As opposed to his son, where I would describe my opinion only getting slightly modified, not really changed, over the years, I really did do a turnaround on James. For a long time, basically neither of the two main associations I had when thinking of him were to his credit: a) when his mother was about to be executed, James lodged a token protest with Elizabeth but simuiltanously sent a letter to Leicester to ensure it wouldn't be taken too seriously, and b) he wrote one of those ghastly books encouraging witchhunts in the 17th century, with devastating results. Yes, I also knew that during his reign, the English equivalent of the Luther bible was created (i.e. just as Luther's translation of the bible into early modern German is a major major step in the develpment of the language and was to prove influential for writers up to and including the decidedly not religious Bertolt Brecht, the "King James bible" did the same for early modern English), but since as opposed to Martin L., James didn't do the translating himself, I did not consider this to be a plus in his favour.

I think the first to make me question this low or at least limited opinion was jesuswasbatman, who had just watched Howard Benton's play about James and Anne Boleyn (in two different timelines, obviously), and then deborah_judge who was also an advocate. A decade, some biographies and a few podcasts later... Okay, I admit it: He was, to tongue-in-cheekily quote a current day translation of a very different epic, a complicated man.

As to not making more than a token protest: given he never knew his mother (he'd last seen her when he was four months old and she had left the country when he was a little more than a year), and was raised by a gallery of her bitterest enemies who kept teaching him she was the worst, this is really not surprising. What is actually interesting is that both James and Mary inherited their Scottish throne as babies, had regents until they were adults and became responsible for a nation with a lot of internal strife, an uncomfortably powerful neighbour next door and nobles with a power that the British nobility had lost post Wars of the Roses, but the results when they took over became very very different. Yes, in a sexist age James had the advantage of being a man and also of not being a Catholic in a country with a majority Protestant population. But he still deserves credit for being the first Scottish ruler in a long time who managesd to stablize the country, lead it well and avoid costly wars with the English. (The fact that he was King of Scotland for a staggering 58 years - to the 22 years of his English and Irish Kingship - tends, I'm told, to be overlooked on the English side of the border in the public consciousness. Even if you discount his childhood and youth., i.e. the years before his personal rule, that's still an impressively long reign.) And he did after a childhood which was if anything even tougher than that which had served as a tough apprenticeship to Elizabeth Tudor (and was so crucially different to his mother Mary's childhood as the darling of the French court): his uncle and first regent, Moray, was shot in 1570, followed by his second regent and grandfather, whom a five years old James saw bleeding to death because Lennox was equally assassinated. This bloody regent turnover continued and got accompagnied with uprisings. When James was eleven, Stirling Castle was raided by Catholic rebels. At sixsteen, he was kidnapped by William Ruthven, earl of Gowrie, and imprisoned for ten months. And then there was his teacher, George Buchanan, who managed to get him fluent in Scots, English, French, Greek and Latin, but did so via constant beatings and humiliations. Buchanan had the declared aim of teaching him about not just his mother being the worst but all the Stuarts being rotten and that as a King he was to exist for his subjects, not for himself. Unsurprisingly, what James actually learned when those lessons where conveyed via beatings was to dissemble, and conclude that it wasn't his ancestors but but rebels who were "monstrous". He also had Buchanan's writings on limited Kingship forbidden as soon as the man was dead.

By now, I've come across a considerable number of royals whom in modern terms we'd classify as gay or at least as bi with a strong preference for men, of which James definitely was one, and who were married because that was par the course for royalty. This often, but not always, means misery for their wives. Compared some of the truly castastrophic to at least very cold marriages (Henriette Anne "Minette" of England/Philippe d'Orleans "Monsieur", Edward II/Isabella of France, Frederick II of Prussia/Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick etc.), James and Anne of Denmark didn't do badly. They even had a sort of romantic origin story, in that Anne, after being married by proxy as was usual, was supposed to be delivered to Scotland via ship, terrible weather made it impossible and her ship ended up in Norway instead, so young James, for the first and last time making a grand romantic gesture for a woman instead of a man, instead of waiting tilll weather and sea were calm enough for Anne to make the trip from Norway instad took the boat to Norway himself, united with his bride and brought her home to England. (His son Charles would decades later try to accomplish something similar by travelling to Spain to woo the Spanish Infanta. It did not have the same results.) This resulted in a good start to the marriage, but also in a dark time for some other women in Scotland because James believed all the bad weather was undoubtedly the result of witchcraft and someone had to be punished for that. Later on, the biggest disagreements James and Anne had weren't about his male favourites but about who got to raise their children, specifically the oldest son, Henry. Anne wanted to do this herself. James, whose own childhood had been a series of bloody turnovers in authority figures (see above), wanted Henry to be raised in the most secure castle in Scotland and by an armed to the teeth nobleman. This made for a lot of rows and repeated attempts by Anne to get her oldest son by showing up at his residence and demanding he be handed over, with the last such occasion coming when James was already en route to England to get crowned.

James' iron clad conviction of the dangers of witchcraft still is chilling to me, but even that is more complicated than, say, the utter ghastliness that was going on in German speaking countries in the 17th century, because James in his later English years actually paired his anti-witchcraft attitude with the admoniishment of judges not to be fooled by conmen and -wen, superstituions and local feuds, and the few times he got personally involved in England (as opposed to earlier in Scotland) it was in the favour of the accused. This doesn't mean women and men didn't die on other occasions in the realm(s) ruled by a monarch known to fear witches, but I still can't think of a parallel among the "theologians" who wrote their anti-wtiches books simultanously in my part of the world, and who never would have admitted the possibility of false accusations, let alone admonished their judges to be sceptical and discerning.

