It's quite obvious to those of us with eyes that Edmund will be Duke of House Atreides. @pandizzy is absolutely plotting in that direction. 
The Sunne in Splendour: A War of the Roses Timeline
- Thread starter pandizzy
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No joke, what is that?It's quite obvious to those of us with eyes that Edmund will be Duke of House Atreides. @pandizzy is absolutely plotting in that direction.
This reminds me: How are the children being educated? You mentioned Catherine having Latin lessons and Dickon and Ceci learning French, but beyond that, what are they studying? Because I'm almost 100% sure the renaissance hasn't reached England yet and with it, the ideas that women have brains and they should be well-educated.
Well that's perhaps a bit unfair, as some things like household and financial management have been considered important for women to learn at the time.
Well, yes, I mean more the knowledge of laws, mathematics, war strategy, history. The more 'manly' subjects rather than how to manage a household 101.
Honestly, I had a lot of scenes set in the nursery and/or narrated by the children planned but they for some reason never work out the way I want them to. My first draft of the emotional support dog's introduction actually had Bess Plantagenet having the idea after many sleepless nights trying to help her little sister calm down, but it just felt weak and I couldn't type it when I sat down to write it. Which is honestly a shame.
You are right that they aren't having the humanistic education typical of the renassaince. The children are having quite a similar education when it comes to languages, they are learning how to speak and write in English, Latin and French, but Dickon and Ned are learning more about laws, geography, culture, swordplay, shooting arrows, riding horses and history (Ned especially) than the girls, who are focusing more on how to manage a household, how to sew and dance, how to hide their emotions, how to receive visitors and dignitaries, how to support their future husbands in their endeavours and act as ambassadors for England in a foreign court. They are still learning church and state law, but the boys are having a more in-depth education in that regard. It's quite a medieval education with some hints of renaissance new thinking. They are certainly being more well-educated than their mother was in her father's court, or even their english aunts though. They're just being taught to be good queen consorts rather than queen regnants.
Bess remains with her OTL Counterpart's personality. She's a sweet girl and a good sister, she's just not a good POV character.
And I wanna say it was the Trastamara infantas that really made it fashionable to teach young girls at the same level of effort as boys.
I think so and you gotta consider that Isabel really was the underdog. NOBODY thought she was gonna become queen so she knows exactly how tricky the succession can be and how woefully unprepared she was when she first came to court so she wants her girls to be ready.
March 1475.
March 1475. The Tower of London, England.
The man before her was a stranger. He had bushy red hair, feverish blue eyes and a sharp jaw hidden under a shaggy auburn beard, a long nose that had been broken before. The man was wearing rags, a dirty brown pair of breeches and a white shirt that was stained with mud and blood. When she came inside his cell, he said nothing, merely staring at her under red-golden eyelashes with a smug grin curling his pink lips.
“You look exactly like your mother,” he said almost mockingly. Annie Holland shifted awkwardly in her stance, grabbing her hands in an attempt to keep calm. She would not let him get to her. She was not afraid of him.
The man was a stranger, but, at the same time, he was her father.
Henry Holland tilted his face slightly. He was sitting on the floor, supporting his arm on the straw bed next to him. Annie simply stared at him, mouth set in a thin and tense line. She could not help but notice the many differences between her and the former Duke. He was sitting and she, standing. He wore rags and she, her fine clothes of velvet and damask. He was in chains, even if invisible, and she, as free to come and go as she pleased.
Henry smiled. “They told me you were bold, and proud, but I did not believe it.” He scowled, face turning a shade too dark and Annie shuddered. “Were you raised by me, you’d behave with the submissive meekness that your sex and age demands.”
Annie tilted her chin up. “I’m sure you would have done so with eager diligence,” she told him. “I may have never met you, but I remember well the stories I heard growing up from servants in my mother’s lands and castles.”
“Your mother’s lands?” he chuckled, arching a single bushy eyebrow. “Don’t you mean the lands that belonged to my family? The lands your whore of a mother stole from me with the help of her libertine brother?”
“Do not use such a cursed language to speak of my mother,” said Annie, jaw tense. “She is ten times the Christian you are.”
“Of course, you would think so, having been raised by your mother and uncle,” her father replied. “They filled your head with lies, sweet child. Anne of York made you think you are grander than you truly are, which allowed you to treat your father with so much disrespect.”
