Firechild keep it simple

July 23, 2012

stupid usb stupid code

I /was/ coding on the hopefully money-making TKD project, and somehow the usb drive randomly stopped talking to the laptop. So now I’m sitting here rping on tumblr, patiently waiting for windows to get off its ass and fix the drive. UUUUGH.

wish on a star permalink me! Entry #2205

July 16, 2012

Ramblings

tagme: bloggish
Tags: ,
142 words

Why the hell am I even still awake? I don’t want to be awake. I want my brain to stop screwing around and shut off. The hamster won’t get off the wheee~eeel. I guess I’m just accidentally going to have another one of those over-24-hour days, and I have to go hulk at some people later today. Without sleep, that could get bad.

I can’t even get my brain to stay focussed on one thing. No, it jumps from Tom to Sigyn to Shakespeare to shipping to I don’t even fucking know. I /was/ going to scene in my head, if I couldn’t sleep, just to get some plot worked out (apparently Amora is going to appear in my fic now, I don’t know) but I can’t concentrate enough for that either.

How stupid is that, anyway? I can’t concentrate enough to sleep? UGH.

1 wish permalink me! Entry #2196

July 11, 2012

The history behind Shakespeare’s Henry IV

tagme: geekgirl
148 words

I finally got the whole download of Tom’s Henry IV – Part I and watched it, yesterday and today. Now, I’m already a big British history girl, and I’ve always loved that whole part of history, how complex it was and how much fun it could be to trace events and people back and forth. So here’s a big old textdump of the things I know, fact-checked at wikipedia.

The thing is, that whole tetralogy of history plays really traces back to one person: Edward III. His reign was hugely long, militarily successful, and he managed that thing which kings often struggled with: he had an assload of living sons (and daughters). And that’s really where about half the trouble started. His eldest son was Edward, the Black Prince. These days I guess most of us fangirls know him from the wholly inaccurate depiction in A Knight’s Tale (<3 to Heath Ledger of tearful memory). Basically the Black Prince was a youthful copy of his father; he married a British countess and fathered two sons, one of which survived infancy. That's Richard of Bordeaux (later Richard II). Other than that, he did a lot of fighting, promoted his father's wars, and basically was all exemplary until he died a year before his father. Edward III's second son was Lionel of Antwerp. He married an Irish heiress, but only managed to produce one legitimate child: a daughter. This is important, because inheritance law and custom at the time pretty much didn't take daughters into account at all. Including descent through women. (The Plantagenets didn't really do feminism.) Edward's third son was John of Gaunt. John's actually a hugely important political figure for the whole tetralogy, although the commoners didn't usually like him much. Mostly this was because he outdid his elder brother in his heiress: the richest woman in England, Blanche of Lancaster. When they married, John basically came to own in his own name a huge swathe of the country, and this gave him enormous power at a time when the monarchy was basically just a counterbalance for the wealthy lords. John had one legitimate son, Henry Bolingbroke, and several daughters. He had a lot of bastard children too, but they don't come into the story until after Henry V, really. The other half of John of Gaunt's political power came into his hands due to the illnesses and deaths of his father and eldest brother. While Lionel was off trying to rule Ireland, Edward III was falling ill and being manipulated by the infamous Alice Perrers, and Edward the Black Prince was falling ill and fighting wars on the European mainland -- and John was at home in London, trying to hold the government and country together against and sometimes with a lot of fractious lords and nobles. Edward III's fourth son was called Edmund of Langley. He married a Spanish princess and had two sons and a daughter. His importance is twofold: in his relationship to Richard of Bordeaux, and in the dukedom he was granted, York. Edward's fifth surviving son was Thomas of Woodstock. He married an English heiress, and had a son and a daughter, and like his previous brother, his importance lies mostly in his relationship with Richard of Bordeaux. Here’s wikipedia’s summation of Edward III’s children and grandchildren.

For our purposes, what you need to remember is this: Edward III had five sons. The eldest died before he did, leaving his grandson as heir. The second handled Ireland and fathered one daughter. The third stayed home, fathered a son, and was politically active. The fourth made war and had a son, and the fifth the same.

So that’s the kind of familial atmosphere Henry Bolingbroke was born to. Because of the age differences between the brothers, the fact that many children died very young, and the long life of Edward III, there was less than a year’s difference in age between Richard of Bordeaux and Henry Bolingbroke. It must have been very interesting for young Henry during the time when his father, John of Gaunt, was handling the affairs of the dying king, and when his father was refused the regency for young Richard, crowned king at the age of 10.

Henry spends his youth not only observing the sway of political fortunes throughout the court (his father was named traitor by various groups for years, and his palace was burnt down in one rebellion), but observing how the so-called “continual councils” governed for and with his cousin Richard II. It must have been very clear to him how easy it was for a king to be manipulated by favourites.

