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beccaelizabethby Robert Lacey
This book sets out to tell stories, so I liked it much better than the one I just finished. It also doesn't promise to be entirely accurate, having a little introduction about how poetic licence can creep into historical accounts, but that's fine because at least it's interesting.
Fine by me.
There's chapters on Boadicea, The Lady of the Mercians, Lady Godiva, Stephen and Matilda, and The Fair Maid of Kent and the Order of the Garter.
Already more mentions of women than the other book.
There's little maps in the front, and family trees of Kings from William the Conqueror on.
Handy.
The little maps don't quite look like the little maps of about the same times in the other book.
fuzzy geography must complicate history greatly.
The bit about Boadicea says "The Iceni occupied the flat fenlands that stretched down from the Wash across modern Norfolk and Suffolk and, like other Celtic peoples, they accpeted the authority of female leaders." But the Romans were gits to women... er, broadly paraphrased, "women had few rights", so they did not accept her authority. They had been allies with the last leader, he'd left them half his wealth, but now they decided to roll up and take the rest. Because women. So Boadicea led her people to attack the Romans. Which seems reasonable, because the alternative appeared to be get abused until they died. Romans suck.
She did pretty good. Londinium burned and left a big layer of fired clay and debris. also skulls. Lots and lots of skulls.
Tacitus reckons she lost because her followers and supply wagons and so forth arranged themselves in a semicircle to watch her win, only they instead blocked the manuevers and cut off retreat. Big slaughter.
Boadicea gets a lot of play, compared to other Queens, warrior or otherwise. I have to wonder if it's not because the whole doomed dead poison bit at the end makes it tidy. I mean, if someone just rules her people and it all goes quite well, and then hands it over to the next ruler, she probably don't get in the books so much, and then she don't get copied out by people making a good bits version. Someone who rebelled and got stomped on has a moral to the story that might seem quite handy. /cynic
This little section makes me want to read more about Celtic tribes. I'd heard the Boadicea bit told like it's a lack of boy child to pass it on to, a violent fail because oops no men. If women could be in charge just in general, if they could have authority in a more equal way, I'd rather like to read about that.
The odds of there being much recorded about it are slim.
The section on 'Arthur, Once and Future King' says that from 410 until 600 virtually no written records exist and 'we can only guess at exactly who did what to whom'. That would be the bit of history the Warlords book tried to be about then. *sigh*
Dark Ages. On how much of the world? Oh yes, tiny small island.
Must poke history to see how the rest of it was doing.
It does a good job explaining the two big sorts of Christianity and why they got in a fight about haircuts and Easter. Well, it makes it sounds interesting and coherent, that's good enough to be going on with, I don't know how theologically sound it is obviously. Celtic Christianity got in a fight with Roman Catholicism and basically lost. A really really long fight though. The haircuts bit was because monks had different hairstyles depending which side they were on. Apparently this was important? :eyeroll:
It is of course a problem for people who are not monks because different kings of different sized territories decided different Christianities were best. And then got in fights about it.
Honestly, humans. A dude turns up whose basic messages is 'love thy neighbour' and a couple thousand years of his 'followers' use him as a reason to go kill people.
But it got sorted out for a whole large chunk of England because a king from one tradition married a queen from the other, Oswy and Eanfled, and then they had Lent and Easter happening at different times, so they decided to sort it out by having both sides have an argue. 664 in the Abbey of Whitby. ... style been important there a while then...
It says Oswy picked the Roman side, but it's also true to say Oswy decided to agree with his wife. That seems wise.
There's a chapter about 'Caedmon the first English poet'. He was a herdsman, a native Brit working for new Anglo-Saxon masters. His boss was a reeve, manager of the abbey farm, and boss of the abbey was Hilda. "As abbess of Whitby she had been hostess of the great synod that had argued over Easter and hairstyles some twenty years earlier". It says later in the book she "was related to the royal families of both Northumbria and East Anglia" and at Whitby "had been in charge of a so-called 'double house', where monks and nuns lived and worshipped side by side and where the men answered to the abbess, not the abbot."
See that's another thing I didn't know women did. Gender equality in religion. Where did that go for ages?
There's a chapter on Alfred, who is on coins as "Rex Anglo", King of the English. But the next chapter says that was only half true and becoming boss of the rest was for his children and grandchildren "and of those the most remarkable was his firstborn, his daughter Aethelflaed, whose exploits as a warrior and town-builder won her fame as the 'Lady of the Mercians'." [p60-61]
Warrior and town builder, firstborn of a King. Sounds like a Queen to me.
