Married Life.

“Mary’s accession to the throne thrust her into yet another nontraditional role: regnant queen. Mary was the first woman to claim the English crown since Empress Matilda did so in the twelfth century; unlike Matilda, she was the first woman to successfully hold the throne. In the intervening years a number of strong queen consorts had exerted influence over reigning kings, but not until Mary ascended to the throne did a woman have control over the realm in her own right. She ruled as a single queen, as her sister Elizabeth did after her, and also as a married queen, having decided to marry for the sake of producing an heir to the throne, like her father did before her. She would take on the roles of Virgin Queen, wife, and would-be mother, and she would usher in an unprecedented time period in the history of Great Britain, when a trio of female monarchs, Mary herself, her successor Elizabeth I, and Mary, queen of Scots, would rule England and Scotland for half a century. Yet Mary, as the first of these three remarkable rulers, had no role model (except perhaps her grandmother Isabel), and no precedent to follow in defining her untraditional role as queen regnant of England. She was the first woman to take the political helm of her kingdom at a time when the nature of female rule created ambiguous feelings at best. Yet she successfully established herself as both king and queen of England; negotiated with the Emperor Charles V for her own marriage with his son Philip of Spain, the highest ranking Catholic prince in Europe, in a marriage treaty that gave Mary autonomy; and reintroduced Catholicism to England. In spite of her reputation for failure, it has been said by one historian that her only real failure was in dying too soon and by another that her only failure was in dying without having produced a child of her own to follow in her footsteps. What if Mary’s two false pregnancies had resulted in the birth of a living child? This is another liminal moment in Mary’s life—had she been succeeded by a Catholic Tudor heir, her reputation as “Bloody” might not have had the staying power that it has had.”

— Princess, Bastard, Queen, Villain by Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, 2016. In The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I

Another thing I’ve been thinking about Freddie Fox is in one of his interviews the journalist writes that Freddie refers to Stephen Fry as a family friend. But I read this interview after I had seen the clip of QI where SF did an impression of Edward Fox, and I got it mixed up and became really confused, but later when I rewatched it I realised two people did impressions of EF in that clip and it’s actually not SF who implied EF was kind of homophobic. (Btw the term used is very curious and I could never understand: ‘a fleet of berties’ ?????? Came to think about it I did a search again and found a discussion that I’ve already bookmarked but it still doesn’t seem totally clear to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/s/4KPv0ELFuE)

Next week!

Steve: You said you put a cat in a box and buried it.

Reece: NO I DIDN’T

不会说话能不能别说话

今天外出那趟我心里还嫌她丢人呢 只不过默默地就像我在这个家养成的习惯一样有意见几乎从来不说 所以其实我们是出门互相嫌弃对方丢脸的程度了｜她还总以为她学过“心理”、别人（包括我）在想什么她都一清二楚 实际上今天那个人很明显就不是真认识过她 只不过通过她行为作出猜测而已 我看她因此自我感觉良好就想着没必要打破她的成就感 谁成想她越回味还回味出我的毛病了

给翻看旧帖的自己：千万不要再回国。记得这次回国回家的遭遇有多难受。身体+精神+work受到多少影响。

或许我应该转变心态 像14年他说的 即使徒劳无功

Um.

Just realized the timing of signing of the Declaration probably overlapped with the AIDS crisis.

原来现在看到何方两个字我会应激。最近总想起《新生代》和《青春舞曲2000》。幸好至少我曾有一个微博id出现在新闻截图里面。

uk visa is killing me