#he looks like he has great intentions and terrible execution

[teamatsumu]

atsumu is the kind of guy who would drive all the way across town to get you your favourite food as a surprise but he would completely mess up the order and somehow get you the worst items on the menu

#💭 late night ruminating #he looks like he has great intentions and terrible execution #my husband has done this btw #miya atsumu x reader #miya atsumu headcanon #miya atsumu x you #miya atsumu imagine #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #hq x reader

[picturejasper20]

Watched Disney Wish Spoilers below

First i want to start with saying that King Magnifico is probably the highlight of the movie. His characterization is interesting and different from other recent disney villains. He has an arc and his own motivations that are linked to his development in the movie.

One thing that is interesting is that he starts sort of a good guy that wants to help people to grant their wishes and wants what he believes is the best for his kingdom. This comes from how in his past he lost everything so he wants to others to live well.

But, he is also terribly afraid of losing everything like it happened to him when he was young. As the story progresses he becomes more and more paranoid until he lets himself be corrupted by black (?) magic in attemps to push down everyone who questions him.

And that's great! That's a cool villain arc- a corruption arc- which i feel it is quite rare to see lately. It's a nice way to show how people with good intentions can lose sight of their initial goals over time.

Now when it comes to Asha... she isn't an unlikeable character but at the same time it feels like she lacks real flaws in the movie. As someone else who watched the movie told me ¨her motivations aren't much different if any other character from the town was put in her place¨. Because, yeah, it feels like there isn't much else to her besides that ¨she cares about her people¨ and ¨she wants the wishes to be given back to their owners¨.

She never has to exactly overcome some flaw of hers in the story aside from not knowing Magnifico wasn't looking for the best interests of the people... which is solved three minutes after she learns about it.

I mean, this has been a problem with other Disney female leads in the last years. The main difference, however, is that they had some form of arc in their respective movies.

Moving on to other characters, they didn't feel that interesting nor memorable. Again, i don't hate them but i didn't care much about them either watching the film. I feel the ones outside King Magnifico i did like were the queen a bit and the star character, they were sort of cute.

On last point in terms of characters, Valentino didn't add anything to the movie. He didn't have some purpose nor added in moving the plot forward. I think the film could worked the same if he wasn't there.

Now to narrative and themes. I got to say that it is all over the place. While the message is there, it feels like the movie doesn't dive too much about it leaving you were more questions than answers. For example, there is one part one of Asha's friends questions why they can't just ask King Magnifico to give their wishes back- something that is never exactly given a proper answer.

The pacing is chaotic as well. The first 30 minutes the film jumped from one plot point to the other, having like 3-4 songs in only one third of the movie. King Magnifico and Asha are seen getting along together in one minute and in the next minute they get into an argument and Magnifico decides to consider her now her enemy. It's like the movie doesn't allow time to let you digest what you are watching because it is already jumping to another important thing.

On the ¨everyone is made of stars¨ thing, i found it weird and i didn't fully get what they were trying to say with it. I guess it has to do with one having control of its own destiny? I don't know.

I would say that the biggest offense of Wish is how King Magnifico gets defeated... the characters sing a song and supposedly summon their star power and with that alone they defeat the villain. It almost feels like deux ex machima and dissapointing. There were other ways they could have made the same thing work with a better execution.

A lot of the movie feels like there were some productions issues when making it. It feels like there are scenes that are missing and things that were going to be explored in deeper detail that got cut out.

In all, i wouldn't say that i hate this movie... the thing is that it has plenty of issues. Things that should have been better polished and given more detail. There are some interesting things in here, the problem is that more often than not they don't reach its full potential. I would say that Wish is worth of watching for King Magnifico but everything else is forgettable.

#disney wish #wish 2023 #king magnifico #asha wish

[dxmoness]

hi i'm here with another (better) request lol,, the floyen family with a (teen)servant! reader who works for them as a chef!! obv platonic as the reader's a minor in this one LMFAO

𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒

— “𝐒𝐇𝐄'𝐒 𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐓.”

Dear Roue,

your letter has been answered! Hope this satisfies your interests. Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Marquise

There had been many servants in the Floyen household. Most came and left in the course of the past two years you had worked here, but you were still here after two years of what seemed to be negligence.

Abandonment was never your thing; you did not condone such things. For you a servant should only leave if their masters were unbearable or abusive towards their said servants.

You had stayed here long enough to think that the Floyens were 'gentle' with their servants. You never got any negative words or statements from them and the duke had just now treated you with respect after two years of staying here.

You were the chef for his own daughter and Lady Jubelian was an entertaining female who enjoyed your time with her and the preparations you made for her.

One day, you were preparing their meal for this morning's breakfast when you noticed that most of the food were seemingly low. Rummaging through the receipts you asked your assistant to place in the drawers, you found receipts that were a bit too high in price to be the right ones. You weren't in charge of the said orders, it was from the head chef. Was the head chef robbing the duke of his money right under his noses?

Debating on whether or not to mention it, you organized the plates of food in an orderly manner whilst waiting for the maid to come and give it.

Eventually, you decided to take the risk and write a letter in a napkin, fixing it in between the clean napkins for Lady Floyen to use when finished.

Once you saw the maid leave the kitchen, your mind started thinking of terrible scenarios that could happen to you since you dared minding other people's businesses.

Later on the maid came back, shaking with fear as she said with a shaky voice. "Name, the duke would like a word with you." Stammering the words out she ran out.

A shiver ran down your spine as you stood up to follow her along. Would you get lectured over this matter? No, you were certain you'd at least be able to explain. After all, the duke had given you respect in the past... But there was doubt in you since just because he had respect doesn't mean he wouldn't lecture you over wasting a napkin.

Momentarily, you found yourself in front of the duke. Regis Floyen stared at you intently. As if he was awaiting an answer about you actions.

"Sarah said you called for me, Your Grace?" You inquire keeping your head down whilst keeping yourself as calm and collected as possible. You were afraid that your voice would shake in a guilty way.

"I did." The duke answered, then he looked at the others who may be eyes or spies of the emperor. Taking this into a consideration, he continued in a low voice. "This matter with the napkin. What's it all about?"

You were surprised. You had given the napkin to Jubelian, didn't you? Why had the duke heard about it when Lady Jubelian wouldn't even have been able to finish eating yet? No matter, it didn't matter at the moment as you explain the situation with the head chef.

The duke was silent until you finished your explanation of the things that had apparently occured under his nose. "I see." He said at last. "I will take this into consideration. You may leave."

Days later you found yourself as new head chef. A job you couldn't have seen yourself in for years to come. The duke had dealt with the old chef; by dealt with he meant executing him for such a crime towards the duchy.

After your sudden promotion, another surprise showed itself when Lady Floyen kept demanding you to eat with her; which involved her talking about things that happened with nobles as well as asking for needed advice at times.

#❥﹒✦﹒✿﹒marq talks﹒ᶻz﹒🖤 #self insert #manhwa x reader #manhwa #platonic!floyen x reader #jubellian eloy floyen #regis floyen #regis adri floyen #maximilian kasin ashet

[wizzard890]

what got you so into the french revolution?

When I was in school for medieval art history, I did a lot of work on saints and their martyrdoms, particularly how the viewers of art depicting suffering imagined suffering, and how the agony/eroticism of those feelings induced a sort of memetic spiritual euphoria. Which means that I spent a ton of time looking at images of executions. I've seen them all: beheadings and sexymen shot full of arrows, saints barbecued or flayed or eaten by wild animals, criminals broken on the wheel -- all the classics. Or at least, I thought I had, until I encountered this triptych in my senior year of college:

This, by Belgian artist Antoine Wiertz, is The Visions of a Guillotined Head, painted in the late 1840s. Wiertz was a symbolist, and spent a great portion of his career drawn to the macabre, never more notably than on the occasion that inspired this painting.

In February 1848, two notable French criminals were due to be executed by the state. The guillotine was of course still in use as a method of capital punishment (and would be until the 1970s), and Wiertz was curious as to what a so-swiftly severed head felt and saw. He wasn't the first; since the guillotine's invention there had been legends of heads that blinked and blushed and tried to speak after separation. Luckily, Wiertz had a friend who was a hypnotist (as you do). Timed to the moment of the execution, he had his hypnotist pal put his soul "into rapport" with the dead criminal, and claimed that he entered the head itself as it fell.

He later recalled his experiences at some length in writing, but since we're talking about me, here is the important passage, dictated as he "felt" the horror of execution:

A horrible buzzing noise, the sound of the blade descending. The victim believes that he has been struck by lightning, not the axe. Astonishingly, the head lies under the scaffold and yet still believes it is above, still believes itself to be part of the body, and still waits for the blow that will cut it off. Horrible choking! No way to breathe. The asphyxia is appalling. It comes from an inhuman, supernatural hand, weighing down like a mountain on the head and neck. A cloud of fire passes before his eyes. Everything is red and glitters.

Now comes the moment when the executed man thinks he is stretching his cramped, trembling hands towards the dying head. It is the same instinct that drives us to press a hand against a gaping wound. And it occurs with the dreadful intention of setting the head back on the trunk, to preserve a little blood, a little life.

This fucked me up so bad.

I am well aware that consciousness after having your spinal cord severed is a done deal. I was aware of this in college. But there was something about this artist's act of imaginative empathy that compelled me, for the first time, to think about the guillotine in particular. About the mechanical wait, not being pushed off a drop or axed while kneeling, about being slid through on a board, of seeing the basket beneath you, already full of heads. Maybe even heads you know.

I imagined it so hard that I made myself sick and couldn't go to class for two days.

The reason I studied what I studied wasn't because I was ghoulish. In fact, I'm a little squeamish. It was because in the experience of pain, we are all deeply individualized, but entirely, helplessly human.

I laid in bed and thought about the small number of humans who I, an educated layman, knew had been guillotined: Marie Antoinette, obviously; Louis XVI; and (in what felt like black historical irony, given what I knew of his day job) Maximilian Robespierre.

It felt intrusive to have intimately imagined their last, most private moments, without really having any idea about them at all. Better to start at the end and work backwards, I thought. So I started reading.

Robespierre, decapitated by guillotine when he was thirty-six. That's the manner of death. How did he meet his death? In terrible pain, I learned. Why? Because he'd had half his jaw blown off the night before. Jesus, why? Because he'd (maybe probably) shot himself. Why?

It turns out, if you keep doing that, a piece at a time, for years, you can learn a lot about someone's life. And, relatedly, in long and branching paths, you can find your way into every nook and cranny of what burned through France at the end of the 18th century.

#aren't you glad you asked #hey emily why were you so obsessed with executions and the horror of suspended pain in the first place? #well yes you see I was raised evangelical and read foxe's book of martyrs at the tender age of eight and it drilled a channel into my brain #hey emily did something happen to you in college that made you hyperfocus on the gossamer threads between life and death? #would you look at the time!!!! #anyway this was probably not the answer you expected but it is what it is #I have seen the past and I foresee the future

[sswirlicuee]

I just finished OPLA (skipping the parts I didn't care about, though). I'll make it short (spoilers ahead):

Things I like:

- Some writing choices. I liked that they weren't afraid to tweak the narratives a little to accommodate the storyline. Kudos for Zoro getting his wounds taken care of by Zeff, Luffy's & Sanji's parents bonding etc.

- How bold the production was with Zoro's sexuality ("You're asking the wrong guy." *Grabs own sword out of some naked blond guy's hands composedly* etc.) I think the intention might have been to depict Zoro as asexual, but it just ended up making him openly gay. End of story.

Things I find questionable:

- The casting, but not the cast. The first thing I need to emphasize is that all of the casts delivered their performance beautifully. There's nothing wrong with their acting skills. But the casting choices just didn't suit the characters at all in my opinion. And it's not a problem of chemistry either. Usually, when I have my reservations about the casting, it'd be like, oh, this guy works as Character A, but it was honestly a terrible decision to put him together with this guy as Character B. With OPLA, the chemistry between the crew were great, and I really enjoyed the bickering between Zoro and Sanji, BUT there's just that one thing that made them not Luffy, not Nami, not Zoro and not Sanji. (Not so much Usopp though).

- The production. I've already made my points about sneakers. Luffy cajoling around IN Converses!? What on earth. Flashback!Sanji walking around the kitchen (and subsequently on that rock) in crisp white sneakers!? What WAS that. And I think they totally butchered that Sanji Flashback scene. I'm not an advocate of eating disorders or putting child actors through food restrictions etc, BUT after 75 days of being stranded on a rock with barely anything to eat/drink, young Sanji still looked as fresh and healthy as he was on day one. His lips were not even chapped in the close up shots. I felt like they could have made more efforts on this.

- Adaptation... but to what extent? Does adaptation mean following the original to the T? Even when some elements were not even crucial to the storytelling (and hell, OPLA will go on for what, another 2 seasons max? some easter eggs might not even mean anything)? So some of the props were entirely unnecessary and so badly executed it made the whole show cheap and ridiculous, like that dog hat Garp was wearing AND the mouse ears on Nezumi. Especially the latter. It might have worked in the manga and anime, but we could have totally dispensed with those.

Recently in Japan, there has just been a production of One Piece On Ice (figure skating adaptation of Alabasta arc -- highly recommend to check it out on Youtube). It was a totally different form of storytelling, but the casting was perfect. In my humble opinion, the actors there fit their roles WAY more than than this cast did in OPLA. I'm not saying OPLA was bad, though. I enjoyed some bits of the show. It just doesn't really stick overall.

