An idea for this blog...

I have political opinions, which you may have observed. I'd like to express these. But it would be much better if I presented historical evidence to back those opinions up, wouldn't it?

So I'll be doing that, starting with a post regarding the connection between women's health and the availability of safe abortions. Suck it, Harper.

In Need of Direction

Welp, my Meliorist column has ended with the passing of the semester. As I'm sure you've noticed, that was my go-to for content this past while.

So what do I do instead? Having to stick with a schedule was good for me and I should probably continue with that. But I want to do something different than the 'humourous history' schtick I had going on. It doesn't have to do with history, although I'd still write on this blog.

Here are some ideas I have:
1) A short fiction blog, with a minimum of 2000 words of story per week. (As a point of contrast, the Things in History You Should Know articles went from 700-1000 words.) Self-contained stories or tied together? I don't know.
2) A reader request article series on this blog. Suggestions are given for a topic, I choose one, and I do my level best to write a thousand word article on it in a week.
3) A video blog (because it might be fun) with reviews of what I've read in the past week.
4) I've noticed that a lot of my friends like writing but find it difficult to write much. I could expand the short fiction blog idea to include whoever's interested, with the requirement that they post a set amount of words per week (which they would set).

Which of these do you like? What tweaks do you suggest? Is there anything really cool that I haven't thought of?

I'm courting your thoughts here. Would they like flowers? I'll get them flowers.

Things in History You Should Know: George IV and Maria Fitzherbert and Caroline of Brunswick

Well. This is the last installment of Things in History You Should Know, originally published here. Odd.

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Welcome to the third week of our Historical Relationships That Ended Badly Month! Like last week, it involves royalty. Like the week before, it involves religion. And royalty + religion = fun times.

You may be vaguely aware that over the course of several centuries, or at the very least since Henry VIII decided divorce was for him, England had issues with religion.

In order to address these, they set themselves up with a brand new church (aptly named the Church of England) and set the monarch up as the head of this church. And after they realized the incredible awkwardness of having a Catholic heading a Protestant church (see the examples of Bloody Mary and James II), they enacted certain “laws.”

Laws that stated that a Catholic was ineligible to succeed to the throne, and that any descendent of George II absolutely could not go get married all willy-nilly without the reigning monarch’s consent.
Naturally, during the reign of George III, his eldest son (George, Prince of Wales) fell in love with and secretly married a twice-widowed Catholic woman, Maria Fitzherbert. She was pretty, common, educated, pleasant and a completely inappropriate wife for the heir to the throne.

Obviously, they couldn’t keep it secret forever (how else would you be reading this?) and knowledge of it came out at pretty much the worst possible time for Prince George. Namely, when he was in debt on a gargantuan scale and asking Parliament for money.

So he was obliged to, through the medium of the leader of the Whig party, publically deny association with that floozy, Mrs. Fitzherbert. This pissed her off severely, but not so much that she broke it off with him. For what it’s worth, Pope Pius VII was on her side, but he was Catholic, so who cares?

Well, they continued to associate with each other, of course, and George III had the wretched luck to slowly succumb to madness over the course of a few decades. But in 1795, well before he was forced to hand the reigns of what passed for ruling over and thus begin the Regency period, George III decided his son had to marry. Properly, this time. To someone who wasn’t Catholic: the prince’s cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. Did the prince consent to this? Yes. Why, when as far as he was concerned, he had a perfectly cromulent wife already? Because he was in debt, again, and wouldn’t get the cash otherwise.

Now, Caroline was neither pretty, common or educated, and she was a bit too crude to be considered pleasant, but she certainly didn’t deserve being married to Prince George. The prince, not apparently having looked in the mirror lately or having noticed the ever-increasing size of his trousers, thought she was ugly, hideous, etc.

They only managed to overcome their mutual disgust enough to have sex three times, which was enough to conjure up a daughter, Charlotte. After that? They kept as far away from each other, living in separate households, and carrying on with other people.

For the prince, this included Mrs. Fitzherbert and his mistress and Caroline’s former Lady of the Bedchamber, Lady Jersey. For further lemon juice in the paper cut, he drew up a new will, leaving everything to Maria, with a tiny exception for Caroline; she got a shilling.

