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yeoldenews · 3 months

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A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency-Era Names

I recently received a message from a historical romance writer asking if I knew any good resources for finding historically accurate Regency-era names for their characters.

Not knowing any off the top of my head, I dug around online a bit and found there really isn’t much out there. The vast majority of search results were Buzzfeed-style listicles which range from accurate-adjacent to really, really, really bad.

I did find a few blog posts with fairly decent name lists, but noticed that even these have very little indication as to each name’s relative popularity as those statistical breakdowns really don't exist.

I began writing up a response with this information, but then I (being a research addict who was currently snowed in after a blizzard) thought hey - if there aren’t any good resources out there why not make one myself?

As I lacked any compiled data to work from, I had to do my own data wrangling on this project. Due to this fact, I limited the scope to what I thought would be the most useful for writers who focus on this era, namely - people of a marriageable age living in the wealthiest areas of London.

So with this in mind - I went through period records and compiled the names of 25,000 couples who were married in the City of Westminster (which includes Mayfair, St. James and Hyde Park) between 1804 to 1821.

So let’s see what all that data tells us…

To begin - I think it’s hard for us in the modern world with our wide and varied abundance of first names to conceive of just how POPULAR popular names of the past were.

If you were to take a modern sample of 25-year-old (born in 1998) American women, the most common name would be Emily with 1.35% of the total population. If you were to add the next four most popular names (Hannah, Samantha, Sarah and Ashley) these top five names would bring you to 5.5% of the total population. (source: Social Security Administration)

If you were to do the same survey in Regency London - the most common name would be Mary with 19.2% of the population. Add the next four most popular names (Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane) and with just 5 names you would have covered 62% of all women.

To hit 62% of the population in the modern survey it would take the top 400 names.

The top five Regency men’s names (John, William, Thomas, James and George) have nearly identical statistics as the women’s names.

I struggled for the better part of a week with how to present my findings, as a big list in alphabetical order really fails to get across the popularity factor and also isn’t the most tumblr-compatible format. And then my YouTube homepage recommended a random video of someone ranking all the books they’d read last year - and so I present…

The Regency Name Popularity Tier List

The Tiers

S+ - 10% of the population or greater. There is no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. 52% of the population had one of these 7 names.

S - 2-10%. There is still no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. Names in this percentage range in the past have included Mary and William in the 1880s and Jennifer in the late 1970s (topped out at 4%).

A - 1-2%. The top five modern names usually fall in this range. Kids with these names would probably include their last initial in class to avoid confusion. (1998 examples: Emily, Sarah, Ashley, Michael, Christopher, Brandon.)

B - .3-1%. Very common names. Would fall in the top 50 modern names. You would most likely know at least 1 person with these names. (1998 examples: Jessica, Megan, Allison, Justin, Ryan, Eric)

C - .17-.3%. Common names. Would fall in the modern top 100. You would probably know someone with these names, or at least know of them. (1998 examples: Chloe, Grace, Vanessa, Sean, Spencer, Seth)

D - .06-.17%. Less common names. In the modern top 250. You may not personally know someone with these names, but you’re aware of them. (1998 examples: Faith, Cassidy, Summer, Griffin, Dustin, Colby)

E - .02-.06%. Uncommon names. You’re aware these are names, but they are not common. Unusual enough they may be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Calista, Skye, Precious, Fabian, Justice, Lorenzo)

F - .01-.02%. Rare names. You may have heard of these names, but you probably don’t know anyone with one. Extremely unusual, and would likely be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Emerald, Lourdes, Serenity, Dario, Tavian, Adonis)

G - Very rare names. There are only a handful of people with these names in the entire country. You’ve never met anyone with this name.

H - Virtually non-existent. Names that theoretically could have existed in the Regency period (their original source pre-dates the early 19th century) but I found fewer than five (and often no) period examples of them being used in Regency England. (Example names taken from romance novels and online Regency name lists.)

Just to once again reinforce how POPULAR popular names were before we get to the tier lists - statistically, in a ballroom of 100 people in Regency London: 80 would have names from tiers S+/S. An additional 15 people would have names from tiers A/B and C. 4 of the remaining 5 would have names from D/E. Only one would have a name from below tier E.

Women's Names

S+ Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah

S - Jane, Mary Ann+, Hannah, Susannah, Margaret, Catherine, Martha, Charlotte, Maria

A - Frances, Harriet, Sophia, Eleanor, Rebecca

B - Alice, Amelia, Bridget~, Caroline, Eliza, Esther, Isabella, Louisa, Lucy, Lydia, Phoebe, Rachel, Susan

C - Ellen, Fanny*, Grace, Henrietta, Hester, Jemima, Matilda, Priscilla

D - Abigail, Agnes, Amy, Augusta, Barbara, Betsy*, Betty*, Cecilia, Christiana, Clarissa, Deborah, Diana, Dinah, Dorothy, Emily, Emma, Georgiana, Helen, Janet^, Joanna, Johanna, Judith, Julia, Kezia, Kitty*, Letitia, Nancy*, Ruth, Winifred>

E - Arabella, Celia, Charity, Clara, Cordelia, Dorcas, Eve, Georgina, Honor, Honora, Jennet^, Jessie*^, Joan, Joyce, Juliana, Juliet, Lavinia, Leah, Margery, Marian, Marianne, Marie, Mercy, Miriam, Naomi, Patience, Penelope, Philadelphia, Phillis, Prudence, Rhoda, Rosanna, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina, Sabina, Selina, Sylvia, Theodosia, Theresa

F - (selected) Alicia, Bethia, Euphemia, Frederica, Helena, Leonora, Mariana, Millicent, Mirah, Olivia, Philippa, Rosamund, Sybella, Tabitha, Temperance, Theophila, Thomasin, Tryphena, Ursula, Virtue, Wilhelmina

G - (selected) Adelaide, Alethia, Angelina, Cassandra, Cherry, Constance, Delilah, Dorinda, Drusilla, Eva, Happy, Jessica, Josephine, Laura, Minerva, Octavia, Parthenia, Theodora, Violet, Zipporah

H - Alberta, Alexandra, Amber, Ashley, Calliope, Calpurnia, Chloe, Cressida, Cynthia, Daisy, Daphne, Elaine, Eloise, Estella, Lilian, Lilias, Francesca, Gabriella, Genevieve, Gwendoline, Hermione, Hyacinth, Inez, Iris, Kathleen, Madeline, Maude, Melody, Portia, Seabright, Seraphina, Sienna, Verity

Men's Names

S+ John, William, Thomas

S - James, George, Joseph, Richard, Robert, Charles, Henry, Edward, Samuel

A - Benjamin, (Mother’s/Grandmother’s maiden name used as first name)#

B - Alexander^, Andrew, Daniel, David>, Edmund, Francis, Frederick, Isaac, Matthew, Michael, Patrick~, Peter, Philip, Stephen, Timothy

C - Abraham, Anthony, Christopher, Hugh>, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Walter

D - Adam, Arthur, Bartholomew, Cornelius, Dennis, Evan>, Jacob, Job, Josiah, Joshua, Lawrence, Lewis, Luke, Mark, Martin, Moses, Nicholas, Owen>, Paul, Ralph, Simon

