between goblin and dwarf is so old that neither side can recall what began the conflict, although each inevitably blames the other. Regardless, it defines the foreign policy of each kingdom, and shapes even the alliances of other nations, as a foreign ruler may enter into a pact with the goblins or with the dwarfs, but never both at once.

The goblin races have some distinct cultural differences, but since the unification of the kingdom, the culture of the comely goblins has been dominant, and colors the realm as a whole. It is a chauvinistic, martial culture which values masculinity and physical strength while disparaging femininity. Cultural and artistic pursuits are viewed as a womanly sphere, and male artists, poets, and bards are looked down upon. However, the role of women as artists in goblin society is at all times regarded as subordinate to their role as wives and bearers of children. Women are the property of men to an extent even greater than most feudal societies in Kalasha. However, despite this some women have been able to drag themselves into positions of relative power through deft political maneuvering, artistic feats, or both - this is helped by the fact that far more female goblins than males are literate.

Female homosexuality is not tolerated in Gobasch, and is punishable by, at best, expulsion and ostracization from family and community, and often worse than that. Contrariwise, male homosexuality is not only tolerated but encouraged as a way of building bonds between warriors. Male homosexuals are still expected to marry women and have children, however, and homosexual men who express femininity are still marginalized and ridiculed. As a whole, goblin society only recognizes two binary genders, although some orc clans maintain cultural practices recognizing a third gender.

Lumber, furs, metals, and fish are the main drivers of Gobasch's economy. Hunting is viewed as a sacred art - goblin legend teaches that Gob, the boar-god of war and hunting, taught the goblins how to track and cleanly kill their quarry. Gob is considered the goblins' patron deity as a result.

As may be expected of a culture which sanctifies war and force of arms, Gobasch has had several civil wars, mostly due to disputes regarding the succession. After King Rickard IV, last in the line of the House of Landau, perished, an eleven-year period of interregnum followed, with several factions vying for the throne, and several would-be kings coming to power before being cast down just as quickly. The war ended with the coronation of the young King Ludwig VIII of the House of Konig, a compromise acceptable to the factions. With the former capital of Tollhaus ruined from the fighting, King Ludwig has moved the capital of Gobasch to his own family's seat of Sicherhafen.

#kalasha

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nostalgia-tblr · 1 year

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Odin's Shit Plan: The Shittening

[Setting: Jotunheim, shortly after the sudden unexpected death of King Lauffey]

"Right everyone, thanks for coming, nice to see you all here. Now, I initially called this informal gathering to discuss what we should do about this power vaccuum we're in following the death of King Lauffey (RIP, Press F To Pay Respect) for which we lack both precedent and contingency plan, and I know it had been suggested by a few of you that we could maybe get all the nobility in one place to consider the claims of the candidates who have said they'd quite like to be king now, and maybe we could vote on that in some way and then afterwards we could get pizza in to celebrate our successful ending of this troubling and potentially disasterous interregnum?

"But... Right, do you guys remember when Lauffey had that kid? And he was a bit small when he was born so the king was like yeah I'm not keen on this one I think I'll just infanticide him and a few of us said it seemed like chucking away your only legitimate male heir - and indeed, as it has turned out, his only possible heir of any kind at all - might not be the best idea and he was like don't be thick lads he's TINY what use is an otherwise healthy legitimate male heir to a king who has no other children and whose kingdom has no idea what to do if he still lacks one when he dies? And so he just went out and left him in that building to die? Yeah?

Well! You might find this a bit hard to believe at first, but that wee runt was actually found and taken in by Odin of Asgard! Who you might know better as "THAT BASTARD," the current leader of our traditional enemy who himself killed quite a few of us during that war. Anyway, he still has that boy! He's a lot taller now but still tiny to giants like us and he's not blue most of the time but he is if you put him in a fridge for long enough, and okay he's been raised to hate us by a rival king who seems to have designs on our own lovely icy kingdom, and presumably he's loyal to Odin and he's never been here and knows nothing of our culture or our language or our... anything, really. BUT, as I said he's definitely Lauffey's actual rejected son and what could be better than that, right? Anyway we can discuss this again after lunch but the lad's a shoo-in for the job as far as I'm concerned."

