Empress Catherine II of Russia didn’t earn the title of “the Great” by being a sweetie. She was, like almost all successful rulers, capable of playing hardball and cagey about maintaining her power. She was determined to make Russia a world power, and that she would force Europe to give her adopted country the respect… Read more Trying to Save Russia From Itself Was a Thankless Job
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born on 15 March 1933 and has been kicking ass ever since. After she was demoted at her day job for daring to be married and pregnant in 1955, the tiny yet stalwart Bader Ginsburg enrolled in Harvard law school in 1956, one of nine women out of a class of… Read more Happy Birthday to the Notorious RBG
The sheela-na-gig, once seen, are hard to forget. These carvings can be found on medieval churches and buildings across Northern Europe, but more frequently in the British Isles and in the greatest numbers in Ireland. A popular hypothesis is that sheela na gigs represent a pagan goddess, but academics believe the situation was more complex,… Read more Sheela-na-gig and Cultural Function
The beloved Georgina era author, poet, and editor Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld passed away on 9 March 1825, and she was largely forgotten until feminists dragged her work back out into the spotlight and made the literati admit that the woman was immensely talented. Her most controversial work was her epic poem Eighteen-Hundred and Eleven.… Read more Remembering Regency Poet Anna Barbauld
David Rizzo, or to use his birth name — David Riccio di Pancalieri in Piemonte – was a personal musician for Mary, Queen of Scots. The queen favoured the witty violinist, and often chose him to sit with her and her ladies-in-waiting. Mary was very musically inclined and had been raised in the refinement of the… Read more The Murder of David Rizzo
One of the essential plot points of Jane Austen’s revered novel Pride and Prejudice is that the opportunistic Mr. Wickham tried to elope with the 15 year old Georgiana Darcy in order to secure her dowry. It is strongly implied that this would have been a disaster, for as soon as Wickham had wedded and… Read more What Could Mr. Darcy Have Done?
Joan of Valois, Duchess of Berry, formerly a princess and a queen of France and now a founding member of the Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, passed away at the Annonciades of Bourges on 4 February 1505. Although she died a nun, she had not been born to wear the veil.… Read more Joan of Valois: Princess, Queen, Duchess, and Saint
On 29 January 1801 a baby girl was born, ostensibly the posthumous and orphaned offspring of a seaman by the surname of Thompson, in reality she was the daughter of Lady Hamilton and her lover, war hero Admiral Horatio Nelson. Admiral Nelson and Lady Hamilton were, in public, the babies Godparents who adopted her after… Read more Horatia Nelson
King Ferdinand II of Aragon, one of the worst royal father’s in history, passed away on 23 January 1516 and was (oddly enough) lamented by his surviving children. His son-in-law, Henry VIII, whom he had betrayed more often than once, was so worried about distressing the heavily pregnant Katherina of Aragon that he waited until… Read more The Death of King Ferdinand II of Aragon
On 14 January 1507 Queen Joanna of Castile gave birth to her final child, a daughter whom she named Catarina after the baby’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon, who was languishing as an unmarried widow in England at the time. Queen Joanna would soon know something of captivity and hopelessness as well. Her husband, of King… Read more Catarina of Austria, Queen of Portugal