#one piece #opla #one piece live action #sanji #zoro

[softpine]

"She can’t get kidnapped tonight. The optics would be terrible." BRANDI!!!

love this sm <33 the contestant push and pull between elaine's expectations and gut (literally) feeling about the engagement was something we knew was coming, but actually knowing exactly how she's processing this is so interesting!

asa bigfoot loml

i'll reread this tmrw, but i'm having a hard time picking up on how austin's feeling about the engagement rn

the glasses thing is so specific and universal and perfect and aaaa

i'm honestly a little surprised asa wasn't being judgemental considering how he was when he met alisa

if he's looking for a big fight does he think finn is stuck there rn? or maybe willingly? or maybe i'm just wrong idk lol

anyways i loved this and your writing and as always i won't stop thinking about it for days <33

i hope you know i LIVE for these messages 💖💖💖

elaine's internal monologue about being kidnapped is something personal to me. after a horrible experience i had while jogging one day, i started consuming true crime content 24/7 because i thought it would help me regain some control, but in reality it just made me SO anxious about everything and distrustful of everyone. not only that, but the truth is that violence happens whether you're prepared for it or not. basic knowledge of self defense & safety is great, but letting fear rule your life is not!

i know puking is gross to read about but it was so necessary to show how, like you said, elaine's gut feeling is at odds with both what she's saying out loud AND what she's thinking in her head.

elaine has been calling asa bigfoot for forever, and now it's finally canon fjskdjs

i liked the part about the glasses because it's something i wouldn't be able to portray easily in a normal story post. and i definitely wanted austin's feelings to seem more complicated than he lets on! elaine wonders if he's worried about the same things or if he would even talk to her about it if he was. so even she can't pick up on his true feelings right now.

the reason asa reacted the way he did here is because he knows that elaine is going to be inundated with people judging her soon, so he felt no need to pile onto that. with alisa it was different, because everyone else seemed to like her uncritically, so asa felt like he needed to be the person to look out for jada. i also think it's easier for asa to give austin the benefit of the doubt, because austin seems to have good intentions even if his execution doesn't come across that way, while it seemed to him that alisa is just playing games with people's emotions for the fun of it. in general, asa tries to give everyone a chance, alisa just pushed his buttons tbh

"if he's looking for a big fight does he think finn is stuck there rn? or maybe willingly?" <- i looove that you said that. i can't say anything about it but i love that you said it :P

thank you for such thoughtful comments, i can't tell you how much i appreciate them!! 💗

#minamill #asks #nonsims #brandi answers #camellia ask #vomit tw #true crime tw

[saintofswords]

tell me abt ur scorpion boy 🔫🔫🔫

Oh wow, I'd be happy to! I'll try to post some highlights of the current adventure the group is wrapping up under the cut!

Alright, so my character is a Shosuro courtier named Maekawa Kenji. A big thing for him has been the tug of war between wanting to be a good, dutiful samurai and of being as decent of a human being as he can. As you can guess, a lot of issues have arisen during our campaign because of this. He's slowly been moving more towards the side of goodness, likely in no small part due to the influence of the Lion shugenja in our group. Said shugenja is a pretty noble samurai and an all around decent person, so he's been a great influence. A big thing for Kenji in most of the previous adventures has been balancing secretly doing the right thing (helping the commonfolk, the downtrodden, etc), while also accomplish whatever tasks the Scorpion have for him.

This conflict has all come to a head in the current adventure we are playing, in which he needed to solve an issue with a certain lord of one of the Imperial family's castles being unable to pay their taxes. The Imperial Family sent Kenji (He rescued a lost child of one of their nobles awhile back) to fix this, with no clear instructions about how to do so; he was simply told to get the castle to paying the taxes again. Upon his very first day at the castle, he learned that a coup was being planned, and set himself in alliance with one of the leaders of the coup, the Steward of the castle. Lots of social manipulating later, The big conflict between the insurgents and the lord of the castle's forces is going to occur, with Kenji having played the field the entire time, unsure of what to do, having simply pushed and pulled here and there in the hopes of pulling out as much corruption as he could.

Lost, he goes to secretly meet with the other Scorpion in the party to discuss what should be done. She believes the lord of the castle should be killed, and Kenji reluctantly agrees that it's for the best. They agree to plan more later that night. Kenji is dragged off by the rest of the party to help with something, and she heads off on her own. She often does that.

Some more things happen and we are brought in to the chambers of the castle's lord afterwards. His court shugenja has been doing a terrible job of his duties for a long time (he was in with the Steward, it was intentional sabotage), so the party's Lion is just doggedly pursuing him with evidence from our investigations, trying to get the court shugenja locked up or executed for his crimes. Kenji, wanting to keep that piece on the board, urges the lord towards mercy when the Lion is out of earshot. He's now, unbeknownst to our Lion, betrayed the trust he has for Kenji. It's not come out yet, but I think the Lion is on the cusp of potentially discovering that. Even if he doesn't though, Kenji really regrets doing that to his friend.

Fast forward to the morning, and there is an invading force outside the castle-the Steward's allies! Kenji worriedly slips away from the party and goes to check on the lord of the castle (He later realized the man was not NEARLY as bad as his reputation had suggested), only to find out from the lord's niece (his heir) that the lord of the castle and his wife were slain in the night. The other Scorpion is also missing. Kenji, worrying about where his fellow Scorpion is, and what she has or hasn't done, sets out towards the battle in hope of negotiating. This doesn't happen, and Kenji will be forced to align himself in the mass battle about to occur.

Unsure of what to do, but feeling that too much of his honor is at stake to simply abstain from fighting, Kenji looks to our Lion. He hopes the Lion will choose a side, and Kenji can follow after him. The Lion abstains, instead waiting in the castle to serve as a medic for the wounded after the battle is concluded one way or another. Kenji, feeling that he needs to do what is best for his Scorpion ally, allies with the coup. As does the ronin in our group, simply wishing to join what he thinks will be the winning side. One mass battle and the coup has succeeded, with the niece slipping out of the castle unnoticed at some point. A new daimyo is immediately installed by the lord above the castle's last lord, and she promptly has the Steward executed for being such a treacherous snake. Things seem good! The party (minus the one missing ofc), are called into to meet with the new daimyo and they advise her about the situation of things and how best to move forward. Finally dismissed for the night, after one of the longest days of his life, Kenji returns to his quarters to find a letter.

"I expected more from my friends. The way of the Scorpions is to serve the best of the empire. Putting traitors, murderers, and backstabbers at the head of power is not the best for the empire. I will see you all after [niece] and I meet with the Imperial Family. Goodbye, Kenji."

The trust of two close friends has now been lost.

We stopped at that, so I have no idea what is going to happen for my character next, but he is NOT feeling happy right now. Mission accomplished, and all he had to trade for it were two of his only true friends and comrades!

#thanks for the interest! #he's been interesting to see in action #went with a unique family name because of some backstory stuff haha #I'm sorry this ended up so long #The amount of miscommunication that occurred between the two Scorpions here is comical to us out of character but man #character drama in the house!!!

[henrysfedora]

i finally had brainrots for my don:

i like the idea of him having a soft sounding name, a name that has a feeling of false security. like when you'd first hear it, it doesn't sound completely threatening and it deters you away from his true self: a ruthless piece of shit. it doesn't work on everyone of course but it works on certain people, depending on their level of naivety. i'm thinking about calling him lauro.

still thinking about a last name for him, but i like the sound of colella. don colella.

what also plays into his kind sounding name, is how well he looks. he is well groomed, well dressed, dresses in warm toned clothes, a lot of blacks, navy red, navy blue, dark greys. he gesticulates, focuses on people when he's talking to them or listening to them. if you don't know him his behaviour makes you feel noticed and welcome in the conversation. but if you do know him his mannerisms seem more like threats than anything else, he is focusing on you and your surroundings, he's keeping track of your every move.

he's a warm character. he has a deep, smokey voice. a warm complexion. strong arms, scarred hands, a soft stomach.

born in 1907, that would make him 45 years old currently in 1952 (i'm assuming we could start off here, things would've settled by then), and it's at this age he was approved to start building his own crime family.

his main business is a well loved jazz lounge, where he has his family meetings upstairs, and it's also where he spends most of his down time. the people he has here are people he trusts the most and wants to keep safe (the place is heavily guarded). it has a warm, welcoming vibe. dark spruce walls, orange lights, red rugs, whiskey, wine, champagne, fireplaces, giant red and gold curtains.

probably has another business though to help launder more money. like a restaurant or something.

he just isn't allowed to drive, he's awful. he has a personal driver. probably owns a really nice limo, like a lassiter in game, but he's not allowed anywhere near the drivers seat.

surprisingly a really good singer.

bisexual. he wants to hold every man and woman's hand.

^ i like to think he's sweet on one of the singers in his jazz lounge.

he's awfully romantic and it's really only where his 'kindness' truly shows. he's awkward, he's lost. flirting? he does not know how, he's a bit unnerving. (i think he's the type of guy to take some poor woman into the middle of the woods and be like 'isn't it so pretty out here :D?' without realising that woman is probably terrified).

that being said he is nice to his crime family, he's just, not great with affection and praise at all. good intentions, poor execution. it ties into his romantic heart too, he wants to impress people, but he won't really do anything anyone finds traditionally romantic. he won't buy flowers, he'll buy alcohol and if they won't drink it he will.

hearts in the wrong place, desensitised to gore, too insane and selfish for all the innocent people he keeps falling for. he's not completely nor inherently evil, he's just, rude, and uptight, and, oddly caring sometimes. he's weird.

so, so far: a handsome, badass gentleman who is a trained ruthless killer.. but to level it out he's also a dumbass who falls for people too easily, and he is awfully terrible at trying to be romantic, and he's just a weirdo.

#its 3am #it's been so long i hope people are still interested omg #i can't believe i was originally going to make him a lost youngster who needed to be fixed... who was going to be good in the end.. #NO. MAKE HIM BROKEN AND HOT AND EVIL #um. #blorbo family #lauro

[the-dragonlich]

🌍 🤫 👀 🌑for Nomad City?

🌍- What is distinctive about the setting? What sets it apart?

I think what would mostly set it apart from other fantasy settings would be the   fact that everyone is actually placed under a curse but it’s one that was placed generations ago that everyone has long learned to live with. (And the way they treat undeads but I’m gonna save that for another post because I have a lot undead lore and it double or triple the length of this easy) You know that trope where some asshole wizard/scientest/what have you turns the whole city/world into mindless monsters so the heros have to figure out a way to reverse it. The mindless part didn’t stick and no one has found a way to reverse it in the few centuries it’s been active (though the search did start winding down at the end of the first century considering the only ones who remembered being humans at that point where just barely past being toddlers) The aformentioned asshole wizard was executed not long after word spread of whose fault this was. Along with the curse came a new abundance of magic. While is was once a very rare thing to receive and you where almost instantly sent to be trained by a older magic user so they could train you to use it correctly (and desperately hope you used it benevolently) The few magic users who were around before the curse did their best to bring about some sort of order but there was was far to many people than the small smattering of them could hope to teach, and on top of that some where being sent away to go find a cure and others straight killed out of misplaced vengeance for the already existing magic users. Everyone was changed into monsters and along with this came many body parts that they didn’t know how to use. It wasn’t uncommon to hear about someone imapling someone with their horns, slashing through them when they were orginally going for a punch, being injected with venom their assialent didn’t know they had, or someone not being aware their kick now packed the punch of a war hammer. And this is on top people finding out the hard way some foods are now poisonous to their new bodies and a horrendous amount of accidents involving magic. The first few decades of the curse where there own special sort of hell for a lot of reasons but it’s been a few generations since, things have long settled down and magic is much better integrated into society.

🤫 - A big spoiler/piece of lore out of context

“Knell, I don’t think he’s even made flesh! I brushed up against him and it felt like touching porcelain.”

👀 - A piece of lore you’ve been wanting a excuse to share

*Another story that takes place in the same universe as Nomads City (All Joy Dies with You) was originally a fanfic before it started feeling like trying to stick with the canons magic system was to stifling and the renewed version of the story is placed into the first century of the curse.

In the modern day it has since become a horrifying and tragic example of of early after curse necromancy with good intentions that just went terribly wrong. One of the zombies that was raised as well as the necromancer are actually still running around. (Though most people just consider that to be a rumor/scary story to tell kids so they’ll behave.)

*While there are quiet a few different types of monster in Nomads City universe, the vast majority of them are animal adjacent mostly because the wizard who set the great curse upon everyone felt the more animal they were, the less sentient they would be and the more familiar they were the easier they would be to control, so anything that looks to uncanny/unrecognizable as something a human during his era would know are considered outliers. Though even the people who look really close to a specific type of animal aren’t guaranteed to be anything like it (Ex: Although Warren is hare adjacent all except the 2 front teeth resemble a carnivores more and Wisteria is actually venomous even though she’s a dog)

🌑 - Is there any symbolism? Motifs

I do incorporate some flower language into lot of characters. Wether that be their actual names (Wisteria, Hydrangea), their relationships to eachother (Yarrow for Knell and Warren) or something about their character (Begonias and Butterfly Weed for Sanguine)

Just about all the characters names have some meaning, that or they’re puns. Some of my favorites are:

Knell, referring to a death knell because he’s a necromancer

Warren Ufkage (Warden of Cage), a reference to his original incarnation who was placed in world with significantly less magic and was fascinated with to the point of obsession and would kidnap and experiment of the any known magic users and magical artifacts

Sanguine, who has a ”the road to hell is paved with hood intentions type of story” so the word seemed fitting.