E - Aaron, Alfred, Allen, Ambrose, Amos, Archibald, Augustin, Augustus, Barnard, Barney, Bernard, Bryan, Caleb, Christian, Clement, Colin, Duncan^, Ebenezer, Edwin, Emanuel, Felix, Gabriel, Gerard, Gilbert, Giles, Griffith, Harry*, Herbert, Humphrey, Israel, Jabez, Jesse, Joel, Jonas, Lancelot, Matthias, Maurice, Miles, Oliver, Rees, Reuben, Roger, Rowland, Solomon, Theophilus, Valentine, Zachariah

F - (selected) Abel, Barnabus, Benedict, Connor, Elijah, Ernest, Gideon, Godfrey, Gregory, Hector, Horace, Horatio, Isaiah, Jasper, Levi, Marmaduke, Noah, Percival, Shadrach, Vincent

G - (selected) Albion, Darius, Christmas, Cleophas, Enoch, Ethelbert, Gavin, Griffin, Hercules, Hugo, Innocent, Justin, Maximilian, Methuselah, Peregrine, Phineas, Roland, Sebastian, Sylvester, Theodore, Titus, Zephaniah

H - Albinus, Americus, Cassian, Dominic, Eric, Milo, Rollo, Trevor, Tristan, Waldo, Xavier

# Men were sometimes given a family surname (most often their mother's or grandmother's maiden name) as their first name - the most famous example of this being Fitzwilliam Darcy. If you were to combine all surname-based first names as a single 'name' this is where the practice would rank.

*Rank as a given name, not a nickname

+If you count Mary Ann as a separate name from Mary - Mary would remain in S+ even without the Mary Anns included

~Primarily used by people of Irish descent

^Primarily used by people of Scottish descent

>Primarily used by people of Welsh descent

I was going to continue on and write about why Regency-era first names were so uniform, discuss historically accurate surnames, nicknames, and include a little guide to finding 'unique' names that are still historically accurate - but this post is already very, very long, so that will have to wait for a later date.

If anyone has any questions/comments/clarifications in the meantime feel free to message me.

Methodology notes: All data is from marriage records covering six parishes in the City of Westminster between 1804 and 1821. The total sample size was 50,950 individuals.

I chose marriage records rather than births/baptisms as I wanted to focus on individuals who were adults during the Regency era rather than newborns. I think many people make the mistake when researching historical names by using baby name data for the year their story takes place rather than 20 to 30 years prior, and I wanted to avoid that. If you are writing a story that takes place in 1930 you don’t want to research the top names for 1930, you need to be looking at 1910 or earlier if you are naming adult characters.

I combined (for my own sanity) names that are pronounced identically but have minor spelling differences: i.e. the data for Catherine also includes Catharines and Katherines, Susannah includes Susannas, Phoebe includes Phebes, etc.

The compound 'Mother's/Grandmother's maiden name used as first name' designation is an educated guesstimate based on what I recognized as known surnames, as I do not hate myself enough to go through 25,000+ individuals and confirm their mother's maiden names. So if the tally includes any individuals who just happened to be named Fitzroy/Hastings/Townsend/etc. because their parents liked the sound of it and not due to any familial relations - my bad.

I did a small comparative survey of 5,000 individuals in several rural communities in Rutland and Staffordshire (chosen because they had the cleanest data I could find and I was lazy) to see if there were any significant differences between urban and rural naming practices and found the results to be very similar. The most noticeable difference I observed was that the S+ tier names were even MORE popular in rural areas than in London. In Rutland between 1810 and 1820 Elizabeths comprised 21.4% of all brides vs. 15.3% in the London survey. All other S+ names also saw increases of between 1% and 6%. I also observed that the rural communities I surveyed saw a small, but noticeable and fairly consistent, increase in the use of names with Biblical origins.

Sources of the records I used for my survey:

Ancestry.com. England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1988 [database on-line].

Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935 [database on-line].

#history #regency #1800s #1810s #names #london #writing resources #regency romance #jane austen #bridgerton #bridgerton would be an exponentially better show if daphne's name was dorcas #behold - the reason i haven't posted in three weeks

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mysterieuxclairdelune · 1 year

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{Chelsea Dingman, from "Psychogeography," published in The Los Angeles Review/ Anne Sexton/ Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls - Raised by Wolves/ Abraham Verghese/ Naguib Mahfouz/ Clementine von Radics, Poem: Courtney Love Prays to Oregon/ Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project/ Fatimah Asghar, from "How'd Your Parents Die Again?" published in The New York Times Magazine/ John Murillo, Poem: Mercy, Mercy, Me}

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lucky-number-8 · 6 months

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Byproduct is now open. Come shop in store and browse through a selection of designer labels including Lieve Van Gorp, Issey Miyake, Project Alabama, Kosuke Tsumura, Anne Sofie Back, Beauty:Beast, Nigel Preston, 20471120, Preen, Miguel Adrover + more

Join us from Thursday the 9th - Sunday the 12th at 2 Rivington St, New York.

Open daily 12 - 7.

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catherinetheprincessofwales · 1 month

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Kate is not your drama queen Her self-possession drives people wild - Jenny McCartney UnHerd.

Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage. In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies”, which ranged widely across royal women from Anne Boleyn to Marie Antoinette and Princess Diana, she had made what many perceived as disparaging remarks about Kate Middleton, then the Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess, she said, appeared to have been “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished”. Indeed, Mantel said, Kate “seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character”.

At this, the newspapers were soon in uproar. The prime minister David Cameron called the comments “completely misguided and completely wrong” and the Labour leader Ed Miliband agreed they were “pretty offensive”. Mantel doggedly refused to back down, saying that her remarks had been twisted out of context, and that she was in fact writing with sympathy about the perceptions that are forcefully projected on to royal women, the cage in which they are held to be goggled at. That was true, but also perhaps not the entire truth, for there was still a perceptible trace of authorial vinegar in the portrait: which of us would be happy to learn, even in sympathy, that we were held at low risk for “the emergence of character”?

Royals are public as well as private figures, of course, and authors are free to hang intellectual ideas on them to try out, as designers do with clothes. Yet while much of the lecture was sharply perceptive, I didn’t agree with the portrait of Kate. That word “selected” had rendered her passive, when in fact her behaviour thus far had suggested both an active intelligence and an unusual degree of self-discipline. The context of her entry into “The Firm” was different from that of other royal brides. Unlike Diana, who had barely emerged from the fractured chrysalis of her troubled aristocratic family when she first met the much older, more worldly Prince Charles, Kate was a contemporary of Prince William’s at the University of St Andrews. Her family background, which appeared warm and supportive, was comfortably middle-class. She seemed generally cheerful and unruffled, even when the press was at the barbed peak of its “Waity Katie” hysteria, trying to goad Prince William into a proposal or abandonment.

After the wedding, in her approach to royal duties, she clearly took the role she had inherited with marriage seriously. The royal whose attitude her own most resembled was the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had long understood the essential nature of the job: to turn up to public events looking the part, intuit precisely what was needed — gravitas, fun, consolation or reassurance — and deliver it while keeping one’s personal emotions on the back burner. This is what a monarchy demands, and the ability to act as an impeccable interpreter of the public mood, year after year, is a particular and testing art. A few have a natural aptitude for it, but most of us do not, and would quickly find its scrutiny and restrictions intolerable.

