So STARZ is my streaming service of the month. Since cutting cable and everything down to basic internet, I’m just relying on Netflix (which comes with my internet), Amazon Prime (which I have because I have things delivered all the time), and one other service per month, rotating. So I have Starz until I work through every series I want to watch, and then I will move on to something else.
With Startz, I have been screaming through the historical fiction drama- watched the White Queen and the White Princess, and now moved on to the Spanish Princess, which I am very much enjoying. They are great fun, and the casting has been so great- Rebecca Ferguson as Elizabeth Woodville, Jodie Comer as Elizabeth York, and Charlotte Hope as Catherine of Aragon. They were so good I can’t imagine anyone else playing them.
It got me to thinking- if I had to be a king/queen/prince/princess, when and where would have been the best- which royal family? Which era? What would have been the best civilization not in the modern era.
War for Ukraine Day 654: The Hits Keep on Coming
mvr
I always wind up thinking about these best time to be alive questions from the bottom. Since I would not likely have made it to the upper/ruling class.
But if I did, I would have liked to be on the Supreme Court in the last 40 years or so. (I guess that is modern era, so I guess I’m cheating. But I think quite frankly that I would not want to go back, either to the US in the 50s or the world before then.)
(If only to tell Scalia and Alito and Thomas what I think of them.)
Suzanne
King Ludwig of Bavaria? He seems like he was quite a dude.
Omnes Omnibus
The Bernadotte family in Sweden. Post-Napoleonic wars. Comparatively low chance of being invaded, deposed, or otherwhise fucked with. Just enough prestige and celebrity to get what you want in life without being regular tabloid fodder.
bbleh
E1 was pretty cool for her time. Louis XVI was the Enlightenment. And the Emperor Meiji was thought pretty well of.
Although I admit I first read the post as “xxx is my screaming service of the month,” which I thought was a new and excellent aspect of our entrepreneurial economy, and that led me to airport security screaming, and then things went even further downhill…
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: beat me to it
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: Kind of like being the bassist in a second tier British Invasion band. Just enough of the upside without too much of the down.
Suzanne
Of modern royals, I will note that Derek Guy is always praising King Felipe of Spain for being impeccably tailored. And in this era, looking good in nice clothes is really what royalty is all about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: That would eliminate Cole.
Chris
Being the King of Thieves seems like a good and, if done properly, righteous gig. I say go for Sherwood Forest around the time of the Third Crusade.
cain
@Suzanne: his wife is also excellent. Must be nice to be royalty without the insane media following you around like they do in the UK. The UK seems to over do it.
SpaceUnit
Burger King.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Royal Cole would have minions to dress him (possibly against his will).
mrmoshpotato
I don’t know, but I’m totally picking Princess John.
Did I misunderstand the question?
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack:Most certainly against his will. But Cole wouldn’t put up with it.
“Off with their heads!”
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: Dressed in Barbie pink?
Yutsano
The Meiji Emperor. Although the blood and death in China and Korea does make that problematic.
Suzanne
@cain: The UK royals look bad. They fail at looking good in nice clothes. I can’t get excited about them.
Agreed that the Spanish royals look better.
RaflW
I’m all in to be anywhere within visual distance of Young King George (aka actor Corey Mylchreest) in Netflix’s Queen Charlotte prequel to the Bridgerton series.
I rarely get mad crushes on young actors, I’m a dignified (snort) 58 year old man after all. But he winds me up as few have in recent years.
Yutsano
@Suzanne: The current* Prime Minister of Spain looks good in pretty much anything he wears.
*He’s technically ahead but he doesn’t have the largest party in Parliament right now. He made a deal with Catalan separatists to win a majority but then the upper chamber didn’t approve it or something. Whatever. Pedro is pretty IMHO.
Mark von Wisco
I would pick one of the minor German principalities prior to the 1871 unification. Especially if there’s one that managed to avoid most of the wars. Failing that, I’d go with the Swedish/Finnish aristocracy of the same general time period, or one of the more prosperous Swiss cantons.
I’m mostly basing this on my ethnic heritage – mostly south German/Swiss German, Swedish/Finnish (maternal Grandmother was from Swedish speaking southern Finland.)
Suzanne
@Steeplejack: I read last year that King Charles has a valet who irons his shoelaces. And boom, just like that….. I became a monarchy abolitionist. Before that, I was like, “Well, Americans shouldn’t tell others what to do.” But now? Nope. Fuck it.