On the plus side for her, she was much, much, much more popular than the prince, whom everyone regarded as a corpulent jerkface. This is because he was, in fact, a corpulent jerkface. She also got to visit her daughter frequently and adopt a whole mess of foster children. One of these, a wee little baby named William Austin, caused a speck of trouble for her when she fell out with the neighbours.
Years passed, until we reach 1811. George III is declared insane and the Regency officially begins. The prince used his new powers to be a dick and keep Caroline from their daughter Charlotte. Propaganda was flung in both directions,

In the meantime, Princess Charlotte, heir to the throne after her father and whom everyone thought was awesome, was married. In short order, she got pregnant. The child was stillborn and Charlotte died soon after the birth. The prince didn’t even bother to write a quick note to tell Caroline, foisting off the duties on some other poor, grief-stricken schmuck. That note never got written, but the prince’s letter to the pope did. The one that suggested that Caroline’s marriage was invalid. And that’s how she found out her daughter was dead.

In 1820, the prince became King George IV and Caroline returned to England to get her rights all recognized – such as her right to become queen, for instance. George didn’t play ball. He locked the doors to his own coronation ceremony leaving her banging on them during the event. He even offered her money to just go away and when that failed, tried to divorce her on grounds of adultery.
For her part, Caroline denied committing adultery, except in the case of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s husband. Zing.

Needless to say, the attempt failed and Caroline continued to be popular with everyone including the reformers until she died the next year. Riots broke out when it was discovered that the powers that be diverted her funeral procession from London. George died in 1830 after years of excess. Maria outlived them all, dying in 1837, now well regarded by the royals and having turned down the offer of a duchy.

At least they didn’t end up like the Hapsburgs or Romanovs.

Things in History You Should Know: Padme Amidala... and Anakin Skywalker

As originally published in the Meliorist, on April 1st. Yes.


Greetings, and welcome to week two of Historical Relationships That Ended Badly Month! And boy, do I have a treat for you today.

A long time ago (say, about 500,000 years ago) in a galaxy far, far away (the Sunflower Galaxy, perhaps), politics were giving everyone grief. Into this fraught atmosphere came a young queen, Padme Amidala of Naboo, elected to great acclaim by her people. During the subsequent confrontations with the Trade Federation, she spent a great deal of time running about, speaking to the Galactic Senate, recruiting young slave boys and other allies, and generally getting things done.

Eventually, the Trade Federation embargo was brought to an end by means of action sequences and cunning. She let loose the aforementioned slave boy, one Anakin Skywalker, to the care of the Jedi, and carried on ruling for another eight years. These were prosperous years for Naboo, so prosperous that she had to publically refuse to defy the constitution and run for the position of queen for yet another term. She was soon thereafter appointed – not elected – to represent Naboo in the Galactic Senate. Work that one out.
Two years after becoming senator, Padme took an unpopular stance against the Military Creation Act.

Justifiably, as it turned out, she feared the implications of militarization and their potential to undermine the democratic nature of the Senate. After numerous assassination attempts sparked by this stance, she was forced to go into hiding lest she wind up in a pine box. It was during this time that all of her work against the MCA was undermined by the individual who was brought in to provide a temporary replacement for her. The identity of this individual is lost to the mists of time, but doubtless once it is learned, it will be a focal point for curses the like this universe has never known.

Up to this point, I have made little mention of young Anakin, Jedi warrior. Allow me to redress this point. It so happens that Padme’s bodyguard during her temporary exile was none other than him and that he still remembered their previous acquaintance with much fondness. How could he not? She and her compatriots did deliver him from a lifetime of slavery, after all. Given all this, the fact that he was four years her junior and Padme’s purported beauty and charm, it is only natural that the young man would become smitten with his charge in defiance of Jedi prohibitions against attachments of the heart.

But Padme would not be wooed so easily. It would take several action sequences, the likes of which would stress our modern workstations to their utmost, before she could allow his courtship of her to continue. Once this was done and Anakin received the artificial hand he required as a result of his troubles, she was happy to let the courtship and marriage proceed so long as they did so under terms of strictest secrecy. The young Jedi was comely, for certain, but she could not let marriage of any sort damage her political reputation and influence.

Then the Clone Wars began and everything went to hell.

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, formerly occupying Padme’s own position as senator of Naboo, had been granted any number of emergency powers since the onset of the war with the Separatists. (Not to be confused with Quebecois separatists, who still do not have access to neither droids nor Sith.) This alone was a subject of concern for Padme, who feared not only his becoming a dictator of sorts but the dangerous activities of her husband in the course of his many exciting action sequences.