Sahara, she’s another story from the first century of the great curse, and one of the main reasons a a lot the modern day necromatic practices are in place today. She raised a entire army of undead in attempt to take over the continent but was surprised when a lot of them turned on her in order to defend there still living loved ones from her and her hoards. (Her name and story is actually a reference to the main villain of the book series The Familiars, it’s a sort of generic fantasy adventure I read as kid that takes place of the POV of wizards familiars. Pretty sure she was also what kickstarted my love of zombies because as a kid it was harder to be scared of zombified animals rather than zombified humans.)

#thank you for enabling me #Ask games

[woolishlygrim]

I really can’t overstate how utterly fascinating I find Ex-Arm.

It’s like - we’ve all seen bad shows, probably worse shows than Ex-Arm. We’re familiar with the reasons why: Low budget and no idea how to stretch what little budget they have, incompetence, lack of interest or inspiration from the creative team, executive meddling, what-have-you. It’s old hat by now.

But Ex-Arm is just endlessly interesting to me because it’s an animated series where the director decided he didn’t need any animators. As other people have pointed out, it’s not like Ex-Arm is cheaply made, it’s got what is probably a very impressive budget! And it isn’t like the director is necessarily wholly incompetent, he’s directed several live-action movies and dramas! And Crunchyroll, who deal exclusively in anime, must surely have some idea of what does and does not make a good anime!

And yet, multiple people signed off on this animated series whose staff did not include animators.

If you ever needed a more perfect crystallisation of the idea of high-prestige and low-prestige work in entertainment, and the idea that the industry elevates individuals in managerial positions while devaluing the teams under them, just - just think about that. Think about Yoshimatsu Kimura, who has never directed an animated series before in his entire career, declaring that he was just going to hire his usual live-action team, and multiple producers going “I see no way this could go wrong.”

It sounds absolutely absurd, like a parody of the industry’s devaluation of certain workers, and yet it actually happened, and then Kimura declared that Ex-Arm was going to be the best science fiction anime ever created and make every other work in the genre look like trash.

I don’t understand how anyone could find that less than riveting. 

But it doesn’t even stop there!

So Kimura, the music director, is a guitar teacher and part-time DJ under the name SIGMA X81. He’s never worked on an anime before, and his music is ... pretty terrible, to be honest. Not the worst, but, like, if you listen to it, and then you heard ‘And this was composed and played by a middle-aged guitar teacher who is also a small-time DJ,’ you’d go ‘Yeah, no, that tracks.’

Tommy Morton, the writer, is also a first-time writer, and appears to not ... actually ... speak Japanese? Like, anime adaptations that utilise a Japanese animation team but which are initially written in English and dubbed into Japanese after the fact aren’t uncommon these days, especially on streaming platforms, that’s what the excellent Castlevania was and also what the equivalently terrible Dragon’s Dogma was. But there’s two differences here: Firstly, Ex-Arm is adapted from a manga that hasn’t been localised into English yet, which means that Morton was either translating as well as writing, or that he was working with a translator and writing based on their work, neither of which is ideal. The second difference is that Ex-Arm wasn’t scripted and recorded in English and then dubbed into Japanese, but rather seems to have been translated from the manga, scripted in English, translated back into Japanese, and then recorded in Japanese.

And as you can probably tell by now, Crunchyroll’s seeming intent here was to give first-time directors (for anime, at least), composers, writers etc a platform to get their names out there, which is very admirable. Unfortunately, they picked a director who didn’t think he needed animators, a composer who’s a middling DJ, and -- I mean, admittedly, the writing is the most competent part of the whole production here, even if it’s not that great.

Just ... fascinating. If we emerged from the hellscape of 2020 for one thing, it was so we could bear witness to Ex-Arm, and I say that without even a hint of irony or sarcasm. They say you learn more from failure than success, and Ex-Arm is a masterclass, far and away the most interesting anime of the decade from a production standpoint.

The only real victims here are HiRock and Shinya Komi, the writer and artist of the manga respectively. I’ve never read the manga, although the art actually looks really good, but it was well-received enough to get a sequel despite being in a pretty competitive magazine. I can only imagine that they are horrified by what became of its adaptation.

#ex-arm

[selinakidreams]

hello hello hello ! this is my comfort piece for @doinmybesthere ‘s mental health awareness month collab! and I’d just like to say a huge thank you to emme for creating such a wonderful collab and thank you for letting me be apart of it.

paring: kirishima eijirou (I’m talking 7ft big strongman vibes) x empathic quirk f!reader (established relationship)

word count: 3.7k +

genre: hurt/comfort + fluff

warnings: mentions of anxiety & toxic friendships, instigating with means to harm- please let me know if I missed anything!!

a/n: this I think,, was the best way to approach what has tormented me for years. it was a reoccurring thing for me but I never handled it properly, and just this year, someone important taught me that I deserve more than what I’ve been putting myself through. so here it is! I also think that once my schedule clears up, I’m gonna make a sister piece to this but idk !! let me know if you guys would be interested in that!

++ the absolute biggest thank you to my betas/flow checkers @doinmybesthere @lady-bakuhoe @keishinslove BIG kith

pss. the first person who can guess my love language based off this fic wins a prize

Turning other’s confidence to despair, gloating to fear, persistence to tiredness, motivation into loss- but all you felt was drained. The overuse of your quirk left your head feeling full of cotton; Your chest heaving and vision slightly blurry. 

You arrived late to the fight because what started as a relaxing day off quickly turned into a rush to get to the streets. Thankfully Red Riot had been on the scene, waist-deep and stalling a full-fledged fight between two combat villains until backup came. 

His tired eyes met yours and you flashed him a hopeful smile until witnessing the villain get a short-termed upper hand. They landed a solid punch, which caused you to feel not only the repercussions of the shock-inducing impact but your building guilt of being a distraction.

Years of training reminded you not to let it get to your head, your hero instincts kicking in after emotionally experiencing that strike. Heart pumping with adrenaline, you began to focus your heart and mind, simultaneously tuning into what those around you were feeling, never forgetting to keep your eyes wide and alert. 

Confidence, eagerness, perseverance, exhaustion, determination. 

Taking a breath as you ease into a rhythm, you kept your sights on the two people who were attacking the boulder of a hero and finally, a steady grasp.

Quirk at work, the familiar mental image of loose strings flowing in the wind appeared, and you grabbed a hold of them, symbolizing that you had caught hold of their feelings and wasted no time on bending and contorting to your will. You watched as their actions became slower and less motivated, making it easier for Kirishima to handle. He must have realized what was happening, a new surge of elation pumped through him as he began to knock both of the villains down a peg. 

Seeing him fight had always been such a marvel to watch; it was so easy to be mesmerized by the sheer enthusiasm he had while trying to keep the balance and execute justice. Kirishima Eijirou was a hero in all senses of the word- and not just any hero, your hero- as cheesy as it sounded.

Secured under his weight and possibly unconscious, Red Riot looked around, a bit disheveled, until his gaze found yours. Expecting to be met with the warm sincere smile that always made your heart flutter, your heart sunk when you saw his eyes turn wide and frantic as he called out your hero name. 

On top of feeling a bit dizzy from honing into those particular subjects and manipulating two people at once, a wave of distress washed over you, adding to the unfavorable aftermath of pushing your quirk. 

You were quick to whip around, finding another villain was closing in closer than expected. You dropped all previous controls and focused solely on the person in front of you. 

“You had gotten better since the last time I saw you,” they sneered as they attempted to land a hard-hitting kick to your stomach. 

Missing by a hair, you pushed past the dreariness in your head and went straight into a defensive position.

The close-cut dodge wasn’t the only thing to throw you off; now you had realized why Kirishima looked at you like that; your traumatic past, the one you had divulged to him in the safety of your home, warbling with tears streaking your cheeks, was coming back to roughhouse with the intent of ending in a knockout. 

Fear twisted into gut-wrenching anxiety; the plummeting feeling hit the bottom of your stomach with a harsh thud.

In front of you stood the unmistakable frame of someone you had considered to be one of your closest friends for a time; someone that seemed so natural to be with, someone you divulged secrets and shared smiles with, someone that had made it seem like separation was not an option- now turned villain, sporting a suited evil smirk smeared on their face. 

It was hard not to let the tears collect on your waterline, thinking about the whirlwind of your relationship as your gaze met theirs for the first time in years. Months and months of triggered breakdowns, cold sweats from various nightmares, and countless tears have been shed as time progressed, the sinking feeling of long-lost fear that they had put you through now showing its ugly head; the thought you had convinced yourself for so long- that you ended up not even being worth their time starting to resurface. 

It had been hard to learn the lessons that were dealt and see the mistakes made on both parts- not just yours, to pick up all the shattered expectations of what a true friendship is, but you had. Now you were able to sort through the wrong sorts and had gotten emotionally and mentally stronger because of it; in many ways, the ending of the friendship helped you realize that there were ways you deserved to be treated, and like shit wasn’t one of them.

However, it almost seemed like all the progress you had made swirled down the drain now that they were in front of you. It was like you were experiencing the heartbreak of them ending the friendship all over again.

“Awww! The poor little hero is still heartbroken after I left her?” their tone patronizing as they jutted out their bottom lip to form an exaggerated pout. “Look at you! I can practically see the desperation on your face- desperate for me to come back? You’ve always been so fucking clingy. But you know, the news has you pinned as like... some kind of saint… no, no. You’re nothing but a selfish attention whore playing the good guy... so I just wanted to stop by and remind you of the truth.” they sneered, really aiming to trigger your trauma. 

You had opened up to them about all your fears; from the smallest to the all-consuming ones, so for them to be targeting you like this… they must have thought that you haven’t changed- and you fucking have. You worked damn hard to do so; You’ve grown and have started appreciating yourself more, started loving yourself more, started working on yourself more. The villain was only targeting your past worries, keyword, past.

Regardless, you were already feeling too much as is and the best thing you could do for yourself right now was to control yourself. 

The urge to take it personally was beyond tempting- to make them suffer as they had done to you, to watch them break right in front of you… But there was a specific way to handle this situation, one you’ve envisioned more than enough, the perfect high route. 

Quickly looking back to see how Kirishima was fairing, you were met with the rock hero in the process of cuffing the other two offenders, allowing you to feel a rush of relief. You turned around and mentally centered yourself. The convict seemed to put together what you were about to do, so without hesitation, they began charging only a second too late.

Taking a breath, the perfect feeling to muddle their prideful feeling down surged through you as you carefully knotted their violent stings together.

It was the feeling you faced when all was said and done after, the outcome you faced after you had gone through confronting all of the trauma that was built up by this person. 

All you felt was emptiness. 

When it hit them, you saw it in their eyes as they stopped in their tracks. No smugness, no pride, no cowardness. Nothing to egg them on and yet nothing to make them feel terrible. Blank. 

Before confusion slithered its way to their consciousness, you took the opportunity and roundhoused them- your efficient ankle sweep knocking their head to the floor, deeming them unconscious.

Crouching to the floor next to their body, you made sure they were breathing before cuffing them and standing back up, turning around you double-check on the scene behind you.

The police furthest from you were tucking the Red Riot’s villains in their cars while the others jogging towards you kept their eyes on the limp body behind you, Kirishima in tow. He looked incredibly tired but couldn’t seem to keep the smile off his face. He felt proud.

A weak smile graces your lips as you try to take a step, only to see your vision blur.

Great. 

The last thing you saw was the panicked look in his eyes as his pace quickened to a run in attempts to catch you. You faded out to the sound of an urgent call of your actual name before your body hit the ground with a thud. 

The next few hours came in slow-paced blinks. 

The first time you opened your eyes post-fight, your body felt heavy… but you were moving. It didn’t take long to realize that you were being carried by the muscular arms that you wake up to every morning. Slowly peeling your eyes open, the sight of his signature spikey red hair reminded you that what had just happened. Your boyfriend, the one who was on the scene with you, had witnessed you overcome one of the people that truly had left damage on you. He wasn’t looking at you, but staring straight ahead; by the way, his fingers curled around your bicep and thighs, it had been tough for him to watch everything that had gone down. 

You tried to call out his name, but it sounded stifled, sounding more like a broken whisper than anything. After another try, he seemed to have heard you, his ears perking up even though all the commotion- or maybe it was just ironic timing. When his red eyes caught the beaming smile you attempted to comfort him with, he tried to mimic it, only you could make out the way his bottom lip quiver. Your eyelids became unbearably heavy and for the second time, unconsciousness took its hold over you.

Blink.

The next time your eyes peeled open, you were being inspected by the all-to-familiar medical team. The inside of the ambulance was much brighter than it was outside, fluorescent lighting causing you to squint. Unnamable hands were touching your head and pulse points. When they noticed your eyes open, they tried to keep you awake as long as possible, the first step was sitting you up on the gurney. The first person you made eye contact with was your designated nurse- the one with the most comforting presence, was that part of her quirk? 