#i don't know what this is sorry #thor movies

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graywyvern · 11 months

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Moon Shines at Night.

"When Providence alone governed the earth, during the interregnum of mankind, she caused such slaughters that intelligence nearly perished. In the year 950, the son of one of Aurillac's serfs, the young Gerbert, sumed up almost an entire European tradition. He was, all by himself, civilization. What a moment in history! Men, through an admirable instinct, made him their master: he was the Pope Sylvester II. When he died, they began to build, on that column that had sustained the world, the legend that was to culminate in the Faust of Goethe." --Rémy de Gourmont

Flowing blue & white.

“Euripides changed the murder of the children to Medea because he accepted five talents from the Korinthians.”

ὡς ἄρα πέντε τάλαντα λαβὼν παρὰ Κορινθίων Εὐριπίδης μεταγάγοι τὴν σφαγὴν τῶν παίδων ἐπὶ τὴν Μήδειαν #ScholionToEuripides (via @sentantiq)

Ghost in the Forest.

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non-rationalist · 1 year

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Called my (double) ex for no reason and was politely but strongly rejected: it hurts.

Full background of our so far two piece (1.5yrs + .75yrs) relationship is a long story for another day, but the immediate background is as follows. Late last year she reaches out to me out of the blue: felt amazing, given my persistent feeling through our relationship was (along with being unsatisfied/wanting to break up for most of the time, with some regularity) that of being unloved/not good enough/her continuing with it more out of costs of switching than because she wanted to be with me. Yeah, I know, I have issues: this one, feeling unloved and unlovable, actually lands pretty perfectly into the expectations of how a person neglected in their childhood should turn out. So, she reaches out, I enthusiastically respond: of course, I'm not asking whether it's good for me or whether it's something I want, but immediately fall into the pattern of her being somewhat unloving and me seeking that love and validation.. with such a promising start (it was mind-blowing to me she would reach out/appear to want me), I was an easy prey. Was even talking to a therapist through all that: understood even at the time I didn't particularly want that relationship back, but didn't have the love-seeking angle, was just explaining me going (to a couple multi-day visits involving multi-hour out of state drive by me) by me being a curious cat seeking emotional adventures.. well, that was probably part of it, this was around the beginning of me embracing feelings instead of running away from them, so throwing myself into an environment that was bound to be dramatic and full of feelings, and also promising to shed light on my past while observing the present by hopefully my somewhat more emotionally mature eyes. I did get what I wanted from the visits, the emotions and light shed on the past, being able to look at some of the old issues together with a bit of a wise smile, while also refreshing on some of the issues that made the relationship not work for me, and reaffirming I don't want this back (this is my only long-term relationship so far, and given neglected kid story/currently being largely estranged from my parents, and my otherwise troubled socialization, sad reality is the ex, however miserable the relationship was, was still the strongest human connection I had, so you bet I had more than my fair share of hang-ups and trouble moving on).

So, after two few day visits around Christmas, refreshing on how trying on having the relationship back would feel and reaffirming we don't really want it, that episode ends. She doesn't reach out on her own anymore. I send a few "shiny rocks" emails, fun memes or interesting links I think she'd particularly appreciate, to a muted response (this is similar to how I behaved during our first interregnum, except then she eventually gotten engaged enough to be again charmed by our beautifully intoxicating conversation to want to go for another round of relationship). After a few rounds I recognize this is some kinda toxic pattern that is not making me happy: me devaluing myself, offering something valuable and authentic for free, to an audience which clearly doesn't appreciate it much. So I stop.

Fast-forward a few months, I've gone even more touchy-feely, being social, valuing humans and human connections for non-instrumental reasons. Realize I feel a bit hurt/used she seems to have reached out to me simply out of convenience/coz she was lonely in her somewhat isolated small town wanted to see if I can be a quick fix to her dating needs/coz she didn't want to spend the christmas alone. Thinking I don't want to stick to bad old habits of viewing humans as instrumental, not valuing connections, that I appreciate her and want to say in touch. So I reach out: it was clear in my heart that I wanted to, but also had to overcome considerable anxiety/procrastinated for a few days over making the call. Happy I got over my fears and called.

