If Martin Had Finished The Books Earlier I Think We’d All Have A Different Opinion On Different Plot

Anatolian shepherd dog puppy in training

Historical fiction writers and historians like to talk about the whole “Edward abandoned pregnant Isabella to save Piers Gaveston” thing (which is entirely fake btw) but I think we should focus more on that One Time In Tynemouth when Isabella faced the possibility of an attack by the Scots because, while it’s actually an event with very little historical significance, I think it had a tremendous impact on the people directly involved in it, as it seems to have been a major trigger in the deterioration of Edward and Isabella’s relationship, which she fully blamed on Hugh le Despenser but it also appears to be one of the rare instance where Hugh was genuinely not trying to fuck her over in any shape or form.

In October 1322, Edward was dealing with the aftermath of yet another failed Scottish campaign, which included Robert Bruce invading back England. Bruce quickly marched toward where the King was at the moment, wreaking havoc as one generally do during a punishing invasion and, by mid-October, Edward was forced to flee, abandoning a whole bunch of his material possessions behind him.

The situation would have already been humiliating enough but it sparked another problem: at the moment, Isabella had been residing at Tynemouth, a little less than a hundred miles away from her husband. While there’s no clear indication that Bruce was planning to walk toward this direction or had any plan to take the queen hostage, it’s undeniable that Isabella herself believed it and was terrified.

It’s always a bit sketchy to try and gage the feelings of people who have been dead for hundreds of years (if anything, it’s also risky to try and assume the feelings of living people too so…) but in this particular case, I really do think we may reasonably argue that it was one of the most traumatic event in her life and she entirely blamed Hugh le Despenser for it, accusing him of ‘falsely and treacherously counselling the king to leave my lady the queen in peril of her person’ at Tynemouth.“, which is straight up factually incorrect.

I won’t try to debate whether or not she was in actual physical danger, partially because I don’t know enough about Robert de Bruce and his military tactics to gage whether or not he may have been interested in taking her hostage (but it honestly feels unlikely, at least in the circumstances…) but we know for a fact that even if Hugh actually did advised Edward to let his wife to rot alone at Tynemouth, that’s not what Edward actually did.

We still have a high number of letters showing Edward’s concern for his wife and he quickly charged some of his most trusted men with the task to go safely fetch the queen. The problem here is that his most trusted men obviously included some of Hugh’s subordinates. Isabella reacted to the situation just as well as you may imagine: she categorically refused to leave with Hugh’s men, not under any circumstances whatsoever. I don’t think her fear was entirely irrational: she had already gone on her knees to beg for Hugh’s banishment and I do think she may have been afraid of him using this occasion to get his revenge.

Now, I’m still not sure if Hugh ever actually intended to get rid of the queen (my opinion on that changes all the time tbh) but even if he did, I’m entirely sure he was not planning to do so here. First, there’s the fact that even if some of his men were present, he wasn’t there to command them and Isabella had no reason to distrust the actual commander present. Most importantly, Hugh’s own wife Eleanor, who had been a member of the queen’s household pretty much since she had set foot in England was also present. Hugh was a reckless man who cared very little about who he had to destroy to reach his goals but he appears to have sincerely care for his close family and it’s highly improbable that he would have voluntarily put her in a harm way, even to get back at the queen, especially since she was most likely pregnant too at the moment.

The situation must have been incredibly messy. Both Isabella and Eleanor were heavily pregnant (or Eleanor’s case, may have just given birth) and their relationship, that had been a stable and friendly one for years, since they were both little more than children, had probably been deteriorating for some time due to their husbands’ affair. Eleanor probably desperately wanted to escape with her husband’s men and Isabella’s clear and definite refusal probably felt like a knee kick in the gums.

The fact that two of Isabella’s ladies died as a direct consequence of their escape, one of them who was also pregnant and passed away shortly after prematurely giving birth was probably even more traumatic for both of them, as was the fact that the third man send by Edward to rescue the queen was actually caught by the Scots and taken hostage, which had been Isabella’s worst fear since the very beginning

Even if all technically ended well (except for those two poor ladies-in-waiting, obviously) and even if most contemporary chroniclers appear to have found the whole event fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty clear that it worsened the deterioration of marriage of Edward and Isabella, if it didn’t kickstarted it; before 1322, Edward and Isabella spent a lot of time together, even when it was not strictly necessary and we have a profusion of letters from one to the other when they were separated.