Shane in SLC
I hear Caligula had it pretty good.
RaflW
@Suzanne: I think the upper English royals should have to sell tickets to tourists who would tramp through the Buckingham and Balmoral front rooms, just like Lady Whatsit of Crumbleposh House has to in order to not lose everything.
Why King Charles gets any subsidy at all makes no sense to me. The royal family is said to be worth billions.
CaseyL
Well, you’d want to avoid any eras or countries where the ruler was expected to ride into battle along with the rest of the soldiers. That eliminates most of Europe before the 17th Century.
Japan had much better medical science and hygiene/sanitation than anywhere in the West until, maybe, the 19th Century. Maybe the Meiji Restoration era? (Japan, late 19th Century.) An Emperor ruled instead of shoguns and samurai. So, more work for you, but maybe more stability and fewer internal wars.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
If I can be an aristocrat, anytime after the death of Louis XIV in 1714 but before the French Revolution in 1789.
or the best parts of the Roman Empire.
you want a world with dentistry, books, and a libertine atmosphere, but with slavery, no ethics or enforcement on the rich, and no competition from the nouveau riche because the spoils are legally assigned to the winning tribe.
Martin
I see the university speech moral panic that Congress and the major news outlets set off is proceeding apace. We’re going to go though this over the next week or two, it’ll die down after a bunch of university leaders are forced out, and we’ll have learned nothing about any of it. But a different shiny bauble will have surfaced we can have a different freakout over.
Actually, the one good thing that might come of it is the insane dumping of cash on privates may take a momentary breather.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Sure! 🤣
brendancalling
I’d like to be the King of Rock, as there is none higher. Sucker MC’s would have to call me sire.To burn my kingdom, you’d have to use fire. And it should be understood that I wouldnt stop rockin’ till I retired (or abdicated or there was a palace coup or some such, as so often happens with kings).
RevRick
True to my Puritan roots, Oliver Cromwell.
*squints at Jackalariat
JR
I don’t know, the July Monarchy? No great shakes but a fair sight better than what came before.
mvr
@Suzanne: I had a Scottish colleague who was into royalty. I never got it. I sort of thought it was none of my business, as you say to tell any other country what to do. I thought that until this colleague didn’t know who I was talking about when I referred to her husband’s soccer pal as that British friend of X’s, because his family came from India or Pakistan despite the to my ear heavy British accent. Turns out only some parts of the empire are British. Then I got where both attitudes came from.
As long as I can remember I thought royalty was a bad idea. I mean we Americans were raised on being against it in school in the 60s, but then there was “the royal wedding” in around ’79 or ’80 and Americans forgot about that.
So count me as anti-royalty, wherever it is from.
Percysowner
I’m not the royalty type. Plus my basic credo is I don’t want to be in any time period that doesn’t have indoor plumbing. Central heat is a must for me as well. That limits me to the modern era 1950s or later. As a female person, I throw out anything before Griswold v. Connecticut and/or Roe v. Wade. All that means is that I can’t think of a single royal family I would want to be in.
opiejeanne
@Percysowner: The Danes seem a decent sort of royalty, but yes, modern plumbing or at least someone else to empty the guzunder.
Splitting Image
There aren’t any safe periods really. Things could go from great to hell in a handbasket very quickly no matter where you lived.
Seconding Sweden as a good choice. They were reasonably wealthy and out of the way of most invading armies.
If you want to go back as far as the Bronze Age, Egypt is a fairly good choice and for the same reasons. They were seldom short of food and went centuries at a time without being invaded.
China might be the most consistently good place to live throughout its history if you drop in near the mid-point of any of its major dynasties and not when things were descending into chaos. That said, if you’re a woman, you’ll want to avoid it like the plague after they invent footbinding.
Britain and Japan both have long peaceful periods by virtue of being on islands. By which I mean, they were able to arrange it so that the fighting took place in some other sucker’s country. If you want the perks of royalty without much of the power, Japan had a system where the emperor abdicated as soon as he reached the age of majority and spent his remaining years surrounded by concubines and servants while the shogun actually ran things. Nice work if you can get it.
The Abbasid caliphate had good medical standards for its day, as did the remains of the Umayyad caliphate based in Cordoba. If you were to drop into Cordoba in the tenth century or so, you could have a pretty good life. Eventually it degenerated into constant warfare as the Reconquest continued.
billcinsd
@bbleh:E1 was pretty cool for her time.