She was suspicious of me calling without a reason: didn't seem so much about me as about her overall stance on human connection instrumentality, "nobody would call just to check up on you". When asked said she did a few sessions of therapy but is now fine and doesn't need it anymore, blamed feeling down around the time we were meeting on me causing her to revert to an old self/roles that made her unhappy but that really aren't who she is anymore, made clear she thinks I'm not good for her and that she doesn't want to be in touch on any sort of deep level. This hurt. I still feel she's an amazing person and would've loved to stay connected.

It's a bit unclear in terms of the family/relationship history above re whether this makes sense. I really should read up on what "neglected kids" issues typically are now that I am aware of that aspect of myself. Never felt I had abandonment issues, if anything something of the opposite, I usually fail to feel the connection to anybody/build much of a bond (long recurrent history from changing schools many times in teen years to changing countries or otherwise completely abandoning old friends and communities without much of a regret or remaining bond, and ditto re specific deeper friends), and don't feel loved/respected/wanted by anybody. But guess ex is a bit of a special case, where I managed to build something of a bond from my end: against all odds in a sense, as it was kinda dubious relationship from a few months onward but through my people pleasing/being unaware of my own needs/risk aversion and other such bad reasons I forced myself to stick around for quite some while (well, and the brainfuck/convo were beyond amazing). So while I stuck to it for what seems like mostly bad reasons, "putting in time" did work and I developed quite a bond. So, maybe with her, being an exception, I am needy. Now that I mentioned this I did remember that part of the relationship, me getting insecure easily, craving some kinda high effort "proof of love" from her with some regularity - it's interesting I completely forgot about that.

Well, guess this is the end of a relationship even on the basic human level, as now she's categorized solidly into the "people who don't appreciate me and so aren't worth spending my time on" bucket. Not something very natural for me as I tend to be in some kinda touch with many of the people I dated at anything beyond very surface level. A bit conflicted as guess feel she has issues and could benefit from therapy (if only due to my high prior on "people in serious relationships are generally well-matched on emotional maturity levels"). Picking up "projects" and trying to guide troubled people towards healing is something I love doing in general, and guess feel it could've been super rewarding to manage to do that for her. But guess I was never in a good position to do that, with all the mutual history and conflict of interest and such, and trying to fight the current lost war for no good reason seems stupid. Plus, not that confident I'm right re her issues: it's not like some more obvious cases or cases that can be cross-checked with multiple people within the shared community. Maybe she is who she is, knows better if she needs therapy, and knows what's right for her re not wanting me in her life. I should leave her be and focus on plenty of issues in my own life.

I might just be full of hubris re being able to notice other people's issues, given I myself is still so full of issues and emotionally immature. Sure, I feel I'm on the right track and happy with the new things I'm learning and therapy insights. But, like, obviously I'm still very broken, maybe should focus on that first.

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pluralsword · 1 year

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The End of Addendum Part One and the Era of Nova Prime

A while ago, we released Chapter 13 of Addendum: Gender Diaspora, but didn't have a chance to announce it here until now. Part One of Addendum reaches it's end, as does the era of Nova Prime's rule when he leaves with Galvatron, Jhiaxus, and the rest of the Ark-1's crew, leaving Cybertron scrambling to set up a new government, an Interregnum Senate headed by Delta Magnus, while Functionism reaches the beginning of it's peak, wielding significant influence in the constitutional convention of the new regime. In these desperate times, Arcee, Codexa, and Road Rage make one final play to change the course of things before having to consider what no one in the Anti-Vocation League wants to think: if they, knight errants of their peoples and aesthetics in all but name, will have to say goodbye.

This chapter contains characters giving speeches in favor of empire, bioessentialism, genocide, gatekeeping, trans tokenization and liminality, hierarchic ideologies, all of which are soundly refuted by the protagonists (as usual). Some excerpts below. This chapter caused us to add the Ao3 tag: Shockwave: "Hi Arcee I made a theory about how you're the best girlboss." Arcee: "I'll kill you."

