Guinevere and Medieval Queens

From Medievalists.net:

Authors have given Queen Guinevere of the Arthurian stories a wide variety of personalities; she has been varyingly portrayed as seductive, faithful, “fallen,” powerful, powerless, an inheritor of a matriarchal tradition, weak-willed, and strong-willed.1 These personalities span eight centuries and are the products of their respective times and authors much more so than of any historical Guinevere. Despite this, however, threads of similarity run throughout many of the portrayals: she had power in some areas and none in others; she was involved in a courtly romance; and she did not produce an heir to the throne. None of these were unique to her, either; either stereotypes or literary convention demanded them all. I examine Guinevere’s portrayals by three influential medieval writers, Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, and Sir Thomas Malory, compare them to historical queens, and show that although their representations of her emphasized different aspects, together they add up to a portrait of a medieval literary queen both stereotypical and human. (Read more.)

 

 I never heard that the Cathars worshipped "Sophia" or "Wisdom." They worshipped the "Good God" but believed that the "Demiurge" was equally or almost as powerful. From Ancient Origins:

The earliest mention of Guinevere is in Geoffrey Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain . This book laid out the basics of the traditional Arthurian legend that later authors would use as a source for elaboration. It includes many of the legend’s central characters, but in more basic and less detailed forms.

This text refers to Guinevere as Gwenhuvara, which comes from the Welsh name Gwenhwyfar. The meaning of the name is not known, but we do know it references a female figure from Welsh mythology famed for her bad reputation. The name was associated with the idea of infidelity, and as such, was still used as a way to insult a young woman’s character up until the end of the 19th century.

In Monmouth’s version, Guinevere is simply described as Arthur’s queen and a great beauty descended from the Romans. According to the tale, Arthur leaves Camelot to wage war in Europe and leaves his wife and kingdom in the care of his traitorous nephew, Mordred. Mordred wastes no time in seducing Guinevere and taking the throne for himself. When Arthur returns, Guinevere flees the kingdom due to feelings of guilt and joins a nunnery. Mordred and Arthur go on to duel it out in a great battle that ends with them both mortally wounded.

Monmouth never goes into detail about the affair between Mordred and Guinevere. Authors who came slightly later, like Wace (1110-1174 AD) and Layamon (12th-13th century), were less generous in their depictions of Guinevere. These authors showed her as complicit in the coup. Most contemporary writers disagreed with this take, however, and usually depicted her as having been abducted by Mordred and being forcefully seduced. From these early versions of the tale, it is hard to learn much about Guinevere. She is never given much characterization; she primarily acts as a plot device. All we can really discern is that her character may be at least partly based on a figure from Welsh mythology . (Read more.)

 

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“I Am Not Suicidal”: Lawmakers Demand Answers After Epstein Accuser Found Dead

 From Vigilant Fox:

Story #1 - Conservative lawmakers are now raising SERIOUS questions about Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre’s sudden “suicide.”

Just three weeks ago, Giuffre claimed she had been in a car accident and had only days to live—describing a bizarre crash with a school bus going 68 miles per hour.

But strangely, Australian police said the accident was “minor,” and no serious injuries were recorded.

But Giuffre brought the receipts in her final Instagram post, which showed crash photos that looked anything but minor.

And now, she’s gone.

The official story? Years of trauma became too much to bear.

But here’s the thing: in 2019, Giuffre made it very clear she was NOT suicidal, even telling her therapist and doctor in writing. She warned that “too many evil people” wanted to silence her. Now those warnings feel chillingly prophetic.

Even more alarming, other Epstein survivors are speaking out—and they’re terrified.

Watch the full breakdown with Maria Zeee and hear the brave survivors in their own words. You need to see this. (Read more.)

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Liberal Shibboleths are Eroding

 From First Things:

Liberal shibboleths are eroding. Concerning abortion, several data points from November bear this out. According to exit polls, women aged sixty-five and over were the only female age cohort to vote as loyally for Kamala Harris as they had for Joe Biden. Younger women shifted away from the Democratic candidate, sometimes splitting their tickets to vote for both Trump and state-level ballot initiatives that favored abortion access. Many of those ballot initiatives succeeded, continuing a trend that has held since Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the enshrinement of legal abortion in the Constitution. But a ballot initiative is a single-issue vote by definition. Thus, though it can hardly be said that young women are becoming pro-life, neither can it be said that they are single-issue pro-abortion voters when it comes to choosing their elected representatives. A generation gap may be emerging, with the gray lobby wondering why young women can no longer be relied on to rally to pro-abortion candidates.

