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Post by Woland on Mar 26, 2020 13:58:41 GMT -5
Ivan IV a.k.a Ivan the Terrible (1530 -1584)
Losing his father at 3 years of age and mother at 8, Ivan was too young to rule as Grand Prince of Moscow, instead the Boyar families bickered over regency of the realm. Growing up in a paranoid environment of backstabbing, scheming and double-crossing wasn't helpful for the future autocrat. He crowned himself Tsar of all the Russias at 16, married his first wife Anastasia Romanovna just 2 weeks later. In his time he conquered Kazan to the south-east, sacked Novgorod to the north, failed to gain access to the Baltic in the north-west and kickstarted the conquest of Siberia to the east. He had 7 wives (3 possibly 4 weren't recognised by the Orthodox Church), beat his pregnant daughter-in-law and (possibly) murdered his own son in haste. In addition to all that he temporarily abdicated for a year, saw Moscow burn down (twice) and kept up a long-distance correspondence with Queen Elizabeth I, he even wanted to marry one of Lizzie's distant relatives before he died in 1584. For better or worse he created the template for the Russian autocrat ruling by divine right. |
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Post by Woland on Mar 28, 2020 16:06:29 GMT -5
Lev Tolstoy by Ilya Repin, 1887
Born to an aristocratic family (his father fought in the war against Napoleon), Lev Tolstoy studied law and oriental languages at Kazan University, served in the Crimean War (his "sketches of Sevastopol earned him early acclaim) and later found eternal fame as the author of War & Peace and Anna Karenina. Later in life he became something of a Christian Anarchist, wanting to renounce all his fame and money to live an ascetic life. Surprisingly he never won a Nobel Prize.
This portrait was done by one of Russia's finest painters when Lev was 59 years old, 10 years after Anna Karenina and 12 years before Resurrection (his final novel).
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Post by The Duchess on Mar 29, 2020 10:16:05 GMT -5
King James II of England & VII of Scotland (1633-1701, r. 1685-1688) James was the second-eldest son of King Charles I and Henrietta Maria. For a royal heir, the Duke of York had a very loving childhood for the first nine years of his life: he lived with his siblings, played with his parents (yes!), and didn't want for anything. However, when the English Civil War broke out in 1642, the happy idyllic life enjoyed by the royal family was shattered. A few years later, a teenaged James, along with two of his siblings, was virtually held as prisoner by the Roundheads. Seeing his chance to escape, James asked Elizabeth and Henry to join him in a game of hide-and-seek, with him hiding. He apparently did himself exceptionally well, and after some time, Elizabeth and Henry gave up on trying to find their brother. James had taken this time to go back into the castle, dress up in one of Elizabeth's gowns, and escape the country incognito. During this charade he did very ladylike things, such as put his leg up on the table to fix his stocking, and refused to let any woman help him to undress. One person figured out who he was, and James confirmed his identity. Thankfully, the man was a royalist, and no harm came to the fugitive duke. He made it to the Continent, where he remained with his surviving siblings (Charles, Mary, Henry, and the toddler Minette) until 1660, when Charles was recalled to England and asked to take his place as king. During his exile, James was a soldier, and upon his return to England, he took the reins of the navy, finally fulfilling the role that his title gave to him: Lord High Admiral. Just like his brother and the gaggle of rakes around him, James was a prolific philanderer and womaniser, openly pursuing any pretty young woman at court, much to the chagrin of his wife, Anne Hyde. One contemporary proclaimed him "the most unguarded ogler of our time," ranking him above even Charles II! By the end of the 1660s, he had converted to Catholicism, at the behest of Anne. It was a bit of an open secret until the Test Act was passed in 1673, which forced all government officials to swear not only allegiance to the king, but also to Anglican theological tenets if they wanted to keep their station. James, who was actually very principled, refused to do so, and resigned from his position in the Navy, thus making his conversion a public affair, much to Charles' despair. When Anne died, James had a marriage arranged to a young Italian Catholic princess, which was also a matter that upset many, many people.
The fact that Charles had no heir by Catharine of Braganza and that his heir presumptive was an unabashed papist made the political atmosphere of the later 1670s and 1680s an exceptionally slippery and dangerous one. Catholics were despised in England, and as James would inherit his throne, everything that Charles had done to rebuild the monarchy would be destroyed upon his brother's accession. Nevertheless, Charles wouldn't accept Parliament trying to meddle in the succession. The issue over James became so contentious that Charles was obliged to send his brother, sister-in-law, and their children into exile for their own safety; first to Belgium, and then to Scotland. By 1681, Charles had had enough of Parliament trying to exclude James on account of his religion, and had it dissolved. It had been sitting since the 1660s. When Charles fell fatally ill in winter 1685, his brother was by his side for the entire time; he ordered the doctors around, and fulfilled one of Charles' last wishes: to be reconciled to the Catholic Church. James became king on 6 February 1685. Like his brother, he tried to pursue religious toleration and had a somewhat autocratic bent, but unlike Charles, he didn't have any political finesse. His attempts to push legislation pertaining to toleration of Catholics and repeatedly packing and dissolving Parliament made him quite disliked, and he was overthrown by his son and daughter-in-law in the so-called "Glorious Revolution", which I posit was little more than a palace coup. At any rate, after suffering a nervous breakdown and a three-day-long nosebleed, James decided that enough was enough. He wasn't going to be made a martyr like his father by staying, nor did he want to plunge his country back into a civil war. Instead he tried to flee England. His first attempt failed, however; he was captured, strip-searched, taunted, held prisoner. He managed to escape and finally succeeded in getting a boat to France, where he was welcomed by his cousin, Louis XIV.