Grace under consistent pressure is an admirable quality. Were a ballet dancer to execute a string of flawless performances, or a pilot to conduct numerous flights without incident, it would not be deemed evidence of an absence of character: quite the opposite. Yet in Kate — especially for those who increasingly conduct their lives online — serene self-possession seems to drive a proportion of onlookers insane: what lurks behind it, what dark secret is waiting to destroy it, how best might it be disrupted? The uncomfortable truth is that what many people deeply crave in a young and beautiful royal wife and mother is not competence, but crack-up

The increasingly bizarre treatment of Kate, or the idea of Kate, is connected to the most dominant phenomenon of our age: a cultural prioritising of drama over duty. The supply of drama has spilled beyond the confines of the novel, theatre, cinema or television to become a commodity on which our public figures are judged. When Mantel spoke of Kate’s apparent absence of emerging “character” she was assessing her primarily through the hungry eyes of a novelist. In books, central female characters often generate dramatic tension by chafing against their circumstances, by the intensifying dazzle of their discontents, something that Kate refused to transmit. In contrast, Mantel described Diana as a “carrier of myth”: Diana, publicly trapped in the disappointments of her marriage, certainly carried more plot twists than any author had a right to expect. Unfortunately for her, the final one was her shockingly premature death.

Set against this artistic conception of “character” — distinctive qualities or flaws that, one way or another, deliver drama — is the societal judgement “of good character”, meaning someone who is broadly reliable and respected in relation to their behaviour to others. In recent years the electorate, in line with Neil Postman’s warning in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, has proved increasingly ready to select the former over the latter, even to the marked detriment of our civic health. The former prime minister Boris Johnson instinctively understood it as his job not to deliver the detail of workable policy, but to satisfy the public’s appetite for story: “People live by narrative,” he once told UnHerd’sTom McTague. In the US, Donald Trump — that relentless generator of low mockery and high fury — is now running for a second term as president, after his first one ended in his supporters storming the Capitol building.

Men are often permitted to survive the frantic generation of drama: it is everyone around them who suffers. Yet women — in art and life — have a greater tendency to be destroyed by it. There is no strutting female equivalent of the male “hellraiser”, but rather a woman who, soaked in the crocodile tears of the tabloids, is tragically “causing concern” among friends. Art and its audiences have always relished the restless struggle and disintegration of female characters who are, or become, unmoored from the harbour of marriage and children. Flaubert’s Emma Bovary — her imagination inflamed by reading novels — is bored with her marriage and disenchanted with motherhood; she seeks solace in affairs and excessive spending, the consequences of which hasten her suicide. Zola’s Nana, a courtesan who ruthlessly captivates Parisian society, has her beguiling face eaten away by smallpox. Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, immolated on their blazing talent, are hung posthumously high in the musical hall of fame, next to Sylvia Plath in the poetry section and Marilyn Monroe in cinema.

In Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight,a middle-aged English woman called Sasha Jansen, mourning an unhappy marriage and a dead child, finds herself in Paris, a vulnerable drifter seeking solace from stray men. Rhys herself, who died at 88 after a precarious but surprisingly long life, had much in common with her literary creations. As the writer and editor Diana Athill crisply put it: “Jean was absolutely incapable of living, life was just hopelessly beyond her. When she was young, she floated from man to man in a hopeless way… by the time she was old, she floated from kind woman to kind woman.”

In Rhys’s latter years — hard-drinking, irascible and impoverished — Athill and a small group of female friends formed what they called “The Jean Rhys Committee” which met regularly to ask “what should we do next?”. Rhys’s claim to such loyalty, I suppose, was the weight of her literary talent, her ability to exert an odd kind of fascination, and the fortunate soft-heartedness of her friends. The dramatic collided with the dutiful, and was kept alive by it.

From what I can see, the Princess of Wales exists at the opposite end of the feminine spectrum from Jean Rhys. Pinned firmly in place by her royal obligations, her wealth, her marriage and three children, she belongs to the realm of the respectable and dutiful rather than the erratic and dramatic. She is not a “character” in the artistic sense, nor does she desire to be, but both a survivor and upholder of an institution: hers is the territory of the prompt thank-you note, the kept promise, the commitment to public service, the uncomplicated pleasure in children, the stoic endurance of difficult times in the hope that better ones will come along soon. The public senses an emotional solidity in her, and it is partly why she is held in broad esteem. In this age of insistent self-definition, duty to others might be an unfashionable concept, but it is nonetheless one that keeps families and institutions from chaos and collapse.

With the advent of the internet, however, anyone with a keyboard can become a form of author, with the freedom to insert a toxic form of drama into real-life situations. What was extraordinary, during the Princess of Wales’s recent health problems, is how speedily and carelessly such speculations overrode the bounds of decency. It was already known that she had undergone major abdominal surgery, and was taking time to recover. And yet — egged on by the participation of silly celebrities and malicious US comedians — conspiracy theories about cosmetic surgery and affairs and nervous breakdowns spread like knotweed. According to social-media researchers, these were also vigorously introduced and amplified by fake accounts set up on Twitter and TikTok, some associated with Russia-linked disinformation eager to spread the termites of mistrust and doubt in Western institutions. Only the Princess of Wales’s revelation of cancer, which carries a testing drama all its own, served to shut up the majority of them.

Unlike these callous gossips, Mantel recognised her own complicity in dehumanising royalty. Upon encountering the late Queen, the novelist said: “I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones.” The Queen looked back at her, she said, briefly hurt. Mantel warned of the way in which “cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty” precisely as it has done in recent weeks. Her talk concluded with a prescient instruction for those who comprehend monarchy mainly as a source of entertainment: “I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.”

In the midst of treatment and recovery, the most hitherto stable of royal women could be forgiven a keen sense of injustice: her job description, it seems, must now include the ability to weather the online public’s fits of brutish mania for drama. With its contempt for duty, and its savage appetite for story, it is hungry to chew up far more than just the Princess of Wales.

#ktd #kate middleton #british royal family #brf #princess of wales

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thepastisalreadywritten · 1 month

Text

Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel (6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage.

In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies,” which ranged widely across royal women from Anne Boleyn to Marie Antoinette and Princess Diana, she had made what many perceived as disparaging remarks about Kate Middleton, then the Duchess of Cambridge.

The Duchess, she said, appeared to have been “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished."

Indeed, Mantel said, Kate “seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character.”

At this, the newspapers were soon in uproar.

The prime minister David Cameron called the comments “completely misguided and completely wrong” and the Labour leader Ed Miliband agreed they were “pretty offensive.”

Mantel doggedly refused to back down, saying that her remarks had been twisted out of context, and that she was in fact writing with sympathy about the perceptions that are forcefully projected on to royal women, the cage in which they are held to be goggled at.

That was true but also perhaps not the entire truth, for there was still a perceptible trace of authorial vinegar in the portrait:

Which of us would be happy to learn, even in sympathy, that we were held at low risk for “the emergence of character”?

Royals are public as well as private figures, of course, and authors are free to hang intellectual ideas on them to try out, as designers do with clothes.

Yet while much of the lecture was sharply perceptive, I didn’t agree with the portrait of Kate.

That word “selected” had rendered her passive, when in fact her behaviour thus far had suggested both an active intelligence and an unusual degree of self-discipline.

The context of her entry into “The Firm” was different from that of other royal brides.

Unlike Diana, who had barely emerged from the fractured chrysalis of her troubled aristocratic family when she first met the much older, more worldly Prince Charles, Kate was a contemporary of Prince William’s at the University of St Andrews.