The next bit was most interesting:
That I had not heard before, and it's making me wonder quite a lot about quite a lot of history. If the names are weird from here and the word can be for either, how many 'lords' are what we'd call ladies? Presumably someone did lots of research. I want to go look.
It also made me angry I'd not heard this before. And the next bit, same page:
Women as bosses, who remain bosses when they get married.
History not a progression from a state of women as property to the modern enlightened approach. Rights lost as well as gained.
The whole chapter about the Lady of Mercia is interesting. She was a warrior and ruled over the Mercians, which was a kingdom when a king was boss so I don't know why she's a 'Lady'. They built a lot of fortified places. I was looking for bits of history with castles. Not the most developed era of castle building, but plenty fortifications through the Welsh borders and the Peak District. Did lots of fighting Vikings. (I know there's a TV show with Vikings but I haven't watched it because small viewing suggests gore levels exceed comfort zone. It sounds interesting though.)
She died just before "receiving the homage of the great Viking capital of the north", York from the previous paragraph I think. "She had played out both of the roles that the Anglo-Saxons accorded to high-born women, those of 'peace-weaver' and 'shield-maiden', and her influence lived on after her death."
Tell me more of these Anglo Saxons, they sound much more interesting than all the Henrys...
I mean Elizabeth is great, but the version of history that kind of has her sitting there alone, only boss because no marrying, that's not a version that leaves much room for women.
The baseline assumptions in many fantasy novels seem to take as normal and natural what the version of history in this book makes look like a stupid Roman and Norman intervention. Women were boss, until them other dudes turned up. Fantasy books could just be more Celtic or Anglo-Saxon and ignore the Romans. Then more women. Much better.
The chapter about Ethelred the Unready has an interesting bit about inheritance.
All the offspring, and the son bit being new, and the whole Lady of Mercia situation, makes that sound very much as if women were included. I need to find more history books to be sure. But for writing purposes? I have never once seen an aetheling system in a fantasy novel, and it sounds much better. Gender equality is best, obviously, but the ability to skip the duds and the really wide pool of people who could be next so they have to work at it, that sounds really useful.
Also the idea that discussion and consensus could be involved in picking a king. Much simpler than the disgruntled ones choosing their own contender and raising armies about it. Would see earlier on who could win such a popularity contest.
The witan, the council of the wise, did a lot of advice stuff. Great lords and bishops, the book says. Imagine the House of Lords electing the next monarch...
About Lady Godiva it says mostly that she probably only took her jewels off. Godiva, Godgifu or 'God's Gift'... well the name works for the story... Er, she was a bit landowner in her own right, very rich, very respectable. Gave a lot to the church. The story goes that she asked her husband not to tax Coventry, so he said okay if she'd ride around naked. He'd led a violent response against the murder of tax collectors in Worcester, "ravaging the town for five days before setting it alight". That seems a bit much when you could just have like trials and stuff. This book reckons that she was probably trying to be a good Christian, what with all the giving to monasteries and nunneries, and that riding around naked doesn't really fit with that, but that accounts of her being stripped might just mean stripped of the rich stuff, riding around without her shinies, which would include hairpins and explain the hair falling over her. It would have been a big gesture of solidarity or at least sympathy with the ordinary town people.
That version is much less fun than the naked one, of course. Seems plausible though.
But the fun version does tend to skip the 'rich and boss of her own estates' parts a bit. It makes it more about pleasing her husband, you know? Instead of a bit protest thing.
So then there's William the Conqueror and the rules change and a lot more of history went into tiny Becca brain via classrooms. Everything before that was sort of a lump of Before, back to the Romans, who were cool so we kept them. Thus is national identity formed.