Some of what got James a bad press back in the day now looks good to us, most of all the fact he genuinely and consistently disliked war. BTW, this was less different from Elizabeth I's own attitude than historians and propagandists for a long time presented it. Elizabeth had avoided actual war with Spain for as long as she could, and hadn't been very keen on supporting the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands directly, either, much preferring it if she got someone else to do it. Once the war was there, of course, it had to be fought, but those eighteen years of war had left both England and Spain exhausted and with enormous debts, and one of James' signature policies, the peace of Spain, was undoubtedly to the benefit of both countries. That in the later years of his reign a majority of people yearned for war with Spain again, for a replay of the late Elizabethan era's greatest hits (without considering the expense of all that national glory), and that James still held out against it is to his credit, especially given the results when his son Charles actually pursued such a policy after ascending to the throne. Something that's also to James' credit as a monarch though not as a father is that he kept England out of the 30 Years War while he lived despite the fact that his daughter Elizabeth and his son-in-law were prime protagonists in its earliest phase and might never have become King and Queen of Bohemia if the Bohemians hadn't believed that surely, the King of England (and Scotland, and Ireland), leader of Protestants, would support his daughter against the Austrian Catholic Habsburgs if they elected his son-in-law as a counter condidate to said Habsburg. He also was ruthless enough to deny his daughter and son-in-law sanctuary in England once they were deposed and on the run, which wasn't very paternal but understandable if you consider that this was before his son Charles was married (let alone had produced an heir of his own), meaning that if he, James died and Charles ruled, Elizabeth was the next in the line of succession, and the thought of her husband, the unfortunate "Winter King" of Bohemia whose well-meaning but inept leadership had kickstarted the war, becoming the King of England if anything should happen to Charles gave James nightmares. In conclusion: not participating in one of the most brutal wars fought in Europe ever and in fact trying his utmost diplomatically to prevent it was a good thing. But in centuries where "manly" and "warrior" were going together in the public imagination, it's no wonder that it didn't make James popular.

Mind you: a misunderstood humanist, James wasn't, either. And something that can definitely be laid as his doorstep (though not exclusively so) is that his relationship with the English (as opposed to Scottish) Parliament went from bad to worse every time there was one during his reign, which definitely played a role in what was to come once his son Charles became King. (ironically, Prince Charles had his first and as it turns out last time as a firm favourite of Parliament when he led the opposition to continued peace with Spain and the pro War party in the last year of his father's life.) Why do I qualify this with "not exclusively"? Because Parliamentarians didn't always cover themselves with glory, either. I mean, as I understand it, James' first English parliament went like this:

James: Here I am, fresh from Edinburgh, your new King. Thanks for all the enthusiasm I encountered on the road, guys. Well, seeing as I am now King of England, Scotland and Ireland, I propose and will coin a phrase: A United Kingdom of Great Britain! How about that? Starting with an English/Scottish Union, not just by monarch but by state?

English Parliament: NO WAY. Scots are thieving beggars who are by nature evil and will deprive us of our FREEDOM and RIGHTS and PRIVILEGES if they are treated as citizens of the same country. WE HATE SCOTS. You excepted, because that would be treason.

(Meanwhile in Scotland: Are ye daft, Jamie? We hate those English murderous bastards!!!!!)

James: So basically no one except for me wants a United Kingdom of Great Britain, got it. I still think I'm right and you're wrong, but fine, for now. How about some money for me, my queen, my kids and my lovers?

EP: About that....

Which brings me to the topic of the Favourites. Most monarchs have them. They're usually hated. (It's easier to count the exceptions.) Ironically, one of the very few exceptions, the only one of Elizabeth I's favourites who wasn't hated while being the Favourite, the Earl of Essex, had all the qualities royal favourites are usually hated for - he held monopolies that provided him with lots of money (and one of the fallouts between Essex and Elizabeth was when she refused to prolong said monopoly), his attempts at playing politics were disastrous (and also outclassed by his rival Robert Cecil), and the only thing he had going for himself really were good looks and cutting a dashing figure when raiding Spanish coastal cities. In over forty years of Elizabeth's reign, a court culture wherein the male courtiers played at being in love with the Queen had been established, and certainly all her long term favourites were framing their relationship with her in romantic language. Now presumably when James became King, people who hadn't been paying attention to gossip from Scotland had expected things to go back to the Henry VIII model where certainly the King still had his faves but the romantic language was out . But lo and behold, while it's impossible to prove James actually had sex with any of the young handsome men he favoured, the language used in his letters to at least two of them (Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham) is certainly suggestive, and he did kiss them and others in public. While men kissing men in that day and age wasn't necessarily coded erotic, especially coming from a monarch, James did it often enough for ambassadors to notice and report. And certainly when courtiers wanted to remove the current Favourite, they tried it via presenting young good looking men to James. (This worked in one case - the toppling of Somerset in favour of Buckingham, though there were other factors involved as well - but failed when Buckingham's earlier sponsors, realizing they had just traded Skylla for Charybdis, tried to do the same thing again. No matter how many sexy young things were presented, Buckingham remained James' Favourite till James' death.) Favourites were on the one hand certainly a symptome of the corruption inherent int he absolutist system, but otoh also hhighly useful in that they offered an out for both King and subjects in whom to blame for unpopular policies. Instead of critiquing the King, the opposition could frame its complaints in being the venting of loyal subjects about the Evil Advisors (tm), while the King could sacrifice a scapegoat if things went too badly to quench public anger. As opposed to his son, James was ready to do that if needs must. But his Favourites still contributed to the overall perception of the court as a den of sin and corruption. (Which, yeah, but as opposed to which previous court?)