Chapter 13 will likely interest people who want to read a (Cybertronian) Senate be incredibly incompetent, even if you haven't read the rest of Addendum or any of our fics, the chapter is fairly self-explanatory:

“Ah, right,” Road Rage nodded and pulled a metal slate out of her wing pack, while Codexa and I sought our own document slates.

We handed them to the guard, whose optics went wide, almost circular. “You three are living Progenitors? It’s an honor, sirs, ma’am.”

“Actually um, ma’am is fine for all of us,” Road Rage smirked. “Best to ask that kind of thing even if it’s out of fashion to now, it’s the way of the Knights.”

I pressed my lips tight to hold in my cackle as the guard’s jaw dropped with a stammer: “Um right- er- go ahead in, here’s your docs back, la- ladies.” They handed them back hastily, and the four guards saluted us before opening the doors.

“This is really weird,” I leaned up to Codexa’s audial.

“Yeah, absolutely bolts that Nova’s Constitution is set up to favor people even older than him as worthy of the attention of the Senate or deciding the composition of that body by lineage no less,” Codexa chuckled as we headed into the glyph walled hall, where tall bulky and winged blue white and red Dai Atlas waited for us alongside hulking boxy blue red Delta Magnus.

“Elders, thank you for coming,” Delta Magnus bowed. “It’s about time these stale Senatorial hearings were lit up by the presence of people with different pronouns. I would have tried to bring trans members of the Primal Vanguard, but none besides me had Progenitor lineage. I may be able to get them in for testimony though.”

“Young man,” I extended my hands to clasp with his. “What can we actually expect from this meeting? Nova Prime leaving for the stars doesn’t mean he won’t come back, making the Senate regent government defunct once more. And there are certainly members of this body of lawmakers like Proteus who know enough of the past million years to want us dead.”

“On the contrary, the stars have aligned for your sakes,” Delta Magnus laughed before letting go of my hands. “Proteus seconded your presence on the floor on the grounds of your lineage and arguing you are a candidate for the Intellectual Class, primordial vanguard , as are your dear companions.”

I stiffened. Did this peacekeeper cop just compliment my entire military career as a predecessor and example to his unironically? And I don’t believe for a second that reactionaries would recognize wisdom from us without planning to mystify, demonize, obfuscate, appropriate, and destroy it.

“That’s definitely suspicious,” Road Rage crossed her arms. “The three of us, last we knew, were last classified as gender redundant in dusty Functionist files, including the shapes of my friends here.”

______________________________________________________________

“Excuse me,” Sturvius stared across the room at us. “As enthused as I am for this, isn’t gender something that has only been introduced to us by extrasolar contact with aliens, including by genetic surgical implementation upon our esteemed guest Arcee by Jhiaxus to show that we could have gender, though it is not in our typical nature? I-”

I growled loudly, rising to full height, crossing my arms, staring back, face scrunched up. Codexa and Road Rage got up to put arms around me.

“I’m sorry if I mispoke, Progenitors,” Sturvius looked away. “I know it is a sore point, a heavy thing. We have not been kind to trans folk, I think. I am just surprised you did not address rights to racial egalitarianism regarding alt modes and cold construction.”

I raised my hand, my circuits simmering. This gender deprived bot has no idea, does he?

“Arcee, you have a reply?” Delta Magnus extended his hand.

“I do,” I laughed. "It's not a race thing! This is clearly a gender and anatomy issue. Assignment to a body and function not their spark's own iteration, no choice in shape after either when a modular body could be provided, and the lack of research to make the bodies as articulated as forged ones, it shows an unconsensual disdain at creation!"

I reached out open hands to the Senator, smiling. "But you've been denied knowledge of what gender is! I can't blame you for trying to piece this together, but I can blame those of you who don’t share Sturvius’s knowledge and opposition of our mistreatment for ignoring the cycle of gender based ostracization, harassment, and murder! You all have some idea something is wrong. Why else does the Primal Vanguard come home with different pronouns and aesthetics, even reformatted bodies in that sense? It is not contracted from fellow species.”

