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Drama, drama, drama!

@girlfromparadise5 / girlfromparadise5.tumblr.com

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fymagnificentwomcn
“Nurbanu did gain formidable clout within a few years following her husband’s coronation, but she must have looked forward to the day when her son would become Sultan, at which time she would figure in dynastic politics even more prominently. She did not wait for that eventuality with crossed arms. Her formal wedding to Selim in 1571, for which she received 110,000 ducats, hence surpassing by 100,000 ducats what Hürrem got when she married Süleyman, served to elevate her status to a Favorite nonpareil. Yet that station still fell short of the highest echelon that an Ottoman royal woman could reach, that of a Queen Mother. Nurbanu devised an ingenious solution to create that effect, which consisted of transmitting her two-pronged identity, as Selim’s Favorite and Murad’s Queen Mother pari passu. (…)
Her steady climb from the humble position of Selim’s concubine to that of the legal wife of the Sultan served to elevate her status to a Favorite Concubine comparable only to her direct predecessor, Hürrem. But Nurbanu ultimately surpassed Süleyman’s wife when she assumed the identity of Queen Mother even before her son ascended the throne. Cognizant of the greater power and prestige she would wield, Nurbanu transmitted a two-pronged identity, both as Selim’s Haseki and Murad’s Valide, and continued to flaunt these twin titles until her husband passed away. Afterwards, she exclusively adopted the second portion of her composite title, Valide Sultan.” —  Pinar Kayaalp, The Empress Nurbanu and Ottoman Politics in the Sixteenth Century: Building the Atik Valide.
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random-bookquotes
Too often, the six queens are seen only in their relationship to a forceful, mercurial king. Katharine of Aragon is the old battle-axe; Anne Boleyn, the seductress. Jane Seymour is the good wife; Anna of Cleves, the ugly frump. Catherine Howard is the giddy bubblehead; Kateryn Parr, the stoical matron. But these women had lives of their own. They had dreams and hopes. Ideas. Opinions. Ambitions. They were fighters. Thinkers. Politicians. Strategists. They led troops into battle and hunted on horseback. They read, danced, intrigued, and sewed. They had children they loved. Pets they adored. They gave money to the poor and supported artists and scholars. They ate peacocks and swans, wore pearls in their hair and diamonds on their sleeves.

Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All (via random-bookquotes)

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anne-the-quene
khaleesiofthegreatdairystate asked:

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a good history teacher but the one of the techniques they use to make history memorable is to make it entertaining. But more to the point, HH isn’t putting together a movie or a TV show. He doesn’t have to deal with the story telling structures that people need to make a TV show. And of course, history has at least two or three different versions of the same event or characterizations of the same person even among well respected academics! (1/4)

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anne-the-quene answered:
You ask five people who have done at least a little bit of independent study on her what Anne was really like, you could get very five different answers. No, TV and movie markers are not usually in it for the money but I was trying to be succinct and not write a huge ask chain like I’m doing right now. Productions have different levels of people who are involved with them and one level of media making, studio executives and the like, are primarily interested in the money. (2/4)
The people putting a TV show or movie together need the okay from executives in order to make their art. You’re right that not every actress is famous before she played Anne but I was just point out if a more well known lady was in the running to play her, she’d get picked over the unknown. From the non-money making side of it, both Foy and Dormer were the right choice for those versions of Anne because of their abilities, their artistry if you like which you were talking about before.(¾)
Foy played Anne haughty and cold because that’s Anne in WH. Dormer played a complex Anne who deftly handled all her roles from sex pot temptress to sincere religious reformer. Doesn’t matter that they don’t look like IRL Anne. It’s way more important they did what the story needed them to do. Claire mentioned the reasons for 1501. Ives and others didn’t pull 1501 out of their ass. Claire said it might be 1507 and people should keep an open might, which is a very balanced view to take. (4/4)
PS: Yes, it would be nice for casting directors to find a woman who looks like Anne to play her but I’ll take someone who looks like Dormer every day of the week over someone who can’t act very well but looks like IRL Anne. Acting ability is more important than looks.

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jedi-anakin

“Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manners of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equaled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that princess in chastity and valor. Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely as well as the most heroic of her sex.

She was of a dark complexion (for in speaking of a lady these trifles become important). Her teeth were of a pearly whiteness, and her large black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire, tempered by the most attractive sweetness. Her voice was strong and harmonious. Her manly understanding was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal perfection the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages. She had drawn up for her own use an epitome of Oriental history, and familiarly compared the beauties of Homer and Plato under the tuition of the sublime Longinus.”

  — From ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’

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fymagnificentwomcn

No, she isn’t. The whole „evil Kösem” thing isn’t played straight in MYKS2.

Kösem was in a role no woman was before her in Ottoman Empire – she was a woman who governed on her own and it wasn’t a role expected of a woman or one subject to any real legal regulations, and the fact that she often formed an alternative source of power in time of weak, tyrannical or mentally ill rulers just made people more to treat her as usurper, someone who made difficult decisions that she wasn’t entitled to make, since they weren’t traditionally within female sphere of influence in the Ottoman Empire, especially in minds of certain bureaucrats. If she had been a padişah, nobody would have given her such wank for them.

This is best exemplified in one of the conversations between Kösem and Murad where he accuses her of being “plague that entered their dynasty by deceit” and “sick woman”. He mentions that yes padisahs made numerous painful sacrifices for the state, but here he is the PADISAH, so he may do what he wants, while she is not entitled to do so just for the fact she’s not the monarch in what was always absolute monarchy. He’s the only person who can make decisions concerning dynasty, no matter what sort of decisions they are, even if destructive ones. He is, nota bene, proven wrong in about this when in his final episode he is criticised by the mufti Yahya Efendi (who for some time was his big supporter) for ordering to execute Ibrahim and Mustafa, thus placing the end to the Ottoman dynasty, which decision is deemed as impossible to carry out. Similarly, he is also called out by Kösem upon executing Ahizade because even the padisah couldn’t execute the Grand Mufti – Kösem calls it “similar unflawlufness that what happened to Osman that she will not allow” even after Murad’s argumentation that since the public killed the sultan, he might execute the chief judge because who he is next to a padisah.

Halil Inalcik in one of his interviews stated that the fact that the mere fact that a woman was ruling the Empire over a padisah (in this case he was talking about Ibrahim’s reign) was viewed negatively and was labelled in chronicles written by contemporary bureaucrats as tagallüb, that is unlawful tyranny, “unjustified taking power into her hands”

It generally shows position of many women that dared to rule, even Elizabeth I in England had to face criticism of people calling her reign illegitimate, and she was a crowned queen regnant.

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germanaustriannoblesandroyals
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