The King's Touch

I knew the French and English monarchs prayed over those afflicted with scrofula but I did not know it was done in Scotland. When Charles I was crowned King of Scots in June, 1633, he continued the ancient ceremony. From The Scotsman:

Charles had already been crown by the English in 1626, this was the first coronation in Scotland since that of King James VI in 1567, and more notably, the first time an adult had been crowned as our monarch since that of James IV in 1458, who was 15, not an adult? Okay let’s go further back to King James I, he was 30, happy now? The abbey of Scone, traditional place of coronations up to 1424, had been destroyed, and for this occasion the ceremonial was located in the remains of Holyrood abbey, which had seen the coronation of King James II in 1437.

All that remained of the abbey was the nave, the remainder of the church having been demolished in 1570, and the structure was now restored for the occasion. Charles was baptised in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood Palace in 1600 by David Lindsay, Bishop of Ross, and created Duke of Albany, the traditional title of the second son of the King of Scotland.

[...]

While researching this I found an article about Charles and the “laying on of hands” a ceremony he performed while at Holyrood, a practice said to have been performed by all the Stewart monarchs but discontinued by the Hanoverian’s. Bonnie Prince Charlie though is said to have performed it during the 45. (Read more.) 

This is of particular interest to me since Louis XVI was a direct descendant of Charles I. King Louis treasured the ancient healing ceremony and celebrated it several times a year, not just at his coronation, as described in my book.

More HERE.

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Maryland’s Energy Crisis Is a Choice

 From Brian Chisholm:

Maryland’s soaring electricity bills are not a mystery, an accident, or an unavoidable act of nature. They are the predictable result of deliberate policy choices and Maryland families are being forced to pay the bill.

A new fifty-state analysis from Energy Bad Boys exposes a widening divide in American electricity prices. In 2011, average prices in Democratic-led states were reportedly 44% higher than in Republican-led states. By 2025, that gap had widened to 61%. Since 2018, prices in blue states rose 43%, compared with 22% in red states.

That does not prove that party control alone determines a state’s electric bill. Geography, fuel mix, weather, infrastructure, taxes, and market structure all matter. But the pattern is too large and too consistent to ignore: states that prematurely close dependable power plants, restrict natural-gas infrastructure, and impose increasingly aggressive mandates tend to make electricity scarcer and more expensive.

Maryland is a case study in what happens when political ambition outruns engineering and economics. (Read more.)

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The 'Real Indiana Jones'

From BBC:

In 1911, a US professor claimed he had discovered the ancient mountain stronghold of the last Incan king deep in the Peruvian Andes. Yet 53 years later, another explorer proved he was mistaken – and shortly afterwards, a BBC crew followed his trail.

"No one now disputes that this was the site of ancient Vilcabamba." So wrote the Yale academic who brought the Peruvian ruins of Machu Picchu to global attention in 1911. Hiram Bingham III was recruited by locals to look for a lost Incan city fabled for its hidden treasures – and he firmly believed that's what he had found.

Yet 50 years later, Bingham's conviction was challenged by another US explorer nicknamed "the real Indiana Jones". In August 1964, Gene Savoy claimed to have found the same lost city – around 60km (37 miles) northwest of Machu Picchu. He believed his expedition had identified the mountain stronghold of the last Incan king at Espíritu Pampa (the "Plain of the Spirits" or Vilcabamba), a set of ruins in remote cloud forests, high above a tributary of the Amazon. 

Just six weeks after Savoy's discovery, a BBC crew followed in his footsteps, travelling by rubber dinghy (and capsizing) on rapids, ascending steep canyon slopes with mules, and hacking through jungle to the site. "Scraps of information they'd picked up on the way made them doubt some of Savoy's claims," revealed the presenter. "But, having come so far, they had to get on and see for themselves."

The stakes were high. Perhaps they would find "the heart of an unknown city, where it seems likely the last Inca emperor gathered the remnants of his people". (Read more.)

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The Remarkable Rise of Empress Theodora

 From Risto Gjorgjiev:

 Born around 500 AD in the vibrant city of Constantinople, Theodora’s early life was far from royal. Her father, Acacius, was a bear trainer for the city’s grand Hippodrome, a colossal stadium renowned for its chariot races and theatrical spectacles. After his untimely death, Theodora’s mother, a dancer and actress, found herself struggling to provide for her three daughters. To make ends meet, young Theodora was thrust into the world of entertainment, becoming an actress and dancer in the very Hippodrome her father had worked.

