Marguerite Valois

Marguerite of Valois was born in 1553, the daughter of Catherine de' Medici, born a powerful noblewoman, and her husband, Henry II of France.

Young Marguerite

As a child, Marguerite was said to have been very rebellious, not listening to her parents. She was also famous for her beauty and her luxurious education. In 1572, at the age of 19, she was forced to marry a man who soon became Henry IV of France, succeeding slightly before her own brothers in line. Her parents arranged the marriage so that even if her brothers did not end up inheriting, they would maintain power through their daughter. In this way, Marguerite, like so many of her time, became a pawn in her parent's game. The marriage also resolved an age-old conflict between Catholics and Protestants in France. The only person who disagreed with the union was Henry's mother, Jeanne III of Navarre, who soon died, an event that many thought suspect. 

Four days after the wedding, a group of assassinations took place in France. After that, mob violence reigned the streets. Some believed that Marguerite's mother, Catherine de' Medici, had incited the riots because of the large numbers of Catholics in France at the time. 

Marguerite spent much time at her brother's court, before being expelled for her affairs in the 1580's. She was then forced to return to Navarre, her husband's court, even though he no longer wanted her there. She was unsettled at court, where no one cared about her. As a final rebellion, she arranged for a plan to defeat her husband. She was caught and banished to a castle far away from court life for eighteen years. 

Marguerite and Henry no longer had any sort of contact, and both had widely known affairs. The annulment of their marriage was finalized in 1599, after which she would no longer be married to Henry, but would still hold her titles. 

After her husband's remarriage to Marie de' Medici, Marguerite returned to court, where she was more accepted. While there, Marguerite worked on her writing, which she had begun in her young adult years. She was interested in the world around her, especially those she knew well. She studied her brothers and husband and wrote about them, hoping to record things about her country for those in the future. She was also said to have been exceedingly generous in her later years, organizing events for the poor. At court, she promoted the arts and comprehensive education for noble children. 

It's sad that Marguerite is remembered in a bad light, when she was someone who did everything she could to help others. She made no more mistakes then her husband, but she was held more accountable, because she was a woman. She was someone who tried to control her own destiny and conform to her own rules - not other's expectations - and was shamed for it because it didn't fit into the mold. Whether or not she was a dutiful was, Marguerite was an important part of the history of France,  and made positive contributions. 

Marguerite didn't listen to what the men in her life told her to do, instead doing what she wanted. Many women today are also expected to listen to the men in their lives and do what they're told, when really they should be challenging the rules they've been given, and learning. 

 

Empress Wu Zetian

Wu Zetian was born in 625 AD to Wu Shihuo and his second wife, Lady Yang. Her father worked in the timber industry and her family was relatively wealthy. She was said to have been a disobedient child who did not follow orders. Instead of doing things that her parents thought appropriate for women, she would spend her time reading and travelling with her family. She was particularly bright and aware at a young age, and knew much about the politics of China.

Wu was around 13 years old when she became a member of Emperor Taizong of Tang's court, as his concubine. She was reported to have been happy at the opportunity to join the court, having an ambitious eye from a young age. The Emperor died in 649, leaving his son Emperor Gaozong of Tang, ruler of China. It is said that at this point in her life, Wu was sent away from court to a nunnery, but other reports have her at court only a year later. It is unknown what occurred in this period, other than that she became the favorite concubine of the new emperor by 650 AD. 

Wu gave birth to several sons in line for the throne. Her power grew during this period, until she finally rid herself of her greatest obstacle: Gaozong's wife, Empress Wang. She told the emperor that his wife had killed his newborn child. Historians are unsure of whether Wu killed the child herself in order to blame the other woman, or Wang really did it. However, the result was Gaozong naming a new empress, Wu Zetian. 

Within their first five years of marriage, the emperor became too sick to rule. It has been said that the sickness was due to poisoning, a likely candidate of such a thing being Wu Zetian. However, nothing can be proved. Due to her husband's inability to rule, Wu took over much of the reigning power. She established a secret police force to carry out her bidding. She ordered executions and jailings for anyone who opposed her. When her husband died, she changed the order of succession so that her youngest and most vulnerable son would rule. 

 

She eventually got tired of ruling through her sons, and forced her final son to abdicate, naming herself ruler well into her life. While she ruled, she promoted the works of women throughout China. She gave political positions to women, and had scribes record the accomplishments of Chinese women. She believed that a good ruler acted towards her people as a mother towards her children. Which is easy to believe,  considering that she likely killed one or more of her children.  