That’s probably why he joined with two of his uncles and a few other influential nobles to draw a line to Richard II when the two men were about 21 years old. They’re known as the Lord Appellant, and they spend about three years with a firm grip on the government and Richard II. So even before Henry Bolingbroke decided to actually take the crown from his cousin, he’d taken the position that Richard II had got out of hand as a king. It was also about this time that his son Henry Monmouth (Prince Hal) was born.

Perhaps fortunately, John of Gaunt comes back from his continental wars and, well, wikipedia puts it as “the old statesman acted as a moderating influence on English politics”. Since two of the five Lords Appellant were nuclear family to John, it’s not hard to see his influence. Unfortunately, his “moderating” influence only lasted about a decade before Richard II decided he’d had enough, and arrested his uncle and two of the other appellants. He arranged for his uncle to die, and in the turmoil the arrests wrought at court, Henry Bolingbroke got into a quarrel with the other remaining Lord Appellant, and they both got banished for their pains.

Henry’s period of banishment was set for ten years … except that his father died in the year after his banishment, and Richard II exacted the second portion of his revenge — he revoked Henry’s Lancastrian inheritance. And /that/ was the spark that led Henry Bolingbroke to usurp his cousin and reign as Henry IV. Possibly partly due to the death of Thomas of Woodstock, his brother, Edmund, Duke of York and both Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke’s uncle, joins Henry in his revolt. (By the way, Richard II took 13-year-old Henry Monmouth into his household while his father was in exile.)

Looking back over Henry IV’s history, it’s easy to see where the real roots of his frustration with Hal come from: he’s seeing Hal set himself up to repeat the mistakes of Edward III and Richard II. And Henry IV overthrew Richard because of some of those mistakes! So he really doesn’t want to see his son become what he fought so hard to remove from the throne.

And all of that is only half the backstory of Henry IV – Part I.

The other half goes back to the second brother, Lionel of Antwerp, who, as you may recall, fathered only a daughter. He also died well before any of the other folk featured in his tale, which is why his whole relevance is in his daughter. Phillippa married Edmund Mortimer, and they had two daughters and two sons, the eldest of which was Richard II’s heir until he could father his own. (Obviously, he never did.)

And therein lies the problem. Which version of agnatic primogeniture holds primacy? By strict interpretation, Henry Bolingbroke was the correct heir to Richard II, regardless of his method of succession. However, a slightly looser interpretation allows for sons of daughters to inherit, which made Roger Mortimer the correct heir (his grandfather being senior to Henry’s father in decent from Edward III). But the looser interpretation hadn’t been necessary for centuries in the Plantagenet royal house; firstborn sons had inherited from firstborn sons for some six kings. The line doesn’t stumble until you get back to Henry II and his many sons (Richard Lionheart and John Lackland being most familiar), where Henry laid claim to the English throne by right of his mother, the daughter of Henry I.

Basically, Henry IV and Roger Mortimer had equal claims to the throne — but Henry got there first. And that’s what led to the rebellion father and son face down in the play. Interestingly, Roger himself does not actually appear in the play; both his brother Edmund and sister Elizabeth (called Kate in the play) do, though. This may be in part due to the historical fact of his death prior to the Percy rebellion, although Shakespeare had already played fast and loose with history at that point.

Roger Mortimer left four children at his death, and his two sons were in the care of Henry IV and Prince Hal for much of their youth. Their sister married a descendant of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, and merged two of the lines of descent from Edward III, in her son Richard. Since Roger’s sons left no children of their own, Richard inherited the Mortimer claim to the throne, which is basically what led into the Wars of the Roses.

It’s like crack, innit?

wish on a star permalink me! Entry #2202

July 7, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-07-07

tagme: bloggish, twitter
52 words
  • @CityVille I abandoned my city for a while and when I came back a lot of my buildings were gone! What happened? #
  • @ZyngaSupport I abandoned my city for a while and when I came back a lot of my buildings were gone! What happened? #

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July 6, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-07-06

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48 words

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July 5, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-07-05

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69 words

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July 4, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-07-04

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48 words

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July 3, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-07-03

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60 words

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July 2, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-07-02

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21 words

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June 30, 2012

minutes ago from Panya on 2012-06-30

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45 words

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wish on a star permalink me! Entry #2186

Archives …
Basics …
Name
Panya Covin-Gwynn
Age
43
Birthday
August 17
Gender
female
Astrology
Leo sun, Scorpio moon, Sagittarius rising [more]
Elements
fire / water / air / earth
School
Elon University, graduated
Major / Minor
English Creative Writing / Philosophy
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Favourite …
Colours
jade-teal green, cream, silver-gray
Food
dark chocolate
Scent
vanilla, sunshine, almond
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garnet, aquamarine, amber
Flower
alstroemeria
Animal
cat
Season
summer
Time
dusk
Movie
The Lord of the Rings
Mangaka
Takeuchi Naoko, CLAMP
Ichiban Anime
Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon
Video Game
Final Fantasy XIV

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