(BTW, and speaking of the usefulness of scapegoats for monarchs, my favourite example for the story about Henry starting out as this charming well meaning prince going bloodthirsty monarch only after he didn't get his first divorce and had a tournament accident being wrong remains the fact that when Henry ascended to the throne at age 18, one of the first things he did was to accuse two of his father's more ruthless tax men of treason and have them beheaded in a cheap but efficient bid for popularity. Now, no one could deny said two officials, one of whom, Edmund Dudley, was the grandfather of Elilzabeth's childhood friend and life long favourite Leicester, had been absolutely ruthless in their mission to squeeze money out of the population by every legal or barely legal trick imaginable. But they had done so under strict instructions from Henry VII, and the accusation of treason for this was ridiculous. Note that Henry VIIII could simply have dismissed them when he became King. But no. He went for legal murder from the get go. However, since everyone hates tax men, absolutely no one minded and many celebrated instead of thinking of the precedent. This is why the Tudors, by and large, when governing had a genius for (self) propaganda the Stuarts just didn't.)

I wouldn't agree with one of the latest biographers, Clare Jackson, that James was the most interesting monarch GB had, but he certainly is interesting, and far more dimensional than younger me gave him credit for.


The other days

hannah asked: I'd love to hear you talk about assorted public transportation options you've taken while traveling, both domestically and internationally, and whether or not any stuck out to you for any reason.

Domestically: Well, it's practically a German cliché to complain about Die Bahn, but the truth is that while it truly is in a bad state, due to sixteen years of conservative ministers of transport defining their office as "lobbying for Mercedes, BMW and Audi" and endlessly delaying necessary repairs of the railway system, I still consider our public transport system my favourite way to travel within Germany. Both the trains, and in cities the busses and streetcars and underground trains. In most cases, it's possible to reach any given destination by train and from the railway station by local public transport. And one great invention that was added in, I think, the second Pandemic year, was Das Deutschlandticket, meaning a ticket you pay per month and which you can use for all public transport within Germany that is not - forgive me using now traumatizing initials - ICE or IC. (ICE in Germany means our fastest trains, to put it simply. ICs are second fastest trains. Both are the type of trains which can bring you from Munich to Berlin in less than five hours.) Which means that if, say, you live in Munich like me, and go to a conference in Hamburg, you do not have to buy extra tickets to use the public transport system in Hamburg, you can simply use your Deutschlandticket . Very neat indeed.

Anyway, the terrible state of our railway system means that currently practically every second long distance train is late, but there are a lot of them, and you do get notified at least an hour before the supposed departure of your train, so you can, using the Bahn app,, easily find a replacement connection. Well, most of the time. Not that people without a mobile device and internet access are screwed, and the are still a considerable part of older folk for whom this is true. Yours truly, in her fiftyseventh year of life, does not have this problem and thus can navigate the perils of the public transport system while using its benefits. Which I still very much prefer to taking the care, believe me. I am a German who isn't crazy about the Autobahn.

Internationally: Back in what turned out to be the last year of the Soviet Uniion (I think? 1991?) my APs and self spent two weeks in Russiai, one in Moscow and one in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, respectively. Among the many memorable things in Moscow were a couple of subway stations which looked like mini palaces, complete with chandeliers. I dimly recall being told these hailed from Stalin's era and were meant to demonstrate how well off the people were in the worker's paradise, which sounds like him, and of course looking like mini palaces does not enhance the usefulness of a subway station, but it still was an unexpected and impressive view! Also, the APs and yours truly actually managed to get to all the sightseeing spots we wanted to visited via the Moscow Metro and armed with a guide book and a map, so all hail the public transport system in Moscow in the year 1991. That same journey also included going by train overnight form Moscow to Leningrad (as it was still called), which worked fine, and while the cabins were hardly luxurious, they were comfortable enough for such a journey.

I also remember the main railway station in Madrid which includes a palm tree garden to relax in, which was lovely. And the cable cars of Lisbon from when I was there two or so years ago; last year, there was a terrible accident featuring one of them, so I don't know whether they'll still continue to be used that way, but they certainly were a signature part of the city (and usually you stand when using them, because they're that crowded.)

The country other than my own where I used the public transport system most often would be the United Kingdom. Generally, I've found British cars to be less comfortable but far more reliable than German ones, and the one time when I did a criss cross journey through the country on my lonesome, I got pretty much anywhere by train easily. As for the London "Tube", it's responsible for some occasions with much adrenaline pumping and transpiration from when I needed to reach the airport but was stuck in the Picadilly Line unexpectedly, but so far - knock on wood - in each of these cases, I did manage to reach the airport in time after all. Oh, and the one time I had to go from Heathrow to Oxford via bus directly, it worked perfectly as well, so good on you, British busses.

Let's see, what else? Oh, right, I once had a chance to housesit a palazzo in Venice for ten days which was awesome, and while I went everywhere on foot, I did take the vaporetto now and then, which was fine, as was the train connection to Padua when I used the chance to see the Giotto frescoes there.

