We each gained 7 lbs between Friday and Sunday night on the convention green room food and a few indiscretions—see how you have to watch it at cons?—but we think part of that is water weight, and will go away. Right back onto the diet today. Last night we polished off a bottle of Champagne, just to finish off our indiscretion, so don’t feel too sorry for us.
RadCon is a big convention, 2500 people, in Pasco, WA, one of the Tricities that sits on the Columbia river just south of us. People come in from Montana, Oregon, California, Washington, and Idaho, and in one case, Kansas.
OSG was there, with company. And we had a great time. Hung out with Patty Briggs and friends, and generally a good time was had by all.
As you said, water weight probably caused by higher than normal intake of salt. Drink lots of water to flush it out. When you’re on a fairly low salt diet, as I am, any deviation from normal packs it on.
hooray, sounds like you had a great time, I am sure much needed funtime .. 😀
OSDaughter and company really enjoyed themselves, and the panels. I think we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of them at future cons.
Hey CJ, I was wondering if you could shed some light on historical behavior for me?
I have been watching “The Tudors” (all about Henry the Eighth and is life), and am curious why so many fathers and families seemed so eager to set up their daughter as a royal mistress. Sure, the perks that go with the job seemed good, but it appeared to have a really bad retirement plan. Or did people (ie, future spouse) just overlook these very public relationships? And, the trickier question, because we can’t ask him, would someone like King Henry really believe that his lack of a male heir was a sign from God that his marriage was improper, or was that just a good excuse to use because he wanted to marry someone else?
It’s because there was money and power to be had by the relationship, the ear of the king, etc. It was even more dangerous if you were a wife. Unfortunately, Anne Boleyn was either a giddy, stupid girl who thought she could get away with adultery—or a naive girl who was set up by enemies of the Boleyns. Mistresses can sometimes be relocated, moved on, married off, and survive the relationship; but spare royal consorts can’t be divorced so readily unless they have royal families to safeguard them, or are themselves incredibly powerful, as for instance, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was a power to equal Henry II. I’m descended from Anne Boleyn’s aunt, and have been rather personally interested to dig up what was going on with that relationship, and from all I can figure, there were the Boleyns hot for intrigue and power, and several other families and persons equally dedicated to seeing them lose influence. The whole family gambled bigtime, under the leadership of Anne’s father, and they blew it, because of Anne.
Anne was not up to the game, and either chose a really bad time to do a teenaged rebellion against her situation, or was just so sure she could trust the people around her, that it was ok to meet people after hours, etc. Henry was thus placed in a Position, and either had to defend her—having very little encouragement from his other advisors to do so, and knowing that if she should have a child, he would have the embarrassment of not knowing whose it was—politically significant and troublemaking in the extreme; or he could rid himself of the Boleyns, who had been unpleasantly pushy, and try again. Henry had come out of the Wars of the Roses, knew he was physically at the end of his rope, and that the Wars could so easily start up again. He believed if he didn’t have a strong heir, and in his mind, a male heir, it was very likely there would not BE an England when he went: France and Spain were lined up waiting. I don’t think he took his religion as seriously as he did his desire not to be the last English king—or to know England was going down in another civil war, with both Spain and France now having some claim on the country.
Not sure about the Wars of the Roses fears here. Henry’s father and grandmother (Henry VII and Margaret Beaufort) ruled for about a quarter century after Henrry plucked Richard III’s crown out of the mud of Bosworth Field. During that time they did a pretty good job of diluting what was left of the York and Lancaster bloodlines (at the request of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, they executed the best-qualified pretender as a pre-condition of their daughter’s relocation to England for her marriage to Prince Arthur).