I clenched fists. “ It is because we are part of the sapient condition, because storytelling of realization and experience of variety is part of all of us. Sentient lifeforms all transform. I, Arcee of Protohex, still remember and understand myself through the linked gender systems from ancient times, still experience multiple genders and kinship to all of our planet in that way gender or no, as does my dear friend Road Rage of Crystal City, and Codexa of Tagan. Jhiaxus did not make me a woman, I sought his help to affirm myself and he abused me! My two friends here aren’t trans like me! I remind you today that among other genders, Solus Prime was primarily a woman who used she/her pronouns! That the Knights of Cybertron celebrated our variation and expansiveness, that the Matrix of Leadership knows all this to be true!”

Gasps, shouting, and arguing broke out, largely over Solus’s pronouns. Functionists and statists shouted blatant lies at me, including: “Lies! Solus forged our path to our civilization’s pronoun of choice, he/him, devoid of gender!”

“How dare you bring such revisionist history before this august body!”

“You would push upon us non-Cybertronian ways as better than our freedom-”

“ENOUGH!” Delta Magnus slammed his staff down. “If you are going to disagree with the only three here old enough to remember it all, or support them, do so following the procedures we agreed to this morning! This raucousness is beneath you! ORDER!”

______________________________________________________________

“They and she fight for love, for hope, they do not seek to force or oppress, and a version of their and her message forms even without contact, because that want is in all of us. That is the power of contextual transformation. Those two and the Circle of Light have been the main agents through which the Golden Age has remained a period of relative equals. For all she has gone through, all the empires she has survived, all the love she has grown, all the ferocity with compassion, I posited that Arcee is the greatest among us, the greatest woman of our time, of all time! She is a Prime without title, she has done what Nova could only dream of, and she knows she cannot do it alone! For this reason, I contest the appointment of the honorable Delta Magnus as the Matrix bearer, and propose that Arcee be appointed instead, as a full Prime! Jhiaxus foresaw this day, it is for that reason he installed a Matrix receptacle in her! And that is all I have to say, I am but a forged gender nonconforming man heralding a new age.”

I cackled. “That’s very sweet in intent, in your own way, young man, but your teacher who harmed me so deeply did no such thing! There’s no Matrix receptacle in my frame, if I must be elected to something executive councilor suffices-”

I felt my midriff plating open up, and the searing pain of a Matrix sized accumulation of solid superstructure, cables, energon ducts beneath plop out in a bleeding mess at my feet before the wounds around the hole sealed.

______________________________________________________________

And that's as much as we are willing to tease, if it caught your interest, you can check it out here! While Addendum is part of the Autosignet Cycle you don't have to read the prior works besides Resolving Hope perhaps if you want to follow along, the rest are orig cont or multiverse crossovers.

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xtruss · 1 year

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In “View of Delft” (Circa 1660), Vermeer hangs the sky with low cumulus clouds. He paints dampness as well as light. Art work by Johannes Vermeer/Courtesy Mauritshuis/Rijksmuseum

The Art World: The Ultimate Vermeer Collection

A bravura show at the Rijksmuseum displays more of the Dutch Master’s work at once than he himself ever saw.

— By Rebecca Mead | February 20, 2023

In the spring of 1914, James Simon, an art collector in Berlin, was approached by a London-based dealer with a proposition: Would he accept two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a work in his collection, Johannes Vermeer’s “Mistress and Maid”? The would-be buyer was Henry Clay Frick, the American industrialist, who in the late nineteenth century had embarked on an acquisition binge of Old Masters, and who already owned two works by the seventeenth-century painter from Delft. Simon’s answer was definitive: although he had received equally lavish offers from other buyers—Frick was far from alone in his desire to gild his Gilded Age fortune with Golden Age masterpieces—he would not part with the painting. Five years and a crippling Great War later, however, Simon found himself in a weaker bargaining position, and for nearly three hundred thousand dollars—the equivalent of roughly five million dollars today—“Mistress and Maid” was shipped across the Atlantic to Frick’s mansion, on Fifth Avenue, where its new owner enjoyed only a short while in its company before his death, in late 1919. The painting—which depicts a lady seated at a table with a writing set, interrupted by a maid holding a letter—has remained at the mansion more or less undisturbed ever since. Frick turned his home into a museum bearing his name, and it has long been its policy not to lend his acquisitions to other institutions.