The other days

Considering this prompt by bimo, it did occur to me that Syril Karn’s part of the Ghorman arc in the second season of Star Wars: Andor in a way is the Mirrorverse, twisted version of a rather popular trope.

( Filling the spoilery darkness with order and light )

The other days

"Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verwirrt/ schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte" (Schiller about Charles' contemporary Wallenstein; less elegantly put in a prose translation into English, "distorted by the favour and hatred of factions, the portrait of his character flickers through history". Up until a few years ago, I assumed there was at least consensus about Charles I., while possessing "private" virtues (i.e. good son, father and husband), not having been a very good King, what with the losing his head over it, but no, he does have his defenders in that department as well, present day ones, I mean, not 17th century royalist. I haven't read Leandra de Lisle's Charles biography, but I did read her recent biography of his wife Henrietta Maria, which makes a spirited case for her as well. (My review of the Henrietta Maria biography is here.) While I'm linking things, Charles I. inevitably features heavily in two podcasts I listened to in the last two years, one named "Early Stuart England" and thus concluded (it ends with the start of the Restoration), and one ongoing, called "Pax Britannica" and about the story of the British Empire, which has only just arrived at the Great Fire of London; both start with Charles' father James (VI and I), and do a great job offering context and bringing all the many players of the era alive, not "just" the respective monarchs. They appear to be both well researched, but come to quite different conclusions as to what Charles thought he was doing in his final trial in their episodes about those last few months in the life of Charles I. Stuart . (Also regarding where Cromwell initially thought the trial was going.) If you don't have the time for an entire podcast but want to hear vivid presentations of the trial itself and the summing up of Charles I., good and bad sides, that go with it, here is the trial/execution episode of Early Stuart England, and here the one from Pax Britannica.

Now, on to my own opinions and impressions re: Charles I. Which after reading and listening up in the last years on the Stuarts didn't change as much as my opinions on his father James did, but that's another, separate entry, which I will probably write as well. Years ago I thought Charles had a lot in common with his maternal grandmother Mary Queen of Scots - they both died undeniably with courage and flair, they both saw themselves as martyrs of their respective faiths, they both were great at evoking personal loyalty in people close to them - and neither of them was an actually good ruler, not least because their idea of the kingdom and people they were ruling and the actual people differed considerably. Mostly I still think that, though now I also see considerable differences.

Not least because Mary literally became a Queen as a baby, and once she was smuggled out of the country as a toddler, she grew up very much the adored future Queen of France, in France, and some of her later troubles hailed from the abrupt change from the role she'd been prepared for - Queen Consort of a Catholic kingdom - to the one she had to fulfill - Queen Regnant of a by now majorly Protestant Kingdom. Meanwhile, her grandson Charles might have been male, but wasn't expected to reign at all, because he was the spare, not the heir, through his childhood and early adolescence. Not only that, but he was overshadowed by both his older siblings, brother Henry and sister Elizabeth, he was sickly small child and for years not expected to live at all, he was handicapped twice over (stuttering and having trouble walking, with the usual ghastly historical methods used to cure him of both). Mary was a golden child (as were Charles' siblings), young Charles was the family embarassment and reminds me of no one as much as of Frederick I. of Prussia (that's the grandfather of Frederick the Great), another "spare" who was suffering from physical impairments and spent a childhood overshadowed by his glamorous older brother, his father's favourite, with whom he nonetheless had a good relationship and grieved for when he was gone. (Think Boromir and Faramir.) That makes for a very different psychological and emotional make-up, and both Charles I. and Frederick I. compensated later in life, when they unexpectedly did become the heir and then the monarch, by very much leaning into the ritual and splendour of Kingship. No "Hail fellow, well met" type of attitude for them (which for all their absolutism the Tudors were so good at); they were monarchs who rather treasured the distance and remoteness, as if in compensation of all that early ridicule and disdain.

If you're curious about the first Frederick, more about him here. Of coure, he died in bed, having created a new kingdom (and a lot of debts), whereas Charles ended up beheaded, with (most) of his family in exile, his three kingdoms at war and England a Republic (or if you want to be hostile a military dictatorship) for the next twelve years. Some of the reasons for this different results are Charles' fault, but not all. He did live in very different circumstances, not least because he inherited some baggage from the previous reign, fatally a very bad relationship between King and Parliament, and his father's favourite, Buckingham. (In fact, Buckingham managing to be the favourite of two monarchs in a row instead of being kicked out once his original patron was no more was a feat hardly any other royal favourite has accomoplished.) But he also from the get go was good at making his own mistakes, ironically enough at first by being completely in sync with the mood of the times. The peace with Spain was a signature James I. policy and achievement (and a very necessary one at the point he inherited the kingdom from Elizabeth, with both England and Spain financially exhausted by the war) - and deeply unpopular. When young Charles (still Prince of Wales) and Buckingham after their misadvantures in visiting Spain and NOT returning with a Spanish infanta as a bride for Charles went into the opposite direction and became heads of the war party which wanted a replay of the Elizabethan era's greatest hits, Charles was, for the first and last time in his life, incredibly popular. And once James was dead, an attempted replay was exactly what he and Buckingham went for - which turned out to be a disaster. Instead of glorious victories, there were defeats. Buckingham just wasn't very good as either admiral or war leader. And Charles was stubbornly loyal to his fave.