With a record number of votes expected to be determined by abortion preferences, 2024 was supposed to be the “abortion election.” Political strategists reasoned that women—especially women under thirty, four in ten of whom said during the fall that abortion was their top priority—would secure the presidency for Harris.

The election results paint a different picture. In exit polls, only 13 percent of young voters named abortion as their top priority, down from 44 percent in 2022. Harris lost support from women overall, compared to Biden: Whereas Biden had won women by fifteen points (57 percent to Trump’s 42), ­Harris won them by eight (53 percent to 45). ­Only in one age group, the sixty-five-and-over set, did Harris improve on Biden’s performance, taking 54 percent. Meanwhile, Trump won 4 ­percent more of the overall female vote against Harris than he had against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

A surprising share of Trump’s female swing was delivered by ­eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds. Youth turnout was lower in 2024 than in 2020, and though the majority of under-thirty women voted Democratic, the gender gap between young men and young women shrank, with 7 percent more women favoring Trump than had done so four years before. Only women aged sixty-five and over were as motivated by abortion as pollsters had predicted, according to post-­election analysis by the AARP.

Thus, the women who most ­reliably support the abortion industry and its candidates are those who least need its services. Well past their childbearing years, the sixty-five-and-over demographic has nothing personal at stake in the legality of abortion. Thus one pro-choice premise, that women vote in favor of abortion for pragmatic reasons, is not always true. The most reliable pro-abortion votes appear to be ideologically motivated, with women choosing Democratic candidates due to a belief that abortion access is a fundamental right. (Read more.)

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"The Song of Glen Dun"

"Spring" by Sir John Lavery

An old Irish song for May.

Sure this is blessed Erin an' this the same glen,
The gold is on the whin-bush, the wather sings again,
The Fairy Thorn's in flower,—an' what ails my heart then?
Flower o' the May,
Flower o' the May,
What about the May time, an' he far away!
Summer loves the green glen, the white bird loves the sea,
An' the wind must kiss the heather top, an' the red bell hides a bee;
As the bee is dear to the honey-flower, so one is dear to me.
Flower o' the rose,
Flower o' the rose,
A thorn pricked me one day, but nobody knows.
The bracken up the braeside has rusted in the air,
Three birches lean together, so silver limbed an' fair,
Och! golden leaves are flyin' fast, but the scarlet roan is rare.
Berry o' the roan,
Berry o' the roan,
The wind sighs among the trees, but I sigh alone.
I knit beside the turf fire, I spin upon the wheel,
Winter nights for thinkin' long, round runs the reel.
But he never knew, he never knew that here for him I'd kneel.
Sparkle o' the fire,
Sparkle o' the fire,
Mother Mary, keep my love, an' send me my desire!

The Madonna of the Lakes by Sir John Lavery

The song is found HERE as well. Share

Our Constitutional Republic is Being Restored

 

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Mary of Woodstock, Royal Nun

 From History...the Interesting Bits:

In 1285, a year after the death of Prince Alphonso, the king took his family on a progress into Kent. Edward went on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas Becket, at Canterbury, before spending a week at Leeds Castle with his family, followed by some hunting in Hampshire. It was at the end of this family holiday that they arrived at Amesbury priory in Wiltshire, where little Mary, still only 6 years old, was veiled as a nun; much to the delight of her grandmother, Eleanor of Provence, but to the consternation of her mother, the queen. Indeed, the Chronicle of Nicholas Trivet emphasises that Mary’s veiling was done by her father, at the request of her grandmother, but only with the ‘assent’ of her mother.¹

It may well be that Eleanor had reservations about her daughter’s vocation being decided at such a young age, or that she feared it was only being done so Mary’s grandmother, Eleanor of Provence, would have a companion in the abbey. After a long and eventful life, and with her health failing, the dowager queen took her own vows at around the same time and retired to Amesbury Priory for her final years, dying there in June 1291. Mary’s veiling had been in the planning for some years; Edward I had been in correspondence with the abbey at Fontevrault, the mother house of Amesbury, since 1282, when the little princess was barely 3 years old.

Eleanor’s reluctance, therefore, was probably more to do with when Mary was to become a nun, rather than the vocation itself; after all, the conventual life was considered a good career for a noble lady. The timing of her veiling may have been advanced not only by the failing health of Eleanor of Provence, but also by the imminent departure of Mary’s parents. Edward and Eleanor were about to embark for the Continent and were expecting to be in France for a considerable time, years rather than months. (Read more.)