In 1691, he made an attempt to reclaim his throne, but that failed. The catastrophe of the Boyne was the final nail in the coffin of this round of Jacobite rebellions, and James sunk into a bitter, profoundly depressed old age; he would do mortifying penances to the point where his priests were afraid that he would end up killing himself (James had indeed expressed the wish to die, but as a good Catholic, suicide was, quite obviously, not an option). He finally did die after suffering a stroke in autumn 1701, a few weeks shy of his 68th birthday. He was interred in France, but the French Revolution saw his grave absolutely destroyed.
I could write about him for ages, but I think this is lengthy enough as is. I plan on, eventually, writing a biography on him, so... Fingers crossed?
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Post by Octavio on Mar 29, 2020 10:51:30 GMT -5
 Irineu Evangelista de Souza, more known to us Brazilians as Baron of Mauá, was an enterpreuner, weaponsmith, banker and capitalist who lived during Emperor Pedro II's reign, in the Empire of Brazil. He was born in 1813, when Brazil was still part of the United Kingdom of Portugal Brazil and Algarves, but it was during Pedro II's reign that Mauá came to be known. He was born into a middle class family in Southern Brazil, and instead of trying to amss wealth with the growing coffee industry, Mauá studied and honed his skills in commerce, which eventually led him to try and make Brazil an industrial powerhouse. He was responsible for many of Brazil's railroads - most of them still in use - and to make a telegraph link between Europe and South America, using underwater cable systems. He tried to ennact the laissez-faire system in Brazil, where the society was still based on slavery and rural production, and he also tried to bring English machinery, since he studied in England. He was part of the Liberal Party in Brazil, and was a fierce opponent to slavery. That made him an enemy to the Conservative Party, and conservatives in general, specially among the Coffee Barons around São Paulo, who where threatened by a growing industry, that could diminish their political power. The conservatives used their influence to enact laws that eventually led to Mauá's bankrupcy. And the Emperor, while could have used his powers to save his entrerpeuner, thought that it would be the best to avoid a political crisis. Mauá lost most of his power and richies, dying a few weeks before the fall of the Empire and proclamation of the First Brazilian Republic. |
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Post by Woland on Mar 29, 2020 12:37:49 GMT -5
Modest Mussorgsky
If you were terrified by the winged devil scene in Fantasia, you can thank Mussorgsky for the soundtrack. In his late teens he left the military to pursue his musical career, eventually he was recognised as a member of "The Five" along with Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Cesar Cui. Despite the operas and piano works, Mussorgsky struggled with alcoholism his life, particularly with the deaths of so many close friends and family. This portrait was finished just days before he died at the age of 42.
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Post by Windischer on Mar 29, 2020 12:48:36 GMT -5
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Post by The Duchess on Mar 29, 2020 18:27:32 GMT -5
Octavio : I've never heard of coffee barons before! Hopefully you'll share more information with us in the future.
 Aphra Behn (1640-1689) Poet, playwright, spy, staunch royalist, potential Catholic (!!!), libertine: Aphra Behn's life seems almost fantastical. Not much is known about her earliest years, which is to be expected, due to her past in espionage. Many rumours about her pre-court life swirl, but it is hard to pin any of them down and truly evaluate their veracity. We do know a bit about her, however. Aphra is most famous for being one of the first Englishwomen to make a career from writing, and her plays were staged by both the King's Company and the Duke's Company. It's interesting to note that the Restoration saw professional actresses establish a career and make a name for themselves. Working within the circles of the court, of course, lead her into a liaison with James, Duke of York, whom she would later vehemently defend during the Exclusion Crisis. Like her male contemporaries, Aphra had no qualms about dealing with illicit sex and scandal in her many plays. One poem, The Disappointment, dealt with a woman's disappointment upon the discovery that her lover suffered from impotence. Her plays and poems concerned themselves primarily with sex, sexuality, pleasure, and a woman's lot. Beyond this, she associated with the coterie of debauched, irreverent wits at court, among them John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and Lord Buckhurst. She didn't limit her affairs to only men, however: she had a public fling with Hortense Mancini, mistress of Charles II (and who also, very likely, had an affair with James, who was married to her cousin). The introduction to one of her works, The History of the Nun, is said to be a love letter to Hortense. When a critic skewered one of her plays for its content, Aphra replied in the introduction of her next poem, saying that the man is only complaining because a woman wrote such things, and that he wouldn't have quailed had a gentleman wrote so bawdily.