Her family background, which appeared warm and supportive, was comfortably middle-class.

She seemed generally cheerful and unruffled, even when the press was at the barbed peak of its “Waity Katie” hysteria, trying to goad Prince William into a proposal or abandonment.

After the wedding, in her approach to royal duties, she clearly took the role she had inherited with marriage seriously.

The royal whose attitude her own most resembled was the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had long understood the essential nature of the job:

To turn up to public events looking the part, intuit precisely what was needed — gravitas, fun, consolation or reassurance — and deliver it while keeping one’s personal emotions on the back burner.

This is what a monarchy demands, and the ability to act as an impeccable interpreter of the public mood, year after year, is a particular and testing art.

A few have a natural aptitude for it, but most of us do not, and would quickly find its scrutiny and restrictions intolerable.

Grace under consistent pressure is an admirable quality.

Were a ballet dancer to execute a string of flawless performances, or a pilot to conduct numerous flights without incident, it would not be deemed evidence of an absence of character: quite the opposite.

Yet in Kate — especially for those who increasingly conduct their lives online — serene self-possession seems to drive a proportion of onlookers insane: what lurks behind it, what dark secret is waiting to destroy it, how best might it be disrupted?

The uncomfortable truth is that what many people deeply crave in a young and beautiful royal wife and mother is not competence, but crack-up.

The increasingly bizarre treatment of Kate, or the idea of Kate, is connected to the most dominant phenomenon of our age: a cultural prioritising of drama over duty.

The supply of drama has spilled beyond the confines of the novel, theatre, cinema, or television to become a commodity on which our public figures are judged.

When Mantel spoke of Kate’s apparent absence of emerging “character,” she was assessing her primarily through the hungry eyes of a novelist.

In books, central female characters often generate dramatic tension by chafing against their circumstances, by the intensifying dazzle of their discontents, something that Kate refused to transmit.

In contrast, Mantel described Diana as a “carrier of myth”: Diana, publicly trapped in the disappointments of her marriage, certainly carried more plot twists than any author had a right to expect.

Unfortunately for her, the final one was her shockingly premature death.

Set against this artistic conception of “character” — distinctive qualities or flaws that, one way or another, deliver drama — is the societal judgement “of good character,” meaning someone who is broadly reliable and respected in relation to their behaviour to others.

In recent years, the electorate, in line with Neil Postman’s warning in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, has proved increasingly ready to select the former over the latter, even to the marked detriment of our civic health.

The former prime minister Boris Johnson instinctively understood it as his job not to deliver the detail of workable policy but to satisfy the public’s appetite for story:

“People live by narrative,” he once told UnHerd’s Tom McTague.

In the US, Donald Trump — that relentless generator of low mockery and high fury — is now running for a second term as president, after his first one ended in his supporters storming the Capitol building.

Men are often permitted to survive the frantic generation of drama: it is everyone around them who suffers.

Yet women — in art and life — have a greater tendency to be destroyed by it.

There is no strutting female equivalent of the male “hellraiser,” but rather a woman who, soaked in the crocodile tears of the tabloids, is tragically “causing concern” among friends.

Art and its audiences have always relished the restless struggle and disintegration of female characters who are, or become, unmoored from the harbour of marriage and children.

Flaubert’s Emma Bovary — her imagination inflamed by reading novels — is bored with her marriage and disenchanted with motherhood.

She seeks solace in affairs and excessive spending, the consequences of which hasten her suicide.

Zola’s Nana, a courtesan who ruthlessly captivates Parisian society, has her beguiling face eaten away by smallpox.

Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, immolated on their blazing talent, are hung posthumously high in the musical hall of fame, next to Sylvia Plath in the poetry section and Marilyn Monroe in cinema.

Rhys herself, who died at 88 after a precarious but surprisingly long life, had much in common with her literary creations.

As the writer and editor Diana Athill crisply put it:

“Jean was absolutely incapable of living, life was just hopelessly beyond her.

When she was young, she floated from man to man in a hopeless way… by the time she was old, she floated from kind woman to kind woman.”

In Rhys’s latter years — hard-drinking, irascible and impoverished — Athill and a small group of female friends formed what they called “The Jean Rhys Committee,” which met regularly to ask “what should we do next?”

Rhys’s claim to such loyalty, I suppose, was the weight of her literary talent, her ability to exert an odd kind of fascination, and the fortunate soft-heartedness of her friends.

The dramatic collided with the dutiful and was kept alive by it.

From what I can see, the Princess of Wales exists at the opposite end of the feminine spectrum from Jean Rhys.

Pinned firmly in place by her royal obligations, her wealth, her marriage, and three children, she belongs to the realm of the respectable and dutiful rather than the erratic and dramatic.

She is not a “character” in the artistic sense, nor does she desire to be, but both a survivor and upholder of an institution:

Hers is the territory of the prompt thank-you note, the kept promise, the commitment to public service, the uncomplicated pleasure in children, the stoic endurance of difficult times in the hope that better ones will come along soon.

The public senses an emotional solidity in her, and it is partly why she is held in broad esteem.

In this age of insistent self-definition, duty to others might be an unfashionable concept, but it is nonetheless one that keeps families and institutions from chaos and collapse.

With the advent of the internet, however, anyone with a keyboard can become a form of author, with the freedom to insert a toxic form of drama into real-life situations.

What was extraordinary, during the Princess of Wales’s recent health problems, is how speedily and carelessly such speculations overrode the bounds of decency.

It was already known that she had undergone major abdominal surgery and was taking time to recover.

And yet — egged on by the participation of silly celebrities and malicious US comedians — conspiracy theories about cosmetic surgery and affairs and nervous breakdowns spread like knotweed.

According to social-media researchers, these were also vigorously introduced and amplified by fake accounts set up on Twitter and TikTok, some associated with Russia-linked disinformation eager to spread the termites of mistrust and doubt in Western institutions.

Only the Princess of Wales’s revelation of cancer, which carries a testing drama all its own, served to shut up the majority of them.

Unlike these callous gossips, Mantel recognised her own complicity in dehumanising royalty.

Upon encountering the late Queen, the novelist said: “I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones.”

The Queen looked back at her, she said, briefly hurt. Mantel warned of the way in which “cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty” precisely as it has done in recent weeks.

Her talk concluded with a prescient instruction for those who comprehend monarchy mainly as a source of entertainment: “I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.”

In the midst of treatment and recovery, the most hitherto stable of royal women could be forgiven a keen sense of injustice:

Her job description, it seems, must now include the ability to weather the online public’s fits of brutish mania for drama.

With its contempt for duty, and its savage appetite for story, it is hungry to chew up far more than just the Princess of Wales.

NOTE: Additional photos have been included in this article.

#Princess of Wales #Catherine Princess of Wales #Catherine Middleton #Kate Middleton #British Royal Family #cancer #chemotherapy #preventative chemotherapy #disinformation #misinformation #fake news #trolls #bots #click farms #targeted attack #malicious gossips

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womanexile · 9 months

Text

The Haylor Bible

Links for all things Haylor. From song to music video analysis, to theories and stories. This is an ongoing project from the Haylor community.

