Firstly,
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startrekholidays sign ups close this Saturday, see also
here. I've been participating for three years now, and it always feels lovely to return to my oldest fandom which keeps rejuvenating itself. Always, I've offered both some of my old favourites like DS9, and my more recent loves like Discovery. Fellow Trekkers not already participating, why not check it out?
Secondly,
yuletide nominations have started,
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cahn wrote
a delightful promo post for our 18th Century Frederician fandom, and this year, I decided to branch out by going back to the Renaissance, and wrote a
promo post for 16th century Hapsburg RPF, which I hereby inflict on you at my personal journal as well. (It's easier to archive this way.)
FANDOM NAME: 16th Century CE Hapsburg RPF
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Europe's most powerful family in the Renaissance has it all: lots of interesting, complex women who are power players in their own right and often mentor each other, dysfunctional - and sometimes surprisingly functional - intense family relationships, allies becoming enemies becoming allies, bastards (both the literal and the figurative sense, with the illegitimates usually not being the second kind of bastard), "us against the world" sibling bonding, intrigues, warfare, the occasional assassination - and a surprise! stepgrandmother/stepgrandson tryst. (Whether or not it counts as incest is up to you. It certainly did back then, though the participants were not blood related. Unlike in a lot of legitimate Hapsburg marriages.)
Let me introduce you to some of the players (links go either to wiki entries or are appropriating vids based on the Spanish tv show
Carlos Rey Emperador as well as some other series featuring several of the people nominated).
Margaret of Austria: daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, raised in France, married briefly to Catherine of Aragon's older brother the crown prince, son of Isabella the Catholic and Ferdinand) before he died (some idiots blamed intense married sex with Margaret), married next to the Duke of Savoy who also died four years in, had enough of marriages, successfully refused more, became Regent of the Netherlands instead and created one of the most splendid and cultured courts of Europe there. Kid!Anne Boleyn was put there by her father and presumably learned a lot. Having had a front row seat to the tragedy/horror that was the fate of her sister-in-law Juana (the maybe or maybe not Mad), Margaret raised several of Juana's children, notably future Emperor Charles as well as his sisters Eleanor and Mary. (More about them and the other siblings in a moment.) Once Charles had grown up, after a brief interlude he asked Margaret to remain as Regent for the rest of her life. She also was his chief negotiator in dicy treaties like the one with his arch enemy Francis I. of France called
Le Paix de les Dames as she and Francis' mother Louise did the negotiating. Margaret has been called the most gifted diplomat of her era, and she shaped the next generation of not just Habsburgs in so many ways. Among them:
Charles V. : The Emperor in whose realms the sun never set. (Original owner of that designation: the Brits reappropriated it centuries later.) (Margaret also had been a huge factor in nephew getting elected to that position.) Yes, he had the terrible Habsburg chin. He also was a mass of contradictions: a faithful Catholic whose army notoriously sacked Rome, one of the few loyal and loving husbands on the throne, but before his marriage embroiled in affairs which included one with his stepgrandmother, a son who never freed the mother whose crown he wore yet who resigned that crown (and all others) shortly after her death, the Emperor who
didn't arrest Luther despite believing him a heretic and who regretted not breaking his word in that regard for the rest of his life. The siblings closest to him were:
Eleanor of Austria: the oldest, raised with him. When she died, Charles said "She was fifteen months my elder, and I don't thin it will be as much time until I follow her", which became true. Closeness to Eleanor didn't stop him from using in her in unhappy political marriages (twice), once to his arch enemy (which made her Catherine de' Medici's stepmother). And yet, when Charles abdicated, she followed him to Spain and was one of the very few people allowed to visit in his retirement.
Mary of Hungary: like Charles and Eleanor, grew up on the Netherlands, and followed Margaret as Regent there eventiually, but not before being Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, flirting with Luther's teachings (he dedicated a book to her) to her brother's indignation, and experiencing the Ottoman invasion close-up. Mary was sharp-tongued, sarcastic, and frequently butting heads with Charles but nonetheless loyal to him. She found herself unable to work with nephew Philip and thus after Charles' abdication of power went with him and Eleanor to Spain, though unlike them she'd never lived there before. Mary died in the same year as Eleanor and Charles.
A Habsburg Siblings vid, featuring in addition to the sisters brother Ferdinand, who was Charles' successor as Emperor and Archduke of Austria (while Charles' son Philip got Spain, the Netherlands and the rapidly expanding and exploited overseas American colonies), and had a complicated and interesting relationship with him as well: Ferdinand, multilingual, more adaptable and more pragmatic might have been more suited to rule in the first place and they both knew it, but who was loyal (up to a point, the point being that Ferdinand had no intention of accepting Philip as future Emperor, which made for some stormy rows Mary tried to negotiate, and the eventual compromise of splitting up the Empire).
Margaret of Parma: Charles' illegitimate daughter from before his marriage, named after his aunt Margaret of Austria. Raised in the Netherlands with Margaret of Austria and then Mary of Hungary as mentors, first married to Alessandro de' Medici (either nephew or illegitimate son of Pope Clement), after his murder married to Ottavio Farnese (definitely illegitimate grandson of Pope Paul III, Ottovio's father died in a spectacular way even for the Renaisance, and her father may or may not have been involved), until Paul III's death de facto First Lady of Rome (she learned a lot), possibly had a flling with a female Tuscan poet, then was Regent of the Netherlands for her half brother Philip of Spain (the one with the Armada, Elizabeth's arch enemy) , which was a trial mostly because Philip was utterly unable to compromise and no sooner had Margaret managed to get anywhere near a solution did he ruin it. He also inflicted his most feared general on her, the Duke of Alva. Working with Alva proved to be so utterly impossible that Margaret resigned her position and went back to Italy. Where she met her other half-brother, Juan de Austria, whose mother is the last lady I need to tell you about, to wit:
Barbara Blomberg: (linking the German wiki entry here because it contains more interesting details than the English one): widower Charles V. had a brief affair with her which resulted in Juan de Austria, future national Spanish hero. Juan got raised in Spain, Barbara got married off with a Charles-financed dowry to a respectable guy in his administration, but where things got interesting was once her husband (and father of her later children) had died in Brussels, and Barbara faced down the feared Alba (and later Philip of Spain himself) who wanted her to go to a nunnery while she wanted a merry retirement complete with wine, men and song. Eventually, Barbara won, and got both the estate, the money, and the liberty to do as she pleased.
Lastly:
A fantastic period appropriate soundtrack already exists, courtesy of the incredibly talented Jordi Savall! Listen and swoon. (I did.)
WHERE CAN I FIND IT: Biographies of Charles and at least one of the Margarets, not to mention his son Philip of Spain should exist in your local library; the linlks provided above might also prove helpful. Or as an introduction, you could stry scenes from the series
Carlos Rey Emperador subtitled in English, with the caveat that while I like the series, it's (Spanish-centric) fiction (for example, for a very different take on the whole Charles versus Francis I. drama, see John Julius Norwich's
Four Princes). It also manages to annoy me by slutshaming Barbara Blomberg. This said, it looks gorgeous and the actors are fine, and at times, it's excellent with the complexity of everyone's feelings, like the one where teenage Charles and Eleanor meet for the first time since their earliest childhood their (imprisoned) mother Juana again, which you can see
here.