With a kind smile and knowing eyes, she jerked her head in the direction of the person she knew was first to come to mind. Following the movement, your gaze landed on Kirishima, who was standing off to the side and chewing on his nail, arms crossed against his chest. 

Had he already got checked out? Was he okay? 

When he noticed you were staring, he mustered up a small smile and in return, you slightly lifted both your hands to do a loose wave in attempts to warm up his smile. It worked.

“Okay c’mon, you know how these checkups go- you can go be with your boyfriend once we know you’re okay.” your nurse teased, knowing full well that a serious approach wasn’t going to work with you being this drowsy. 

You merely nodded in response, head and eyelids still heavy.

 The rest of the examination went by speedily, you being awake making everything go ten times smoother. After everything was checked and you were clear to go home, the nurses moved to talk to Kirishima as you moved to the edge of the ambulance, waiting for them to finish. 

“I’m so lucky that you’re not only my hero but also a registered caregiver. Well actually… both are pretty super...” You mumbled, trailing off with a lazy smile, lids finally starting to accept the losing battle of staying open. 

“Nooo, you’re lucky that it’s the overuse of your quirk that’s keeping you out of the hospital and not fatal injuries. It’s not manly to push yourself too hard.” he quipped back in a light playful tone; He didn’t miss how hard you were fighting to stay awake. “Baby, can you make it to the car or do you want me to carry you?” 

It was moments like this where you appreciated how comfortable Kirishima made you feel in your relationship; feeling no shame when you revert to a clingy pile of mush. Reaching out, you let your eyes close as you mimic grabby hands to your enormous boyfriend. 

You hear him sigh as he kneels in front of you, opening your eyes in time to catch his broad back muscles shifting, “c’mon love, you need to help me with this bit.”

You clumsily climb on his back and loosely wrap your arms around his neck, standing up with ease. He quickly adjusts you against him to get a better hold on your thighs. Once he begins walking, you let yourself subside back into unconsciousness.

Blink.

You were jolted awake when you felt yourself falling, only for your behind to hit a familiar cushiony surface. Oh right, the car. Before you could fade out once again, you heard Kirishima say something about going to grab the paperwork so the both of you can file your reports later when you wake up. The last thought you were able to think was something along the lines of how incredibly lucky you were to have someone love you so deeply.

Blink.

Waking up to the view of the city lights twinkling below your balcony and the energy of a healthy 8 hours of sleep, you stretch the rest of the drowsiness out of your body till you feel ready to accept the hefty amount of paperwork that’s waiting for you in the other room. 

The only light that illuminated your bedroom was the reflection of the living room lights on the hallway floors. Before getting up, you spared a glance at your nightstand, seeing a glass of water with a note underneath, as predicted; this happened more often than not after a battle. You reach out and take the glass in hand and take a steady sip before letting in more and more water, then reading the messy little note:

 in the livingroom <3 

You smiled at the little doodle he drew- two characters that seem a lot like the two of you, kissing, with a sparkly heart over their heads.

The need to recreate this drawing was growing at an incredible speed.

With newfound determination, you push yourself up from the bed and shuffle to the living room, squinting when the light becomes a little too harsh against your eyes.

Eyes fully closed when you get to the center of the living room, purposely facing the wrong way and trying to suppress a giggle, you try to use the most monotone voice you could muster.

“Kiri - where are you I can’t see.” 

“Your eyes are closed- babe, open your eyes.” 

“No it’s too bright but I saw this cute drawing on the nightstand done by this really talented artist and I must recreate it please recreate it with me.”

You heard a bit of shuffling before his voice came close to your left side.

“Was it a pretty manly drawing?” 

“I would like to think so.”

He was much closer at this point, shifted to somewhere close in front of you right before warm lips were on yours; as quick as the peck came, it was gone in a flash followed by the sound of him plopping down on the couch.

“Wait Eijirou-” you start to pout as you turn in the direction where the couch is, eyes now fully open and set on Kirishima until the shock of pain shot through your nerve endings. 

“Ah, shit! Fuck!…” you wince, lifting your leg to hug your newly stubbed toe.

Kirishima is back by your side in an instant, really trying to suppress his laugh but doing a terrible job.

“You’re such a jerk for laughing,” you pout, giving your best attempt of a proper shove… and he didn’t even budge. 

There was a moment of complete silence then the booming of your boyfriend’s boisterous laughs bouncing off the walls. Rolling your eyes, you limped over to the spot on the couch where he was previously sitting, and as the cushion beside you dips, you sigh. 

The sight in front of you was a disheveled mess. Scribbled on papers were thrown about- most were filled out but there were a few that were blank, pens and highlighters could be spotted under and over random reports.

“I did most of the reports… but I didn’t know if you wanted to fill out yours… because of who you were fighting.” he slowly stated, as if he were walking on eggshells. You could tell that he was holding back from hitting the main issue. 

Was this something you were ready to unbiasedly talk about? Kirishima knew most of the details, but he also realized that you probably wanted to talk about it more now that you’ve not only seen them after all this time but had to fight them. 

With another sigh, you let your head fall into your palms- your elbows digging into your thighs- and you roughly rub your eyes before coming up for a new breath of air. 

“My heart was pounding…” you started, attempting to prepare for the unwanted wave of grief, but as you trailed off, oddly enough, it never came. 

When reflecting on the fight, you remembered the range of emotions you felt, but now… you just felt… empty- which was ironic. No sadness, longing, anxiety… if anything, with your caring redhead staring at you with the roundest eyes, you felt at ease. 

“But honestly? I don’t really feel much right now. Like I can say that when looking back, I think I handled myself in the best way possible- they don’t deserve to have that satisfaction of creating a rise out of me, and quite frankly… I’m tired, Ei. I’m so tired of letting them have that hold on me. I don’t deserve that kind of pain. As much as I am a hero, I need to think about myself as a person and there’s only so much I can endure. My mental and emotional health comes first.” 

After saying all of that, there was a slight hint of relief that flooded your system; you already began to feel lighter.

“I’m so proud of you. I know that must have been really hard to face but you did it, and you were so good about it,” he whispered as he reached out for your thigh. 

Accepting his comfort, you sucked in another breath and smiled up at him. He held and returned your smile for a couple of seconds before slightly leaning in, his eyes flickering from your eyes to your lips. 

“Would it be alright if I.. kiss you?” it was such a heart-warming gesture, how he was making sure you weren’t pushing yourself. 

“More than alright,” you whisper, barely getting out the last word because of how quickly the gap between you two closed. The kiss was comfort in the rawest form; his pace was slow, his large hand cupping your jaw as his tongue invaded your mouth. You were following his pace, your eyes coming to a close, melting into a relaxed state for what seemed like the first time today. 

Keeping the kiss light, he pulled away shortly, but not before placing a lingering peck on your lips, then one on your forehead and whispering, “I made you a snack. You’re probably hungry right now so I prepared you a little something filling. And while you eat, I’m gonna run a bath with some Epsom salt and lavender oil, does that sound good?” 

Overwhelming gratitude washed over you. Words couldn’t possibly measure even the bare minimum of the love you have for Kirishima Eijirou, and yet you managed to string a soft, “You are the most wonderful person in the world, and I… Eijirou I love you so much.” 

His eyes became a little teary as he looked down at you, a wobbly smile in place before whispering a returning “I love you,” before heading into the bathroom to run the water in your massive tub. 

As the thundering sound of the water filling the tub echo through your apartment, you get up and rummage the fridge to find a plate of adorably cut red apples with a glob of peanut butter off to the side. 

“Baby do you want tea?” You call out just loud enough, “I’m gonna brew that green tea with the toasted rice!” 

He came into the kitchen looking big and confused, “what did you say, baby?”

“Green tea?”

“Oh yes, please,” he said, leaning in and planting a kiss to your temple before turning back to the bathroom. 

“Kiri? Can you put on the house shows on the tv? I forgot what channel they were on.”

You didn’t need to turn around to hear tv turn on; a shout of thanks was called out before you took a bite of your snack.

It felt all very domestic, something you never thought could happen to you. Your childhood was a montage of quirk abuse, being emotionally used, following the same types of toxic people, and never learning your lesson. It all flipped somewhere in your twenties- you began to realize the pattern after being shown the kindness the world could offer. No longer world you put up with bullshit like that. You knew better now and Eijirou always reminded you of that. 

You were halfway through one of your favorite flipping shows when Kirishima came in shirtless, letting you know the bath was ready, “Okay my love, it’s ready. Take your time, I‘ll be in the tub.”

You stripped on your way to the bathroom, leaving all your clothes on the bench in the bedroom before padding into the warm-tiled bathroom.

The view you stepped in on was delicious; your huge boyfriend taking up most of the tub, his head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed.

“Gee red, you’re so sexy.” you aimed to tease, but your words came out a bit strained. He chuckles before turning to face you and groaning your name, “hurry up and come in here.”

And it’s then when you’re submerged in all the heat and laying against your boyfriend’s warmth, do you remember that life is what you make it to be. Never accept anything less than the love and care you deserve.

Blink.

#she dreams ! #mha kirishima #kirishima eijirou #bnha eijiro kirishima #kirishima eijiro x reader #kirishima fluff #kirishima eijiro fluff #kirishima x you #bnha kirishima #mha #bnha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #mha fluff #bnha fluff #hurt/comfort

[therealvinelle]

Tucker and Dale and Aro vs. Evil

So, I wrote this meta explaining what the Volturi’s failure to stop Victoria looked like to the Cullens, tonight I write my theory on why this was allowed to happen. Well, the way this meta ended up I write a bunch of theories, and debunk them one by one until we arrive at the one true theory that I think makes sense.

Now, one thing is clear: Jane had orders not to stop Victoria’s army. We know that for sure. The question is who gave it.

Theory: Aro was behind it

Aro gave Jane the order to let Victoria’s army wreak havoc in Seattle for months because he wished the Cullens harm.

Before we get into any of the different scenarios trying to figure out what motive Aro would have, or why Aro would even do such a thing, I’ll remind readers that in New Moon, Edward broke the law in the middle of Volterra. Alice then brought a human who knew about vampires into the palace. Aro had every justification to punish them, yet he let them all go. This was an act of generosity. For this theory to be true, Aro would have to do a complete 180 in the two months that passed between St. Marcus’ Day and Jane’s deployment to Seattle.

Scenario 1: Aro wanted Alice (and Edward, according to Edward)

Relevant meta. TL;DR, Edward brings nothing to the table, Alice doesn’t bring a lot either. This scenario depends on Aro not realizing as much.

Now, he is very excited about Alice’s gift, and would love for her to join, that is true. However, he saw all her thoughts, all that she is, he knows her better than anybody in the world. He knows her limitations as well as she does. Would recruiting her be worth letting a newborn army reign in Seattle?

Let’s assume that Aro thinks Alice is worth all of this. Why would he let the newborns attack the Cullens, when there was a chance Alice would be killed? Edward too, for that matter, assuming Aro wanted him. A recruitment plan that breaks your own law and endangers the life of your recruit-to-be could only be explained by madness or else stupidity. And Aro is not stupid.

Assuming that Aro is mad, there’s the damning argument: Chelsea wasn’t part of the team. 

(And yes, I know for sure she wasn’t part of the team. There were five Volturi, and they’re described as follows: 

I knew it would be Jane in the front — the darkest cloak, almost black, and the smallest figure by more than two feet. (Eclipse, page 331)

Jane is 4′8″, Chelsea is 5′3″. Now, Felix is 6′7″, so Bella’s estimate is a tiny bit off, but Chelsea is a tiny woman a mere seven inches taller than Jane. Bella couldn’t have mistaken that for being two feet. So, Chelsea wasn’t present.)

When Aro wants to recruit someone, he sends Chelsea. He did not send Chelsea in Eclipse.

I hereby declare the theory that Aro didn’t interfere because he wanted to recruit Alice debunked.

Scenario 2: Aro wanted to destroy the Cullens

If Aro wanted the Cullens dead, they would be dead. He has an elite force of killing machines. There’s no need for newborn armies in Seattle.

The movie tries to explain the fact that Aro hasn’t moved against them with the fact that Alice would know. Well, the movie is dumb. What would it matter if she knew? The dead don’t speak. Alice could try alerting other vampires to the tragic impending fate of the Cullens, but this wouldn’t save her. More, the Cullens live among humans and presently have a human living among them. Aro could easily make a case if anybody had questions afterwards. He could also just make something up, as Edward is so fond of accusing him of doing.

There’s the PR issue, that Aro’s critics would get a lot of ammunition against him if he executed an innocent coven, but not stopping Victoria was a lot worse for his image. Victoria’s army made international news for weeks on end. It made the Volturi look weak.

Let’s assume, though, that Aro wants the Cullens destroyed, and thought letting a newborn army wreak havoc was a good way of accomplishing this. Bottom line is that he wants them dead.

If that’s the case, then they would have been killed by Jane after the newborn battle.

The world would have been told that the Cullens tragically perished against the newborns, and that it was the Volturi who stopped them. It would have been perfectly plausible, the Cullens are malnourished pacifists who live with humans. No one would bat an eyelid at a coven led by Carlisle Cullen succumbing to a newborn army. They would have, too, if it weren’t for the shapeshifters.

So, Jane’s orders don’t match up with this scenario.

And then there’s the matter of what Aro’s motive would even be.