As long as one wasn’t Catholic and didn’t mind being spied upon to make sure you weren’t anti-Tudor
Tehanu
I’d like to be a friend of Gregor Vorbarra. Just a friend, because being a royal means having to spend most of your time presiding over really boring meetings and reviewing parades and meeting local dignitaries, when you’re not worrying that every word you utter and every decision you make will negatively impact millions of people.
Splitting Image
@billcinsd:
To be fair, her contemporaries in France arranged a diplomatic marriage between Marguerite de Valois and King Henry of Navarre to calm tensions between the Catholic and Protestant factions in France. Then they organized an army and massacred every Protestant they could find in the entire city of Paris.
The King of Spain asked for her hand in marriage and then attempted to invade the country when she refused.
Joe Falco
The obvious choice is being Emperor of the United States in the mid to late 19th century.
Suzanne
@mvr: The older I get, the more I fantasize about fucking off to live somewhere remote and rainy, where I am unlikely to be shot.
Richard
I would go to Mexico because I think it was beautiful before the Conquista.
zhena gogolia
This thread is hilarious.
I have no desire to be any kind of royal personage.
I am enjoying The Crown, though. Elizabeth Debicki and Khalid Abdalla did a great job.
CaseyL
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: I’d take Imperial Rome as long as it was during Augustus’ reign only. (OK, maybe Marcus Aurelius.) The Roman Republic…I’m not sure. It wasn’t really much of a Republic, with despots like Sulla and Caesar being de facto Emperors.
As for France – my god, the nobility there was just awful. (There was a reason for the Revolution, after all. Lots of reasons, in fact.) Never mind being part of the aristocracy; I think I’d rather be a peasant in a far-from-Paris farming village. Cleaner for sure; also safer.
MMM
The Black Night in The Holy Grail?
Timill
@Joe Falco: Norton 1?
I pick Tong So, the Averter of Calamities…
Though I am much impressed by Cohen the Barbarian’s devotion to good dentistry…
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: People are welcome to dump cash of my privates any time. /s
mrmoshpotato
OT – 🎶Shut the fuck up commercial about A1C🎶
mrmoshpotato
@Sister Golden Bear: And so starts Balloon Juice After Dark! 😁
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: What about remote and snowy?
Ramona
Eleanor of Aquitaine, er 12th? 13th? century. She lived into her eighties and the wondrous Kate Hepburn played her in The Lion in Winter.
HumboldtBlue
I have started watching The Musketeers on Hulu. It’s… entertaining, The dashing Musketeers all in dark leather, rather a hirsute lot they are. There is the virtuous married woman who runs an inn and whose pale lovely bosom heaves a lot anytime Dartagnan is around. There’s the red-haired street-wise woman with loose morals who is always willing to polish a Musketeer’s sword, and of course we have the dark-haired, dark-eyed ingénue.
She’s not just beautiful, but deadly, and she’s already bedded Dartagnan AND saved his life, and it’s just episode 3! The ingénue is also the secret love of the ever-odious Cardinal Richelieu. There’s some good acting and actors, the plot is a bit thin, however.
On another note, here’s what Beethoven was thinking as he wrote Moonlight Sonata.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: Are they big on chocolate?
RaflW
@Suzanne: I fantasize about fucking off to live in Sydney, NSW, where yes it does rain some, but often is sunny too, and I am unlikely to be shot.
Joe Falco
@Timill: Norton the 1st. Best emperor the US ever had.
mvr
@Suzanne: I resonate with that.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Wouldn’t Old King Cole be a merry old soul?
David 🌈 ☘The Establishments☘🌈 Koch
Skinny Elvis
Baud
I can see Cole as King Ralph.
Pete Downunder
@RaflW: Sydney has had some wild weather lately. Over40C (104F) followed by a cool change and 90 kph winds.. Edited to make autocorrect believe in the metric system
frosty fred
I have never gotten beyond Stephen Jay Gould’s formulation: no one who was a parent would choose to live in any era but modern times, because infant mortality made choosing earlier times inconceivable.
HumboldtBlue
A day in the life of a dog.
Pete Downunder
@frosty fred: Also would you want to live before anesthesia and antibiotics
Baud
@Pete Downunder:
And before Balloon Juice!
dlwchico
Season 5 of Fargo has been pretty great so far and season 3 of Slow Horses is also very fun. Gary Oldman is crushing it in Slow Horses.
prostratedragon
@HumboldtBlue: Looks like, but apparently isn’t, Pavarotti’s biggest fan. We should all be adored this much by someone.
divF
@Percysowner: I agree with you on indoor plumbing. However, I would like to remind everyone of James Joyce’s commentary on empires and toilets:
Baud
@prostratedragon:
The Two Tenors > The Three Tenors.
