This is an emergency to people in our communities. I don’t ever want to leave my apartment and find my neighbors are missing. And as a queer Jewish person who’s family came here as refugees from anti-Semitic violence before AND AFTER the Holocaust, I know that if my neighbors go, I’m somewhere on the list.Â
TV is our shared culture and mythology. And stories like the one shown on tonight’s Steven Universe episode offer a path for talking with our racist uncles, and for teaching younger generations that there are other ways of looking at each other.Â
My neighborhood needs to be a family now. Your neighborhood does too. If you can, talk with your neighbors and show immigrants and/or Muslims and/or LGBTQ people in your community that you will stand with them.
Showing Up for Racial Justice provides training for white people to talk with other white people to combat racism. Because it is NOT people of colors’ job to deal with this stuff, it is our job as white people to do that labor.
And if you are looking for a place to give to support grassroots people of color lead organizing in communities around the nation, here’s Center for Popular Democracy– donating will support their partners around the states.Â
I usually don’t ask people for stuff via Tumblr, but this is important enough for me to break my rule. My friend and colleague Scott Kaufman, who you may well remember from our Game of Thrones podcasts on Lawyers, Guns, and Money, is dealing with some really serious medical issues right now.Â
He’s thankfully getting better, but even with health insurance, the ICU isn’t cheap. If you could help out here, it would make a huge difference.Â
Probably the same way they did when he did it last time:
“In 267 AC, after a dispute with the Iron Bank of Braavos regarding certain monies borrowed by his father, he announced that he would build the largest war fleet in the history of the world “to bring the Titan to his knees."”
“It was Tywin Lannister who settled the crown’s dispute with the Braavosi (though without "making the Titan kneel,” to the king’s displeasure), by repaying the monies lent to Jaehaerys II with gold from Casterly Rock, thereby taking the debts upon himself.”
Happily accept payment, cross the debt off, and move on.Â
Hello folks, it’s that time of the week again! I’m 5200 words into the Politics of the Iron Islands essay and I have a couple pages roughed out of Davos II, but in the meantime, what do we have on the Tumblrs? Did Kermit Tully marry one of the Strong sisters? No. Bittersteel and a post-Daemon victory scenario. Bracken and Blackwood smallfolk. Bolton smallfolk. On Ellyn Reyne: Part I Part II…
Not that often. Not only were full crowns rather heavy, they were often the most valuable thing the monarch owned, partly for the symbolic value the particular crown had but mostly because of all of the jewels and precious metals. Thus, wearing it from day to day would have been a huge risk. (Also, depending on the state of the royal finances, you might have had to pawn them…) So most of the time, the crown stayed in the vaults with the rest of the royal jewels and plate.
A further complication is that monarchs seldom had just the one crown. To use the English monarch as one example: St Edward’s Crown was the oldest of the Crown Jewels and goes back all the way to Edward the Confessor (hence the name), although parts of it supposedly go back to Alfred the Great. This crown represented stability and legitimacy of succession, as it had been used for every king pretty much between William the Conqueror and Charles I, so using it was very important: hence why Henry VIII used it to crown Anne Boleyn, a very public statement about the way things went. Incidentally, Parliament sold the crown in 1642 during the Civil War, and no one knows where the original went. (Charles II had a replacement made, and then Colonel Thomas Blood stole that one, and so on…)
Needless to say, you wouldn’t dream of using this crown except for coronations, so kings acquired other crowns to be used on different occasions. (Edward III, for example, had no less than nine crowns and a dozen circlets, because if you’re going to try to conquer France, you need to do that in style.) So when would a king wear a crown? Well, any major public event – a religious holiday, the installment of a bishop or the dedication of a church, a session of Parliament, meeting another monarch, making a pilgrimage, etc. etc.Â
For ordinary fancy occasions – your state dinners, your feasts, your dances, your earlier monarchs went with circlets or coronets. But fashions change, and once we get into the later Middle Ages, you start to see more of a preference for fancy hats as day-to-day wear. My personal favorite is Henry IV’s rather snazzy red number:
Now that is a hat that screams “I may be a usurper whose actions will lead to the Wars of the Roses, but you have to admit, I look damn good.”Â
1. They were already willing to go nuclear, hence the Hammer of Waters.
2. I don’t think the timeline is that messed up, certainly not for things like timing and sequence. It’s pretty clear that a long period went by between Pact and Long Night.
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