She moved the country away from its reliance on military force, instead focusing on the works of scholars. The period of her rule is said to be one of the most artistic and scholarly in the history of China. She helped the poor by lowering taxes and offering public services, encouraging growth in many areas often ignored by the ancient Chinese. 

Wu also focused on religion, favoring Buddhism. She had scholars come to her court and build sculptures and temples for the gods. Her rule saw the greatest development of Chinese Buddhism in the history of the country. 

Towards the end of her long life, Wu was said to have become more fearful of those around her. She was often extremely harsh and unforgiving towards those who had offended her. Throughout her life, she'd had no fear of hurting others in order to attain security for herself. She was said to have killed many who she thought posed a threat to her rule, including almost the entirety of the Li family, who she rounded up and forced to commit suicide, suspecting that they had a claim to the throne and were plotting against her. 

Overall, Wu Zetian did many amoral things throughout her life in order to establish and hold power over others as Empress of China. However, the time of her reign saw cultural growth in China, as well as a rise in women's rights throughout the country. 

Smithsonian Magazine had this to say about the empress:

“Explaining why the empress was so reviled, then, means acknowledging the double standard that existed–and still exists–when it comes to assessing male and female rulers. Wu probably did dispose of several members of her own family, and she ordered the deaths of a number of probably innocent ministers and bureaucrats. She also dealt ruthlessly with a succession of rivals, promoted members of her own family to high office, succumbed repeatedly to favoritism, and, in her old age, maintained what amounted to a harem of virile young men. None of these actions, though, would have attracted criticism had she been a man. Every Chinese emperor had concubines, and most had favorites; few came to power, or stayed there, without the use of violence. Taizong forced the abdication of his own father and disposed of two older brothers in hand-to-hand combat before seizing the throne.”

Similarly to Isabella of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Wu Zetian did everything to maintain power, including using the methods of men throughout the centuries, but is held far more accountable for her actions. This has much to do with the stereotyping of women as either "a bimbo or a bitch" present still today. Women are viewed in two lights, either as the stupid woman or the one who poses a threat to males, and is therefore evil. Think about it.  

Isabella of France

While last week's post focused on a woman villainized because of perceived vanity, this week's will focus on a woman who was villainized in the period in which she lived for being too assertive, putting herself into a man's role.

Isabella Capet was born circa 1294, the daughter of King Philip IV of France and his wife, Joan I of Navarre, queen consort. She had three brothers: Louis, Philip, and Charles, all of whom would come to rule France.

Isabella grew up surrounded by great wealth, as her father was famous for his obsession with wealth and power. She was given a thorough education, better than that of many noble women of her time, and developed a love of reading and learning. She was also said to have been a beauty from an early age, and her husband later gave her the nickname "Isabella the Fair".

When Isabella was still an infant, war broke out between France, her homeland, and England, which had had strained relations in the past. The pope was so concerned by the tension that he got involved, urging Isabella's father to betroth the baby to Edward II, the son of Edward I, the reigning King of England at the time, in order to make peace between the warring countries.

In 1308, when Isabella was between the ages of 12 and 15, she married King Edward II, who had been ruling since his father's death. Unfortunately, Isabella and her husband did not have a happy marriage. Edward was not only unfaithful, but proudly so, and his affairs were always with other men, something which angered Isabella. He would often show them off in front of the court, something which she found humiliating. He showered his lover, Piers Gaveston, with abundant wealth, and often ignored his queen in front of others, including at their wedding feast. 

Gaveston was also not popular among the others at court, and found himself exiled from England until his later return and execution in 1312. Soon after his exile, Edward took a liking to another at court, Hugh Despenser the younger. 

During this time, Edward was becoming a very unpopular King, especially among his own advisers  for ignoring his duties in favor of showing off his favorite men. The Despensers were becoming far too powerful in the eyes of the English barons, as well as Isabella. The barons began to take military actions against the family, and Isabella begged Edward to exile them, for their own good. Edward listened for a short time, but invited them back only months later. 

Reunited with his lover, the two began to fight back against the barons, hanging those who opposed them, and imprisoning and executing others at random. The Despensers now had complete control over Edward and the entire country, seizing control of Isabella's money and houses. Edward did nothing to improve his wife's situation, openly siding with the Despensers. In 1322, Isabella left court, angry with her husband's treatment of her, to embark on a ten month pilgrimage. When she returned, she found that her staff had been imprisoned and her children taken away from her. In her mind, this was the end of her marriage.

In 1325, Isabella's brother, the King of France, seized some of Edward's land in France. Isabella was sent as a delegate to preserve peace between the two countries. Instead, Isabella, along with Roger Mortimer, an earl and her lover, gathered support against her husband among the French. They were successful in regaining England, and Isabella saw the Despensers executed in a gruesome manner and her husband unseated from the throne as well as publicly humiliated. Isabella's son, Edward III, inherited the throne, and she later also had her husband killed. 

