This is clearly from the Department of Memes That Like Disturbing Medieval RPS.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, ( Read more... )

In my continuing if irregular series of interesting frontispieces to texts on the Wars of the Roses, I present to you one that I found in an old article called "Richard II and the Wars of the Roses," by Margaret Aston (it's in that collection of essays on Richard's reign dedicated to May McKisack), which is one of those wonderful articles that ( Read more... )

Beth just sent me this rather alarming quote from an otherwise reputable article in a reputable journal (emphasis mine):
"Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature," Richard recreates the world around him in his own twisted image in parody of divine creation. By ruining God's image, he spitefully attempts to pay back the Maker of his own misshapen ( Read more... )

Yet another excerpt from the Golden Garland of Stuff &c. This one is about the legendary and certainly untrue tale of the foundation of the Order of the Garter, notable for its extremely odd depiction of the Hundred Years War (obviously they didn't call it that then). It is interesting, too, that the lady in this version of the Garter story ( ( Read more... )

I wrote 687 words of dissertation today! This after a rather lengthy hiatus. Granted, 280 words of that were involved in block quotes, but still, that means I wrote 407 words of dissertation, and the way things have been going, that is Nothing To Sneeze At ( Read more... )

It is apparently a continuing feature of this journal that I occasionally post illustrations of Plantagenets with foliage blossoming from their loins. Which is a sort of alarming thing to do on more than one occasion, but, whatever. Anyway, I have a weird fondness for this kind of genealogy (the old-fashioned Jesse-tree style), and the frontispiece ( Read more... )

So it is a chilly Saturday evening and I am bored and have no social life. My original plans, which involved making this magnificent concoction, have been thwarted on account of the phyllo dough being insufficently thawed ( Read more... )

I am being simultaneously earwormed by "Vindaloo" and "The Internet Is For Porn." I am beginning to fear for my sanity.

However, this post is not just to waste your time by proclaiming the madness of having those two songs in one's head simultaneously. lblanchard linked me to this in the comments to my last post and I felt it was awesome enough that it ( Read more... )

A couple of you have heard me lament, on previous occasions, the inability to find an online reproduction of the title page of Hall's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, because it is pretty and shiny and awesome and also highly propagandistic, and really, I know you have all wanted to see pictorial representations ( Read more... )