The bit with Stephen and Matilda is a few inheritings later, 1135 compared to 1066... But the Lady of Mercia was way back in 911. Couple hundred years. I'm trying to keep it straight in my head and also comparing them, because this time a King, Henry I, tried to leave his kingdom to his daughter, but it did not so much work out. The barons promised to follow her, then promised again four years later, but nope. Book reckons "The unlikely prospect of a woman controlling the male-chauvinist barons of hte Anglo-Norman realm might just have been feasible if Matilda had not been married to Geoffrey of Anjou, an ambitious young nobleman whom many Normans distrusted, and if Matilda herslef had not been so heavy-handed. At the moment of Henry's death she had been quarrelling - not for the first time - with her father, and her absence from the deathbed cost her dear. The moment was seized by her nimble cousin Stephen of Blois, the son of Henry's sister Adela." [...] "But Matilda had her father's ferocious bloody-mindedness, and she was not willing to let her cousin steal her inheritance without a fight. The next twenty years would see Stephen and Matilda battling for control of England and Normandy, raising armies and bribing towns, bishops and barons to consolidate their cause. Matilda captured and imprisoned Stephen, then Stephen besieged her. In the winter of 1141, Matilda and her followers made a dramatic escape from Oxford Castle, dressed in white so they could not be seen against the snow. When Matilda held power, she alienated people with her overbearing ways. When Stephen had the whip hand he proved too soft and good-natured."
Which is an... interesting summary of the problem. It's not like a woman trying to hold power is always criticised in very similar terms...
Things went to hell big time, and this was the era later known as the 'great anarchy'. It was the end times for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It's from there we get the summary "men said openly that Christ and his saints slept."
All that fighting for what? Matilda wasn't popular enough? Or not enough people could be having with a woman on the throne?
1135-1154 , that's a whole long time of fighting.
It all got sorted out when her son Henry Plantagenet got put in charge, Henry II. And that's the last we hear for women rulers around her for a whole lot of Henrys.
That's another era that sounds super interesting to read more about. But also like it's going to be hard to find more to read, seeing as everyone was busy fighting everyone else for many years.
The chapter on Piers Gaveston and Edward II mentions in passing that "Other kings had no problems with same-sex relationships. It is generally assumed that William Rufus (who ruled from 1087 to 1100) was gay - he produced no children and kept no mistresses - and the same has been said of Richard Coeur de Lion, though this is hotly denied by recent biographers. Whatever their predilections, these monarchs did not allow their private passions to impinge on their royal style or, more important, to influence their decisions when it came to handing out land and other largesse." In other words the author reckons the problem wasn't a gay king, it was, in the words of the chroniclers of the time, love 'excessive', 'immoderate', 'beyond measure and reason', and diverting far too much of the cash flow.
... the idea of gay Kings, generally assumed or otherwise, was not one I can recall being raised in History lessons. English Lit, certainly, but outside of that... the book does point out that the details of the bedchamber are unknowable, whoever was in it, but it is nonetheless a bit interesting.
The last chapter with a lady in the title is the least interesting. Not a warrior queen. 'The Fair Maid of Kent' was 19, and had a slight case of bigamy. She "was faced with having to explain to the Pope how and why she had married an earl when she was already married to a knight." The Pope sent her back to the first one, and the book reckons she "seems to have made the best of it", having five children before he died. The year after he died, she married the Black Prince. The chapter reckons "The 'Fair Maid of Kent' would be the first beautiful and controversial Princess of Wales."
... I reckon, nice one. ... well, if marrying is what you've got, she did pretty well out of it...
not nice to break promises, but, 19, many things seem more reasonable at 19.
Most of the chapter is about the Order of the Garter, a bunch of knights that don't interest me very much.
Most of history books that mention women are more like this late chapter, all marrying and saying how she's the prettiest and making out like she decided to be pretty at people.
I want to read history that's more like the Celtic or Anglo Saxon chapters, where women are running things, warrior queens, peace-weaver, shield-maiden, land owners, abbess hosting decisions that change the country.
Also just the version of history where women help make decisions and, well, peace-weave, with those marriages and their lands and their trade and treaties. It's not all men with their swords out. For that matter a version that's men with their diplomacy out would be a new and interesting variation. But I'm pretty sure women were there, and they had a lot more to do than look pretty.
This was a good book though, it made plenty of things seem interesting and gave me ideas for what else I want to read up on, which at this stage of my mostly lack of knowledge is what I needed.
This book sets out to tell stories, so I liked it much better than the one I just finished. It also doesn't promise to be entirely accurate, having a little introduction about how poetic licence can creep into historical accounts, but that's fine because at least it's interesting.
Fine by me.
There's chapters on Boadicea, The Lady of the Mercians, Lady Godiva, Stephen and Matilda, and The Fair Maid of Kent and the Order of the Garter.
Already more mentions of women than the other book.
There's little maps in the front, and family trees of Kings from William the Conqueror on.
Handy.
The little maps don't quite look like the little maps of about the same times in the other book.
fuzzy geography must complicate history greatly.