This is a trait sympathetic in a private human being and disastrous in a monarch, because the "evil advisor" ploy is ever so useful if you need to blame someone for an unpopular policy and/or monumental fuckup, and James, for all that he adored his boyfriends, had used it if he had to. Charles I.' sons, Charles II. and James II., drew very different lessons from their childhood and adolescence in an English Civil War, not least in this regard . Charles II. was ruthless enough to sacrifice unpopular royal advisors if needs must, James II. was not and was more the doubling down type, and guess which one died a king and which one died in exile. Buckingham had already been hated under James, but under Charles this really went into overdrive, and there was a rather blatant attempt at getting him killed via show trial when parlamentarians (aware that Charles who refused to let Buckingham go insisted that Buckingham had only fulfilled his orders) thought they had a winning idea by insinuating Buckingham had murdered James (which Charles hardly could cover for), only to find Charles indignantly shot that down as well. Buckingham ended up assassinated anyway, by a disgruntled veteran but to the great public cheer of Parliament, and you can't really call Charles paranoid for developing the opinion that most MP were fanatics not above lying in order to kill his friends with flimsy legal jiustifications.

(Fast forward to Wentworth/Strafford getting killed in just such a fashion years and years later.)

Buckingham's successor as person closest to the King and accordingly hated for it was Charles' wife, Henrietta Maria, and here we have shades of Louis XVI., because in both cases the fact these two Kings didn't have mistresses and were loyal to their wives worked against them and contributed to the wives fulfilling the role of the royal favourite in getting blamed for everything going wrong, and there was an increasing amount of things going wrong. Leandra de Lisle points out that actually, far from dominating Charles and making him do her bidding, Henrietta Maria had to live with the fact that Catholics under Charles had it worse, not better, than they had lived under James I., because no, Charles wasn't a crypto Catholic. Going all in with the High Church idea and the bishops etc. together with Archbishop Laud wasn't in preparation for an eventual return to Rome. Which didn't make it better in terms of the result. It was one of those head, desk, moments demonstrating what I said earlier, that Charles kept misjudging what the people in the countries he was ruling wanted and were like (he really seems to have thought it was all a couple of troublemakers in Westminster that objected, but really, out there in the countryside, etc.).

Now, for all that he spent his first three years as a toddler in Scotland, he had otherwise zero experiences of the place, and none of Ireland, so he has some excuses there, and like I said, I can understand the emotional background to the increasingly terrible relationship with the English Parliament. But it still means he failed at his job, to put it as simplified as possible. There were monarchs before and after who were also absolutely and sincerely convinced they were God's anointed (and knew better than anyone elected). Elizabeth certainly thought she was. And most of her favourites were deeply unpopular. (It's telling that the sole one who wasn't, Essex, was the one ending up rebelling and getting executed.) But she was aware she had to woo Parliament now and then to get what she wanted in terms of budget. And she was really good at a mixture of prevaricating, not allowing herself to be pinned down in one particular corner. Charles I.'s near unerring instinct for finding "solutions" to his problems that made things worse, not better, and then refusing to offer scapegoats or listen to advice that required a complete reevaluation of his own beliefs was a fatal combination of traits which, again, would have well fitted a private citizen - but not a monarch in early modern England.

So did Charles leave the country something other than a Civil War in which some 6% of the population died? (Hence the "man of blood" label, though of course it's a bit rich coming from the likes of Cromwell - just ask the Irish.) An A plus art collection, and I'm not just being flippant. He had superb taste in paintings, not just in terms of dead and already declared great painters but of his own contemporaries. (Charles I. as a nobleman and patron without royal responsibilities - say, as the King's younger brother he was originally supposed to be - , would probably get an admiring footnote in any cultural history.) The idea that monarchs/heads of government can be put on trial and held reponsible not by other fellow monarchs but by their people. (Well, in principle. In practice, the trial in question was extremely questionable from a legalistic pov, not least because it wasn't even conducted by the actual elected Parliament but by the leftover "rump" that remained after having been purged by the military of anyone who might disagree. Hence Charles, who like grandmother Mary was at his best when backed into his last corner, pointing just this out as if he was a trained lawyer. Stupid, he was not. Whether that makes his previous fuckups as a ruler worse is for you to decide.) Anyway, I would say that the National Assembly putting Louis XVI on trial had a better claim of being actually representative of the country AT THAT POINT than the Rump was of Civil War England. And both trials presented an intriguing paradox, to wit: a) the monarchs they judged were guilty of at least some of the accusations - Louis XVI HAD conspired with foreign powers against his people in his last two years, Charles had, among other things, restarted the Civil War after it had already been believed to have ended, but b) any just trial should allow for the possibility that the defendant could be found innocent, and there was no way in either trial that would have happened, the only acceptable outcome was a guilty verdict and a death sentence, because the accusers and the judges were one and the same. (One of the podcasters disagrees and belongs to the school of historians who think hat if Charles had submitted to the authority of the trial and had entered a plea, he wouldn't have ended up executed, btw.)

(BTW, Robespierre originally was, unless I'm misrenembering, against a trial against Louis XVI for that reason - not because he didn't want him dead, but because, and here his inner lawyer spoke, a trial should allow for the possibility of innocence, and if Louis was innocent, the entire Revolution was wrong, which could no be, hence there should not have been a trial.)