In 2021, when the Frick started renovations at the mansion and moved its collection off-site, a chink of light in the institution’s tightly shuttered terms was spotted: during this interregnum, the works could finally travel. “Mistress and Maid”—along with the Frick’s two other Vermeers, “Officer and Laughing Girl” and “Girl Interrupted at Her Music”—has now recrossed the Atlantic, returning to the Netherlands for a landmark show at the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum has corralled enough Vermeers to make the most hard-hearted of robber barons swoon—twenty-eight paintings, out of an acknowledged thirty-six or thirty-seven surviving works by the artist, who may have produced no more than fifty in his short lifetime. (Vermeer died suddenly in 1675, at the age of forty-three.) As Taco Dibbits, the general director of the Rijksmuseum, points out, the exhibition gathers more Vermeers in one place than Vermeer himself ever had the opportunity to see.

“Mistress and Maid,” which Vermeer painted sometime in the mid-sixteen-sixties—and which used to hang in the West Gallery of the Frick mansion, near works by Rembrandt and Constable—now has a wall of its own, at the heart of the exhibition. At right angles to it hangs “A Lady Writing,” which was acquired in 1907 by another art-hungry American, John Pierpont Morgan, and is now in the collection of the National Gallery, in Washington. (The National Gallery held its own blockbuster Vermeer show in the mid-nineties, bringing together what was then an unprecedented twenty-one works.) The two paintings have thematic and stylistic commonalities. Each shows a fair-haired woman, finely dressed in a yellow satin jacket and seated at a table, with a pen in her right hand and a sheet of paper at the ready. Each displays Vermeer’s uncanny command of optical effects, with a dissolving focus on the fur trim of the jacket and a sheeny light reflected from a pearl earring. A blue tablecloth is rucked up in almost identical disarray, a circumstance that would be nothing but an annoyance to an actual letter writer—who doesn’t prefer to lay paper on a smooth surface?—but which reminds a viewer that these are carefully staged scenes, with the folds of those draperies as deliberately arranged as the garments of a Renaissance Madonna. It is peculiarly moving to see these two works, which were painted within two years of each other, in juxtaposition. A viewer can take in one, and then the other, with a turn of the head no greater than that of the woman represented in either painting. Between them, these works consumed perhaps a year of Vermeer’s labor—a scrupulous rendering of bourgeois appurtenances and a faithful imagining of internal lives, which might better be described as an act of devotion.

The Rijksmuseum show, which extends across ten galleries in the museum’s special-exhibition wing, is organized thematically—Vermeer’s use of musical instruments; Vermeer’s depiction of gentleman callers—with works from differing periods placed together to show them to their best effect, like artfully rumpled drapery. (The gallery design, by Wilmotte & Associés Architectes, is similarly deft: extensive velvet drapes muffle the murmur of visitors, while the walls are painted in rich, dark colors lifted from a seventeenth-century palette.) A less than strict chronology also orders the display, which begins with Vermeer’s only two known exterior scenes: “The Little Street,” one of four works by the artist in the Rijksmuseum’s own collection, and “View of Delft,” which was borrowed from the Mauritshuis, in The Hague, and was painted in about 1660. The latter work, a cityscape in which the red-roofed town appears as a horizontal sliver between glimmering water below and a wide swath of sky above, inspired the rediscovery, beginning in the eighteen-sixties, of Vermeer, whose reputation had languished in the preceding two centuries. Its subject is light, which, as the artist expertly renders it, turns the spire of the Nieuwe Kerk a pale buttercream. But the painting also conveys the sensation of atmospheric humidity. In a catalogue essay, Pieter Roelofs, one of the show’s curators and the head of paintings and sculpture at the museum, points out that Vermeer hangs this sky with low cumulus clouds of a sort that were almost never represented by his contemporaries. In this canvas, as in “The Little Street,” with its weeping brickwork and stained whitewash, Vermeer paints dampness as well as light.