The bit about Boadicea says "The Iceni occupied the flat fenlands that stretched down from the Wash across modern Norfolk and Suffolk and, like other Celtic peoples, they accpeted the authority of female leaders." But the Romans were gits to women... er, broadly paraphrased, "women had few rights", so they did not accept her authority. They had been allies with the last leader, he'd left them half his wealth, but now they decided to roll up and take the rest. Because women. So Boadicea led her people to attack the Romans. Which seems reasonable, because the alternative appeared to be get abused until they died. Romans suck.
She did pretty good. Londinium burned and left a big layer of fired clay and debris. also skulls. Lots and lots of skulls.
Tacitus reckons she lost because her followers and supply wagons and so forth arranged themselves in a semicircle to watch her win, only they instead blocked the manuevers and cut off retreat. Big slaughter.
Boadicea gets a lot of play, compared to other Queens, warrior or otherwise. I have to wonder if it's not because the whole doomed dead poison bit at the end makes it tidy. I mean, if someone just rules her people and it all goes quite well, and then hands it over to the next ruler, she probably don't get in the books so much, and then she don't get copied out by people making a good bits version. Someone who rebelled and got stomped on has a moral to the story that might seem quite handy. /cynic
This little section makes me want to read more about Celtic tribes. I'd heard the Boadicea bit told like it's a lack of boy child to pass it on to, a violent fail because oops no men. If women could be in charge just in general, if they could have authority in a more equal way, I'd rather like to read about that.
The odds of there being much recorded about it are slim.
The section on 'Arthur, Once and Future King' says that from 410 until 600 virtually no written records exist and 'we can only guess at exactly who did what to whom'. That would be the bit of history the Warlords book tried to be about then. *sigh*
Dark Ages. On how much of the world? Oh yes, tiny small island.
Must poke history to see how the rest of it was doing.
It does a good job explaining the two big sorts of Christianity and why they got in a fight about haircuts and Easter. Well, it makes it sounds interesting and coherent, that's good enough to be going on with, I don't know how theologically sound it is obviously. Celtic Christianity got in a fight with Roman Catholicism and basically lost. A really really long fight though. The haircuts bit was because monks had different hairstyles depending which side they were on. Apparently this was important? :eyeroll:
It is of course a problem for people who are not monks because different kings of different sized territories decided different Christianities were best. And then got in fights about it.
Honestly, humans. A dude turns up whose basic messages is 'love thy neighbour' and a couple thousand years of his 'followers' use him as a reason to go kill people.
But it got sorted out for a whole large chunk of England because a king from one tradition married a queen from the other, Oswy and Eanfled, and then they had Lent and Easter happening at different times, so they decided to sort it out by having both sides have an argue. 664 in the Abbey of Whitby. ... style been important there a while then...
It says Oswy picked the Roman side, but it's also true to say Oswy decided to agree with his wife. That seems wise.
There's a chapter about 'Caedmon the first English poet'. He was a herdsman, a native Brit working for new Anglo-Saxon masters. His boss was a reeve, manager of the abbey farm, and boss of the abbey was Hilda. "As abbess of Whitby she had been hostess of the great synod that had argued over Easter and hairstyles some twenty years earlier". It says later in the book she "was related to the royal families of both Northumbria and East Anglia" and at Whitby "had been in charge of a so-called 'double house', where monks and nuns lived and worshipped side by side and where the men answered to the abbess, not the abbot."
See that's another thing I didn't know women did. Gender equality in religion. Where did that go for ages?
There's a chapter on Alfred, who is on coins as "Rex Anglo", King of the English. But the next chapter says that was only half true and becoming boss of the rest was for his children and grandchildren "and of those the most remarkable was his firstborn, his daughter Aethelflaed, whose exploits as a warrior and town-builder won her fame as the 'Lady of the Mercians'." [p60-61]
Warrior and town builder, firstborn of a King. Sounds like a Queen to me.
The next bit was most interesting:
Women exercised more power than we might imagine in the macho society of Anglo-Saxon England. The Old English word hlaford, 'lord', could apply equally to a man or a woman.
That I had not heard before, and it's making me wonder quite a lot about quite a lot of history. If the names are weird from here and the word can be for either, how many 'lords' are what we'd call ladies? Presumably someone did lots of research. I want to go look.