To further her anxiety, she discovered that she was pregnant with twins prior to Anakin’s return to Coruscant. As she knew that the Jedi Council were intelligent enough to put two and two together, what with her close acquaintance with Anakin and the timing of her pregnancy and all, she endeavoured to keep the matter secret for as long as possible. Historians speculate how she planned to deal with the matter once the twins were born; inconclusive evidence has been found that indicates that she intended to give birth on Naboo and pass the infants off as belonging to her sister.

Whatever her intentions were, her husband went, how shall we say, completely fucking crazy – a process that included killing off an entire temple full of children, among other misdeeds. Padme braved a confrontation with Anakin, which came to naught. Seeing that he was beyond help, she left him to his own devices and involved herself with the burgeoning rebel movement against the newly deemed Emperor Palpatine before the onset of labour. Anakin, meanwhile, become Darth Vader. You may have heard of him.

The chronicler George Lucas states that upon giving birth to the eventual heroes, Leia and Luke, Padme “died of grief.” Mere words cannot describe the silliness of this medical diagnosis, especially in light of Princess Leia’s testimony that she possessed memories of her mother.

So what explanation can serve for Lucas’ inaccuracy? Think of his patrons, the American film industry – he was just as beholden to them as Shakespeare was to Elizabeth I and James I. As we are all aware, the presence of a woman who has not only birthed, is no longer beholden to her love interest and holds a position of authority is anathema to them. Padme proved resistant to further director-enforced romantic tension and so, she had to die.

In defiance of Lucas, the historical record indicates that the twins’ birth went off without a hitch. She sent Luke off into hiding with his step-relatives, whom she had previously met, and sent herself into hiding. Passing off Leia as the child of her good friend, Bail Organa, she posed as a servant of his household while secretly conducting the activities of the newborn Rebel Alliance. This continued until she came down with a nasty case of food poisoning when she was thirty-two, to which she succumbed. Such is the reason for the blackened cuisine for which Alderaan was known before it was destroyed.

Darth Vader became a lackey and then died.

Things in History You Should Know: Heloise and Abelard

As originally published in the Meliorist.

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Greetings, and welcome to :Historical Relationships That Ended Badly” Month!

The first up on our list is a particularly intelligent teenager and her philosopher teacher (twenty-two years her senior) who loved her. It is a tale part romantic and part squick-inducing.

First, the hero: Peter Abelard, born in 1079, philosopher and Breton. After being educated in the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, he spent much time setting up schools in the area by which he could annoy his philosophical rivals. Things he liked included science and debating.

Next, the heroine: Heloise, born in 1101, skilled with pen and languages – in addition to her native French, she also understood Latin, Hebrew and Greek. Her uncle Fulbert was a canon in, you guessed it, Paris, and she was his ward. Fulbert thought she needed a teacher. He picked Abelard. Trouble ensued: seduction. In case they had any ambitions of hiding that fact, so ensued a pregnancy and a son. It seems that giving your spawn a weird ass name is hardly a modern phenomenon, as evidenced by the name they gave the babe, Astrolabe.

Fulbert, quite naturally, was somewhat less than amused. A marriage was proposed so that the uncle wouldn’t knock Abelard’s block off and while Heloise didn’t think much of the idea, the couple went through with it anyway. The matter and marriage was kept hush hush until Uncle Fulbert started prattling on about it in public. Heloise didn’t hesitate in denying it and to escape her uncle’s wrath, she hurried off to visit a convent at Abelard’s suggestion.

Out of doubtless many decisions of dubious quality, this was probably the worst decision Abelard had made in his lifetime.

One of these two things happened: either Fulbert thought Abelard was being a sneaky bastard on him and that he’d left his niece to be eaten by wolves somewhere (this is the most commonly accepted view), or other members of the Clan Heloise and got royally ragey. Then, well…

Men, cross your legs. Abelard was castrated.

So he became a monk and Heloise was forced to become a nun. (For the love of criminy, doesn’t she get a say in anything that happens to her?) Heloise wasn’t too keen on the career change at all, but again, no one gave her much choice in the matter. On a positive note, the church wasn’t too shabby a place for a woman back in those days, at least compared to the other options. Being married to Jesus (even if you were already bigamously married to Abelard) gave them a chance for authority they’d seldom see in the secular realm. Heloise herself became in turn a prioress and then an abbess.

Abelard continued to have his enemies and his students, although the former were to have their licks in. They managed to get banned and burned his collection of theological lectures on account of heresy – “Yes, we know you’ve been feeling very down about the whole ‘balls chopped off’ incident. However, we’d very much like to destroy your life’s work.” After that, he got forced in a monastery himself.
There, he annoyed and was made annoyed by the monks, shoved off, and became a hermit. Eventually, roaming packs of students found him out and he was obliged to teach again and set up an oratory.
For which he, after taking his leave, successfully angled for Heloise to become a prioress of. Huzzah!