One of the best-known facts about Vermeer is how little is known about him; few documents survive him, and there are no contemporaneous descriptions of his methods, or accounts by his sitters. There are no drawings by him, or any definitive likenesses of him, though the three-quarter profile of a figure in an early work, “The Procuress,” suggests that it may be a self-portrait. It’s not the kind of sublimely refined figure one might imagine Vermeer to have been, however; this man is a sly, grinning onlooker to a lewd brothel scene, in which a soldier is putting a coin in a young woman’s open palm with his right hand and cupping her breast proprietorially with his left. This large canvas, which Vermeer painted when he was in his early twenties, is on loan from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; it shares a gallery with several other paintings from the beginning of Vermeer’s career, when he was experimenting with religious and mythological themes in various styles, among them Italianate. Aspiring Vermeer completists based in America or Europe will be grateful that the Rijksmuseum has included “Saint Praxedis”—a work, only in the past decade confirmed to be by Vermeer, that is usually displayed in the National Museum of Western Art, in Tokyo. An uninspired copy of an uninspiring painting by Felice Ficherelli, the work—which depicts a sweet-faced saint wringing from a sponge the blood of a nearby martyr who has just been decapitated—would hardly justify a trip to Japan.

Little is known about Vermeer’s painting of St. Praxedis—the attribution hinged in part on the fact that the canvas bears the signature “Meer 1655.” But Roelofs and his co-curator, Gregor J. M. Weber, who is the Rijksmuseum’s head of fine and decorative arts, suggest that scholarship has in fact uncovered a considerable amount of detail about Vermeer’s life, beliefs, and practices. Of particular interest is an inventory of household objects made after his death, many of which Vermeer used and reused in his paintings, like the costumes and props kept by a travelling theatrical company: curtains, chairs, Oriental carpets, the yellow jacket with its fur trim. There is no trace of the lenses or other optical devices that many critics (and the artist David Hockney) have argued Vermeer must have employed. Weber, though, proposes that Vermeer obtained a camera obscura—in which a chink of light in an otherwise shuttered chamber produces an inverted image of the outside world—from a Jesuit church next door to his house. (The Jesuits had embraced the device as a tool for observing divine light.) Weber found a drawing, made by one of the priests, Isaac van der Mye, that features idiosyncrasies of the camera-obscura technique.

Mostly, however, there are only the paintings to go on. High-tech analyses, at the Rijksmuseum and elsewhere, have uncovered sometimes surprising evidence about Vermeer’s methods. A single gallery is dedicated to “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window,” on loan from Dresden. Generations of museumgoers have known the work as a virtuoso exploration of perspective: a drawn curtain in the foreground reveals a rug-draped table, beyond which stands a girl with a bare wall behind her. More than forty years ago, X-ray technology revealed that behind the girl’s head Vermeer had originally placed a large painting of a cupid, which had been covered up; in 2017, further analysis determined that the overpainting had been done decades after Vermeer’s death. The cupid painting has now been painstakingly uncovered, and it takes up a quarter of the canvas, offering an unsubtle indication of the girl’s thoughts. The painting, though, is most mesmerizing in its tiniest details, such as the points of light on the silken ends of the curtain’s tassels. An exquisite reflection of the girl’s head in the open window is a visual doubling that also poses a question: Could she be of two minds about the love letter she is reading, the cupid’s looming presence notwithstanding?

One way to insure that your show has a record-breaking count of Vermeers is to be inclusive in your accounting. From the National Gallery comes not just the small, fabulous “Girl with the Red Hat”—whose gamine subject glances over her shoulder with an expression that somehow falls on the border between total confidence and total unease—but also “Girl with a Flute,” a figure with similar features less finely rendered. The National Gallery recently downgraded “Flute” to “Studio of Johannes Vermeer,” even though nothing is known of the artist’s having had pupils or associates of any sort. The National Gallery contends that its analysis of the paint and the brushwork suggests a less skillful hand than Vermeer’s; the Rijksmuseum counters that similar deficits can also be found in other, uncontested works by Vermeer.

Across the gallery is another attribution puzzle. The delicate “Lacemaker,” usually housed at the Louvre, has been hung alongside “Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,” whose authorship was questioned until, among other things, it was determined that the canvas had a weave matching that of the Louvre painting, and likely came from the same bolt. (“Young Woman Seated at a Virginal” is the only mature work by Vermeer to be in private hands; it belongs to Thomas Kaplan, an American billionaire businessman, and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, who also own the largest private collection of works by Rembrandt. Unlike Frick, Kaplan and his wife do not live with their art; they have gathered their paintings and drawings as the Leiden Collection, which operates as an Old Master lending library.)