It also made me angry I'd not heard this before. And the next bit, same page:
The assets and chattels of any marriage were legally considered the property of both husband and wife, and wills of the time routinely describe landed estates owned by wealthy women who had supervised the management of many acres, giving orders to men working under them.
Women as bosses, who remain bosses when they get married.
History not a progression from a state of women as property to the modern enlightened approach. Rights lost as well as gained.
The whole chapter about the Lady of Mercia is interesting. She was a warrior and ruled over the Mercians, which was a kingdom when a king was boss so I don't know why she's a 'Lady'. They built a lot of fortified places. I was looking for bits of history with castles. Not the most developed era of castle building, but plenty fortifications through the Welsh borders and the Peak District. Did lots of fighting Vikings. (I know there's a TV show with Vikings but I haven't watched it because small viewing suggests gore levels exceed comfort zone. It sounds interesting though.)
She died just before "receiving the homage of the great Viking capital of the north", York from the previous paragraph I think. "She had played out both of the roles that the Anglo-Saxons accorded to high-born women, those of 'peace-weaver' and 'shield-maiden', and her influence lived on after her death."
Tell me more of these Anglo Saxons, they sound much more interesting than all the Henrys...
I mean Elizabeth is great, but the version of history that kind of has her sitting there alone, only boss because no marrying, that's not a version that leaves much room for women.
The baseline assumptions in many fantasy novels seem to take as normal and natural what the version of history in this book makes look like a stupid Roman and Norman intervention. Women were boss, until them other dudes turned up. Fantasy books could just be more Celtic or Anglo-Saxon and ignore the Romans. Then more women. Much better.
The chapter about Ethelred the Unready has an interesting bit about inheritance.
In Anglo-Saxon 'ethel' (also spelt 'aethel') denoted someone well born or royal- hence hte vast number of Ethel-related names, from Ethelbert to Aethelflaed. All the offspring of a king, down to his great grandchildren, were known as aethelings - 'throne worthies' - and it was from thei gene pool that the aetheling who seemed most qualified for the job was selected. It would be many years before the rule of primogeniture, whereby the king would be automatically succeeded by his eldest son, came to prevail.
All the offspring, and the son bit being new, and the whole Lady of Mercia situation, makes that sound very much as if women were included. I need to find more history books to be sure. But for writing purposes? I have never once seen an aetheling system in a fantasy novel, and it sounds much better. Gender equality is best, obviously, but the ability to skip the duds and the really wide pool of people who could be next so they have to work at it, that sounds really useful.
Also the idea that discussion and consensus could be involved in picking a king. Much simpler than the disgruntled ones choosing their own contender and raising armies about it. Would see earlier on who could win such a popularity contest.
The witan, the council of the wise, did a lot of advice stuff. Great lords and bishops, the book says. Imagine the House of Lords electing the next monarch...
About Lady Godiva it says mostly that she probably only took her jewels off. Godiva, Godgifu or 'God's Gift'... well the name works for the story... Er, she was a bit landowner in her own right, very rich, very respectable. Gave a lot to the church. The story goes that she asked her husband not to tax Coventry, so he said okay if she'd ride around naked. He'd led a violent response against the murder of tax collectors in Worcester, "ravaging the town for five days before setting it alight". That seems a bit much when you could just have like trials and stuff. This book reckons that she was probably trying to be a good Christian, what with all the giving to monasteries and nunneries, and that riding around naked doesn't really fit with that, but that accounts of her being stripped might just mean stripped of the rich stuff, riding around without her shinies, which would include hairpins and explain the hair falling over her. It would have been a big gesture of solidarity or at least sympathy with the ordinary town people.
That version is much less fun than the naked one, of course. Seems plausible though.
But the fun version does tend to skip the 'rich and boss of her own estates' parts a bit. It makes it more about pleasing her husband, you know? Instead of a bit protest thing.
So then there's William the Conqueror and the rules change and a lot more of history went into tiny Becca brain via classrooms. Everything before that was sort of a lump of Before, back to the Romans, who were cool so we kept them. Thus is national identity formed.