JoyceH
From the POV of the royalty, Queen Victoria had it pretty good. Consider that your army and navy roamed the globe claiming vast territory for you, and showered you with massive gems and called you an empress and everyone thought it was a good thing because you were bringing Civilization to those benighted regions.
Librarian
@Splitting Image: The period of Japanese retired emperors, or Insei period, actually occurred in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the retired emperors handed over power to their successors. The period of shoguns began later, when emperor Go-Toba named Yoritomo Minamoto the first shogun in 1192, beginning the Kamakura shogunate.
MagdaInBlack
Wonkette’s Saturday Night Movie is “The Thin Man.” I’m all in 🙂
StringOnAStick
I’m in the anti monarchy camp; the lucky sperm club is bullshit. That humans can even think that royalty is real is mindblowing to me.
RaflW
@Pete Downunder: Yeah, I was just talking with a newish friend who grew up in Sydney, he said those hot downslope/from the desert wind days happened when he was a kid but they are hotter now.
Climate impacts seem to be showing up in Australia more rapidly than, say, in the GOP-belt in the southeast of the US.
Weapon X
Dioneo in the Decameron had a pretty good gig. Just saying.
NotMax
Habitually still think of STARZ as an also-ran. It’s claim to fame back when was a lot (a lot!) of bare breasts.
Plan to drop Apple TV+ on or before the three month free trial is up. Same with Hulu’s 99¢ for six months. Other than scattered titles, not enough I haven’t already seen on either service which appeals to me to justify continuing past the bargain stage.
Plus the Apple service’s technical innards suck big time. Currently have 63 streaming channels pinned on my Roku home screen, 59 of which don’t cost me a penny. A handful of those, too, are music or radio only.
Brachiator
Being a member of the kuge, the Japanese court nobility during the Tokugawa Period might be fun. Prestige with no real power and little personal danger.
But I would also like to be a visitor to the era of Oda Nobunaga to see how wise and ruthless he really was. I would also like to hang around with Emperor Akbar during the Mughal Era.
Pete Downunder
@RaflW: South Australia just had the most Australian couple of days ever. Hot with severe fire warnings followed immediately by heavy rain and flood warnings. Climate change is hitting Oz hard because our weather was pretty extreme even in good times.
Percysowner
@NotMax: I have never subscribed to STARZ, I keep Hulu although I don’t watch it a lot because I share with my kids and they do use it. Basically I’m buying a lot of services to give to my kids and their kids. It’s called being a mom and a grandmom.
Chris T.
@RaflW: Anywhere in NZ would be good. You can choose how much rain you prefer, to some extent, and you can pick between tropical (far north North Island) and near-arctic (far south South Island).
(I’d go for Nelson if possible myself.)
Climate issues are getting to NZ too, with flooding everywhere, and heat waves in Chch (which otherwise is/was like SF and Seattle, nobody has air conditioning because it wasn’t needed; fortunately some places have heat pumps because they’re efficient, and that also means cooling).
wjca
Tempting, to be sure.
In the real world, I’d go for Scandinavian royalty and as close to the current year as the contest allows. In particular, a prince with multiple older brothers.
But frankly, being a monarch is a really rotten job for anyone with any sense of responsibility. I’d rather opt for something more like Seneschal or other senior civil servant.
Chris T.
@Pete Downunder: I sweated my <insert various body parts here> off in Melbin when I was there. OK, technically St Kilda. Oh, the food was so good!
wjca
I’d incline more to West Australia, somewhere around Perth. Mostly because the climate is more what I’m accustomed to.
In fact, if (God forbid!) TIFG (or one of the wannabes) gets in again, and things go as bad as seems likely, that’s my exit strategy.
NotMax
@Percysowner
Have never subscribed to STARZ either. But do remember its reputation
Pete Downunder
@Chris T.: Melbourne is famous for having four seasons in a day, but the food is, on average, excellent. I live in Queensland where the weather is beautiful one day, perfect the next.
NotMax
@Pete Downunder
Don’t know all that many people who have visited Australia but to a person they heap praise on Cairns.
Maybe I just have an offbeat pool of acquaintances?