Soon after, her ruling son rebelled against her, having Mortimer killed, and Isabella banished from court. She lived out the rest of her life at Norfolk, where she died in 1358. 

Isabella was a ruthless ruler who used her resentment as a weapon against her husband, and punished heavily for wrongdoings. However, it should be noted that this type of behavior was not uncommon at the time. Fora man, one would expect something like this to happen if they had been publicly humiliated, stripped of their power, and had all their possessions, and their children taken from them. Isabella saw no other way to regain her throne and her power over her own life. Her actions were not justified, but they were the only way for her to assert her power.

For someone like Isabella, being used as a pawn was something that was expected. She was a noble woman, who was sent to a foreign country as a peace negotiation. When there, she was used as a way to produce heirs for the throne, and not treated with any respect. After she finally took control, she was discarded by the son whom she had placed on the throne herself. She was used by every man in her life, and she wanted to break free from that.

The type of double standards used to villainize women like Isabella, whose actions were no worse than any man's, are still present today. Women in positions of power who make brutal decisions are criticized for being  too harsh, while men are lauded for their bravery and quick judgment. Because women are viewed as weaker than men, it is shocking to to them when women are able to be cruel, and they retaliate through this double standard.

Capture the Fall: Decaying Beauty

Shot 1: dying flower bush
Shot 2: decaying pumpkin
Shot 3: tree skyline
Shot 4: gate
Shot 5: pan up tree
Shot 6: cat
Shot 7: underneath the leaves
Shot 8: treehouse
Shot 9: skeleton tree
Shot 10: chair

To create this video I thought about the themes I related to fall. I thought of death, and decay, and chose those as my themes. Then I explored some, and found some shots of the decaying leaves and dying flowers. To go along with those, I found a decaying pumpkin, showing the coming winter, and two decaying human-made objects: a chair and a treehouse. I thought these things our in nature went along with the season quite well.

Overall, I feel as though I captured the essence of what fall means to me. I found music that fit with the theme. I'm very pleased with the final video.

Reflection on Fall

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky

--William Butler Yeats


For this assignment, I'm taking a break from the theme of this blog, and writing about my favorite season: fall.

To create this video, I thought about what fall brought to mind for me. Fall, I decided, is mostly about change. The type of change that the season of fall brings about is death. The leaves die and fall - giving the season its name - and every piece of nature prepares for the oncoming winter by either following the leaves and dying, or finding a way to hibernate.

Fall is my favorite season for precisely this reason: I love seeing the change around me happening. It makes me feel more in control of my own life. And I find the death and sleep of the natural world fascinating. I love decaying things, old things, broken things. Things that are left around to crumble on their own. Fall creates many of these images in my mind.

Leaves are captivating on their own. They grow from buds on trees into green plants. When the weather gets colder they turn golden, red, orange, and finally brown. Then they fall to the ground to become soil, so that new plants can grow. Leaves are beautiful. They are the perfect example of how life isn't a line, and doesn't revolve around one subject. Life consists of many circles and loops and it revolves around every being in the world.

Fall is cold sometimes and warm sometimes. It is the time for apple cider and hayrides and corn mazes. For carving pumpkins and eating pie and getting lost in the woods and writing a novel. It's sweaters and wool socks and sometimes shorts instead. It's everything good about winter, without being too cold.

Autumn is a great reminder about a lot of things having to do with life. That it evolves, and ends, but never fully dies. Life gives way to new life, and leaves are all part of one cycle of helping life to continue on.

This is why fall is my favorite season.

Marie Antoinette

In honor of her recent birthday, I've decided to write about one of the most interesting time periods in history, the French Revolution, through the lens of Marie Antoinette, an excellent example of the falling aristocracy of the period.

Marie Antoinette,  last Queen of France

Marie was born Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna on November 2nd, 1775 in her homeland of Austria. She was the fifteenth child in her family, and the second to last. Her mother was the Empress of Austria, and her father was the Holy Roman Emperor. She was well educated, but not extremely so. She was educated in the areas viewed as fitting for a woman, such as religion and morality. To preserve a waning alliance  between Austria and France, Marie was betrothed to an eleven-year-old boy,  Louis Auguste, the heir to the French throne. 

The King sent Marie a new tutor, who remarked that she was not unintelligent, but, "rather lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach." She was sent to France at the age of fourteen to marry a boy she had never met, and to one day rule a country she had never seen. She was said to have missed both her parents and the privacy of her home, and wept for days at a time in the French court. When the King died five years after her marriage, Marie became the Queen of France. 