 The Hippodrome was not just a place of entertainment; it was the beating heart of Byzantine social life. Here, factions clashed, politics played out, and the mood of the populace was gauged. Theodora, with her keen observation, learned to read the crowd’s behavior, understanding their passions, grievances, and loyalties. This knowledge would later prove invaluable.

However, life in the limelight was not without its challenges. Theodora faced societal disdain due to her profession, which was often associated with promiscuity. Her travels across the Eastern Mediterranean exposed her to various cultures and experiences, including a tumultuous relationship with a Syrian official that left her stranded in North Africa.

In a twist of fate, Theodora’s return to Constantinople marked a new chapter in her life. Embracing Christianity, she left behind the world of entertainment and joined a community of devout women. It was during this period of reflection that destiny played its card: she caught the eye of Justinian, the nephew of the reigning emperor and the empire’s most eligible bachelor. (Read more.)

 The Mad Monarchist has a post about one of the most colorful women who ever lived, the Empress Theodora.

Together with her husband Empress Theodora oversaw the rebuilding of Constantinople into one of the most spectacular cities in history. She helped in the building of hospices, churches and refuges for the poor. She is also credited with influencing new laws to protect women, making rape and kidnapping capital offenses, no matter if the woman was noble or common born. Women could not be forced into the entertainment industry or prostitution and could not be put in prison for debts. Instead they were to be placed under the supervision of religious women to work off their debt. This was necessary because of the rape and abuse women often suffered in prison. She cracked down hard on prostitution, buying the freedom of many girls herself, meting out harsh punishment to their captors and setting up establishments to help them get back on their feet in legitimate ways. (Read more.)

Empress Theodora did much to protect women during her husband's reign. From The Collector:

The origins of women’s rights can be attributed to Empress Theodora. Probably her experience as a young woman marginalized by the institutional system of that time pushed her to work on the improvement of women’s rights in the Empire. She elaborated on The Corpus Juris Civilis, a series of juridical reforms included in Roman law, and laid the foundation for a framework for Western legal heritage for women’s rights, including the English Common Law, the American Constitution, and even contemporary international public law. Additionally, under Empress Theodora, rape became punishable by death. No matter their position or status, everyone present during the rape was affected by this rule, and the rapist’s property was handed over to the victim. (Read more.)

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The Death of Truth

 From Gavin Ashenden.at New English Catholic:

The death of Professor Jason Arday is a great tragedy, and those who pray will immediately want to pray for his soul, but not just for his own soul, but for the souls of those who manipulated, used and abused him by finding in him a useful instrument for the progressive fantasy of diversity, inclusion and equity.

Suicide always leaves anybody touched by it, which includes those who read about it, with a sense of guilt. We cannot escape the question of whether or not there was anything we could have done to save a life from despair, or whether there was anything we did to contribute to the despair?

And so, in order to face those questions, many of the people who found in Professor Arday a useful tool for their propagandisation of progressive ideology need to divert and deflect the blame to others.

Already the accusations have been made that those who asked questions about the truth were to blame for placing a fragile man under pressure, as if there is some kind of trade-off between personal fragility and claims for truth. (Read more.)

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The Absence of Young Male Novelists

 From Chronicles:

Acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates had no issue tweeting that “a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested.” And, without a hint of irony, followed up that statement with “this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own ‘privilege.’” Although she is willing to recognize that young white men may be talented and barred from literary opportunities, she cannot help but equalize the statement with ludicrous notions of “privilege” where there is anything but.

None of this is especially controversial within the industry itself. By 2021, there was not a single white male millennial on the Times’s “Notable Fiction” list; the same was true in 2022, and only one appeared in each of the next two years. Demographic transformation of American publishing is measured, publicized, and, in many quarters, celebrated. The question is not whether the literary establishment has changed, but whether its new priorities have altered the kind of literature it is capable of producing. If the aspiring Roth or McCarthy today finds fewer editors willing to take his manuscript seriously (not because of its prose but because of the demographic profile of its author), that represents more than an injustice to individual writers. It represents a narrowing of the imaginative possibilities of American literature itself.

Beyond the disparities in race among novelists and literary agents lies the much more pervasive racial disparity in short-form magazines where fiction writers can build a portfolio. These magazines brazenly cater to just about every favored identity group imaginable. They offer fee-free submissions for minority groups; they have exclusive windows to segregate who may submit; and they champion these groups as combating historical overrepresentation from white men. This, of course, can only go on so long before these identity groups, themselves, become the overrepresented ones.

