The Pride Of Dijon By William John Hennessey, 1879 / "cowboy Like Me" By Taylor Swift

Every other guy in France during this time period was named Francis/Francois. There are PLENTY of candidates. 

So excited for The Serpent Queen!!!! Both new actors are playing a character named Francis I don't know which one is Mary's Francis.

Edward’s consort, Queen Isabella, is an enthusiastic book collector. She has many volumes of religious devotion, including a spectacular apocalypse; a two-volume Bible in French; a book of sermons in French; two books of Hours of the Virgin; and various antiphonals, graduals, and missals for use in her chapel. She also owns an encyclopedia (Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, in French) and at least two history books: Brut (bound with the Tresor) and a book about the genealogy of the royal family. She also owns at least ten romances. Among them are The Deeds of Arthur (bound in white leather), Tristan and Isolda, Aimeric de Narbonne, Perceval and Gawain, and The Trojan War.

Ten romances suggest that Isabella is keen on reading. But this is not the full story. Not only does she borrow books from her friends, she takes books from the royal lending library. This contains at least 340 titles and is housed in the Tower of London. As a younger woman, she borrows romances for herself and titles such as The History of Normandy and Vegetius’ text on warfare for her sons.

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, Ian Mortimer

I would dye my dog like this

Life beyond Henry VIII

Christina of Denmark, most famous for sassily rebuffing Henry VIII’s proposal of marriage by saying she’d only marry him if she had TWO heads, lived as interesting a life as any of the Tudors.

Her father Christian II of Denmark was so hated in that country that history now calls him “Christian the Tyrant”. He was overthrown by his own uncle and exiled to the Netherlands, then ruled by his brother-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  

Christina grew up an exiled princess without a kingdom, the daughter of a black mark on European royalty. 

She married young and was widowed soon after.

Her cousin was Philip II, who later married Mary Tudor...then Elisabeth de Valois (the French princess)...then his niece Anna of Austria...

Christina actually met Mary Tudor, who was jealous of Christina’s closeness to Philip, a closeness her own marriage to the Spanish prince and future king was lacking.

After refusing to marry Henry VIII, Christina married the Duke of Lorraine and had several children with him, including Charles III. Her husband died after four years of marriage, leaving Christina to fight with the other nobles over the regency for young Charles. Christina won the regency...and then lost it. But she wasn’t going to give up without a fight, not even when France invaded the duchy of Lorraine and demanded that Christina hand young Charles over to the French king, Henri II, to raise in France. 

She went to King Henri in person to beg him not to separate her from her son, but he wouldn’t relent and took her son anyway. Charles would later marry Henri’s daughter Claude in one of the few happy and loving marriages in the Valois family history. Charles and Claude later named one of their daughters after Christina.

Also, Henry VIII wasn’t the only person Christina turned down. She also turned down one of Mary Queen of Scot’s uncles, a member of the Guise clan. She blamed the Guise for Henri’s invasion of Lorraine. 

Funnily enough, Charles wasn’t the only member of his family to marry into the Valois family. Charles’s cousin Louise married Henri de Valois, known in history as King Henri III...aka, the possibly gay French king...(who history buffs on Tumblr should embrace as their bisexual goth problematic fave, just saying). 

According to writer Brantome, Christina also met Mary Queen of Scots after the young queen was widowed by her beloved, the young King Francis II. Mary’s uncle warned her ahead of time about Christina’s theatrical antics and her need to be the center of attention, behavior the Guise party found both annoying and amusing. I wonder what Christina would have thought of the Scottish queen, daughter of ANOTHER woman who turned down Henry VIII with a sick burn. 

Christina may not have attended her son Charles’ wedding to the Princess Claude, but she did attend the coronation of the new king of France, ten-year-old Charles IX...who could barely keep his large crown still on his little head. Brantome wrote that Christina showed up in her finest velvet gown with a carriage drawn by Turkish horses (her favorite type of horses). When she arrived in this pomp and splendor, even Catherine de Medici remarked: “There’s a proud woman!” 

Christina tried to offer every piece of advice to her son Charles while he was Duke of Lorraine, while her daughter-in-law Claude listened to her mother’s every advice on what to do with Lorraine. The poor couple probably never caught a break from two very nosy and very opinionated mothers and mothers-in-law. 