In 1322-1323, the time they spent together had shrunk to next to nothing and there’s few letters remaining to indicate that they keep contact when they were away from each other. In fact, there’s times during those two years when Edward himself was pitifully vague about the exact whereabouts of his wife, which lead me to believe that he had either temporarily casted her away from court or that she herself had decided to stay away from him (probably a mix of the two) and that he was trying to save face.

Now, what I find the more interesting is that I can easily understand the point of view of every person implicated in this situation. Isabella must have felt like her husband had abandoned her and only 'rescued’ her by sending her her worst enemy’s delegates. The fact that her contemporaries seems to have seen the situation as a non-issue and that even Hugh’s worst detractors didn’t blame him for anything, for once (the pope himself actually commended him for the way his men had acted…) must have been even more enraging for her.

Eleanor probably felt like her queen and friend had not only gravely offended her husband (and by extension her family and herself) once again but also put them all in danger for no logical reason. Edward was clearly worried for his wife at first but her refusal to cooperate was probably mind-boggling to him at first and then insulting, especially when it become obvious that she was not planning to get over it.

As for Hugh…If there’s one thing we know about Hugh’s personality, it’s that he was very good at making himself the victim in even the situations where he was the most blatantly at fault. Now, considering that he already disliked Isabella before the whole thing, can you imagine how he saw it and what he had to tell Edward about it? It must have been something along the lines of:  "Your wife essentially spat in your face by refusing the help you sent her and claiming you had done nothing useful, she offended me once again and still claimed it was somehow my fault and she also endangered my wife and unborn child, what kind of unnatural, hateful woman would behave in such a way toward her king and husband? How can you take that?” Fuck, he may even have truly believed that.

Now I’m not gonna say it’s the one thing that really determined the rest of their relationship (there was already A Lot going on long before that and there was much more to come for all of them) but I do think it was a pretty major element of how things managed to go so bad so fast and I also find it pretty telling that Isabella would later accuse Hugh of forcing her husband to abandon her to mortal danger even if absolutely no one else seems that it was what happened when it actually happened…

It’s like a bunch of annoying teenage girls are telling us this story... Damn you Reign - lazy historical writing strikes again!

What level of Evul™ TV Henry VIIIs are you on a scale of Damian Lewis getting drunk and talking about his sex life in Wolf Hall to Mark Stanley growling “YOU PROMISED ME SUNNNSSSS” like an actual demon in the new Anne Boleyn trailer

I’d watch a TV series staring these two actors. I don’t care what the show is about, I’d watch it. Especially if it featured Littlefinger and Varys as Westeros’s odd couple...just saying.

Manston was on his legs again in an instant. A fiery glance on the one side, a glance of pitiless justice on the other, passed between them. It was again the meeting in the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite: ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.’

Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies (via talesofpassingtime)

I’ll say it: Aeneas Manston is an underrated villain from Victorian Literature. 

tormund seeing jon at winterfell

I don’t really get the Jonsa/Jonerys fights because Sansa and Dany are such interesting characters to me while I find Jon so boring (that’s just my taste, nothing against people who like Jon). Why are people fighting over which of these women gets his boring ass lmao. I personally don’t like Jonerys because it feels like a boring arc for Dany - especially if she’s pregnant. And Sansa has grown so much into herself as a politically savvy ruler that it would make me sad to see her ending up as Jon’s Queen or w/ever. A lot of Jonsa fans keep comparing Jon and Sansa to Ned and Catelyn, which is fine I guess. But I don’t want Sansa to be Catelyn 2.0. I thought the whole point of the story was that they learnt to be better and smarter than their parents. Jon and Ygritte was really the only pairing that I liked for Jon, because she made up for his broodiness and made his character more relaxed and human to me. I’m not sharing my opinion just to hate on these pairings, I guess I wanted to know if there were other Sansa or Dany stans who felt this way.

Honestly...that’s perfect! 

…Mansfield Park from Edmund’s perspective might look a good deal like Emma, actually.

You’ve got the good sense, the quiet life, the being accustomed to having the best judgement in his little community; then the subsequent falling in and out of temptation and trials, his own judgement proving faulty, other people’s affairs going in unexpected directions; and finally, though unelaborated on, the “oh. OH” moment when Edmund realizes that Fanny has been RIGHT HERE the WHOLE TIME.

Even Sam loves the Stark girls

love a Sansa and Sophie stan