1. The problem with Superman in the DCEU was due to very poor script and directorial decisions taken early on, compounded by a studio attempting to rush through a shared universe, which made it impossible to credibly course-correct in time. Henry Cavill wasn’t given anything to work with. 
2. To be honest, the DCEU needed to reboot anyway, and replacing their Batman and Superman at the same time (while keeping their Wonder Woman as the one bright spot) is as good a way to do that as possible.
3. OTOH, I don’t know which way the DCEU is going in the future. The Shazam trailer was a good start to bringing new tones and emotional palettes, Wonder Woman 1984 is probably in safe hands, but I don’t know if the Cyborg, Flash, or GLC movies will be any good, and there’s some projects out there – David Ayer’s Gotham City Sirens, the Leto Joker film, the Joaqin Phoenix Joker film – that sound really dire. Hard to divine a direction per se. 

Because she was in exile in England and, on paper, attempted to overthrow the government of England. 

Historical fiction, definitely read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies. 

Also I strongly recommend Keith Wrightson’s lectures on Early Modern England:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL18B9F132DFD967A3

I would definitely suggest restricting yourself to recent historical works, as Thaddeus Stevens was Public Enemy Number One for the Dunning School, so got cast as the Richard III of the Radical Republicans. 

Here’s some recent books I can recommend:

• The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights, Barry Goldenburg, 2011.
• Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth Century Egalitarian, Hans Trefousse, 2000.

violettamondarev:

angrylittlesliceofpizza:

racefortheironthrone:

Sure. 

The Versailles strategy – which isn’t unique to Early Modern France; I think the sankin-kōtai system of the Tokugawa shogunate is similar enough in purpose and effect that it qualifies – was a strategy for monarchies to gain power over the nobility through the exercise of (mostly) soft power, rather than crushing them by military force. 

The basic idea is this: bring the whole of the nobility together into a very large court (the court at Versailles included 6,000-7,000 people when you add together the royal family, royal officials, courtiers, and servants; compare this to the early medieval court of Charlesmagne, which amounted to a few hundred people). Instead of the king going out on progress to visit his subjects, his subjects would come to live at Versailles instead. 

This change had a number of consequences: 

• Reduction of the economic independence of the nobility: Living at Versailles in the style benefiting a nobleman or noblewoman was incredibly expensive. Not only did it require you to establish a second household – with Louis XIV as your landlord charging you rent – but the official rules of Versailles required a particularly high-spending lifestyle: “The king insisted that every courtier be well dressed on all occasions: a death, a birthday, or a marriage in his family required that everyone wear new clothes.” (Versailles: A History, Robert Abrams) Moreover, while you were away at Versailles, you weren’t spending time on your estate maximizing your income, and the scissors of increasing spending and stagnant or declining incomes trapped a lot of the nobility in debt.
• And once you were in debt, you were in Louis’ clutches. Because working was out of the question, the only way to earn additional money to help pay off your debts was through a royal post or the like, and those were Louis’ to give and take away. Moreover, residents of Versailles were spared from various forms of taxation and were legally protected from having their property seized for non-payment of debt – this is how Louis initially enticed the nobility to move – but that meant that at any time, Louis could evict you from Versailles and throw you to the wolves.

• Reduction in the political independence of the nobility: at the same time, living away from your base of power meant that you became less important back at home. After all, you weren’t there making all the of the important day-to-day decisions, but the King’s intendant was. 
• More importantly, living in Versailles meant that the king controlled your political environment. While you might think that being surrounded by the rest of the nobility of France in close physical proximity to the King’s person might give rise to assassination or coup d’état, the reality was that you were living in the King’s palace surrounded by his guards and very far away from your feudal levies, and you had to obey his rules, which by the way kept you constantly busy in various rituals and ceremonies from the time the king got up in the morning to the time he went to bed at night, and let the king observe who was there and who wasn’t. And if that wasn’t enough to keep people loyal, he also had his spies open everyone’s mail, and listen at everyone’s doors, and he could order you arrested at pretty much any time he wanted?