Charles to his last hour did not consider himself guilty in the sense he was accused of being. He did think his death was divine punishment, not for failing his people - he thought, as mentioned, he had done his best throughout his life, and it wasn't his fault that it hadn't worked out - , but for letting Parliament bully him into signing the death warrant for Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Stafford, a man he knew to be innocent and to have been condemned just as a lesson to him. This, he said in his final speech, was why his fate was deserved. I think this perspective both shows why I wouldn't have wanted to be ruled by him, but why I also think he was, as a human being, a far cry from our current lot of autocrats who wouldn't know how to spell guilt and responsibility, be it personal or political.

The other days

My definition of "MCU" includes the tv shows (that I've seen). With this in mind, in no particular order:

1) Agatha Harkness & "Teen" ( spoilery identity is spoilery )

, Agatha All Along: I adored this show in 2024 when it was released and I still adore it, and have rewatched it three times already. There are many reasons why, but the relationship between these two characters is most definitely one of them. It has different layers, not least because the characters are both holding back information about each other and their true reason for the show's quest for a considerable time, and yet they bond in a very real way even before the various reveals. It ends up as mentor/protegé, with a sideline of odd couple and sort of, kind of, family. And I really hope that whatever the MCU future brings, we will see these two together again.

2) Jessica Jones & Matt Murdoch, (The Defenders): speaking of combinations I hope to see again - The big crossover miniseries of the Netflix Marvel shows was flawed in several ways, but the various combinations of characters were all gold, and I loved the Mattt & Jess combo most of all. To put it as unspoilery as possible: their different ways of reaching the top of a building had me in stitches. And the serious character scenes were fantastic. That neither of them was sexually interested in the other might have been why they got along so well, given both characters have a really messy love- and sex life.

3) Tony Stark & Bruce Banner, (The Avengers): their scenes were such an unexpected delight. Very differnet personalities, and yet a meeting of the minds, so to speak, and great chemistry to boot. We hardly saw them in the same room again after Age of Ultron, which I regretted, but given the ensembles grew larger and larger, it was probably inevitable. (Also, the writing for Bruce Banner changed a lot.)

4) Yelena Belova & Alexei Shostakov, (Black Widow, Thunderbolts): I was torn between this and Yelena & Natasha, and Yelena & Kate Bishop, but Alexei wins with a combination of the relationship being showcased in two different movies and the way we see it change through said movies. Also: Alexei may have been a deadbeat (spy) dad, but he can make Yelena smile (intentionally, I mean, not just when he's being goofy) in an incredibly touching way. Again in both movies.

5) Nebula & Gamora (both of them), Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Infinity Wars and Avengers: Endgame: pace Yelena & Natasha, but these are my favourite sisters in the MCU. They get introduced as a seemingly straightforward rendition of bad girl and good bad girl, the evil and the heroic sister - and then it gets complicated. Given their incredibly screwed up childhood and youth (Thanos trying his best to win the worst Dad competition in the MCU), it's a miracle they had non-hostile feelings for each other to begin with, and yet they do. The moment in Guardians 2 when we find out what Thanos did each time Gamora beat Nebula in a match is absolutely gut wrenching. And when we see them connect and change through sevearl movies, it is both touching and absolutely cheerworthy.


6) Mark Spector & Steven Grant, Moon Knight: that they're both played by Oscar Isaacs is the least of it. The miniseries was so clever in the way it introduced us to them which turns certain tropes on their head because ( it gets spoilery )The result is a sort of "unknown and seemingly very different brothers find each other" tale which also manages to be self exploration and offers moments of grace, support and love in the last three episodes that still make me reach for my hankerchief upon rewatch.


Not included: Peggy Carter & Dottie Underwood (Agent Carter), because the subtext is barely sub, and I definitely ship them, which makes them disqualified for a list of platonic relationships (which I want to remain platonic). But they definitely had "my best enemy" potential in that show. And fantastic chemistry.


The other days

Eleven / Kathryn Janeway: Why? She's his type. Unlike many another version of the Doctor, he's good at endearing himself to competent authoritative women. Depending on when in their respective timelines this meeting occurs, he might also impress her by bringing his very own nurse (Rory) along, which given that Voyager is desperate enough for nurses to let their own Doctor draft Tom Paris will definitely be a plus.


Five / Benjamin Sisko: Why? Mutual bonding over argumentative companions and cricket vs baseball. Five would be charmed by the Ben and Jake father/son relationship (and depending on whether this is before or after Adric dies also melancholic), and wouldn't ruffle Sisko's feathers the way some other Doctors might.


Nine / Jean-Luc Picard: Why? Picard would respect Nine's chip on the shoulder and not wanting to talk about any personal issues (and vice versa). (Though Deanna Troi, sensing Nine's emotional state, wilil try to corner him, but that's another issue.) Depending on the situation they're in when they meet, there might be some prickliness at first, but I think generally they'd find it easy to ally against the menace of the day and maybe share clipped yet meaningful conversation over some tea and/or bond over Dickens once that's done before Nine takes off again.


Fifteen/ Michael Burnham : Why? Much of her personal arc is going from repressing it all stoicism to openly emotional behavior, accepting your past grief and guilt and continuing to do better (and helping others) in the present - that's what he's practically the embodiment of for the Doctor! They would work well as allies, and there would definitely be dancing at some point. Also, she'd make him promise to visit Zora now and then as he travels through time.