Timeline

Haylor timeline summary

Updated Haylor timeline on twitter

2nd updated Haylor timeline

Year of “shooting your shot”

When HS gave TS the airplane necklace

Harry’s 1989 era IG posts

Reputation timeline

Anne being a Haylor

Harry’s Another Man playlist

Music Video

Wildest Dreams

Style/Perfect

Adore You

Falling/cardigan

As It Was mv

Late Night Talking mv

Daylight mv analysis

Daylight mv analysis part 2

Satellite mv analysis

Satellite mv analysis part 2

Songs

Fools Gold Lyrical analysis

Sign of the Times analysis

Seven analysis

Medicine analysis

Still the One analysis

Wildest Dreams and Cruel Summer interpretations

Back for You analysis

Only Angel

Cornelia St., Lover and Paper Rings

The Very First Night

Death by a Thousand Cuts analysis

Cruel Summer

Not So Typical Love Song analysis

The 1

Exile

This is me trying

Happiness analysis

…Ready For It analysis

1989 album

As It Was

Little Freak

New Years Day

Snow on the Beach

Try Honey

Begin Again

Glitch

Canyon Moon

Now That We Don’t Talk

Is It Over Now?

Olivia

End of the Day

Theories

HS and TS twin flame journey

HS and TS twin flame dreams

Daylight mv. Was it almost Two Ghost 2.0?

May 20th-date of significance

November 15th-date of significance

Haylor dates of significance

How Gerry Rafferty’s Right Down the Line (Harry’s inspiration and pre show playlist staple) is the basis for much of Harry’s Haylor writing.

Fine Line (the song) as Harry’s barometer

Harry adding Stockholm Syndrome to the LOT set list 2023 European leg

I Wish You Would/Already Home

Why is To Be So Lonely rare?

Why is All of the Girls You Loved Before Haylor?

Haylor signs in 2023

Did Haylor collab and what 1D songs are Haylor

Where We Are leak

Talk leak

Something I’ve Been Waiting For and Endlessly leak

Sweet Disposition (a Haylor story)

She’s the One BTS story

Harry’s Haylor tattoos

Is the Satellite mv a response to Question…?

Is Mastermind about Harry?

Variations in handholding

September 28th

Unspoken dialogue

They can say it in a song

Harry referencing Taylor’s older songs

Harry thinking about Taylor

No place like home (Harry & Taylor using “home” in their songs)

Secret language

“No shoes”

Jewelry

Colors

Haylor “pay for it”

TS questions for HS

TS & HS using “drive” in their songs

TS & HS using “wine” in their songs

TS & HS using “summer” in their songs

TS & HS using “red lipstick” in their songs

TS & HS using “stay” in their songs

TS & HS using “New York” in their songs

TS & HS using “daydream” in their songs

TS & HS using “hallways” in their songs

TS & HS using “flying & planes” in their songs

Songs of significance

Words by Gregory Alan Isakov

Miscellaneous

Other Haylor master post

Another Haylor master post

Haylor tarot readings

Haylor playlist “most amazing unspoken dialogue ever”

#haylor #harry styles #taylor swift

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writingcold · 18 days

Text

Hello! Welcome to Chapter 7.1 and 7.2 of CD&FE.

Pairing: Jake X Female Reader

Summary: This is an AU that starts with the release of GVF’s first EP, Black Smoke Rising, and follows along life paths over the course of twenty plus years. I’m just going to say I’m smiling.

Content warnings: Total Fluff. Like Josh’s hair at Red Rocks.

Word Count: approx. 6.2K

We’re almost there. I’m picturing @edgingthedarkness and @takenbythemadness rubbing their hands over the pending last part of this chapter. It’s… I can hear them cackling over it still. But that’s next week. We’ll just swoon together this week, okay?

CD&FE, Part 7.1: Jake’s POV

We needed to slow down a bit. Our families were feeling the effects of us always on the road. Danny was a single dad and Sam was struggling to keep his own marriage together. When things got super serious about priorities, it was decided that it would not kill us to pump the brakes. We would tour heavily the first year out after an album, but then taper off, picking festivals and one offs that were more friendly to the family schedules. This had a ripple effect for all of us - Danny had more time to spend in his folk sphere and play as a session musician for many of his friends. Sam was really making strides in his production interests, going so far as starting his own company that kept him busy enough to settle his bouncy nature. Josh had found a niche that satisfied his time with a camera.

That left me. I had a litany of projects with other bands and musicians, which was great. But what was keeping me busy in all that newly found downtime was creating tech for rigs. I had three different editions with a large guitar company issued, along with pedals, and even a few unique electronic pieces that I held patents to.

I had found a balance between my commitments with the band, with my commitments to tinkering with the tech side, and being able to fucking live. I was able to pursue interests apart from music. I traveled - mostly alone. It was strange, but I found solace in silent spaces. It was more than enough to keep myself sane.

I had a string of relationships that served their purposes at their given time, but nothing stuck for longer than a few months. I was happy. No matter what, I was happy. I felt healthier than I had felt in years. I got to spend an abundant amount of time with Dad and his bands. It had become more important since the old man was beginning to actually feel his age. We’d spend days going from tiny bar to tiny amphitheater to take in acts that we would debate over and appreciate together.

We were returning to the states after touring Europe in support of our eighth album release, ready to strike out across the States and Canada. I knew at some point I needed to look at the pending schedule, but we had a few weeks off. I found myself at my cabin close to Yankee Springs. Childhood nostalgia aside, it was the best retreat that I could find after the first part of the tour. The Spring air was crisp and the scrap of snow that still haunted the ground made sure that I was mostly alone in the area. By the end of the first week, I was actually sleeping like a normal fucking human, and behaving like one, too.

I finally was able to wrap my head around getting back into work and after bantering back and forth with Sam about meetings with management, I looked at the pending schedule. St. Paul was towards the beginning of the Midwest stretch. I closed that shit down and walked out onto the porch with a fresh cup of coffee and my pack of smokes to settle into my old man rocking chair to watch the day go by. I felt calm as the day whittled away. My thoughts bent back to Ann Arbor and that girl that had caught me absolutely despising myself for resorting to flirting to get people to see our show. She had captured my imagination the moment I saw the Deep Purple album between her fingers. She had my spirit the moment she walked out of my hotel room door without a goodbye.

Every time my path crossed hers, I fell harder for her. Each time we parted, the longer it took to recover. She took parts of my heart every chance she got, while leaving me with parts of her own in hopes of returning to reclaim. We had been through St. Paul a few times, but I actively avoided any contact. I supposed that was fear on my part. I had been with Clara. I was not that guy. The last time through, however, I was alone, but I was healing. I didn’t have the balls to check her socials. I didn’t have the fortitude to see if she was still with him. I just hoped that she was happy.

I was not on the rotation for the big meetings with the suits this time around - Sam and Josh had drawn the short straws, they would whine about it and I just quietly flipped them off. It gave me a few more days up north. Danny brought his boys and we spent time down at the lake and running through the woods. It felt good. It felt like I was strong. Ronnie and her family joined us, rounding out our nights with laughter and kids playing. It was hard not to feel the mind tug back to easier times.

Tour started in Nashville and moved east, then across the south, heading west until we landed in San Francisco. We turned north and worked our way back east with the intent of finishing in Detroit. Despite small hiccups and a few of us being dogged by respiratory illnesses, we were cruising right along at a good clip. We had built in family time every few weeks, taking a break to soak up kids and spouses/partners just for the sanity of Josh and Sam. It was working well. We had one such break between Rapid City and St. Paul. Because of school, Danny found himself stuck hanging out with me as we waited for Josh and Sam to have their time. We decided to push on to the Twin Cities, taking in the river and hanging out.