We’re not sure where he himself ended up, but he took up writing again, both for philosophy and for Heloise. This included songs, hymns for her priory and love letters. It’s obvious that they still loved each other dearly, but it wasn’t an easy matter to deal with. Nevertheless, when Abelard died in 1142, while in the midst of still more troubles with the church, his body was taken to Heloise in accordance to his wishes. When she died twenty-two years later, she was buried beside him.

As for Astrolabe, it appears that he entered the church – or at least, Abelard intended for him to enter the church – and he died in 1150. Nothing else is known.

The nice thing about this story is that the tragedy of it was largely contained to the two protagonists. The subjects of the next three weeks were not quite so lucky.

Things in History You Should Know: Charlotte Corday

As originally published in the Meliorist.

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Assassins are largely either assholes or not on speaking terms with reality. Often both. When we think of John Wilkes Booth nowadays, we do not think of his famed skill as a Shakespearean actor. Nay, we think, “Man, he was an almighty asshole for assassinating Lincoln.” So allow me to express my admiration of and wish to high five Charlotte Corday, slayer of Jean-Paul Marat!

Once upon a time, there was a revolution. A French one. They saw what the Americans did with theirs and were like, “Dude. We want some of that. Only more hardcore.” The country was bankrupt, the peasantry (the Third Estate, if you will) was sick of being oppressed by the nobility and the clergy, so why the hell not? The kick-off in 1789 went pretty well considering, but in 1793, it had all gone to hell.

The Legislative Assembly had fallen the previous year, with massacres occurring fast on its heels. Louis XIV, now known as Citizen Capet, was executed in January, and his wife and children were still imprisoned. The Committee of Public Safety formed in April, signifying the victory of the radical Jacobins over the republican Girondists. And who was egging on all this? You guessed it: Marat!

Here is where Corday enters the picture. Born of a minor aristocratic family, educated in a convent, and a big fan of Rousseau and Plutarch with an extra helping of Voltaire, she knew what she was about. Things she was for: the Girondists. Things she was against: executing deposed monarchs, violent and bloody civil war, and assholes like Marat who thought that item number two was fantastic so long as it ensured the survival of his version of what the revolution should look like. Corday’s thought processes thus went that if she took down Marat, with all his lovely rhetoric in his lovely little newspaper (called The Friend of the People, because it sounds more cuddly that way), further violence could be prevented.

Well, she was wrong on that front, but you can’t blame a woman for trying. She skedaddled off to Paris on July 9th and bought herself a kitchen knife with a six-inch blade as soon as she got there. And man, if you’ve ever sliced your finger open whilst chopping vegetables, you know what those suckers can do. Also, it could fit snugly into Corday’s corset – you know that’s what all the fashionable revolutionaries were doing anyway. She wrote a nice letter explaining why she was going to knife some punk and on the 13th, and went out in the fresh afternoon air to do it.

She called on Marat at his home at noon, asking for an audience on grounds that she knew of some fiendish Girondist hijinks and oh, did she mention that she had some names to give him? Enemies of the state and what have you? Scintillating stuff. But she was turned away by his wife, Simonne Everard, because her husband was busy having a bath. So she came back several hours later. Marat was still in the bath, Everard still didn’t want to let her in, but he decided that the business of revolutionizing could not wait and had her brought in.

Corday spilled the artificial beans while Marat wrote it all down. (He was still in the bathtub, but had a plank placed across it as a writing desk.) They had a good, long chat, finishing with his pleasant statement that everyone she named was totally going to have their heads chopped off. Then Corday had to ruin their burgeoning friendship by taking out that kitchen knife and going all stabby on him. Marat called out for Everard, but it was too late and he was made holey by Corday’s attentions.

Needless to say, she didn’t get away and she was put on trial. And, well, they didn’t really believe in long, drawn-out trials in that day and age. Not being overly impressed with her statement that “I killed one man to save 100,000,” they quickly decided that hey, the guillotine might be a fine place for her! So they shoved her neck under the blade on July 17th, a mere eight days since she left for Paris and a mere four since she went all Brutus on Marat’s ass. She was ten days shy of twenty-five.

Alas for Corday, Marat achieved martyr status and the Reign of Terror got into full swing. A whole motherlode of people got guillotined over the course of two years – estimates run as high as 40,000. Oops.