The exhibit has a few unfortunate absences, including one of Vermeer’s most resplendent compositions, “The Art of Painting,” which depicts a painter working on a model posing as Clio, the Muse of history, in a studio more sumptuous than Vermeer could ever have afforded, with black-and-white marble floor tiles and a brass chandelier. The painting’s owner, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna, declined to lend it, citing in part its fragility (though it travelled five times between 1999 and 2004). The Louvre’s other Vermeer, “The Astronomer,” had already been promised to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The pendant piece to it, “The Geographer,” on loan from Frankfurt, is therefore the show’s only image of a solitary man. The light from a window falls on his globe, his papers, and his forehead, “emphasizing the scientist’s intellectual focus on the world,” according to the wall text nearby.

Vermeer’s greater fascination was with the world of women—mistresses and maids alike. “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is on short-term loan; she goes back to the Mauritshuis at the end of March, two months before the exhibition closes. If Vermeer’s more accessorized interiors have their contemporary, bastardized equivalents in curated Instagram posts, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is a paparazzi shot—its subject looks startled and not especially gratified by the attention. In “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter,” both the subject’s capacious robe and the shadows on the wall behind her are painted—like the pearl girl’s head scarf—with precious ultramarine pigment. This costly choice lends a celestial touch to the mundane, an effect that Vermeer also employed when rendering the lead panes on the window of “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher,” which is owned by the Metropolitan Museum. (That painting, and two of the Met’s other Vermeers, have stayed in New York, either because they are too fragile to travel or because the terms of their bequest forbid it, although the Met has lent its two remaining Vermeer works.) In “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter,” the figure rests her arm on a swelling belly, suggesting that she is pregnant—as Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, who bore fourteen or fifteen children in twenty-two years, was for most of their marriage. Scholars are justified in characterizing Vermeer’s works—created in a domestic context that must often have been chaotic—as representing idealized moments of calm. But only a critic who has never been pregnant would look at a woman who appears to be in her third trimester and see stillness. The woman in blue is gripping the letter tightly with both hands—a map on the wall could signify that her partner is away at sea—and, in addition to her roiling emotions, she must be feeling the kicks and squirms of an imminent newcomer.

The jewel of the Rijksmuseum’s own Vermeer collection, “The Milkmaid,” is given a room of its own—something the young model who posed for the painting most likely did not enjoy. “The Milkmaid” is an exploration of minimalism, three hundred years avant la lettre. A recent analysis of the painting’s surface revealed that Vermeer painted over a row of jugs that once hung behind the milkmaid’s head, leaving a bare wall with the tonal nuances of a Morandi. The wall’s surface is rendered with infinite care, its nails and holes painted in sharp relief. The graduation of shadow and light contributes to the sense of verisimilitude, though Vermeer adjusts optics for the sake of art by painting the jigsaw piece of wall between the jug and the milkmaid’s arm a brighter hue, the better to accentuate her gesture. The eye is tricked into believing that it sees the world reproduced; what it actually sees is the world enhanced.

The viewer’s vantage is that of someone seated slightly below the standing milkmaid, granting her a sturdy monumentality, her humble work elevated and dignified. She is a remarkable presence—worth waiting one’s turn to lean against the velvet-covered guardrail that protects each painting, and taking a moment to commune with her. Critics have noted that a tiny cupid appears on a tile edging the wall behind her. Perhaps Vermeer intended viewers to infer that his milkmaid, too, had love on her mind. But who’s to say that she is not, rather, reflecting on the task of pouring milk from a heavy jug—on the care that she must take in doing so, on the strength in her young arms? Perhaps she is thinking of neither love nor work, and is instead reflecting on how the slow, perpetual flow of milk serves as an endless measure of time—just as it appears to us now, as we regard her in her reverie. Like Vermeer’s other women, the milkmaid evades trite allegory. The light falls on her forehead, too. ♦

— Published in the print edition of the February 27, 2023, Issue, with the headline “Dutch Treat.”

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