Add another couple decades and I really don’t think Henry VIII was much worried about roses, be they red or white. The families he hassled with were the ones founded by his father’s warband/cronies, including the Butlers, who’d married a daughter off to the mercantile Boleyns in the usual cash-for-cachet ritual
Ah, yes, the Botelers/Butlers—et al! It’s certainly an interesting period. Wolsey, Pole, etc. There were ambitions under every rose bush, as seems, and the interests they represent are sort of a compendium of what was going on inside England and in Europe: I think one could teach a fascinating English history course just by figuring out who was up to what and why just in Henry’s court! I found this site, which is quite a nice little list of players. http://tudorhistory.org/people/
And if you want to know something about English history—Lynn is the person to ask! She’s really a fount of info on various personages!
The show is portraying her as politically naive, and as a young girl who, having gotten King Henry to make the ultimate declaration of love by divorcing his wife and marrying her, was entirely unprepared for the changes required to fill the role of wife and Queen instead of royal mistress. Most specifically, unable to handle the fact that she was no longer the center of the King’s attention, and totally unprepared for the reality that he would take other mistresses. It’s also a widely held view that Henry was much more interested in the chase than in what he actually caught, so her ploy of being desired but unobtainable outside marriage worked great as a mistress, but you can’t play that role as a wife. So a bit of both teenage rebellion and political naivety, I’d say.
There was a third person in that bed: Anne’s father—who was as determined a stage parent as ever walked.
Plus there was a lot about Henry by that time that would have been very unpleasant up-close-and-in-the-bedroom, and if young Anne couldn’t control her reactions in a marriage to which she was ordered—she could have really offended Henry, who had been young and handsome, and who now wasn’t. I think it was more than just the fact of Henry preferring the chase; that courtly love was something he could manage elegantly, but intimacy would have been different. That’s where I think Anne found herself out of her depth.
From what most historical renditions of Anne’s story protray, her real downfall was due to her inability to produce a male heir. Everything else was supposed to be just trumped up charges. After several miscarriages Anne only managed to produce one daughter. Edward VI was the son of wife #3 Jane Seymore. Edward was never strong and only lived 6 years past his father. He would have never been physically up to the adventure Twain put him through in “The Prince & The Pauper”. Most belive that Edward’s poor health was most likely due to congenital STDs, inherited from Henry. The Irony to Henry’s quest for a son to suceed him was that his daughters, Mary (aka Bloody Mary, for her reign of terror on the protestants)and Elizabeth were both strong rulers. Elizabeth I, Anne’s daughter, was (arguablly) the strongest English monarch in history.
That, definitely. And the inconvenience of her family, who were politically aggressive beyond all good sense. Henry or someone close to him arranged a constellation of executions that would not only eliminate an inconvenient queen, but break the Boleyns, who were downright dangerous, and possibly already assessing the royal silverware. My line, out of the aunt, stayed out of it, or I wouldn’t be here. But the dustup got the side of the family that was politically active. The political ferment of Lancaster and York out of which Henry came to the throne was still bubbling, and there seems to have been a plot under every cabbage leaf. Henry taking down the Church was partly about wives, and partly about taking on the institution that was so incredibly powerful in Spain, and that moved its chesspieces (clerics) about the board and gathered information and pulled strings all over Europe. They were very, very chancy times. England had fought one set of wars (Maud and Stephen, in the 1100s) about the ties to the Holy Roman Empire, and the related-ness of most of the monarchs of Europe…it was 400 years after that, and the issue was still hot.) I don’t think most history books delve deeply enough into the traffic in information and influence conducted by the Church in Rome and Henry’s situation with Europe, when it comes to sorting out his actions.
People as late as 1960 in horsebreeding, dog breeding and other such believed that a dam could be ‘contaminated’ by a prior non-registered breeding, so that all future offspring would be halfbreed and should not be registered. So you may imagine how confused and erroneous belief was about offspring and infidelity in the human species back in the 1500’s.
STDs are certainly a good bet as a reason for problems in childbirth.
No question that Elizabeth was one of the smartest rulers in English history. And she had been educated in survival. Nowadays they’d have had the poor kid in counseling. In her day, they congratulated her on another birthday and made her queen of England.