As someone who studies kingship and the idea of rulers to my fellow scholars who also study this stuff: why this incessant and persistent twee woobification of kings and queens?
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This is an honest question. I think that you can have a favourite ruler inasmuch as the one you find the most interesting. But I do not understand this attitude towards people of immense privilege whose social class was entirely arbitrary.
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And based on perpetuating the false ideology that certain people have the right to rule, and the very real consequence of murder and war to achieve power.
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Why this constant perspective of stanning queens? Eleanor of Aquitane would not be your friend or mine.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip
I think some portion of this, especially with female rulers, is about gender. Unless you invest a lot of time and study, women rulers are likely some of the only famous women you encounter. It feels good to point to powerful women as evidence that women have leadership capacity.
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Replying to @TheGlintOfLight @AdmiralHip
And then this also gets all tangled up in "girl power" stuff. We want curricula to be diverse and we want girls to know that they are more than wives and mothers to be, so we default to a simple gloss of historical women because the nuances can get kind of depressing.
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Replying to @TheGlintOfLight
Except that mentality of, well there were these powerful women@often ignores the class structures that are inherent and additionally perpetuates the idea that common women are of less worth to us as scholars, it perpetuates the idea that common women themselves were only wives
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @TheGlintOfLight
Or mothers, when while yes the reality is that most people led what we may consider a dismal life comparatively, but the nuances aren’t necessarily depressing. Women controlled money/finances, they participated in agricultural and house work, invented beer/mead and so on.
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While textual sources are thin for regular people, it’s a good reason to use other evidence such as archaeology to supplement.
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