Aphra was active in the political world as well; she worked as a spy for the English crown, operating within enemy territory in Antwerp. When political parties began to form during the tumult of the 1670s and 1680s, Aphra quickly sided with the fledgling Tories, whose main goal at that time was to secure the succession and keep Charles' younger brother and heir presumptive, James, in his rightful place. She even went so far as to write a play lambasting James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, Charles' eldest illegitimate child, and the darling of the exclusionist Whigs. The king did not take kindly to this, and Aphra found herself arrested, but was released shortly after. For all intents and purposes, she was a staunch royalist, fervently supporting the Stuarts. Aphra would turn her pen against the Whigs who jostled and jockeyed for exclusion, decrying them as nothing more than the heirs of the Commonwealth crowd. When the braying of the exclusionists reached a fever pitch and Charles was obliged to send James into exile, Aphra dedicated one of her plays to him. Her sympathy for James seems to have been a common theme throughout her life, all the way up until her death in 1689. Following James' deposition, Aphra was approached by Bishop Gilbert Burnet and asked to write a piece welcoming the new monarchs, William and Mary. Aphra flat-out refused, and died soon after, aged just 48.
In her life, she produced 19 plays, making her one of the most productive playwrights of the Restoration. Here is the text of the aforementioned introduction to The History of the Nun:
I feel like it may be worth noting that Aphra's lover, Hortense, also had an affair with one of Charles' daughters by Barbara Villiers. I don't know if Aphra ever had a relationship with Charles himself, but at this point, absolutely nothing would surprise me.
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Post by Woland on Mar 30, 2020 11:08:19 GMT -5
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Ever since the age of 3 she talked about having "visions" which she experienced throughout her life. Her family sent her to a monastery where she became Abbess, and after her death she was granted Sainthood.
Not only did she compose music - making her one of the earliest composers whose work still survives - she also wrote on theology, medicinal science, the human body and a morality play or two. Shirley she's an excellent rolemodel for feminists.
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Post by Steenie the Queenie on Mar 30, 2020 19:42:44 GMT -5
Cicero came from humble beginnings, having been born around 103(ish) BCE, and finally passing away in 43 BCE. The man was hailed as one of the most frightful conservative reactionaries in the Senate, and was one of the few not involved in the final plot to assassinate Caesar, having been left out due to mistrust from the conspirators. In this, for a second time, Cicero would not be the one to "Save the Republic".
Truthfully hailed by many as to be the saviour of the Roman Republic in the year 63 BCE, whereby he enacted the Senatus Consoltum Ultimum (My specific use of this act as a source and as being used by Cicero himself comes from Appians history of Rome which can be located here: www.loebclassics.com/view/appian-roman_history_civil_wars/1913/pb_LCL004.3.xml?result=10&rskey=2fBLGW). When enacting this act in question, Cicero had been charged by the Senate to put down a conspiracy, whereby a disgruntled senator after power within the Roman government hatched a conspiracy. Catiline, at the head of the conspiracy, aimed to kill Cicero as well as many Roman senators in order to seize power for himself. With this, Cicero arguably saved the Republic by having a number of the conspirators executed without trial, so invoking the enatus Consoltum Ultimum, whereby he was legally allowed to be above the law so as to save the Republic. With the Catilinarian conspiracy crushed, Cicero cemented himself as a champion of peace and freedom, until the eventual rise of power seen by Gaius Julius Caesar only years after his efforts.
With this move, Cicero was initially hailed as a saviour of the Republic, being granted the title "Father of the Republic". Alongside this, Cicero is noted as having brought deep thought and almost Laconic wit into the Roman political sphere, and is to be considered one of the greatest, and perchance most influential politicians of all time. This was true both before and after his exile at the hands of Caesar, mind you.
Despite this, Cicero met his match in Caesar, and indeed within his adopted son Octavian, and with Caesar continually chipping away at the already crumbling foundations of the Roman Republic, all he could do was stand by and watch in exile, as the thing he loved the most, was slowly ruined and destroyed.
Images taken from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero
Other Sources Used: The Parallel Lives by Plutarch, published in Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1919. The Life of Julius Caesar.Attachments:
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Post by Woland on Mar 31, 2020 5:00:59 GMT -5
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known as Stendhal (1783-1842)
Better known for his two novels "The Red & the Black" along with "The Charterhouse of Parma", before his literary career Stendhal served in the French Army; he was Commissioner of War Supplies during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.
The unofficial "Stendhal syndrome" - named after Stendhal's experience in Florence - is when a person experiences a draining sense of ecstasy from viewing objects of extraordinary beauty.
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