The Marchioness of Milford Haven

  

I just read a book on Victoria of Hesse and found it extremely interesting, along with a biography of all four of the Hessian princesses. From Tatler:

In 1884, Princess Victoria married her first cousin once removed, Prince Louis of Battenberg at her home city of Darmstadt. Her father, also called Louis, did not approve of the match: in his eyes, Prince Louis had very little money, and the marriage would inevitably involve his daughter moving away from Germany to live in Britain. However, he could not argue too strongly as he had secretly married his mistress, Countess Alexandrine von Hutten-Czapska, which sent shock-waves through royal families. He was subsequently forced to seek an annulment of the marriage. Princess Victoria had four children with her husband: Alice, Louise, George and Louis. They lived at a series of houses including Chichester, Sussex, and Schloss Heiligenberg. Princess Victoria taught all four of her children. Her younger son, Louis, remembered in 1968 that she was ‘a walking encyclopaedia. All through her life she stored up knowledge on all sorts of subjects, and she had the great gift of being able to make it all interesting when she taught it to me.’ (Read more.)

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Trump Vindicates “Conspiracy Theorists” on COVID-19 Origins

 From AMAC:

As part of his promise to ensure the truth about COVID-19 – and the attempted cover-up of how it spread around the world – is told, the Trump White House recently removed federal government web pages related to the pandemic and replaced them with a flashy new landing page that reads, “LAB LEAK: The True Origins of COVID-19.”

The page provides a concise yet information-packed synopsis making the case for the lab leak hypothesis. It notes specifically, “The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature,” and “By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.”

Most of the details on the page come from the aforementioned House report, which was led by former Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

As the report notes, recent analysis of the COVID-19 virus contradicts the narrative forwarded by Dr. Fauci and others at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In a 2020 interview with National Geographic, Fauci stated that scientific evidence “very, very strongly” supported the idea that COVID-19 “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” Rather, the virus most likely “evolved in nature and then jumped species,” he said.

But according to the report, there was never any strong evidence to rule out a potential lab leak scenario. Wenstrup discloses that “more and more senior intelligence officials, politicians, science editors, and scientists increasingly have endorsed the hypothesis that COVID-19 emerged as the result of a laboratory or research-related accident.”

One such official is former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who testified before the subcommittee that evidence for the lab leak theory is “long, convincing, [and] even overwhelming,” in contrast to the “spillover” theory, for which evidence is “nearly empty and tenuous.”

The report also notes that the NIH “funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology” (WIV)—an allegation Fauci has continually denied.

An affiliation between the NIH and WIV is concerning, as scientists at the latter institute are known for creating “chimeras, or combinations of SARS-like coronaviruses through genetic engineering” and employing “reverse genetic cloning techniques on SARS-like coronaviruses.”

As the new White House webpage notes, summarizing the subcommittee’s report, “All COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans.” This differs from past pandemics, where there were multiple spillover events.” Moreover, WIV researchers exhibited symptoms of the virus months before the earliest cases were officially documented. (Read more.)

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The Three Principles of Crafting a Great Life

 From Culturcidal:

Let’s start with…

1) You’re either growing or getting rotten: There is no standing still in life. In every part of your life, you’re either going forward or backward. Whether you’re talking about your health, your career, your relationships, your knowledge level, or your skills, you’re either improving or getting worse.

While it is impossible to work on everything at once, the moment you become content in an area and think you can afford to coast is the moment you start going backward.

Granted, not everything improves or decays at the same rate. At 20, if you’re already in a pretty good spot, you may be able to afford not to pay a lot of attention to your health, but at 40? At 60? You are going to rapidly decline if you aren’t working on getting better.

Right after the honeymoon, when everything is going great in your relationship, you may be able to skate a little bit in your relationship. But, what if you’re still doing it in year 5 when your sex life has dropped off a little? When your husband is finding excuses to get out of the house? When you realize you’re dressing like a frumpy old maid for your husband and saving your hot outfits for nights with the girls? You better get to work, or your relationship may be at risk.

You think you can coast and still get that promotion at work? Still get by with going through the motions when your kid is going through something? Do you think if you haven’t advanced as a human being from 20-to-40, you’re going to be doing fine? Not really.

Similarly, drinking with the boys a couple of nights per week can turn into an alcohol problem. Eating a little too much can turn into thirty pounds if you change jobs and go from moving all day to sitting at a desk. You can very easily wake up one day after five years of playing video games and watching reruns, then wonder, “What did I do the last few years of my life? How did I ever get into this big of a rut?” Some people will have something bad happen to them and mentally live in it for years, decades, or even a lifetime. Meanwhile, the longer they trap themselves in that negative space, the rottener their life becomes.

For growth, for happiness, for just plain old, being a better, stronger human being, you need to learn more, add new skills, and keep adding to your strengths. Even small consistent improvements over the course of a lifetime will take you further than a vast majority of the human race. On the other hand, decline is a choice and if you aren’t actively trying to improve, you’re declining. (Read more.)

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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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