Wednesday I found myself itching to find her. A voice in the back of my head was whispering, but I wasn’t paying much attention until it was nearly four in the morning. I decided to check to see if she was even bothering with socials any more. I was pleasantly surprised to find that she had posted three months prior - a picture of her with a group of friends. She looked different. Beautiful as ever, but there was something missing. A shine? I noticed that her smile was not as warm, her eyes were not as bright. I felt a hurt pass over my chest as I scrolled back through, finding no evidence of him. Was she alone? I didn’t dare to text the old number I had still residing in my contact list, but I had pulled it up and stared at the picture of the cottage that I had as the profile picture.

I convinced Danny to go to that pub she had taken me to. I somehow remembered that there was live music on Thursday nights. ‘Perhaps’ was the word that I was thinking about throughout the day. I had no actual guarantee that she was even still in St. Paul. I had just this tiny hope that she would somehow know that I was in town. I knew her company was once again handling the graphics and ads for the show. I also knew that her company was handling not just the show in Minnesota, but in Des Moines, all three shows in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit. Though it was someone else’s name attached to the team, I hoped that she had seen us on the roster, just as in times before.

The pub had changed little from the one time I had been there, however, by the time we arrived, it was much more crowded. I won’t lie and say that I didn’t spend my first twenty minutes looking around to see if she was there, because I did. Danny was in conversation already with the bartender about the band that was in the middle of setting up on the small stage. My eyes wandered around, landing on the booth that we had shared. Everything with Y/n had been natural. Never rushed. Quick to laughter. Always savoring every moment we had together. It was like we knew our time was always fleeting and we just needed to absorb whatever we could. Problem was - my being wanted it like a drug. Wanted her more than anything to just stay.

We settled into dinner and a fresh round of beers as the band began to play - mostly covers of well trod tunes. And they were good. I sometimes missed the days of finding joy in just playing to play. There was something to be said to get to hone an entire show, crafting how each piece was played over the course of a tour, but something else entirely to just being in the moment and the honesty in something so small. Three songs into the set, however, I heard a familiar muted sound. My brain ran through the guitarist’s rig like one of those fucking TV moments where the character figures out brain surgery or something. I glanced at Danny before I made my move towards the stage.

I pointed to the pedal and amp while catching the guitarist’s eye. He looked at me like I was about to touch his grail or something. I shrugged and started to turn when the most god awful shriek came across the speakers. He had such a look of panic that I had to help at that point. I grabbed the single pedal, disconnecting and tearing off the back. It was totally fried inside.

“Fuck no,” he gasped as he knelt down.

“Keep playing,” I remarked as I shoved my fingers around the hot wires.

It was a fairly easy fix, but I needed more cabling. I tucked behind the amps, finding what I needed and restrung the whole bit. By the time I returned to the pedal, six phones were out and up with faces that were beaming behind them. I smiled and waved, knowing full well my anonymity was blown. Oh fucking well.

“You’ve done this before,” the guitarist said as I finished hooking him back up.

“Yeah, Coachella was interesting. Another time in Mexico City. Nearly blew up somewhere in Italy once… Imagine doing this with a few thousand eyes on you,” I snickered as I took my bow and backed away.

I was polite and stood for a few fan pictures before making my way back to my nearly cold dinner. Danny grinned as I reached for my beer.

“Show off,” he snarked, leaning his back against the bar top.

“Poor kid didn’t know he was about to literally go up in flames,” I said before shoving a french fry in between my teeth.

Their song wrapped and the singer pointed us out with a big “thank you to Jake fuckin’ Kiszka for your amazing assist”, to which all I could to do is fight an eyeroll and cheer them with a lift of my beer. By the time I pushed away my plate and finished our drinks, we were ready. I got the band’s credentials from the pub manager. I wanted to be sure to send that kid a proper pedal and perhaps some gear, just to help them out, even if he never made it out of the bar scene. There was no hope of seeing her in the wild, so what was the point of hanging out? By the time we reached the hotel, our social media manager was on our asses about the “occurrence”. She scolded us for not taking video ourselves as that’s the shit that gets eaten up. We should just be thankful that there were a few steadfast fans that were being super positive on the feeds. Sometimes, this business takes all the fun from the part that really only held what was important to me.

We were playing Target Stadium come Saturday. Friday, we welcomed Josh and Sam back in and we spent the evening just going over the set list and catching up on the family. Mom and Dad would be there for each show from here through Detroit. It was good to have them close. I went to bed alone, knowing that she was out there, close, but not nearly close enough.

Sound check went fine. It was not the biggest venue we had played, but it was large. It was something to have our sound pulsing through the air and striking the empty seats. I was retreating off the stage when I saw a familiar figure, one that I thought I would not be seeing. Her face was shadowed as she was talking to a few of the suits that were in attendance, but when her eyes met mine, there was a shine that I had desperately missed. The slow smile that tugged and pulled across her lips set me on an edge that I could only tumble down from. My feet turned towards her direction, and I was unable to even think about stopping from my path towards her.

“Deep Purple,” I said as I approached.

The warmth of her laugh healed the distance. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders as she stepped in close to me. I felt all of me melt against her and hold on for dear life. I breathed her in as I nuzzled into her neck. I could care less of how it looked. I felt her chest quiver against mine and knew she was moved just as much as I.

“I’ve been looking for my mouse,” I whispered and smiled when I heard her breath catch in her throat.

She moved just enough to allow her lips to meet mine in a chaste kiss. I could taste tears and wasn’t sure if they were hers or my own. We hid against each other until we could both recover. I was sure my heart was leaping within my chest when I saw her eyes filled with the spark that had been missing in the pictures I had just seen of her.

“I’ve missed this face,” she said quietly, tracing her fingers down my jaw.

I could not stop myself from taking all of her in - the fine laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. The way her cheek blushed when she realized I was studying her. How her hands would not leave my body for more than a second. Damn, she was the most beautiful she had ever been if I had to compare to all of our meetings. She had taken my breath away and all of my reason with it.

Josh called from behind me and I felt the moment get yanked away. There were a few items left on the day that I had committed to and could not be put off. I cursed as she frowned, which was only mirroring my reaction.

“I should’ve-” she started, withdrawing from me.

“Wait. I have these promotions, then…”

“I knew you were here, Jake. I should’ve reached out. You have no time for this.”

I cursed again as I looked back at my waiting twin and Mom, both wearing the same mischievous look. “I have another break in about three weeks. Will you be here?”

She touched my hair, passing her fingertips across the streaks of gray amongst brown that I had allowed to be seen. “I’ll be here. Same number. Just…”

It was the best I could hope for. By the time I hit the stage that night, it was like I was weightless. I’m sure my brothers were taken aback by my energy of the evening, but they could fuck off. Mom hugged me tight that night and asked if that was the girl I’d been waiting for - the girl that held me like I was her life.

“I’ve waited for her for so long. I hope I can prove it to her that it’s finally our time,” I said, as she held onto me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy, honey,” she said, filling me once again with all of the emotions of earlier.

The joy that had infused me was only spiked further as my phone pinged a notification when we were loading up on the buses. It was from her. I waited until I was away from curious eyes to open it.

I’ve made some changes.

I had no idea what she meant, but I desperately needed to find out.