NotMax
Oh my.
6 killed, dozens injured after severe weather hammers central Tennessee.
Paws crossed Tennessee jackals emerged safe and sound.
Aussie Sheila
@Suzanne: The British Royals aim to look simpatico with their greatest supporters. The great British middle class. Hence their lack of style and general boorishness. They have more money than god, yet dress like a wannabe from expensive middle class outlets. I couldn’t give a fuck about clothes as such, but given their money, the great British middle class aren’t getting their moneys worth when it comes to style. They are awful.
Dowdy and boring.
Hermione Bouquet a la mode.
Aussie Sheila
@RaflW: Sydney’s weather is gorgeous. Apart from the occasional heat wave. Beautiful late summers and autumns, rain mostly when needed. Winters mild. No frost or snow.
But the real estate would make your eyes water. It’s a national disgrace. Thank you conservative governments that made RE investments mostly capital gains tax free.
I look forward to the taxes to come for Aholes that were able to take advantage of low interest rates and zero capital gains tax.
Splitting Image
@Librarian:
Thanks, you’re right. I was conflating the two.
MomSense
@RaflW:
His smile is wonderful.
HumboldtBlue
Tennessee got hit with some nasty weather today, Nashville and environs got hit with a tornado.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: Is that the one about the little pill with a very big story to tell? AAAARGH!!!
TriassicSands
Personally, I think Prime has become a joke. I have Prime because I live in a rural area and a lot of things are only readily available and affordable for me on line. When I first signed up for Prime (I get a discount) there was a choice to have it display only free videos. That is gone, and today, Prime is all about getting people to pay for shit. Freevee (with ads) represents most of the free stuff now from Prime. There are some good things that are free, but overall it is now a much more accurate match for Bezos — trying to bleed every last cent out of customers while taking over the planet. Hey, you can buy Oppenheimer for $20.00 or watch the “first episod free” for lots of stuff, but I guess then you’ll have to subscribe to the particular service in order to watch episode 2-?.
opiejeanne
@Aussie Sheila: I think you mean Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Boo-Kay). She and her sisters all had flower names, like Our Daisy and Our Violet, and Our Rose. I think that’s all of them but there could be more.
wjca
When I hit those, I watch the free episode to see if I’m interested. If I am, the library probably can get me the DVDs for the rest. For the newest shows, it can be a while. But usually some library in California will have a copy eventually.
bjacques
The King Of Sandusky, Ohio, or the Queen of the B-B-Q. Or both.
Since Baud doesn’t wear pants, he’d have to be the Emperor in his New Clothes.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Tehanu: Sounds like you want to be Ivan Vorpatril. Which isn’t such a bad aspiration.
Nelle
@Chris T.: When we lived in NZ, we had no central heating, no insulation, and single pane windows. Wore a hat to bed, fingerless gloves when I crocheted. We only heated the room we were in with a space heater. But we had indoor plumbing.
When we lived in Northern Alaska (Kaktovik, in the title song of Molly of Denali, PBS Kids title song), we didn’t have running water, but we had heat.
I like living in a time and place with both, especially now that I’m what is called ” old.”
Nelle
@Pete Downunder: i got a clue as to the usual weather in Brisbane once when I saw so many bundled up for the cold when it was beautiful and balmy compared to Central North Island NZ, where we had just come from. Noosa Heads was just lovely.
raven
@Aussie Sheila: I was there on R&R during the moon landing. Froze my ass off! Hilarious movie about that time:
The Dish
raven
@Aussie Sheila: My good friend works at UNSW Matraville and she and her wife and child are here now. We get to see them Tuesday!
Chief Oshkosh
@Steeplejack:
Old King Cole was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler he had a fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh, there’s none so rare, as can compare,
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.
Aussie Sheila
@opiejeanne: Yes indeed, but I like my off centre spelling. I think it encapsulates her and the great idiocy she represents, better. Hyacinth sounds almost normal. Hermione isn’t . If you get my meaning. And Bouquet is perfect. 🫠
Aussie Sheila
@raven: Matraville is great. Right on the sea, great restaurants and a bus ride into town. What’s not to like?
Raven
@Aussie Sheila: I had another friend who taught at Wollongong. Great guy and an absolute mad man. Knew more about rock and roll than anyone I have ever known!
Nancy
@Percysowner:
My thoughts (almost) exactly!
Functional indoor plumbing and reliable heat beat having courtiers.