The bit with Stephen and Matilda is a few inheritings later, 1135 compared to 1066... But the Lady of Mercia was way back in 911. Couple hundred years. I'm trying to keep it straight in my head and also comparing them, because this time a King, Henry I, tried to leave his kingdom to his daughter, but it did not so much work out. The barons promised to follow her, then promised again four years later, but nope. Book reckons "The unlikely prospect of a woman controlling the male-chauvinist barons of hte Anglo-Norman realm might just have been feasible if Matilda had not been married to Geoffrey of Anjou, an ambitious young nobleman whom many Normans distrusted, and if Matilda herslef had not been so heavy-handed. At the moment of Henry's death she had been quarrelling - not for the first time - with her father, and her absence from the deathbed cost her dear. The moment was seized by her nimble cousin Stephen of Blois, the son of Henry's sister Adela." [...] "But Matilda had her father's ferocious bloody-mindedness, and she was not willing to let her cousin steal her inheritance without a fight. The next twenty years would see Stephen and Matilda battling for control of England and Normandy, raising armies and bribing towns, bishops and barons to consolidate their cause. Matilda captured and imprisoned Stephen, then Stephen besieged her. In the winter of 1141, Matilda and her followers made a dramatic escape from Oxford Castle, dressed in white so they could not be seen against the snow. When Matilda held power, she alienated people with her overbearing ways. When Stephen had the whip hand he proved too soft and good-natured."
Which is an... interesting summary of the problem. It's not like a woman trying to hold power is always criticised in very similar terms...
Things went to hell big time, and this was the era later known as the 'great anarchy'. It was the end times for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It's from there we get the summary "men said openly that Christ and his saints slept."
All that fighting for what? Matilda wasn't popular enough? Or not enough people could be having with a woman on the throne?
1135-1154 , that's a whole long time of fighting.
It all got sorted out when her son Henry Plantagenet got put in charge, Henry II. And that's the last we hear for women rulers around her for a whole lot of Henrys.
That's another era that sounds super interesting to read more about. But also like it's going to be hard to find more to read, seeing as everyone was busy fighting everyone else for many years.
The chapter on Piers Gaveston and Edward II mentions in passing that "Other kings had no problems with same-sex relationships. It is generally assumed that William Rufus (who ruled from 1087 to 1100) was gay - he produced no children and kept no mistresses - and the same has been said of Richard Coeur de Lion, though this is hotly denied by recent biographers. Whatever their predilections, these monarchs did not allow their private passions to impinge on their royal style or, more important, to influence their decisions when it came to handing out land and other largesse." In other words the author reckons the problem wasn't a gay king, it was, in the words of the chroniclers of the time, love 'excessive', 'immoderate', 'beyond measure and reason', and diverting far too much of the cash flow.
... the idea of gay Kings, generally assumed or otherwise, was not one I can recall being raised in History lessons. English Lit, certainly, but outside of that... the book does point out that the details of the bedchamber are unknowable, whoever was in it, but it is nonetheless a bit interesting.
The last chapter with a lady in the title is the least interesting. Not a warrior queen. 'The Fair Maid of Kent' was 19, and had a slight case of bigamy. She "was faced with having to explain to the Pope how and why she had married an earl when she was already married to a knight." The Pope sent her back to the first one, and the book reckons she "seems to have made the best of it", having five children before he died. The year after he died, she married the Black Prince. The chapter reckons "The 'Fair Maid of Kent' would be the first beautiful and controversial Princess of Wales."
... I reckon, nice one. ... well, if marrying is what you've got, she did pretty well out of it...
not nice to break promises, but, 19, many things seem more reasonable at 19.
Most of the chapter is about the Order of the Garter, a bunch of knights that don't interest me very much.
Most of history books that mention women are more like this late chapter, all marrying and saying how she's the prettiest and making out like she decided to be pretty at people.
I want to read history that's more like the Celtic or Anglo Saxon chapters, where women are running things, warrior queens, peace-weaver, shield-maiden, land owners, abbess hosting decisions that change the country.
Also just the version of history where women help make decisions and, well, peace-weave, with those marriages and their lands and their trade and treaties. It's not all men with their swords out. For that matter a version that's men with their diplomacy out would be a new and interesting variation. But I'm pretty sure women were there, and they had a lot more to do than look pretty.
This was a good book though, it made plenty of things seem interesting and gave me ideas for what else I want to read up on, which at this stage of my mostly lack of knowledge is what I needed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-08-12 09:50 pm (UTC)where I mentioned much of this stuff and connected it to fantasy novels before
no subject
Date: 2015-08-12 09:54 pm (UTC)The depiction is in a almost unknown, except to historians part of St. Peter's Basilica at the heart of the Vatican.
Even the Roman Catholic church in nearly two thousand years hasn't dared to bury and/or destroy it.
They also never talk about it.
kerk