We see in New Moon and again in Breaking Dawn that he cherishes his friendship with Carlisle. Now, Aro is capable of killing what he loves, but that’s when backed into a corner (he was going to lose Marcus, Carlisle had created an immortal child). Carlisle in Eclipse was minding his own business and not backing anybody into any corners.

This exchange in particular comes to mind:

“But how can your intent possibly matter, dear Carlisle, in the face of what you have done?” He frowned, and a shadow of sadness crossed his features—whether it was genuine or not, I could not tell. 

“I have not committed the crime you are here to punish me for.” 

“Then step aside and let us punish those responsible. Truly, Carlisle, nothing would please me more than to preserve your life today.” (Breaking Dawn, page 434)

This is a lot of things, but it’s not a man who wants Carlisle dead.

(That question of whether his sadness is genuine or not is a great example of unreliable narrating in these books. Aro has no reason to fake sadness, and if he did want to fake it he’d presumably do more than a subtle “shadow of sadness”. However, Bella has been told only terrible things about him and views him as a murderous tyrant, so her first instinct when he displays human emotion is that it can’t be real.)

Let’s assume, though, that something about the Cullens offends Aro so much that he’s willing to kill his best friend over it, and in a particularly roundabout way involving newborn armies at that.

Why would he be arguing in favor of them increasing their numbers in New Moon? Bella was clearly gifted, and yet he wouldn’t let the Cullens leave until he had reassurance that she would be one of them.

I guess his motive would be that the Cullens are a threat, but one wonders how when all these people do is eat deer and play house. They’re weird, but they abide by the law, I imagine far better than most vampires out there. More, they’re led by Carlisle, an infamous pacifist who's friends with Aro.

I don’t see the threat.

And, again, if Aro somehow did, the Cullens would be dead.

Scenario 3: Aro wanted Alice, and to destroy the Cullens

Including this one because I’ve seen variations of it floating around. Aro has so many evil plans, he executes them all at once and hope one will stick.

If he wanted this, he would send Chelsea along, execute the Cullens for harboring human Bella or in any of the ways outlined in scenario 2, and make Alice join him. End of story.

Conclusion: Aro had nothing to do with it

If Aro was behind the Eclipse clusterfuck, there would be no Breaking Dawn because the Cullens would be dead or trapped in Volterra.

However, his life is Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, so he looks really really shady.

And the meta is now thirteen hundred words, so we’re making it a two-parter.

#aro #volturi #twilight #twilight meta #twilight renaissance #the eclipse debacle #long post #jane

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What if Bella had met the Volturi's as a child? What would it change and what ties do you think it would have?

It’d change a fair amount, as in, the entire plot of Twilight would have been derailed. Or, that is, it might change nothing at all.

So, we have three options here. 

Nothing Changes

Bella is an extraordinarily delicious child visiting Italy and the small medieval town of Volterra.

If Bella doesn’t happen to be on the tour, probably whoever’s looking at her sighs, looks longingly at her delicious blood, and then walks away. The Volturi do not lose control in their own city.

Bella goes on her merry way and Twilight presumably happens. Except maybe Bella goes to Alice, “Oh yeah, Volterra, I went there once. Nifty place, nice buildings.” Alice stares.

Bella’s Eaten

Bella’s an extraordinarily delicious child whose mother thinks it’s a great idea to sign them up for the tour of Volterra castle. It’s a very exclusive tour you know! Bella’s eaten almost immediately, she’s probably fought over, Jane gets one limb and Alec gets another.

Years later, Edward arrives in Forks, his personal purgatory where he listens to the banal thoughts of teenagers. Bella Swan does not arrive. Edward continues to be miserable and depressed.

The Cullens have a game of baseball with James, Laurent, and Victoria. Unfortunately, James recognizes Alice, and is intrigued enough to come after her. Unfortunately, Alice is a vampire and not a human with human relatives to hold hostage. The Cullens murder him, Laurent flees to have sex with the sexy Denali ladies, and Victoria swears vengeance upon Jasper.

Unfortunately, her gift tells her that any attempt to murder Jasper will end up with her dead. Jasper doesn’t give her the time needed to plan. He hunts her down and murders her in cold blood.

Carlisle has the world’s worst weekend. 

Edward is still depressed and concludes this is why vampires are abominations without souls. Irina gets to keep her boyfriend, he cheats on the diet and leaves within the year. Irina drowns herself in rebound sex with pretty mortals to try and feel better abou tbeing dumped. It doesn’t work.

Aro Discovers Bella

And this is probably the route you were thinking of.

Perhaps Aro’s taking a midnight stroll with Renata, perhaps he catches Bella on the tour, but somehow he manages to meet her and happens to brush her hand. Suddenly, eating Bella is off the table forever.

Bella’s gift isn’t game changing in the way Alec and Jane’s were, necessarily, but it is something Aro does not want falling into enemy hands and something he may one day need.

He’d probably do something similar to what he intended to do with Alec and Jane. He’d leave her to live her mortal life, keep close tabs on her, and turn her when she’s a young adult (probably around twenty).

Which means Bella returns to America, probably tailed by Demetri, and has no awareness that she is at some poing going to become an immortral blood drinking creature and move to Italy to become a member of an ancient vampire sect.

Bella moves to Forks, she has a run in with Edward Cullen who very nearly eats her, Demetri calls Aro to say “we have a problem”. At first, Aro isn’t too concerned, he’s delighted to hear that Carlisle’s alive and well and my god he has a coven now. Given Edward is Carlisle’s progeny, Aro is probably sure Edward will leave the city completely to avoid temptation and the others will quickly move on.

Edward’s back within the week. He attends school. He sits within a foot of Bella Swan in Biology class.

Demetri at this point probably summons Bella out of school in the middle of Biology with no warning, gets her the hell away from Edward, and has to come up with the world’s most ridiculous lie of why she should never enter within 20 feet of Edward Cullen ever again.

Demetri is a federal agent and Edward is under suspicion of being a sexual predator and serial murderer. Here are all the women who have disappeared in various towns the Cullen family have lived in.

Bella is of course horrified and shocked, but given Edward’s reaction in that first Biology class and his weirdness in the second one... 

Aro calls Carlisle. It’s a very awkward talk. Carlisle apologizes for not writing in forever he got... distracted. Aro says it’s fine, no big, CARLISLE MISSED WATCHING THE MOON LANDING WITH HIM. But regardless, Aro is calling to ask him what the fuck.

Aro tells him about Bella, Carlisle is very uncomfortable with this girl having no choice but to become a vampire and no idea what’s going to happen to her, but there’s no talking Aro out of it. He’s even more uncomfortable that he has been begging Edward to skip town but, for some unknown reason that is perhaps pride, Edward is refusing. 

“All these worlds are yours,” Aro undoubtedly says, “Except Europa, attempt no landing there.”

In other words, hands off Isabella Swan.

Carlisle tells Edward. Edward is appalled and conflicted. At this point, he’s unwillingly fascinated by Bella but has not yet decided he’s in love. He doesn’t quite have her Carlisle persona crafted yet  and so she’s not the saintly figure deserving of worship. Right now she’s just this plain, boring, girl who dared to smell delicious.

So, a part of him thinks it serves her right. Now she will suffer for all eternity as he does. More, he can save face, the monster inside him can go back to sleep for her days are number and he can pretend he’s the wonderful person everyone thinks he is. Everything will remain as exactly as it is. EDWARD IS FINE, THIS IS FINE.

Another part of him panics. First, this girl is condemned to the worst future imaginable. Not only is she becoming a demon, but a blood drinking demon at Blood Drinking Demon HQ. More, if she becomes a vampire, no blood for Edward. And remember, this is a scent he would scour the world for. Edward salivates over the thought of her blood, obsesses over it constantly, and fantasizes over how he will devour her. Suddenly, Edward may not be able to eat her. In canon, the option of eating her is always on the table, and some part of Edward is always thinking about it, always leaving it open. Here, it’s soon to be gone.

Edward probably sneaks into her room at night to watch over her sleep. Telling himself he’s protecting her from meteors but also realizing that he’s there to test his own will power and ponder over the future in which he quietly eats her in the middle of the night. 

Now, this can go two ways

Bella wakes up, and that guy Demetri said is a sexual predator targeting her is IN HER BEDROOM LOOKING SCARY AS FUCK. Bella undoubtedly screams bloody murder and tries to hit Edward with something.

Edward panics at the noise and eats her. Then when Charlie comes running he eats Charlie Swan too. The house is an utter blood bath, Edward stands there in a daze knowing the monster inside him has won. He no longer looks anything like Carlisle Cullen (this is a thing Edward does).

Probably though, Demetri is there. Which means Edward has heard his thoughts from the beginning. While Edward has the overconfidence of Gilderoy Lockhart, and tells Bella things like the laws of physics not applying to his driving or that he could beat Jasper in a fight with both hands tied behind his back, usually when push comes to shove he knows where he stands. (He tries to fight Jane in Volterra, it doesn’t go well, and he acts very meek at being confronted by Jane, Felix, etc. When he fights Victoria, he doesn’t fight at all, but just blathers nonsense and it somehow works out for him.)

So, while Edward will tell Jasper later that he totally could have taken Demetri, he’s not going to try. 

So, instead, Demetri goes, “Hey buddy, looking for a midnight snack?” and Edward shuffles and petulantly asks, “Aren’t you looking for a midnight snack?!” Edward’s here to protect Bella, you see. Demetri just nods, of course, Edward’s here to protect Bella.

They stare at each other.

Neither leaves.

Eventually, Edward slinks away, feeling very disgusted with himself, angry and Demetri, and internally raging that he didn’t get to eat Bella.

Demetri calls Aro and notes that they’ve got to turn the girl. Demetri cannot watch her 24/7 and this boy is 100% going to eat her. Aro hops on a plane in record time, bringing Renata, and makes an awkward visit to both Carlisle and Bella.

Aro tells Bella the truth about Edward which is... a little different but also pretty scary, the truth about what’s going to happen to her and why it’s important, and anything else she wants to know.

I imagine Bella quietly and stoically accepts her fate. 

Edward doesn’t get to eat Bella Swan. He feels very conflicted about it and is filled with self-loathing that he’s conflicted about it. I imagine the Madonna complex he holds for Bella blossoms at this point, and he later comes to Italy with the intent to free her from the Volturi clutches.

This doesn’t work out. 

Knowing Edward, his attempts increase in desperation until, finally, he does something very illegal in an attempt to free her and make up for damning her to this life.

The Volturi are forced to execute Edward.

Carlisle gets yet another awkward, terrible, phone call from Aro.

#twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #aro #the volturi #bella swan #demetri #carlisle cullen #edward cullen #anti edward cullen #anti edward/bella #meta #headcanon #opinion

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 25 - ao3 -

“Qiren-xiong! Qiren-xiong!”

Lan Qiren opened his eyes, disoriented and confused at being so abruptly disturbed in such an unexpected fashion. This sort of shouting and running around were not permitted in the Cloud Recesses, lest they disturb the cultivation or quiet contemplation of others, and anyway he had never heard such panic in Lan Yueheng’s voice before. Not even with his first explosion, back when he’d still been afraid of fire.

“Yueheng-xiong?” he asked, unfolding his legs from his meditation posture. Taking that as permission, Lan Yueheng burst through his door. “What’s happened?”

“Something terrible,” Lan Yueheng said. His cheeks were pale, his eyes wild; Lan Qiren had never seen him like that. “Qiren-xiong…it’s your brother – no. It’s He Kexin.”

“Say one, say the other,” Lan Qiren said dryly, trying to lighten the mood a little without any success. “What about her?”

“She’s killed someone.”

“What?” Lan Qiren stood up almost too fast, and his head spun. “Who? Not one of ours?”

“A teacher!” Lan Yueheng wailed. “I don’t know which one, but one of them – an honored teacher – she killed him – ”

Lan Qiren rushed out the door, a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. There were teachers he liked and teachers he didn’t like, teachers that were good at teaching and teachers that were poor, but they were all his teachers – teacher for a day, father for a lifetime, as the saying went.

Even the ones he didn’t get along with so well, he’d made up with in time, and he was on good enough terms with all of them now. So was his brother, for that matter…

A horrible thought occurred to Lan Qiren: would this be the thing that finally broke his brother’s madness? Was blood truly necessary to wash away his obsession – or would he persist onwards, ignoring even this?

Surely that was impossible.

Surely not even their family’s love-madness –

Lan Qiren felt even sicker, and hurried his pace still further. 

He knew the histories of the Lan sect better than many others. After all, it was his personal family history as well as the sect's history, and there had been a period in his life when he had briefly focused in on that history to the exclusion of everything else as a subset of his interest in the Lan sect rules; in retrospect, it had probably been in part a misguided subconscious attempt to make himself fit in with the rest of them through study and sheer force of will.

Unfortunately, that knowledge meant that he knew enough not to be able to even finish that thought. His family’s tendency towards love-madness was truly terrible, a panacea in small doses and poison in large: his ancestors had achieved miracles that no one had anticipated on behalf of their loved ones, but they’d done terrible things for love, too. When it was good, there was nothing better; when it went bad, there was no limit to what they might do. There was a reason everyone had been just waiting around hoping for his brother to get over it by himself…

Lan Qiren made it to the hanshi and saw several of his elders there, including a few teachers. Each one he saw and recognized made his heart relieved, and yet also tighten in terror: what about the rest?