The most commonly offered explanation for this obvious discrimination against white men is that publishing is simply “correcting historical imbalances.” An industry that once professed indifference to the identity of the author increasingly treats identity as a meaningful criterion in and of itself. Literary merit is now expected to coexist with representational goals, institutional diversity targets, and a moral vocabulary inherited from Marxist cultural theory. The result is a publishing culture that increasingly evaluates fiction not as art but rather as an instrument of social justice.

What does this mean for us? What does this mean for the West? (Read more.)

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Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche

Henriette-Marie de France

From History of Royal Women:

Queen Marie-Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I of England were two of the most notorious queens in European history. They both faced accusations that they had transgressed social, gender and regional norms, and attempted to defend themselves against negative reactions to their behaviour. Each queen engaged with the debates of her time concerning the place of women within their families, religion, politics, the public sphere and court culture and attempted to counter criticism of her foreign origins and political influence. The impeachment of Henrietta Maria in 1643 and trial and execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793 were also trials of monarchical government that shaped the English Civil Wars and French Revolution.

I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Palgrave Macmillan of Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie Antoinette by Carolyn Harris, which is a part of their Queenship and Power series. Marie-Antoinette has had much written about her, while Henrietta Maria seems to have been quite forgotten. I only recently received a new biography about her.

The comparison between Marie-Antoinette and Henrietta Maria is perhaps not one that immediately comes to mind, but both women lived in a time of civil unrest, albeit over 100 years apart. Both women were childless for the first part of their marriage and suffered for it. It’s a rather interesting comparison, and I especially enjoyed reading about Henrietta Maria’s impeachment, about which so little appears to have been written. Henrietta Maria managed to escape to France, but without her husband who was eventually executed in 1649. Marie-Antoinette and her family also attempted to escaped, but they were caught, and both Marie-Antoinette and her husband were executed by guillotine. (Read more.)

  My books on the two Queens available HERE. Share

Racialized DEI Hiring Is Bad for Everyone

 From AMAC:

Jason Arday was found dead on Friday. After large parts of the black Cambridge academic’s work and life story were revealed to be fraudulent, the 41-year-old chair of sociology of education resigned in early August and, many suspect, took his own life.

Western liberals have rushed to blame those who criticized Arday, accusing them of “racist” attacks that led him to commit suicide. But while Arday’s death is undoubtedly a tragedy, it does not illustrate the dangers of anti-black racism. Instead, it demonstrates the destructive nature of so-called “antiracist” DEI policies to everyone involved. Those who pushed Arday forward because of his race and not his merit and those who for years turned a blind eye to his dishonesty bear far more blame than any supposedly “racist” critics.

Jason Arday was the hero of a fairy tale irresistible to western liberals. The son of immigrants from Ghana to the U.K., he told people his childhood was spent in special education schools for physical and intellectual disabilities. He also said that he didn’t learn to speak until age 11 and to read until 18. Dyslexic and deaf in one ear, he said he developed epilepsy as a teen from enduring beatings by neighborhood kids. (Read more.)

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Did the Hittites Record the Fall of Homeric Troy in Cuneiform?

 From The Collector:

Homer’s account of the Trojan War in the Iliad, written in the 7th century BC, is one of the world’s most enduring stories. But was it purely fantasy, or based on real historical events? In the search for confirming evidence, scholars have examined clay tablets containing the historical archives of the Hittite kings at Hattusa. They preserve details of Anatolian politics in the 13th century BC, the time when the Trojan War was supposed to have been fought. While these administrative texts do not speak of golden armor or meddling gods, they do record a century of real conflict over the legendary city the Hittites called Wilusa, which many scholars believe was ancient Troy.

The Hittite Empire ruled over much of Anatolia throughout the Late Bronze Age, the era between approximately 1550 and 1150 BC. Numerous Hittite documents have been uncovered and translated. In particular, thousands of clay tablets were unearthed at Bogazköy in modern Turkey in the early 20th century, containing administrative records kept by Hittite royal scribes of the Hittite capital of Hattusa. This collection contains diplomatic letters between rulers, quite a few of which refer to attacks on western Anatolia by a nation called the Ahhiyawa. While not universally accepted, the majority of scholars agree that the Ahhiyawa were the Mycenaean Greeks. The ethnonym “Ahhiyawa” is held to be a Hittite version of “Akhaioi,” the Greek form of “Achaeans.”

As soon as these documents were uncovered and translated, historians began to realize their potential significance regarding the Iliad. According to Homer’s epic poem, a thousand Greek ships were launched against Troy in western Anatolia in the 13th century BC. This was not a war against just one city but against Troy’s many allies all over western Anatolia as well. Hittite documents dating to the same period appear to confirm that the Ahhiyawa were engaged in large-scale warfare in western Anatolia at this time. (Read more.)

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