Three / Saru (who was a Starfleet Captain, too): Why? Three can come across as incredibly high handed on first impressions, but Saru is a masterful diplomat, would spot Three is actually knowledgable and competent beneath the bluster and would lintrigue him as a Kelpian so any initial problems would be quickly moved aside in favour of teaming up. 'They would also bond over Buddhism.


Thirteen/ James T. Kirk: Why? No, not because he'd hit on her. (TOS Kirk, not AOS Kirk, i.e. he's not his pop cultural stereotype.) She'd consider him fun to have an adventure with, he'd be curious and charmed and very amused once she inadvertendly outs Scotty's inflated time estimations, whereas with male versions of the Doctor he might feel initially one-upped.


Twelve/ Christopher Pike: Why? Even if it's early Twelve at his prickliest, Pike's general relaxedness and experienced diplomacy would help smoothing things over. Conversely, Twelve could empathize with the whole "knowing your eventual awful fate" part without insisting on talking about it the way some other Doctors might. I predict at least one meal cooked by Pike while Twelve plays guitar before the Doctor leaves again.


Unfortunately, I can't think of any version of the Doctor who'd get along really well with Captain Archer because Archer would, depending on the point of his timeline, suspect the Doctor of being a tool of the Vulcan High Command, the Admiralty or the Xindi, while the Doctor, any of them, might like Porthos but would find Archer incredibly annoying, and that's before they find out about certain episodes involving slavery or torture.


Therefore, you get a bonus pairing:

Seven/ Gabriel Lorca (no, not the one we never met, I do mean the season 1 of Discovery guy) : Why? Mutual mindgames! Who manipulates whom best? Who sets a trap for whom while pretending to be their harmless facade? Who figures out the truth about the the other guy first? Might there be conversations with increasingly disturbing subtext about mentoring young women with a chip on their shoulder and tremendous guilt and anger issues? One thing is sure: it would be incredibly entertaining.


The other days

Pick a date below and give me a topic, and I'll ramble on. I'm good at talking. It can be anything from fandom-related (specific characters, actors, storylines, episodes, which Disney Marvel shows are my faves and why, why the world should give the Tudors a rest and make a Stuarts era show or several instead, which 18th century ladies need their own series, etc.) to life-related to favorite tea brands to whatever you want.

They will probably be brief, or not, depending on the subject. Also, I reserve the right to decline prompts that I don't feel equipped to meet.

Topics: you can get an idea from my tags/from the stuff I usually ramble about/from things you maybe wish I talked about more but don't. Also, please feel free to check out the 2025 meme,  the 2024 meme,  the 2023 January meme, the2022 January meme, the 2021 January Meme, the January Meme: 2020 Edition, the 2019 one, the 2018 meme, the 2017 edition , and the 2016 January meme to see which topics I've written about in past years.


January 1 -

January 2 - Five places everyone should visit in Germany (redfiona99)

January 3 - Which incarnations of the Doctor would get on best with which Starfleet Captains of Star Trek? (lightofdaye)

January 4 -

January 5 - Favourite Hiking Spots around Munich (mildred_of_midgard)

January 6 -

January 7 - Six favourite platonic relationships in the MCU (itsnotmymind)

January 8 - Whatever happened to Charlotte B? (sajia_kabir)

January 9 -

January 10 - Charles I. - Man of Blood, Martyr, Idiot or Well-Meaning but Hopeless? (watervole)

January 11 -

January 12 - Favourite Show to watch in 2025 (aurumcalendula)

January 13 -

January 14 -

January 15 - Andor: Syril Karn on Ghorman, on "going native". (bimo)

January 16 -

January 17 -

January 18 -

January 19 - Adventure in Time and Space to Accept or Decline (ffutures)

January 20 -

January 21 - Public transportation options while travelling (hannah)

January 22 -

January 23 -

January 24 - The new 1930s? (maia)

January 25 -

January 26 -

January 27 - James VI and I (cahn)

January 28 -

January 29 -

January 30 -

January 31 -

redfiona99 asked me: how would you feel about a Roman AU for Babylon 5? (I quite like the idea of circa fall of the Republic but ...

This got my imagination going, but not to the fall of the Republic; it went to either the Third Century Crisis or later the Attila the Hun era instead, or maybe Justinian. Either way, it's tricky whom to cast the Minbari as, since they are canonically the most powerful of the space faring "younger" races - as Londo says, even at the height of the Centauri Empire, they left the Minbari alone - but there has to be something more powerful standing in for the Shadows and Vorlons, while the Centauri need to be still powerful enough to re-conquer the Narn with Shadow aid.

Preliminarily, I'm going with....

Minbari: Persians (The Sassanian Empire, to be precise)

Humans: Arabs

Centauri: Romans (naturally, but depending on whether we're talking Third Century or Fifth Century or Sixth Centauri, the location of Centauri Prime can be Rome in the first case and Constantinople in the other two)

Narn: Goths

Shadows: Attila the Hun

Vorlons: ???? (If you want to be mean, you can say Christianity)

I could also see the Humans as Franks (equally an up and coming power). Howver: the Minbari really need to be the Persians no matter which century you set the story in in a Roman AU because the Persians (or Parthians) for a thousand years were the one Empire the Romans, even at the height of their power, were forced to see at least as equals. The Romans and the Persians never managed to conquer each other, and it's highly symbolic that after a thousand years (Delenn's favourite time span) of duking it out or being in cold war, you have first one and then the other near victorious and then the newly islamized Arabs steamroll over both in the 7th century. (Well nearly steamroll over both, they didn't get Constantinople, and the Byzantines managed to regroup after a century, reconquer big parts and hang on for some centuries more.) Which is why my AU couldn't be later than the sixth century. And if the Minbari are the Persians, you have the problem that the Franks are far, far away and have no direct conflict with them, whereas the various Arab kingdoms, usually client kingdoms of the Romans when the Empire was powerful and in its decline getting more and more independence, did have conflicts with the Persians.