CD&FE, Part 7.2: Her POV

Four words had never felt so heavy, and yet so freeing at the same time.

I’ve made some changes.

Four words that I hoped were enough to convey that my path had been lost, found and re-paved since our last meeting. My life with Frank had been beautiful. My life with Frank as we tried to make the long distance between us work was not so beautiful. We tried. There was no leeway for him - he had to be in Paris. I had a little bit of give, working from his tiny little rooms that the university had provided, but my company was once again expanding. I needed to be present to woo new clients. I was needed to be present to ensure the quality of our work to our established clients who preferred to work with me in person. It became us trying to prop up tent poles for a tent so riddled with holes and flooding with water that neither of us could survive.

In the end, it felt bitter to be walking away after so much was put into the relationship. It took more than a while to recover. I fought from throwing myself back into work - which would have been the easiest thing to do. Bury myself in hours away from home; away from being alone. I sold the apartment that we had so fallen in love with. Everything was very civil in regards to dividing up the holdings. I was thankful for that. I found a little craftsman home from the early 1900s that was further out of the city on a scrap of land where I didn’t have neighbors two feet away from me. It was… nice. I continued to work from home three days a week. I somehow found a balance - one that I knew I had been lacking.

I took time to go home to my parents. I took time to spend with my siblings and their families. I took time to absorb Pat and Sidney’s family. I took time to mourn my time with Frank. Finally, I took time to really be well within myself. I took about six weeks off, first to move into the new space, then to just be a regular human. I did travel back to Duluth, but did not stay in the cottage that I had with Jake. I walked the trails that we had slipped and slid across together. I went to the mansion, but this time the gardens were in full bloom. I knew my spirit bled for him. I realized that there was no one else that I wanted. There was no one else that understood me like Jake did; despite our time together adding up to little more than thirteen days. DAYS.

At first, I did not want to believe that this deep seeded need was love for a man I knew in such an ephemeral manner. I had promised that man to latch onto someone who could love me where I was. And I did love Frank. I am convinced that I loved him deeply. However, there was always a dogged feeling that not all of my needs were being met - not the way that Jake fulfilled me. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t fully accept that fact.

I celebrated my forty-third birthday by doing nothing. I was by no means feeling old or sad about my age. Fuck that. I was feeling better than I had in years. I was strong and independent and … When I had seen that the GVF ticket had been passed along to my old position that was now occupied by Cody Youngblood, I knew perhaps I was ready. I had sheltered in place the last time they had blown through town. This time, however, I paid attention. I was upper, administrative management now, no need to sit in on the tasks that were once so important to me. But I did take notice and follow the progress through. I wondered if any of them realized that it was now my company that was handling them throughout the Midwest stretch. We had our tendrils reaching across the states and even into Toronto.

I had checked the schedule of shows, knowing that this account was huge compared to even a few years prior. Live acts had changed considerably with the advent of having streamed shows across multiple venues. GVF were part of a dying breed that some speculated would be relegated back to playing on street corners and honky tonk bars. But the band was persevering - along with many others that were proving that live music - not streamed performances - were still best practice. I was stuck in Des Moines with a project that had simply imploded when I knew there was a break before playing the area in Minneapolis. The client was pissed off that we had followed their wishes to a ‘t’ and it fell apart just as the project manager had predicted. I soothed the ruffled feathers and salvaged what I could before trudging home, afraid that I was going to be too late.

While on the plane, Pat sent me a link with a question if that was ‘my’ guitar player. A friend of his had been at the pub that night and had video showing Jake helping a band out. I stared into my screen. What didn’t seem real was followed by all sorts of accounts that Jake had helped out a young guitarist during their set. There were pictures splashed all over. Each new picture came with a fresh fight to catch my breath. I had to get home. I needed to make my way to him.

I was a ball of anxiety as I dressed and prepared to get into the sound check that was scheduled. Cody was to be there taking care of our company’s tasks, but I thought dropping in would look good on such a large, long-term account. At least that was my cover. I passed through security and surprised Cody as he was running through his final digital checks. It was an amazing set up. It was hard not to feel the energy in the air. We were deep in the guts of the stadium when the sound vibrated through my form. Jake’s playing was unmistakable. I smiled as we walked up through the layers of concrete until we were in the open air. A group of techs were standing to the side, making adjustments and honing in on the sound that was needed. We moved towards a group of management that we knew, and were going over the final touches as the check came to a close.

My chest was on the verge of rupture when the band started down the main stairs that would lead them right past us. I kept my attention where Jake would eventually appear, but I turned away as I heard commotion towards the back of the stage. My body felt hot and jumpy the longer I waited. He was here. He was so close. I wondered if he would be happy to see me. I panicked at the notion that he may just walk past me without acknowledgement. I had not contemplated that part. I just knew I needed to be here, at this time.

He had his head down as he descended the metal stairs. I smiled at the amount of silver that had invaded his hair. Clad in sunglasses, he looked soft in trousers, boots and a pull over. I was glad to see that the mustache and goatee were in place, but once again, speckled with gray in the best way possible. How was this man aging like this? He was even more handsome compared to his form from years before. He looked up and paused. I hoped that he saw me - that his slowing of tread was because of me. He took his sunglasses off and my breath stopped completely. He was walking towards me, eyes filled with recognition and warmth. I had no idea if it would be any kind of touch until he called me ‘Deep Purple’ and I had no choice but to fall into his embrace.

There’s a feeling that can overcome you when you pull on your favorite outfit, or snuggle down into the right blanket, or how the sunshine hits your face after you’ve been upset and you just know it’s all good. The moment he touched me was like all three moments in one. Every inch of me felt right. I felt elevated. I could feel his body shaking against mine, like he was totally filled with joy and anticipation. I felt like I whimpered as his mouth passed against the exposed skin of my neck. It was by no means anything other than him trying to get closer, but just the feel of his breath against my skin was enough to know he was right there with me - in the same mindset.

Damn. He called me ‘mouse’ and I lost it. All of the emotions struck like a tide. His lips met mine. My chest swelled with a pain of need and want and lust and most of all love. Love that was passionate and greedy. Love that was consuming. Love that was nurturing and unquestioning. Love that was his.

I heard his name being called. I knew I was in the final seconds of whatever this was. I did not want to let go. My spirit tried to reach out and cling to him as he had to continue to work. But the need for him to stay was shared between us. I could see it in him - he did not want to go. I touched his face, brushing away tears for both of us. They called for him again and a look flared in his features that I wasn’t sure if he was about to explode in rage or melt into me with need. I knew I was stammering to get words out. I always felt like his time was precious. Never more so than in that rush that was beginning to tug at him. I watched as he physically struggled against it.

Three weeks. He said three weeks. I’ve waited nearly twenty years, what was three more weeks?

Rarely do I ever take advantage of tickets for events that we get for free through work. However, that night, I was in a VIP box watching Jake strut around like a god. Those few around me noted that he seemed different - lighter. I did not move from my spot the entire time, watching him laugh and interact with his brothers and the crowd. I wondered if he knew I was there. I should have texted him, but I needed this for me. The last little scrap to tear away and accept that the man that the whole damn stadium was screaming for was mine.

Three weeks. I needed to focus on getting the rest of my shit in place. I was by no means quitting, but I was stepping up and through an opportunity that would allow much more flexibility and time away from the office. I purchased a ticket to get to the Detroit show. It was my whole focus. He texted every night, while I answered every morning. I wanted to drop everything and run to him. Strange how things had changed. I had spent so much time focused on the now - but I wanted that ‘now’ to be nothing but him.