“Maybe they did,” she said, “But they also made me strong. Stronger than you.”
Her father smiled an amused grin, tilting his head. “Really?” he asked, mocking her with his eyes and words. “Well, then prove it to me. What made you decide to visit your forsaken father, Anne?”
She took a deep breath, shuddering with each movement of her chest.
“I wanted to see you,” she admitted, “To meet you, to see the face of the man that caused so much pain and suffering to my mother.”
“Well?” he asked. “Are all the stories proven true in your mind? Am I truly as bad as your mother and her servants painted me to be?”
She took a good look at him, the feverish glow in his eyes and she could almost imagine the way he would scream at her Lady Mother, how his large hands could make bruises bloom under her skin. Annie took a deep breath, her entire body shaking. She feared him, she realized, even if he was weak and powerless now. A man was never fearless before a woman, not so long as he had still his fists and his strength.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “You are not in a position of power. Not anymore. You can’t hurt me or my mother ever again.”
“Yes, your uncle lovingly made sure of that,” he replied with a snarl. “Edward usurped the throne from the rightful king and now injustice rains over England. A man can’t even discipline his wife and daughter as he pleases without losing his lands for it.” Henry Holland shook his head. “Now my father’s once-proud title will go to a stupid and senseless girl upon my death, right into the hands of her dirty Welsh husband.”
“Do not speak like that of him,” said Annie. She felt no need to correct him that she and Henry were not yet married, not even betrothed. There was no need for him to know such a thing. “Harri is more man than you could ever hope for.”
“Maybe he is,” said her father, “But he is no husband for you, grandson of a mere butler that dared to infiltrate a Queen’s bed.”
“He is the husband I choose,” said Annie. “Harri adores me and I will be happy with him, far happier than I would be with any man you select for me.” She took a deep breath. “The King, my uncle, has made his thoughts clear. Upon our marriage, we will assume the title of Earl and Countess of Huntington as well as assume the Duchy of Somerset, Harri’s maternal inheritance, as our own. When my mother dies, we will receive Exeter as an earldom, to be gifted to our second son once he comes of age.”
She smiled at the scowl on his face, the disappointment stamped on his features.
“The dirty Welshman you so despise will hold the proud titles of your father and his father,” she told him. “My uncle said we will be wed when I turn fifteen and my mother works daily to prepare my dress and my trousseau. Harri and I will be a true family, with many children and there is nothing you can do about it.” She took a deep breath. “Soon, the King will sign the order for your execution. It will be carried out without delay. God will take you soon, my lord father, and when he does, I will be reborn.”
Annie smiled once more and turned, holding her skirts to make the sudden movement. Her father stood up to grab her, but she was younger than him, quicker and soon enough the door was opened and she was outside, two guards flanking her. There was a small caged window at the top of the door and Annie gave her father one last look through it, observing his flushed face.
“Damned girl!” he called out in a hoarse voice. Her father grabbed the door and shook it, but it had withstood many others before him. “Damn you, Anne Holland. Damn you.”
“The Lord does not hear the words of a traitor,” said Annie. “You have no power. Nothing but words and even those are meaningless.”
She gave him one last look, and turned, her skirts swishing as she did so. He continued to scream and curse out as she left, but she barely heard them, feeling as if a weight had lifted itself off her shoulders. Her mother had told her not to go, to leave her father to die without sight from his sole child, but she felt the need to lay eyes upon the man that had so frightened the Duchess in the past.
Annie returned to the palace by barge, with a small grin on her lips. She entered her rooms with a spring upon her step, calling her maids to help her change her clothes so that she could attend to the Queen, as Annie had been made a lady-in-waiting to her aunt upon her fourteenth birthday.
She was alone, waiting for their return with her favourite green dress, when she noticed a strange piece of paper on her desk. Annie picked it up and her eyes widened as she read the pamphlet, a mocking drawing of her grandmother and an archer in each other’s arms. Annie recognised Duchess Cecily only by the coat of arms painted on her dress, the one she used while her husband still lived, and even then, only with much difficulty as the drawing was hastily and weakly made. It seemed the work of a mad man, without reason and sense.
But under it, a true sign of madness was written.
A bastard who wears the crown. The white or red rose, it was all the same.
Annie turned around and walked out the door, still clutching the letter in her fist. The dress could wait. Her uncle, the King, must see this filth.
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