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The Sale of Charles I’s Collection

Rubens' Crucifixion, similar to the one in Henrietta Maria's Chapel at Somerset House

 

From Kings, Collectors, and Paintings in the Seventeenth Century:

 The first “authorized moves” (Haskell) may have been carried out at the end of October, 1642. Nine months after the King left London, parliamentary troops seized Windsor Castle and removed the magnificent silver plate made by Christian van Vianen for the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter lost, presumably melted down. From early 1643 onwards, more systematic confiscation and destruction followed and an inventory was made of Queen’s “hangings and household stuff.” A Rubens’s altarpiece may have been thrown in the Thames and it may have had some connection with James I’s Catholic Secretary of State, Sir George Calvert.[1] This Crucifixion by Rubens definitely hung in the Queen’s Chapel, and it seems to have been a victim of Puritan anger. It is known that instructions were given to deface “superstitious” paintings in the chapel of St James’s Palace, but it is not known which, although it looks like Rubens’s altarpiece was destroyed by an enraged Parliamentary commissioner in March 1643 on site rather than being thrown in the river.[2] Despite this vandalism, the King’s pictures survived the war “relatively unscathed.” The King’s collection became a target for the Puritans in whom it aroused anger because of the large sums spent on it, at a time when Charles was engaged in levying taxes without summoning Parliament. (Read more.)

 

Stuart novel, HERE.
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The Last Modern Pope

 From First Things:

For me, the Francis years have the unmistakable sense of an ending, of a last hurrah. Nobody would have predicted that in 2013. To begin with, Francis was, quite simply, a phenomenon. For a while he was as unavoidable as Taylor Swift was last summer. The soundbites echoed through the media for days. The face—grandfatherly, shrewd, usually wearing a broad smile—was everywhere. The Paris Climate Agreement, the prevention of U.S. military intervention in Syria, the peaceful 2016 elections in the Central African Republic, and a surge in confessions in England were all attributed to his efforts.

Moreover, he was consistently surprising. Next to Francis, Donald Trump looked drearily predictable. Just when you were tempted to write him off as a liberal, he would poleaxe the German bishops or issue a thunderous statement on “gender ideology.” Just when you were relishing his comment that “If we don’t proclaim Jesus Christ . . . [w]e would become a compassionate NGO and not a Church,” he would release some turgid document composed in impeccable U.N.-speak. His sternest critics would find themselves floored by a public gesture of kindness or a beautiful mini-sermon on the love of God. Previously undreamed-of initiatives crash-landed on the Church: an Amazon synod; a synod on pretending not to want to change Catholic teaching on the sacraments; a synod on synodality; a ban on advertising the Latin Mass in parish bulletins; a cinematic collaboration with Wim Wenders; a deal to give the Chinese Communist party new powers over bishops and priests. Even the hideous cover-up scandals, like the Zanchetta and Rupnik affairs, had an insane, couldn’t-make-it-up quality to them. He visited sixty-eight countries, published millions of words, and rewrote swathes of canon law. This was a pontificate on a Napoleonic, a Henry VIII scale. You could almost miss, underneath it, the signs of an era coming to a full stop.

That era began in 1864, when Pope Pius IX outraged European and American opinion by condemning the notion that “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” It was, of course, a thoroughly modern sentiment. As Roger Scruton observed, one definition of “modernity” is the condition in which people go around thinking about what it means to be modern. And for the 150 years after Pius’s throwing-down of the gauntlet, there was a general impression that the Church should be thinking about it a great deal, and that the pope’s job was to define the Church’s relationship to the modern world. (Read more.)

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How The Dating Scene Became Apocalyptic

From The Daily Wire:

A big part of the problem is that we’ve reached peak feminism in 2025, with so many women opting out of dating entirely and not even pretending to want to settle down with a husband and children. According to a recently published Wall Street Journal article, this is mostly because they’re unhappy with their prospects.

“I’m financially self-sufficient enough to do these things [house hunting, having babies] myself,” one Boston-based single told the outlet. “I’m willing to accept being single versus settling for someone who isn’t the right fit.”

But what is “the right fit?” According to these women who are quick to swipe left on any man who isn’t 100% on board with their career ambitions, it requires an absolutely perfect meshing of interests, values, and goals, plus physical attraction, earning potential, and of, course, height. There is no room for compromise from these perfection-seeking women who say they’re just as content to live solo and brunch with their friends on weekends.

A Washington-based firefighter told WSJ she doesn’t want to be financially tied to a man. “If I need companionship, I volunteer at the dog shelter,” she said. (Read more.)

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