You are clearly brilliant.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tehanu: Points for going all the way to Barrayar
Geminid
Got a dawn, December thunderstorm here. I guess it’s the front that spun off those terrible tornados in Tennessee last night. The storm seems to have lost its punch crossing the mountains.
evodevo
@opiejeanne:
Yep…that’s all of them. Our local PBS station has Keeping Up Appearances on every Sunday at 6. My sister and I think Hyacinth reminds us greatly of our mother, who was always concerned with “how it would appear”, rather than how it actually was, and who was in competition with all her middle class friends as to entertaining…and was greatly concerned with “class”. She didn’t approve of either of our choices for a mate, wanting us to marry some country club choad instead. We are so glad we didn’t listen to her lol
NotMax
@evodevo
Don’t dare brush up against the walls.
;)
Another Scott
Good morning.
I happened to pop over to electoral-vote.com and skimmed their mailbag. Zooks! Their doomers are worse than ours! 🤪
Remember:
1) Climate change.
1) Dobbs.
3) Competent government that has done good things.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
Those interested in next year’s New Jersey Senate race can find a fairly long Andy Kim interview in Politico this morning.
Rep. Kim is running to succeed Senator Menendez and his principal opponent is Tammy Murphy, Governor Phil Murphy’s wife. Kim answers questions on the Israel-Gaza war and border security as well as his reasons for running, and the challenges of running against a candidate backed by Democratic county leaders..
Anyway
@Geminid:
The storms aren’t here yet – but expect to get 1 to 2 inches of rain in 24 hours. Sending ” stay strong” vibes to the sump pump …
It’s my friends group Dirty Santa party this afternoon – prepping the present and baking cookies. Bah humbug…
opiejeanne
@Aussie Sheila:
what
ever.
opiejeanne
@evodevo: Ha! I didn’t have that issue with my parents, and they loved my husband. OTOH, I couldn’t stand to watch “Mama” because it reminded me of my Missouri family that my mom was wise to escape when she took a job in California and stayed.
Miss Bianca
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Hey, yeah, Ivan V had a pretty good gig going, all things considered. :)
Peke Daddy
Frederick the Great. Believed the monarch was the first servant of the state. A patron of the arts and the Enlightenment. Supported freedom of the press and literature. Quite tolerant for his time. Built the foundation for Prussia to compete for leadership among German states. Introduced the potato and the turnip, a great boon to his people.
wjca
The humidity comes to mind. Vastly better than Brisbane, of course. But still excessive.
Annie
@Suzanne:
that has been debunked. The firm King Charles gets shoes from says their laces are rounded and can’t be ironed.
Barney
I’ve read the books on which The White Queen/Princess etc. were based, rather than watched the series. Tell me, did the series show Elizabeth of York having such a creepy longing for the days when she was having sex with her uncle Richard III, who had deposed her brother, executed her uncle and half-brother, declared her a bastard, and forced her family to live in Westminster Abbey’s crypt? It seemed unlikely, given his actions, and rather gross (at least it was told in memory, rather than explicit “current” narration).
I never quite understood why the author decided to go that way – an extreme desire to rehabilitate Richard III, perhaps? Though that could have been achieved with those two just not having sex at all.
Paul in KY
@Barney: Richard III deposed her brother & then murdered him and his younger brother. There is no evidence he had the Duke of Clarence executed, as George did that to himself quite nicely (IMO). He did have her technically declared a bastard (although if her father Edward IV and her mother had ever had a public marriage ceremony, she & her siblings would have been legit, no matter what).
Barney
@Paul in KY: I’m following what, in the novel, Phillipa Gregory has Elizabeth of York, and her mother Elizabeth Woodville, accept as true, for the purposes of what they then feel about Richard III. The uncle Richard executed was Elizabeth Woodville’s brother Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, and the half-brother Richard Grey, Elizabeth Woodville’s son from her first marriage – it’s a matter of historical fact that Richard III executed them in 1483 for supporting Edward V.
In the book, the Elizabeths do not believe Richard III had the Princes in the Tower killed, so for their motivations, that doesn’t count. Not sure why the public marriage ceremony would make a difference – the argument (in the book, anyway) is that Edward IV was already married to another woman (Lady Eleanor Talbot, who had conveniently died so that no one could ask her, but after Elizabeth of York was born), and so the marriage of Edward IV and Woodville would be invalid.
This still adds up to good reasons why the book’s heroine should not be longing for incest with the man who killed and dispossessed her relatives.,