Babylon 5 itself is a problem. I'm tempted to go with Alexandria as THE multicultural city of antiquity and keeping that distinction well after it had no more politicial power, but it's a bit tricky to justify why the Goths should send a representative there. Well, maybe Theoderich really wanted good doctors and illegal copies from the great Library?


Anyway, I could see Sinclair and Sheridan as being (nominally) Roman governors of Egypt in present time who used to fight for their Arab kingdom of origin against the Persians in the past. Londo is a Roman (either Roman Roman or Byzantine Roman) at the start of the story aware of the utter pointlessness of his Senator position and the decline of Roman power and wishing for the past who gets sold on the idea that allying with these new barbarians, the Huns, is just the ticket to get the Empire back to full strength, and of course finds out how horribly mistaken he is, but in fact he's following tried and true later Roman policy of trying to play one nomadic warrior nation against the other. (Later, when he tries to fix what he's done, he has overtones of Aetius "The Last Roman".) The Narn/Goths are first exposed to the Huns (hence them ending up in Northern Italy and Spain to begin with), which is why Goth!G'Kar is an early warner who doesn't get listened to.

Delenn is a direct descendant of Aradashir I. i.e. a member of the Sassanid royal family, and a Zoroastrian, of course. She is on the track to becoming Queen of Queens but declines in favour of "pursueing her studies at Alexandria" while maintaining all sorts of important political connections to Persian generals and heads of influential families. This has long term consequences. (I could also see Delenn as Pulcheria, with Sheridan as Marcian, but then she's Roman, not Minbari.)
Pulcheria, but then she's not Minbari

Arab!Sheridan's breaking point when he declares independence: if it's the Third Century Crisis, can be at any point when the various Roman Emperors assassinate each other in dizzying speed. If it's the Fifth or Sixth Century, when it looks like the Huns could take over the entire Roman Empire, full stop. And then the Archbishop of Alexandria or Justinian himself wants him to kill all the heretics, at which point Arab!Sheridan breaks with the Church as well.

By the end of the story, the Huns are gone, but what was the Roman Empire has been irrevocably transformed, and many new kingdoms arisen. It is a new age, etc.


The other days

My first instinct is still to say „I wouldn’t, because the original is so great. Not perfect - nothing ever is, and I‘m aware of B5‘s flaws - but it is still one of my all time most beloved tv series, and thus I instinctively dread it getting a second rate makeover.

My second instinct is to do what I suggested a couple of years ago, when we first heard rumors there might be a reboot, which is: a parallel show which covers the same years as the original does but focuses on different characters and situations, those we didn‘t or couldn‘t see much of in the original show - Centauri women ( you knew I‘d start with the Centauri, didn‘t you?) from their own pov (both women who live on Centauri Prime and women who try to have a different life elswehere), and more of the non-noble Centauri in general, ditto for the Narn (and here one could use, for example, Na‘Toth‘s departure at the end of s2 for a storyline following her and through her some other Narn), more human civilians, too; how did the Minbari who weren‘t in the Grey Council react when it was broken up, how about making a worker Minbari a pov character, what became of Delenn‘s s1 friend the poet, and so forth.

HOWEVER. This isn‘t what was asked. And in past years and decades, I‘ve come across reboots of sci franchises wich I really liked - not just of shows where I didn‘t have an emotional attachment to the original (Battlestar Galactica comes to mind) but where I did (the German sci fi series Perry Rhodan since some years now runs parallel to the original a reboot called Perry Rhodan Neo. ) Pondering what makes a good reboot (for me, as always, this is highly subjective), I decided that a good reboot wonders what the core of a story/series is. And then doesn‘t try a remake (a remake is a different thing), but tries to put its own spin, influenced by the different time of creation, on it. In the case of BSG, I‘d say Moore and friends concluded the core is „planets inhabited by humans get attacked by androids, cataclysmic events ensue, the survivors then look for Earth, but the Cylons are still an issue“ and went from there. Presumably he was also aware original BSG was influenced by Mormon beliefs and decided to include a strong religious element - but not for the human characters, for the robots/androids/cylons. As for the original BSG characters, some made it in name and function to the reboot, but not necessarily in personality, others were combinations, and others were unique to the reboot.

( So what is the core story of Babylon 5, and how could one reboot it? )

So these are some thoughts of how to make a reboot that‘s not just a remake.

The Other Days

Well, considering one of the delightful things about seasons 1 and 2 was that they kept surprising me in a good way, I feel that I shouldn't really make predictions or requests, because I want the show to keep doing that, if there is a third season. For example, the first season had something of a Farscape vibe (while being utterly Trek), whereas the second season had something of a Doctor Who vibe (dito), and if the show creators want to tackle The Expanse next, I'd be all for it, but equally if they don't and do something very different entirely.

All this being said, here are some ideas and wishes:

( Cut for some spoilers in Prodigy, Picard and DS9 )

- Again, these are just some ideas, but even if none of that happens: my main wish is for the show to continue its great level of storytelling.


The Other Days