“I’m happy for you,” Patrick admitted as I was carrying my bag out to set by the front door. “You’ve thought this through. This is what you want.”

“It’s what I want,” I replied as I rushed back to get my light trench coat from the back closet.

“It’s good to see you this happy, Y/n,” he said with a grin. “The girls are going to miss you fiercely.”

“I won’t be leaving forever. Just not around quite as much,” I said as I made sure my ticket was waiting in my phone. “And perhaps their favorite auntie will send them all sorts of shit from all over that will drive their daddy crazy.”

He shook his head with a naughty look. “You do and I’ll break each one before it gets into their hands. They’re still young enough that I can open and censor anything that you send.”

I laughed loudly. The incident of the harmonicas, kazoos, and slide whistles still gets talked about years after the actual occurrence. Or the slime-fest that Auntie Y/n promised and was met with unexpected consequences of it in the girls’ hair and staining outfits for days. The glitter shooters. The craft fairs that we would hold in Sidney’s living room were epic, but glue, beads and cutouts were not furniture friendly. And best of all, at the end of it, I could kiss them all and walk away from the annoyed parents and happy children.

“Regardless, they’re going to miss their Sunday time with you,” he said, his lips held tight.

“I’ll miss you too, Patty,” I said softly. “But I’m not going far, or for that long. We’ve got a lot to figure out yet.”

He was nodding, but I knew he was just hiding what he wanted to say. They were concerned for me. Hell. I was concerned. I never threw anything to the wind like this. Every step I made was measured and planned and had a direction that had an end goal in mind. This whole time. My goal for now however, was Jake. My direction was him. I said I was not one of those girls to drop everything for a man. That was true. I still wasn’t. But I was to a point in my career that I could dictate my role and my projects.

“I love you,” I said, coming to a stop in front of him. “I’ve loved you since second grade when you told me that I had a booger on my forehead. I love your family. I love your kids. Fuck if I miss much of that, right?”

“Love you too, punkin,” he whispered, tugging me close.

I was on the flight to Detroit when I saw that Jake texted a picture from the stage of Comerica Park. My heart flooded with his words: Tomorrow morning will be here in less than twelve hours. He was counting down. I had a car waiting for me at the airport that would take me to the hotel before dumping everything and running my ass off to get to the venue. I had a ticket for one of the boxes, but also told Cody to expect me backstage. He was a sweetheart about it, knowing that I was not going to be there to see him. That ruse had been blown. He just said that all my passes would be at the will-call window. True to his word, everything was there.

I got a beer and tucked into my spot - on Jake’s side, overlooking the stage. I could not hide the absolute joy that flooded my system as they hit the stage and the whole stadium exploded in sound. I had no idea how long the tears were standing in my eyes, or how they started to trail my makeup down my cheeks, but I was ruined by the midpoint of the show. Amidst blushed cheeks and racoon eyes, I ducked out of the box and could only hope that I was able to hide my mess until I got to the ladies room. I could hear Jake commanding another solo and it was like reverberating off my bones as I tried to pull myself together.

“Hey, honey, you all right over there?”

Fuck. I was totally caught being overstimulated and over emotionally wrought in the fucking bathroom. I was reaching for a wad of towels when the woman who was asking me my status came into view of the mirror. My insides froze. She froze as well before she quickly recovered. I had seen pictures of his mother that he had shown me during our time in Duluth. I had seen her at the exhibition for Clara, though from a far distance.

“Well, I’ll be,” she said, her tone shifting as she moved to get me more towels. “You’re Y/n if I’m not mistaken.”

I bit into my lip trying to stall just long enough to catch my breath. I had no voice to give her so I nodded.

“Jake said that he would be flying to St. Paul the moment he came off stage,” she replied with a small grin. “Guess he won’t have to now. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Karen.”

“Y/n,” I said, as I met her gaze through the mirror.

“So, I’ll ask again - you okay?”

I sucked in a hard breath. “Just having a moment. I don’t normally do things like this, but… Honestly. I didn’t want to wait.”

The smile that spread across her face was so like Jake’s in those quiet, over the top moments that he could barely hold himself together that it just caused all the emotions to rupture out of me all over again. She hushed and cooed as she rushed to help once more. I tried to warble out a thanks, but it just made things worse. It started with a chuckle, then a laugh and landed in a sob that was not my own. Karen had her own tears in her eyes as she wiped at her face.

“You really do love my boy, don’t you,” she sighed, as if just giving herself over to her own emotions.

All I could do was nod my head and we both just blurted out in a shared moment of joy. She was waving her hands wildly as she was trying to reign herself in. A ray of light shot across her features as she froze.

“I have an idea!” she announced. “I’m not sure how you were planning on reaching him, but I think we need to really do this right. Wait… How were you going to surprise him?”

“I have backstage access. I was thinking about trying to meet him after-”

A twinkle crossed her gaze. “You’re with me.”

She wrapped her hand around my wrist and pulled me out of the restroom and down the walkway. We rushed past the box that I was in and moved instead into one just beyond the barrier that read ‘No One Beyond This Point’. She pushed open the door to reveal a near identical box that I was in, but this one was furnished with a sidebar filled with iced drinks and snacks. There were about twenty people in the room, all were just visiting and watching every now and then. This was the family. I felt way out of place as Karen waved me towards the glass.

“Hon,” she called out as we approached three men that were tucked at the fore. “Hon…”

The moment the man turned to look at his wife, I knew it was Jake’s father. The way he leaned into her and listened and reached for her… Fuck. It was all Jake. The shy little smile. The secret language that he was able to share with his wife was all on display. His eyes turned to me and he was instantly on his feet.

“Wow, fancy meeting you here,” he opened with a wide smile.

“We have to surprise Jake. You in?” Karen beamed as she wrapped her arm around her man.

“Jake doesn’t like surprises,” Kelly remarked, brows furrowed.

“He’ll like this one,” Karen stated with finality.

I couldn’t help the spike of nervousness that invaded as my eyes turned towards the glass. Jake was stomping across the front of the stage racing towards the encore. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but how awful would it be if his parents were ready to spring right into whatever was ahead for the two of us. I listened to them banter about how Jake was so looking forward to seeing me - how he had gushed over how we seemed to be the proverbial ships passing in the night over and over. I looked down as the spotlight dimmed across him before he stepped forward again to be awash in brilliant light. The silver in his hair was a halo around him. My heart thudded in my chest at the sight. I was putting myself in his parents’ hands. How the hell did this happen?

We’re down to one last posting to wrap this lovely little story up. See you next week!

@lvnterninthenight @doodle417 @luverleaver @jakesgrapejuice @fictional-duchess @milkgemini @positivegvfthings @songbirds-sweet @gretavanbitches @gardensgatedaisy @babyhoneygvfarchive @myownparadise96 @josh-iamyour-mama @starcatcherc @loveisonaroll @jakesstarlight @reesetrippingthelight @builtby-gvf @ignite-my-fire @wetkleenex-gvf @gold-mines-melting @starsasone @mysticalstarcatcher @montenegroisr @takenbythemadness @way-to-go-lad @cal-a-bungaa @thewritingbeforesunrise @leftjudgeempathsuitcase @brokenbells11 @imborrowedshesblue @vanfleeter

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