Marie was not everything that people desired in their Queen. She was outspoken for a woman, and often reported to be improper in her actions and words. She enjoyed the same activities as men, but also spent a large amount of her time working on her appearance, and enjoyed balls more than anyone else at court. Her husband, however, loathed social gatherings, and found court life too exciting and improper. 

When Marie was twenty two, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter. After that she grew distant from her husband, often abandoning court life in favor of her own private estate, where she did not have to worry about ruling or gossip, two things that she despised about the French court. 

She could do nothing, however, to deter the gossip back at court. Many said that she was having an affair with Count Axel von Fersen, a Swede in the court. Others simply said that she was unintelligent, improper, and not a suitable Queen. At the same time, the economy in France was at one of its worst points of all time, and people blamed that on the rulers, both Marie and her husband. 

After the diamond necklace scandal many of the French found themselves disillusioned. Almost all 

European governments in that period gave their blind trust to the reigning monarchs. But the French no longer trusted Marie, and by default, did not trust Louis either. This troubled Marie deeply, and she took to hiding away, even building another retreat to turn to. 

In 1789, a group of commoners stormed Bastille Prison. This action started the French Revolution. Marie knew that her husband would do nothing to stop the rebellion, and so she called on her connections in other countries to help. But no one could do anything to save them. They were arrested. Louis was tried for treason and found guilty in January 1793. He was executed. 

In October of the same year, Marie was put on trial for treason, theft, and sexual abuse of her son. The male jury found her guilty of these crimes, and she was beheaded on October 16th. Even the day before her death, Marie would not admit to any crimes. She claimed that she had a free conscience. When the priest told her to have courage in the face of her death, she responded by saying, "The moment that my ills are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me." 

Marie Antoinette was an important political figure of her time and played a decisive role in the French Revolution. However, in history she is often villainized as being selfish and speaking her mind. It is important to remember when speaking about such matters that what is written about women of the past was written by those living then, and most often they were men whose views were clouded by misogyny. Marie Antoinette could not be faulted for the French Revolution, it was the inherent sexism present at court that caused any part she may have played i nthe downfall of her country. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine

For some easy facts, here's a Wikipedia overview of one of the most powerful women in history. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine lived during a time where women were rarely figureheads of power, other than as queen consorts. Although Eleanor, unlike Elizabeth, was not queen in her own right, she was an extremely  influential political figure who navigated court life with an ambitious eye, seizing opportunities at the same power that Elizabeth was born into. She was described in one account as a, "dark-eyed beauty, disconcertingly articulate, strong-minded and even jocular and not at all the modestly veiled damsel in the tower."

It is because Eleanor did not have Elizabeth's advantages of inheriting a throne that makes her so interesting. She was born the Duchess of Aquitaine in 1122. Her birth ensured her a good marriage. When she was only 15 she married King Louis VII of France. She was criticized during her short reign of being indecorous by church leaders. During the second crusade, Eleanor and Louis realized that their marriage would not work. The pope agreed to annulment of their marriage after the birth of a daughter rather than a son. Later that year, Eleanor married again, this time to the soon-to-be King Henry II of England. 

Henry II

The couple had eight children. In 1173, their son decided to rebel against Henry and usurp the throne. Eleanor, who had had enough of Henry, supported her son's revolt. Some historians believe that she herself plotted it. The Queen attempted to flee court along with her sons, but was captured by the King. She was imprisoned by her own husband for sixteen years. As her son died of sickness while fighting, he begged the King to pardon Eleanor. He was not forgiving, however.

When Henry died, Eleanor was released from prison. She was already sixty seven years old. She was said to not have shed a tear when hearing of the tragic news. Her favorite son, Richard, had inherited the throne after her husband's death.  She was back in royal favor, and accepted at court once more. While her son fought in the third crusade, Eleanor ruled England for five years. She held down the throne while it was in it's most vulnerable state: unprotected by the King. Her younger son was also vying for power. 

Richard died in battle, leaving Eleanor's younger and less competent son, John, King of England. Eleanor, securing her line, devised a scheme to marry her granddaughter to an enemy, ensuring peace. She rode to bring the boy to England amongst fighting at the age of eighty. She later had to defend borders from her own grandsons through written agreements. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine was not silenced by her role as a woman and regnant. She schemed for power, and constantly ruled over more powerful men in order to make things happen. She was forced down by both her husbands and three of her sons as she attempted to rule, but in the end, she got her say in the matter. 

Eleanor was, "beautiful and just, imposing and modest, humble and elegant," someone wrote after her death.