thesnowleopard
Paula R. Stiles
thesnowleopard

I had that situation going through Dulles (totally not by choice) one evening when United canceled the second leg of my flight out of the blue. This left me stranded overnight in DC and the airline rep had the gall to suggest I shouldn’t have booked a flight through DC during their cherry blossom festival.

Nevertheless,

Mary was definitely an idiot. Every time some show or film comes out trying to make Elizabeth the villain, killing off spunky, Scottish Mary out of jealousy, I roll my eyes.

Matilda of England was crowned Holy Roman Emperor alongside her husband. So, yeah, a woman could be made Emperor. After her husband died, and they had no children, she got chivvied out of power, largely through the machinations of a skanky archbishop who convinced the nobles they should elect emperors over respecting i

Hmm...no. Only in France. And only after the failure of the direct male line of the Capetians left the King of England the sole direct Capetian remaining.

First of all, the Bible is a great book, but as history, it’s frequently been found lacking. Second, the people described in the Bible came from a relatively small part of Western Asia. It’s true that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were pretty misogynistic, at least in Europe (the Ionic Peninsula is a whole other

Primogeniture wasn’t really a thing in medieval society until around the 12th century in Western Europe.

Survivors could be sold into slavery if they weren’t ransomed. But you had to survive the sack, first. The rest I agree with--once a city walls were breached in Medieval (or Ancient) times, surrender was off the table. The fact that the bells didn’t ring until after Daenerys’ forces had entered the city renders them

That was a pause in the fighting, not a truce. It is a universal reality that once the walls of a city are breached, there is no truce. And if you surrender, your captors can do whatever they want to you. You’re throwing yourself on their mercy. Doesn’t automatically mean they have any.

The Tarlys were traitors to their liege lords the Tyrells. Randall Tarly should have been fighting Cersei, not swearing allegiance to her and turning on his own lord. In medieval terms Randall deserved a far slower, messier and more painful death. His son made his own bed when he backed up his dad.

The early medieval Spanish institution of the infantado is pretty fascinating. Now *those* women had power.

So...when someone tells you they’re an astrophysicist, you think...what? Hans Zarkov? Brian May? What?

I mean, Terry Gilliam’s a medieval historian. It’s not that unusual.

1977 was a long freakin’ time ago. That’s 42 years. There’s been an almost complete overturn in the historiography on this topic since then. No medieval historian would base their arguments exclusively or even mostly on secondary sources that old.

I once compared your average fifth century Frankish monarch to Judge Judy in a class I was teaching. The early medieval Frankish monarch’s power extended mainly to upholding laws and customs in the realm, defending against foreign invaders, putting down rebellions, and adjudicating disputes—he could try to extract

The average Englishwoman in late medieval England got married around age 18. Women (and men) in the high nobility in Europe were traded like playing cards from birth onwards, with alliances being made and broken as a matter of course as political situations changed for their parents. But regardless of when a marriage

Martin’s total mishandling of religion as it pertains to his pseudo-Medieval Europe just makes my teeth grind. So much conflict in the Middle Ages was predicated on the Church hierarchy trying to expand and establish its authority vis a vis secular (often pagan) authority and that’s completely lost in GRRM’s

No, most historians do not consider Europe only to include Western Europe (which you also seem to think excludes the Mediterranean). *This* medieval historian certainly doesn’t.

Europe does *not* refer solely to Western Europe and it never has.

There were a lot of queens during the Middle Ages (every king regnant needed a queen consort and those women did have power), but the 12th century is especially notable for Queen Regnants and Regents (which could effectively be the same thing). In the early 12th century, Urraca I of Castile-Leon ruled two-thirds of

No, they really aren’t.

The Inquisition began in the late 12th century, in response to the Catharist heresy (think the Dominicans). However, it lacked the institutional continuity of the later Spanish Inquisition.