So why would anyone sign up for this system? 

Well, in addition to those nice taxation and debt privileges, Louis simply made it a requirement that if you wanted anything from the king – command in his armies, help with public works in your area, help with a legal case, etc. – you had to come and ask him in person. Which meant coming to Versailles and taking part in the rituals, and since getting an audience took forever, you’d better get an apartment, and so it goes…

Just as importantly, after a certain point, it was the place that the nobility wanted to live. Did you want to make a good marriage? Versailles was where the most eligible matches lived. Did you want to live a magnificent lifestyle? Louis spent a LOT of money on making Versailles the most ostentatious and magnificent palace in Europe, not just in terms of architecture and gardens, but the best entertainments, the best scholars and artists, the best tailors and craftsmen, and so on and so forth. Did you want a political career? You couldn’t really do it out in the provinces anymore, so you might as well go to Versailles and play the game. 

Anyone interested on how that system worked on a day to day basis, and how exactly the nobles were kept busy, could (and probably should) watch the 1996 film Ridicule. It’s really good.

Yeah, Ridicule. Lots of backstabbing, nobles sinking in games with absurd rules, hoping to exist and be seen, and losing every time… it’s chilling and at the same time relatable.

It’s almost like high school, really, with a lot more wigs and frills. Except the Popular Girl and her fans are supposedly ruling the country. Predictably, this does not end well for the population of said country.

Seconded. 

BryndenBFish was running a collaborative project on doing just that, so there should be a googledocs somewhere. 

1. Primary goal is to keep Balon peaceable. Secondary goal is to make Theon a loyal subject; probably would try to wed him to a Northerner so that he wouldn’t make war on his in-laws.
2. Rules varied, but it was pretty rare for a hostage to spend their entire life in captivity. 
3. Ned, in consultation with Robert, would appoint a regent. 

nanshe-of-nina:

racefortheironthrone:

I don’t think they ever had the fiscal ability to do that long-term, and certainly after the dragons the political power to do it at all. 

A Versailles program needs a standing army who is loyal to the king, among other things. Westeros completely lacks that because its kings are still dependent on their nobility for soldiers.

Just to add something that I didn’t put in my original post about the Versailles strategy – at the same time that Louis XIV started the Versailles system, he also outlawed private armies and enforced that law vigorously. 

The Westerosi monarchy isn’t anywhere near being able to do that. 

Yes and no. 

The complicating factor is that significant portions of the nobility were quite involved in the early stages of the French Revolution – the Parlement of Paris’ refusal to register royal decrees on taxation leading to the calling of the Estates General, the renunciations of feudal privileges, the Orleanist faction of the Second Estate joining the National Assembly, etc. – and were quite fluent in the language of the Enlightenment, and could become quite popular political figures. (Think nobles like the Comte de Mirabeau, or Phillipe Égalité the Duc d’Orleans, or the Marquis de Lafayette.) The real turn against the nobility comes a bit later, with the Great Fear, the beginning of the war, etc.  

I would argue that the main contribution was that it exacerbated inequalities in taxation, and here is where the political and economic impulses of Louis XIV’s government come to the fore. Politically, Louis needed to give out tax exemptions as a way to get the nobility to come to Versailles and keep them there. Economically, Louis’ ministers wanted to tax the Second Estate to pay for Versailles, to pay for Louis’ wars, to pay for the growing centralized bureaucracy that was replacing the nobility out in the provinces, to pay for the infrastructure and investments in new industries that were needed to develop the French economy. 

Because the former impulse usually won out during the reigns of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI (to be fair, a lot of royal finance ministers tried to tax the First and Second Estates even when it usually ended their political careers), the tax burden on the Third Estate was significantly higher than it would have been had the Second Estate been paying taxes.