Which one had been lost? Which familiar face would he never see again?

He didn’t doubt Lan Yueheng for a second. If he said that someone had died, it must be true - and even if he had harbored any such hopes, the grim expressions on everyone’s faces made clear that there was nothing good to be found here.

It was all happening too quickly. He didn’t have time to think.

(Who would be gone from their holiday feasts, their seat left empty or taken up by someone new? Whose voice would go missing from their debates, their wisdom and insight lost forever? His swordfighting teacher, who he’d butted heads with more often than not? His music teacher, who had praised him and defended him as a child? Who?)

“Qiren, good, you’re here,” one of the elders said upon seeing him, waving him forward and glaring at the other disciples milling around until they scattered. “You’re needed – there must be a trial.”

“Of course,” Lan Qiren said, suddenly alarmed at the suggestion that there might not be one. If there was a death, there would need to be a trial; their sect valued the rules, and would never condone an outright execution without appropriate judgment.  “Yueheng-xiong said – a murder?”

“A killing,” the elder confirmed. “It looks to be murder, but there’s been no investigation yet – but she’s admitted committing the act.”

There was no need to specify who. In the last month or so, there had been only one person on everyone’s lips.

Lan Qiren swallowed, braced himself. “Who was the victim?”

Hearing the name was like receiving a blow, making him stagger and want to sit down.

Neither his teacher in the sword, with whom Lan Qiren shared a small enmity and who his brother adored, nor his music teacher, who Lan Qiren held dearest of all and his brother was indifferent towards - but the old one, the one that spoke up only rarely, preferring to spend most of his time sleeping, but which always put in a good word for everyone whenever he did so. 

He was one of their oldest, well-meaning if perhaps too strict, a respected teacher for years and years. He had been their father’s teacher, once, and Lan Qiren remembered how he used to keep sweets in his pockets and distribute them to the juniors - in some cases, long after they were too old for such things. Lan Qiren remembered his brother’s long-suffering expression when he was “snuck” such a treat well into his adolescence; he remembered, too, how his brother had eaten the candy anyway and how it had improved his mood - he had even smiled in amusement at Lan Qiren when he had gobbled his own down without any grace at all. 

He had praised Lan Qiren’s academic skills and encouraged him - had been one of the ones who took him to see his father every month as a child, had been one of the few who had scolded Lan Qiren’s brother for not being kind because not even Lan Qiren’s father could prevent him. He had a reputation for being a little overbearing, a little nosy, a little tactless with the carelessness of age, but that had mostly come from how much he wanted everyone to get along. 

He was someone who was greatly respected and admired by everyone.

“Why?” Lan Qiren choked out. 

It made no sense for He Kexin to kill him. If anything, she should have seen him as a natural ally: he was one of the ones who most vociferously opposed the match.

In fairness, by this point, most of the teachers had settled on that position, reluctant as they were to reach that conclusion when it was something that Lan Qiren’s brother so obviously wanted. It was simply too clear to everyone that He Kexin, whatever her somewhat improved opinion of ‘her’ Qingheng-jun was, was not interested in becoming Madame Lan, either now or later. 

If Lan Qiren’s brother had had any notion of true filial piety, if he had been strictly taught the rules and taught to keep to the rules, he would have dropped the suit long ago, knowing that his sect demanded more from him than what he was giving to it. But he wasn’t, and he hadn’t, and Lan Qiren recalled with great bitterness all the times when his brother had equated the well-being of the sect with his own interests and no one had opposed him, least of all their father. 

Here was where it all ended up. 

“Why did she kill him?” he asked.

“We don’t know.”

“Worse than that,” one of the others said, hands gripped so tightly behind his back that his shoulders bent backwards. “We don’t know...the sect leader has been informed, but he has not yet issued a judgment.”

He meant that he didn’t know if Lan Qiren’s brother even would.

Lan Qiren shook his head. “Uphold the value of justice,” he said, and looked at his teachers and elders sidelong. “Take the straight path, reject the crooked path. Do not take a life within the premises. The rules are quite clear: a murder within the Cloud Recesses calls for a trial, and for a harsh response, no matter the personal cost. Do you agree?”

The elders looked back at him, surprised: Lan Qiren had never cited the rules as a warning before. He had never made clear that he, at least, would have no intention of stepping aside this time – brother or no brother, sect leader or no sect leader, this was simply a step too far. There were rules that could be bent and rules that could be broken, ones that could be responded to with punishments and others that had to be dealt with harshly, living up to the demands of justice no matter how bitter.

If they bent the rules on something like this – there would be no point in having the rules at all. They would only be making a mockery of them, paying lip service when whole-hearted adherence was what was required; they might as well throw them out entirely rather than let themselves become hypocrites of the worst sort. Lan Qiren knew that he tended towards inflexibility, that he was too stern and too unforgiving, but this was the sort of thing that simply could not be forgiven; they could not find a loophole, they could not be moved by mercy, they could not simply bow their heads and shrug their shoulders and look away this time, the way they had so many times before. 

If they allowed for power and influence, the protection of the sect leader, to overcome their principles – if they punished only those who were weak and had no backing, and refrained when it was the sect leader’s beloved – then they ought to lose the right to call themselves Gusu Lan.

“You’re right,” his teacher finally said. “The rules are clear. We must do what is right.”

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said, and braced himself. “No matter the cost, we must.”

This was going to hurt.

Not just his brother. Lan Qiren didn’t know what his lovesick brother would do in response to this fiasco, but he was certain it wouldn’t be good, not for him and not for her and not for any of them, the sect and all. This was going to hurt everyone.

But then again – hadn’t all this hurt them all already?

A feeling of deep foreboding settled deep in his gut, Lan Qiren entered the hanshi, where his brother was waiting, eyes narrow and features set and defiant, standing in front of He Kexin, her own features equally defiant and yet also strangely confused, as if despite the fact that her sleeve was still splattered with blood she had not yet absorbed what she had done.

When all the present elders and members of the main Lan clan had gathered – all the ones who, when all together and speaking in a single voice, were entitled to override the orders of the sect leader – the argument began in earnest.

Everything happened very quickly after that.

After, when it was all over, Lan Qiren didn’t remember the exact words said or the arguments made. He didn’t remember the rules he cited or the positions he took – he barely even remembered that he had for the first time in his life spoke out in earnest, acting as a full adult of the Lan clan with all the rights and privileges he had never felt truly entitled to claim, standing in actual opposition to his brother and refusing to yield and insisting that for once, for once, the rest of the sect refuse to yield alongside him. 

He didn’t remember much of anything else, either.

He didn’t remember the details of He Kexin’s defense, didn’t remember the stupid reasons she’d spouted for what she had done – her story only made sense if you assumed the worst in people, and then acted upon it without bothering to check. Thanks to Lan Qiren’s brother’s endless persistence, He Kexin had a terrible impression of the Lan sect; it had made it easy for her to believe it when her friend abruptly claimed that the teacher had engaged in misconduct, when in fact he had only correctly identified that He Kexin’s beloved ‘sister’ was using Qingheng-jun’s love-madness and indulgence to try to benefit her own sect, and had scolded her for it. 

He barely remembered the way He Kexin’s story had collapsed in the face of even the most basic of questioning, all of her assumptions falling apart one right after the other, and then falling apart even further in the face of actual presented evidence. The way that it became increasingly obvious that one of her friends had lied to her in order to manipulate her, had been lying for weeks on end and encouraging her to carry on the relationship just to take advantage of her. 

He scarcely recalled the exact words that were spoken when even He Kexin’s friend, already captured by Lan sect disciples on account of the crime and dragged in to give account, denounced He Kexin’s actions. If only she had been less arrogant, her friend complained, less overenthusiastic - she hadn’t mean to push He Kexin to go so far as to kill the man, had meant only for her to use her influence with Qingheng-jun to immunize them against the teacher’s criticism. Only in her excess disdain for the Lan sect, He Kexin had jumped straight to the worst conclusions and gone too far, and now she had now ruined everything…

The details didn’t matter.

What Lan Qiren did remember was the look of horror on He Kexin’s face when it all fell into place. He remembered how she stared down at her hands that had killed a man for so little purpose, for no purpose at all, on the basis of false accusations because of her blind trust and unwillingness to question, her refusal to communicate and her unwavering belief that she knew best. He remembered the alarm and very real fear that appeared when the first elder proposed a sentence of death, pointing out that the only appropriate resolution for such a pointless murder was the most severe, that it would be a life for a life in the traditions of the cultivation world –

Remembered the expression on her face when his brother proposed a different solution.

Remembered the expression on his brother’s face, fanatical and determined, the whites showing all around his eyes, the reckless madness of love writ all over his face – it had consumed him wholly. He had given himself away in full, and there was nothing left, nothing binding him back other than the duty that had always weighed him down.

Remembered how he had responded – what he had offered –  

“This cannot be,” Lan Qiren said numbly, walking out into the light of dawn – they had argued the whole night through before reaching the end. “What are we going to do?”

“Qingheng-jun is entitled to resign his position and enter permanent seclusion if he so wishes,” his music teacher said heavily, his voice nearly as dull and shocked as Lan Qiren’s. “His wife, whoever she may be, is entitled to do the same, matching her actions to his. It is our sect’s way: that those who travel the same path as Dao companions be allowed to continue down that same path, never being parted in life. The precedent was set years ago…”

“As was the one that dictates that those who are in permanent seclusion cannot be removed against their will for any reason,” his swordsmanship teacher said, his voice equally solemn. “Not even for trial, should a crime later be discovered. As their seclusion is permanent, they are removed from the world – they are considered as if already dead, never showing their face under the heavens.”

Lan Qiren knew all of this. He knew all the stories, all the rules, all the precedent – not that it had ever been used this way, but his brother had always been one to find loopholes in the rules, to bend their letter to his will rather than bend his neck to honor their spirit. If He Kexin was his wife, she could accompany him anywhere, including into seclusion; if they were both in seclusion, she could not be tried; if she could not be tried, she could not be found guilty and sentenced to die.

“He condemns her instead to a living death, then,” he said woodenly. “She doesn’t even – like him.”

“She is not the one who chose seclusion. She is welcome to leave at any time,” his swordsmanship teacher said bitterly. “Provided, of course, that she is willing to bear the cost and lose her life to pay for her crime.”

He Kexin wouldn’t do that, Lan Qiren knew. She was vivacious and bright, full of life and humor and hope; she feared death, as any regular person did, and she was not part of the Lan sect – she didn’t know how strict their seclusion was. She didn’t know how taxing it would be on her, how little she would see of the world, how disconnected and isolated she would be.  

There would be servants to care for her in her seclusion, but they would seek to minimize their presence as much as possible to avoid disturbing her, speaking to her only when necessary. She would be able to speak with her husband, to meet with him on occasion – their seclusion was technically shared, and therefore meetings between them were not counted as a breach of that seclusion, but they would not be permitted to meet too often, lest they be distracted from the higher purpose of cultivation by bodily affairs.

Permanent seclusion was rarely chosen by those young enough to allow for the possibility, but should there be any children born into her seclusion, they would be taken from her and allowed to visit only rarely – the exact frequency had not been recorded, and would probably be a matter of debate should the issue ever come up. Their father would likely see them even less often, only on holidays involving filial piety, and whether he would speak to them would be entirely up to him; there was no obligation on his part.

“How could this be worth it?” Lan Qiren whispered. “How could he…?”

“He is in love,” his music teacher said, as if it were a death sentence.

It was a death sentence.

“We must send word to the former sect leader,” his swordsmanship teacher said, shaking his head. “He, too, is in permanent seclusion and cannot be forced out, but he retreated from the world in honor, not on account of a crime; he could break his seclusion voluntarily. He has always cared deeply for the affairs of the sect – surely he would…”

He trailed off, shaking his head a second time. A motion was taken among the elders and members of the Lan clan, each one of them deeply subdued – He Kexin had already been taken away by her bridegroom to perform the marriage ceremony in the memorial hall, without any of the usual trappings of such a festive event – and a runner was soon sent to the rooms that Lan Qiren’s father had selected for seclusion.

Each of them anticipated a long wait, expecting the former sect leader to demand a full explanation of all that had occurred before emerging, yet to their surprise the runner returned within half a shichen, scarcely enough time to get to the rooms and to return.

“Seniors,” the runner cried, throwing himself down on his knees and touching his head to the floor. “I sought to alert the sect leader of what passed here this night. I called his name time and again, rang the bell to alert him of an emergency…”

“And what?” one of the elders demanded. “What happened then? Why have you returned so quickly?”

“He did not respond,” the runner said. “No matter what I did…I thought the situation was desperate, and so acted rashly. I bypassed the prohibitions and looked through the window – seniors, honored teachers, the former sect leader is dead!”

Lan Qiren started violently.

“What?” his swordfighting teacher demanded, rising to his feet – they were all rising up, all but Lan Qiren who only sat there, stiff in shock. “What do you mean? Even if his cultivation failed, it would not be so soon!”

“It cannot be doubted. After what I saw, I went inside to confirm it. He is dead.”

“When,” Lan Qiren said dully, barely bothering to make it a question.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“It has been an entire night,” he said, staring down at his hands. “Bad news flies on swift wings, and spreads as quickly and inexorably as ink in water. Tell me - did my father die by his own hand before or after he found out what his beloved eldest son has done?”