So, do we congratulate Corday for her courage in taking out someone who really was doing his level best to decrease the peace and effectively willing to go to her death for it as such a young age? Or do we condemn her for the violence that her actions sparked, even if it was unintentional? Do we have a glass of wine and marvel at how f*cked up that entire revolution was?

The answer is: yes.

History Makes Fantasy Better

Well, it does.

We're well aware of the standard ur-setting that fantasy authors tend towards - medieval, quasi-European. Probably akin to either a) Tolkien's Middle Earth or b) Robert E. Howard's Conan stomping grounds. Or a violent, pointy-eared offspring of the two. Or urban fantasy. These works are not to be dismissed out of hand, for a skilled author can make even the most cliche premise awesome with the right sort of zazz. (If you'll forgive the term.)

But you know, honestly, if an author even keeps the magic and just uses another place or era for the basis of the setting, she or he can make their story plenty more interesting even if they're not the most fantastic of authors.

Steampunk is an excellent example of this, especially as I firmly consider the subgenre to be fantasy, not science fiction. (The only reason most examples of it are shelved with the scifi is because it wouldn't exist without Jules Verne and he's been grandfathered into the larger genre because they didn't know the stuff in his books was impossible at the time. I make an exception for Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age because it's actually set in the future.) Victoriana can be used without the steampunk tropes, though, and used effectively.

Why limit yourself to just the nineteenth century, though? Authors, both would-be and otherwise! You have the entire march of history to work with! With many fine historians and archaeologists having done the lion's share of work providing you with the details of practically any past world that catches your fancy, it's worldbuilding made easy.

Imagine, if you will. Paleolithic fantasy. Canadian fantasy (and no, I don't mean urban fantasy set in Ontario, with respects to Charles de Lint). Russian. African. Motherlovin' Aztec. Or Inca. Or Mayan. The mere thought of such settings sparks my imagination and distracts me from projects I'm already determined to see to completion.

History can even make the standard setting better, giving one a better sense on the grand scope of it - how things kept happening, how technologies kept evolving, even if according to our stereotypes, they spent a long time standing still on that front. They were using cannons during the Hundred Years' War, remember. The art of shipbuilding was continuously adjusted until they had vessels that could make a transatlantic crossing, remember. Firearms cropped up in the 1300s, remember. And the moveable type printing press? Fifteenth century!

What did they eat? Where did they live? What was their philosophy? Their religion? Their livelihood? What did they celebrate? What was their government? Their view of their own history? Their ideal man? Their ideal woman? Every culture, both past and present, had and has their own answers to these questions and even one differing answer can make one hell of a story. Read about them, learn, and be inspired.

To finish, here is a brief and woefully incomplete list of otherwise-settled fantasy novels.

Steampunk:
Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest
Mainspring, Escapement and Pinion, by Jay Lake
Court of the Air, Rise of the Iron Moon, Kingdom Beyond the Waves and Secrets of the Fire Sea, by Stephen Hunt
Whitechapel Gods, by S.M. Peters

Asia:
Green, by Jay Lake
The Tales of the Otori series, by Lian Hearn

Middle East:
In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice, by Catherynne Valente

North America:
The Thirteenth Child, by Patricia C. Wrede
The Sharing Knife series, by Lois McMaster Bujold
(Note: It would be nice to find some fantasy based on Native history without the colonials sticking their noses in. Anyone know of any?)

Elizabethean:
Midnight Never Come, by Marie Brennan (Its sequel, In Ashes Lie, is set during the Restoration.)
Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, by Elizabeth Bear

Regency:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, by Galen Beckett

Victorian: (Not quite steampunk!)
Freedom & Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull

France:
The Cardinal's Blades, by Pierre Pevel
The Privilege of the Sword, by Ellen Kushner
The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After, by Steven Brust (well, it's a pastiche of Dumas)

Greece:
Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Also, practically everything written by Guy Gavriel Kay, with the exception of The Fionavar Tapestry. I say this even though I've mixed feelings about his work; many people with good taste enjoy it, so there you are.

My challenge to my readers (I know of two of you) is this: think of a history book you've read. Or an anthropology or archaeology book, if you're fancies run that way, for they certainly can be included in the larger thrust of my argument. Think of a fantasy story that could be written based on that book. Imagine how awesome it could be. Beccarae, I'm thinking specifically of The Ghost Map for you, because I know it could be amazing. Write your ideas down if you want to and have the time.

But at the very least, just think about it.