It’s a pity that Reign never mentioned Lorraine, or Christina, her son, and tons of other colorful personalities from France during the 1550s and 1560s. I feel like the writers would have had so much fun featuring a sassy smack down between Catherine de Medici and Christina of Denmark. 

Reign really failed to show how important the Guise family was to Mary. There’s a whole goldmine of storylines from history that the show sadly skipped over.

So you want to read something like Jane Austen?

I see lots of posts where people answer this question with recommendations for classic historical romance authors like Georgette Heyer or more modern bodice-rippers like Julia Quinn or Tessa Dare. But to me that’s never quite the appropriate answer. Sure, if what you want is romance with country dancing and breeches, that’s fine, but surely if you want to read more things similar to Jane Austen, the best way to do that is to delve into her lesser known contemporaries. People Austen admired and people who admired her. People writing on similar themes and using similar language. 

So this is my list of 10 novels from the 18th and early 19th century that you might like to try if you’ve read Austen and want to branch out more. These are just personal recommendations and based off what I’ve read; I’m very happy to hear other suggestions!

Worth noting as well that all of these are available online or free for kindle download. :)

Keep reading

Jon Snow....King Beyond the Wall.

Sansa Stark.....Queen of the North.

Bran Stark....King of Westeros (um okay)

Arya Stark....Queen of this ship.

Maybe Arya will one day be the Queen of a fantasy version of America?

WOMEN’S HISTORY † LOUISE DE LORRAINE (30 April 1553 – 29 January 1601)

Louise de Lorraine was the only surviving child of Nicolas de Lorraine, duc de Mercœur and his first wife, Marguerite d’Egmont. Her mother died when Louise was a baby and her father remarried to Jeanne de Savoie-Nemours in 1555, by whom he had six children, two of whom died young. Jeanne proved to be a loving and caring stepmother who ensured that young Louise received a good education. Jeanne died in 1568 and her father married a third time to Catherine de Lorraine, the granddaughter of Claude de Lorraine, duc de Guise and Antoinette de Bourbon. Catherine, who was only three years older than Louise, was reportedly unfond of all of her stepchildren. Regardless, by reaching adulthood, Louise was recognized as an ideal beauty of the times with blonde hair and fair skin. In 1573, Henri, duc d’Anjou, the third surviving son of Henri II and Caterina de’ Medici, paid a visit to Charles III, duc de Lorraine on his way to claim the crown of Poland. Louise was present at this gathering and Henri was immediately taken with her, supposedly because of her great resemblance to Marie de Clèves. After the death of his older brother in 1574, Henri returned to France to claim the throne. Henri originally planned to marry Marie, but she died shortly afterwards of pneumonia or complications of childbirth, leaving Henri heartbroken, though aware that he had to marry to father heirs. His mother wanted him to marry Elisabet Vasa, but Henri sought Louise’s hand instead and they married 15 February 1575, two days after his coronation. Caterina was initially uneasy about her sons’ choice, as Louise was the cousin of Guises, but she changed her mind after meeting Louise. Louise and Henri appear to have genuinely loved each other, but despite their hopes, they were childless. She made numerous pilgrimages to pray for children, but none were born, causing her great grief. She was also greatly upset about her husband’s conflicts with her half-brother, Philippe-Emmanuel, a diehard supporter of the Catholic League and prayed constantly for reconciliation between them, though she was disappointed in this, too. She was generally well-liked by her subjects for her generosity and charity. Henri was assassinated 1 August 1589 by Jacques Clément in revenge for his ordering the assassinations of Henri de Lorraine, duc de Guise and Louis II de Lorraine, cardinal de Guise. Louise was grief-stricken at his death and went to work trying to reverse the excommunication he had received. She begged his successor, Henri IV, to punish Catherine-Marie de Lorraine, the sister of the Guise brothers, who had openly boasted about her involvement in the assassination of Louise’s husband, but he didn’t, though both he and Louise were probably relieved when Catherine died in 1596. Louise spent the rest of her life residing in the Château de Chenonceau. She died 29 January 1601 and was buried in a convent in Capuchins. In the 19th century, however, her remains were moved to the Basilica of Saint-Denis. Her niece, Françoise, married Henri IV’s favorite illegitimate son, César, duc de Vendôme.

George Costanza

Fanny practicing her dance moves:

 ...and was actually practising her steps about the drawing-room as long as she could be safe from the notice of her aunt Norris...

Mansfield Park Memes, Ch 28