Nobody answered him.

#mdzs #lan qiren #my fic #my fics #spilled pearls #mind the ao3 tags #you all knew it was coming

[reallifesultanas]

The myths around Kösem Sultan's execution / A Köszem szultána halála körüli legendák

One of the most frequently discussed topics about the Sultanate of Women is the brutal execution of Kösem Sultan. Usually, the casual people think that she was assassinated by her son-in-law Turhan Hatice Sultan during a long power struggle. We have plenty of accounts of the events, but there are quite a few of them that are contemporary. In this post, I would like to summarize what we know, who were the characters of the events, and what might have happened that night. In the comments section or in Tellonyme, I look forward to everyone's opinion and comment about the topic so that we can discuss it! :) If you don't know Kösem Sultan, you can read her biography HERE.

What do we know for sure?

- After Ibrahim's dethronement and execution, Kösem Sultan became a regent to her grandson Mehmed IV. - Turhan, Mehmed’s mother, and Kösem Sultan were on different sides during the political games. - Kösem Sultan was killed by her enemies on September 2, 1651. - Turhan Hatice became the new regent, Kösem Sultan's executioners were not punished, but her supporters were soon killed.

Backstory

Kösem Sultan came to power for the second time in February 1640. Along with her crazy son, Ibrahim I, she began to rule the Ottoman Empire as regent. Everyone loved her, she had a huge experience in rule, she did a lot of charity. Everything seemed perfect, but her son, Ibrahim, soon came under the influence of bad advisers. Cinci Hoca was a religious leader in occult sciences who took advantage of the Sultan’s mental problems and seriously influenced him. As a result, the Sultan executed his Grand Vizier in 1644 and exiled his mother. He originally intended to send his mother to the island of Rhodes, but eventually, his concubines persuaded him to send her only to another palace. Kösem Sultan spent the next few years there in exile, but during that time she corresponded regularly with the statesmen and tried to keep everything under control. She probably wrote her well-known letter to Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha here, saying, "In the end, he will not leave you or me alive and we will lose control of the state again, thereby destroying our society." The situation deteriorated to the point that in 1647 Kösem Sultan and the new Grand Vizier, Salih Pasha and Seyhülislam Abdürrahim Efendi tried to dethrone Ibrahim but they failed. The next year, both the Janissaries and the Ulema joined the rebellion, and on August 8, 1648, the mad sultan was easily dethroned and imprisoned and his followers were removed from positions.

Ibrahim was succeeded by his son, Mehmed, who was barely 6 years old, andso he needed a regent. The statesmen asked Kösem Sultan for the honorary task. The position of regent was usually held by teachers, pashas, or mothers (in the case of Mehmed II, the Grand Vizier was regent; in Ahmed I, his mother and teacher; in Murad IV, and Ibrahim's case their mother), so Kösem Sultan was the first grandmother to become regent. According to the most accepted opinions, this happened because Mehmed’s mother, Turhan Hatice, was not even 25 years old at the time, too young and inexperienced to run the empire. Anyhow Kösem Sultan started her third regency and she constantly disregarded Mehmed’s mother, Turhan. Because of Turhan’s youth, she might truly would not have been the best regent, yet she had every right to control the harem. Kösem Sultan, however, did not allow this to the young woman either. So Turhan, in vain was the mother of the reigning sultan, all her duties were ruled by Kösem Sultan. Kösem Sultan gained more and more enemies both in the divan and the harem, so both places split into two sides: Kösem Sultan and her supporters and Turhan Sultan and her supporters.

Two opposite sides and characters

Kösem Sultan and her supporters

Kösem Sultan ruled the empire as a regent for decades, and when she was not a regent, she followed events as valide sultan. Earlier in her life, she worked together with most of the pashas. During her first regency, she said that she, as the representative of the ruler, intended to be there at the divan meetings in person. This was not allowed by the pashas and so she was forced to accept. During her third regency, however, she was not bowing before anyone’s will. She had lost all her sons, buried at least one daughter, sacrificed her whole life for the empire, so then she refused to compromise on anything anymore. She wished to rule the empire as an absolute monarch. And in the divan she dismissed everyone who disagreed with her. More and more people began to debate her right for ruling. One of her well-known divan speeches happed around this time. Kösem Sultan accused the Grand Vizier Sofu Ahmed Pasha of wanting to kill her, then she continued: “Thank God I survived four rulers and I ruled for a long time myself. The world will neither collapse nor reform with my death.”

Kösem Sultan went too far. She didn't just change the pashas she did not like but replaced them with Janissary officers. The Janissaries have served her with allegiance since the first regency of Kösem Sultan. Back then, in 1623, she went against everyone and gave the Janissaries a huge amount of money after Murad IV's accession to the throne. Although there were rebellions and disagreements, basically the Janissaries - but at least some of their corps - were loyal to Kösem Sultan. Representation of the Janissaries has been a thing for centuries, but to make Janissaries — or simply soldiers — vizieres was too much. Pashas learnt a lot and bore a lot to reach the highest possible positions and they were aware of how to be good veziers. This was their only aim and Kösem put Janissary officers there instead of educated statesmen. Everyone in the divan felt that Kösem Sultan wanted to build a military rule so that she could lead the empire in a way she liked. Thus, by 1651, only a few corps of Janissaries were actually on the side of Kösem in political terms. Although the people still loved her for her generous charity, in political terms their support did not mean much.

In addition to the growing tension with the pashas, Kösem Sultan had a rival in the harem also. Although most sources treat it as a fact that the relationship of Kösem Sultan and Turhan was terrible, there is no evidence to that effect. The relationship between the two of them only began to deteriorate over time, but in general, it can be said that Kösem Sultan just did not care about Turhan at all. She certainly looked down on her and didn't think much about Turhan. Kösem Sultan, although she had her own harem staff, did not have the most influential eunuch. Moreover, some said most of her servants also found her unworthy after realizing the way she treated Turhan. Perhaps it is no coincidence that so many sources mention a servant named Meleki Hatun, who famously switched sides and betrayed Kösem Sultan and began to strengthen Turhan’s side.

Turhan Hatice Sultan and her supporters

Turhan Hatice had more allies and so was in a better position in the harem than Kösem Sultan. She received help from an influential eunuch, Suleiman Agha. Suleiman aga was the leader of the harem agas, an ambitious eunuch with great power and contact system, with significant political influence. The harem was actually torn in two, thanks to the supporters of Kösem Sultan and Turhan Hatice. Both sides had their own chief eunuchs, which caused immense chaos within the harem, people did not know whose instructions to follow. And although the title of Valide Sultan belonged to Turhan Hatice as the mother of the sultan, the vernacular referred to her only as “small valide,” while Kösem Sultan was called “big valide”. Suleiman Agha's support, however, was worth its weight in gold. The eunuch looked primarily at his own interests throughout his life, and he had a great understanding of how to exploit and influence people. This is precisely why the possibility arises that it was Suleiman who set Turhan up and turned her against Kösem Sultan. Perhaps it was Suleiman who - hoping for his own rise from the young valide - persuaded her to take what was her right. In addition, Suleiman Agha was very liked by the young sultan, becoming a kind of father figure for the boy. Of course, it is not my intention to underestimate the role of Turhan in the events, but at the same time, I feel that the role of Suleiman Agha is actually underrated and I would like to make that clear. I’m not saying Turhan was a naive girl led by the evil Suleiman Agha, I just think that without Suleiman’s support and incitement, Turhan probably wouldn’t have, or much later, confronted Kösem Sultan.

In addition to Suleiman, three other major eunuchs also sided with Turhan: Hoca Reyhan Agha, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Agha, and Ali Agha. Hoca Reyhan Agha was closest to Turhan as his associate and religious leader, but Lala Hajji Aga was also a long-term partner in Turhan’s life. In addition to the eunuchs, we must also mention Meleki Hatun, whose legend is well known. According to this, she was the one who betrayed the plan of Kösem Sultan to Turhan, thus saving the little Sultan Mehmed from death and dethronement. However, the reality is probably less romantic. It is unlikely that a previously insignificant, never-ever mentioned servant like Meleki would have known about Kösem Sultan's plans and so could betray her. Certainly, Meleki was given a bigger role in the legend than she actually had. Maybe Meleki has agreed to be a scapegoat, testifying against Kösem Sultan if she gets goods in return. Given what a huge fortune Meleki gained after Kösem Sultan’s death, we can’t rule out this option either. Even if Meleki brought supporters for Turhan within the harem, she could have had quite a bit of an impact on the whole event. In addition to Turhan, the key figure was Suleiman Agha, who also had a close relationship with the divan, so he could easily connect members of the divan who were dissatisfied with Kösem Sultan. The most influential supporter was none other than the Grand Vizier, Siyavuş Pasha, but practically the entire divan turned against Kösem Sultan so far. It should also be mentioned that although most formations of the Janissaries were impartial or were on Kösem Sultan's side, the Sipahies tended to the group of Turhan and her supporters.

What led to the tragic night?

Before turning to the immediate causes, we need to jump back a bit in time to better understand Kösem Sultan's behavior. As is well known, Ibrahim I was succeeded by his son, Mehmed, barely 6 years old, who needed a regent. The statesmen asked Kösem Sultan for the honorary task. However, the request was rather strange. Why is that? The regent position was usually held by teachers, pashas, or mothers, and Kösem Sultan was none. Moreover, Kösem Sultan rejected the request for the first time on the grounds that she no longer has the strength to rule further.

Why did Kösem Sultan take on the task? Did she really want to retire?

To understand Kösem Sultan's thoughts, we need to jump a little further back in time. Kösem Sultan was in exile for years during Ibrahim's reign. From her exile, she repeatedly attempted a coup against her own son. From one of her surviving letters in exile, it is clear that she was part of the coup that eventually dethroned her son. Outwardly, however, she showed a very different picture. After Ibrahim was shut down, they wanted to put his son, Mehmed, on the throne. Kösem Sultan then met with the statesmen at Topkapi Palace to discuss with them what Ibrahim's fate should be. They negotiated for hours, but Kösem Sultan all along refused to give Ibrahim's eldest son to the statemen. The statesmen had to publicly convince Kösem Sultan for hours. Kösem Sultan who had previously done everything to dethrone her son is now standing by his son. Why? Of course, we will never know exactly what happened in her mind. However, it seems probable, that Kösem Sultan wanted to keep the image of a loving mother in front of the soldiers and the people. If she would just agree to Ibrahim's dethronement and Mehmed's enthronement that would be strange from a loving mother. Therefore, she held a sham debate with the pashas not to lose the sympathy of the people, but at the same time to keep the empire safe. Kösem Sultan was an experienced politician who was able to rule for years, and her loving and caring mother image was essential to that. Thus, with Kösem Sultan's consent, Sultan Ibrahim was eventually closed up and Mehmed has proclaimed their new sultan. Perhaps the first rejection of regency in 1648 was also part of a play like this. Kösem Sultan maybe felt the people expect this of her, so she offered to retire, while maybe in the background she had already agreed with the pashas.

And why did the members of the divan let Kösem Sultan to be the regent? After all, any of the members of the divan or even Mehmed's teacher could have applied for the task. And that would give huge power to them. So why did they give this opportunity to Kösem Sultan?

Ibrahim I was executed on August 18, 1648. Some say Kösem Sultan gave her consent to the execution but it cannot be ruled out that the execution took place behind her back. As I mentioned above, the mother of the dethroned or assassinated sultans has traditionally retreated to the Old Palace, where they lived their remaining years politically inactive. In her case, however, this did not happen. This raises the possibility that Kösem Sultan was unaware of Ibrahim’s execution and the pashas tried to reconcile the shattered woman with this gesture. Maybe Kösem gave her consent, knew what will happen, but still in the end she couldn't bear the pain. Either way, after the execution Kösem Sultan has changed. She turned against the pashas with whom she had always cooperated before. Whichever version is true, we can clearly see that the Kösem Sultan who became a regent to Mehmed IV, was no longer the same woman who had previously been considered the beloved mother of the empire.

But who ordered the execution of Ibrahim? Do we know? No, we do not know. Actually any of the statesmen could do it, but either Suleiman Agha or Turhan Sultan could make the little sultan to sign the fetwa petition and then send it to the Seyhülislam to authorize. Anyhow, the fetwa was authorized with full right, as Ibrahim was very harmful to the empire.

The murder

As can be seen from the above summary, Kösem Sultan was trying to build an absolute monarchy in which no one but a few Janissary corpses supported her, so a huge team gathered against her. According to the well-known version, over time, the strife between Kösem Sultan and the statesmen escalated to the point that, with the support of Turhan Hatice, the statesmen tried to remove her from her position. Kösem Sultan in response to this planned to dethrone Sultan Mehmed and put her other grandson on the throne instead. To do this, she wanted to let the Janissaries into the palace so that they could carry out the coup at night, which is why she left the gate to the harem open for the night. However, Kösem Sultan's plan was revealed to her enemies. According to some it was a servant named Meleki Hatun, who betrayed Kösem and told her plans to Turhan. Thus, as soon as the men of Kösem Sultan opened the gate on September 2, 1651, the men of Turhan Hatice, led by Chief Eunuch Suleiman Agha, closed it and sent an execution squad to the residence of Kösem Sultan. When she heard knocking on her door Kösem Sultan thought that her own allies had come, so she shouted at them, “Have you come?”. However, instead of the voice of the Janissaries, she heard the voice of the eunuch Suleiman Agha, which made her panic and flee. It’s not exactly known if she did get out of her apartment and if yes then how because the descriptions don’t match. Some said she hid in a closet inside her apartment, others said she tried to get to the Janissaries, but she couldn’t get through the closed gate, so she finally hid in the room next to the gate.

The execution squad, which consisted of several eunuchs (Suleiman Agha, Hoca Reyhan Agha, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Agha, and Ali Agha, as well as some unknown eunuchs) continued the search. Kösem Sultan hid in a closet from which the edge of her dress protruded, revealing her hiding place. When they found her, she threw money at her executioners, trying to pay them off, but she had no chance against Turhan's loyal men. Legend has it that while the men tried to capture and strangle the valide sultan they ripped out her diamond earrings - which she had received from Sultan Ahmed - from her ears; torn apart her clothes as they tried to take away the precious ornaments from her. Kösem Sultan beyond her sixties fought very hard but in the end, the eunuchs overcame her. Some say she was strangled with her own hair, others said with a curtain. She survived the first strangulation attempt but did not survive the second.

However, there are several points in the story above that raise doubts:

- Kösem Sultan's problem was not Mehmed but was the pashas, Turhan and Suleiman Agha. Then why didn't she get rid of them? Wouldn’t it have been easier and more logical to kill these people than to dethrone one child sultan for the benefit of another child? Of course, we can justify this with the fact that Kösem Sultan was no longer sane, so let’s not even look for logic in her actions. However, it may also raise the possibility that perhaps Kösem Sultan was completely or at least partially innocent throughout the series of events. She may not have planned anything with the Janissaries, the whole plan was only invented by Turhan and her men to legitimize their own actions. However, it contradicts that the Janissaries were indeed preparing to gather on the tragic night, and it is unlikely that Turhan and her team could successfully cheat the Janissaries without Kösem Sultan realizing it. It is possible that Kösem Sultan was indeed prepared for a minor coup, but it was perhaps not directed against Mehmed. Kösem Sultan had to realize that besides the pashas, Suleiman Aga was behind the "rebellious" behavior of Turhan and Mehmed. I think Kösem Sultan planned a smaller coup in which she would have got rid of the eunuchs and servants she didn’t like and would have scared Mehmed and Turhan. This would have ensured her own power and that neither Turhan nor Mehmed would question her anymore.

- Why was Kösem Sultan killed in such a strange way? After all, the lawful, usual method of execution was by an execution squad with Seyhülislam fetwa and silk/bow string. (It is important to note, however, that female members of the dynasty have not been executed before, women have typically been punished only with exile.) Kösem Sultan in contrast was killed by inexperienced eunuchs, with a kind of fake fetwa, and by her own hair or a curtain. The question arises that perhaps the execution of Kösem Sultan was not even planned. If the execution would be planned, executioners could clearly kill her after a legal fetwa. About the fetwa... There was, of course, a fetwa, but the temporality is somewhat disturbed by the fact that the Seyhülislam was replaced by one of Turhan's trusted men just when the execution took place. Precisely because of this, and because of the unusual brutality of the execution, there is a possibility that perhaps the execution of Kösem Sultan was not originally planned, only things slipped out of control, and in the heat of the moment, the Eunuchs executed Kösem Sultan. In retrospect, to legalize the events, they produced a fetwa with the new Seyhülislam.

- But then who and why did finally decide that Kösem Sultan should die? Turhan was not present at the events, and since the murder was not planned in advance - based on the fetwa and executioners - I would remove her from the list of suspects. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Turhan Hatice Sultan and Suleiman Agha talked about this possibility also. It is more probable, however, that they originally merely wanted to scare Kösem Sultan, to show her that she had been exposed, that time had passed over her. In my opinion, Turhan hoped that Kösem Sultan would admit her defeat and simply retire to the Old Palace. It would have been too risky to kill a venerate and beloved valide, especially knowing that none of the female members of the dynasty had ever been executed before. They probably wanted to resign her, but so far there was nothing to lose for Kösem Sultan. The only thing that still made her vivid was power, so she certainly objected to the idea of ​​forced retreat. When Suleiman Agha realized that Kösem Sultan was not listening to them, perhaps out of fear, he decided they had to kill her. After all, if the enraged Kösem Sultan had come out of the palace, Suleiman and the other eunuchs would have found themselves headless at once. Although there is no evidence of it, my personal opinion is that Suleiman may have wanted this from the first minute, as he knew full well that Kösem Sultan would never retire. Either way, the eunuchs eventually defeated and executed the elderly valide in a way that could not be called professional at all.

- Can we completely rule out that Kösem Sultan was executed with a truly legal fetwa and by an execution squad? Unfortunately, this cannot be ruled out either. The English ambassador, for example, reported that an execution squad had killed Kösem Sultan after a fetwa requested by the young sultan. He said that the execution happened in front of Mehmed eyes. We must admit though that the English ambassador was not among the best-informed ones. It is likely that everyone at the time believed that the fetwa was pre-issued. Only later, after historians’ research, it became very possible that the fetwa was presumably made after the execution of Kösem Sultan. It is not seems reasonable that Kösem Sultan would have been executed before the eyes of her 10-year-old grandson, Mehmed. Turhan tried very hard to protect her son, unlikely to have exposed him to such a trauma. Mustafa Naima agrees with the English ambassador that the execution was planned in advance, but he said it was not the eunuchs but an execution squad that killed Kösem Sultan. However, then why was the execution brutal? Why wasn't there a silk/bow string? Why was it performed by unfit eunuchs?

The aftermath of the murder

To prevent any resistance, during the night, Turhan Hatice and her men removed all statesmen who would have endangered them. The first man to be appointed that night was Ebu Said Efendi, the new Seyhülislam. He was the one who eventually issued the fetwa for the execution of Kösem Sultan (in retrospect). Turhan then sent a message to all statesmen and soldiers to immediately go to an audience where they would take allegiance to Sultan Mehmed. Most, out of fear or out of sincere feelings, immediately approached the Sultan, and those who did not, the new Seyhülislam issued a fetwa for them. Thus it became lawful to execute the supporters of Kösem Sultan, since they did not appear before the Sultan either. And the rebellious Janissaries were thus stigmatized as traitors and were legally executed. For commoners, they became the scapegoat for the death of Kösem Sultan. After the murder, Kösem Sultan was transported to the Old Palace, where her body was prepared for the funeral. She received an imperial funeral, and the people of Istanbul voluntarily held 3-day mourning, closing all shops and stores. Kösem Sultan has always been popular among the people, but interestingly the same people did not turn against Turhan because of the death of Kösem Sultan, in fact, Turhan became as loved and revered valide sultan just as Kösem Sultan was.

What happened to the real culprits? Turhan and Mehmed escaped, of course, but it is questionable whether they had any part in the murder at all. It is true that a rebellion in 1656 seriously shook their power, but in the end, they did not lose it. The main reasons for this were the weak Grand Veziers, the resurgent Celali rebellion, and the war with the Venetians. Due to the war people of the capital did not get enough grain, the soldiers were not properly paid, but ordinary people were also increasingly dissatisfied, especially angered by the extreme wealth of those close to the Sultan. Eventually, under the leadership of the Janissaries and Spahis, the people revolted on the fourth of March 1656. During the rebellion, several of those close to the sultan were brutally executed, the whole capital was ravaged. The mob hung all 31 people on trees next to the Blue Mosque. Among them was Meleki Hatun, whom the sultan especially loved. Although the capital has been shaken by riots in the past, such a rebellion has never happened before. Not only did the soldiers revolt, but the people also stood by the soldiers as one. Everyone closed their shops, a general strike took place during the rebellion.

Suleiman Agha was no longer in power when the rebellion took place and perhaps this held his head on his neck. After the assassination of Kösem Sultan, he became the chief black eunuch, but he could only enjoy the position until July 1652. Suleiman continued to stretch beyond his blanket, trying to change political issues that had nothing to do with him. Turhan Hatice also began to realize that Suleiman was not on their side at all, but only on his own. Of particular interest is that Lala Ibrahim Agha convinced Turhan of this, who himself took part in the execution of Kösem Sultan. Lala Ibrahim Agha was Turhan’s personal eunuch and he never longed (or wisely didn’t show her) for a higher position. Turhan was thus finally dismissed Suleiman Agha in 1652 and exiled him to Egypt. The refined eunuch even invented himself in exile, growing into an influential figure who became one of the main figures in Cairo’s local politics. He died in 1676/7.

Epilogue

We will probably never know exactly what led to the execution and how it took place. Nor was my aim with the post to present a perfect solution in the manner as Hercule Poirot usually does. I merely wished to shed light on the fact that the generally known and accepted theory should be regarded with some healthy doubts. The fact that it is the most generally accepted theory, does not mean it is the most thorough. There are plenty of question marks, dubious information which makes it clear that this whole situation was more complicated than two women fighting for domination over the harem.

Kösem Sultan was the sultana who broke the highest, who could have been at the top for a long time, but from the great heights, she finally fell down and became the only murdered valide sultana ever. Kösem Sultan had several titles during her life: Naib-i Sultanat (regent of the Ottoman Empire), Umin al-Mu'minin (mother of all muslims), Büyük Valide Sultan (great Valide Sultan), Valide-i Sehide (martyred mother), Valide-i Maktule (murdered mother), Valide-i Muazzama (magnificent mother).

Used sources:  M. Kocaaslan - IV. Mehmed Saltanatında Topkapı Sarayı Haremi: İktidar, Sınırlar ve Mimari; L. Peirce - The Imperial Harem; Ö. Kumrular - Kösem Sultan: iktidar, hırs, entrika; C. Finkel - Osman’s Dream: the History of the Ottoman Empire; M. P. Pedani - Relazioni inedite; N. Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; G. Börekçi - Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I and His Immediate Predecessors; F. Davis - The Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul; Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; F. Suraiya, K. Fleet - The Cambridge History of Turkey 1453-1603; F. Suraiya - The Cambridge History of Turkey, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839; Ö. Düzbakar - Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations In The Ottoman; G. Junne - The black eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire, Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan.

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A Nők szultánátusának egyik legtöbbször tárgyalt témája Köszem szultána brutális kivégzése. Általában a laikusok elintézik annyival, hogy Köszem szultánát menye, Turhan Hatice gyilkoltatta meg hosszas hatalmi harc lezárásaként. Rengeteg beszámoló áll rendelkezésünkre az eseményekről, ám meglehetősen kevés van köztük, mely konkrétan korabeli lenne. Ebben az írásban szeretném összegezni, hogy mit tudunk, kik voltak a szereplők az eseményekben és hogy mi történhetett azon a bizonyos éjjelen. A kommentszekcióban várom mindenki véleményét, megjegyzését a témáról, hogy meg tudjuk vitatni a posztot! :) Aki nem ismerné Köszem szultánát, az ITT tudja elolvasni életrajzát.  

Mit tudunk biztosan?

- Köszem I. Ibrahim trónfosztása és kivégzése után régens lett unokája IV. Mehmed mellett. - Turhan, Mehmed anyja és Köszem külöböző oldalon álltak a politikai játszmák során. - Köszemet 1651. szeptember 2-án meggyilkolták ellenségei. - Turhan Hatice lett az új régens, Köszem gyilkosai nem lettek megbüntetve, támogatóitól azonban rövidesen megszabadultak.

Előzmények

Köszem szultána 1640 februárjában másodjára került hatalomra. Zavart elméjú fia, I. Ibrahim mellett régensként kezdte irányítani az Oszmán Birodalmat. Köszemet mindenki szerette, az uralkodásban hatalmas tapasztalata volt, rengeteget jótékonykodott. Minden tökéletesnek tűnt, azonban fia, Ibrahim hamarosan rossz emberek befolyása alá került. Cinci Hoca okkult tudományokkal foglalkozó vallási vezető volt, aki kihasználta a szultán mentális problémáit és komolyan befolyásolta őt. Ennek az lett az eredménye, hogy a szultán 1644-ben a nagyvezírét kivégeztette, édesanyját pedig száműzte. Eredetileg Rodosz szigetére szándékozta küldeni anyját, de végül ágyasai meggyőzték, hogy csak egy másik palotába küldje. Köszem elkövetkezendő éveit ott töltötte száműzetésben, ám ezalatt az idő alatt is rendszeresen levelezett az államférfiakkal és igyekezett kézben tartani mindent. Valószínűleg itt írta meg jól ismert levelét is Hezarpare Ahmed Pasának, mely így szólt: “Végül sem titeket, sem engem nem hagyna életben és újra elveszítenénk az uralmat az állam felett, ezzel pedig lerombolnánk társadalmunkat.” Odáig fajult a helyzet, hogy 1647-ben Köszem szultána és az új nagyvezír, Salih Pasa és a Seyhülislam Abdürrahim Efendi megpróbálták trónfosztani Ibrahimot, azonban lebuktak. A következő évben a janicsárok és az ulema is csatlakozott a lázadáshoz és 1648 augusztus 8-án könnyűszerrel trónfosztották és bebörtönözték az őrült szultánt, követőit pedig eltávolították a pozíciókból.

Ibrahimot a trónon fia, az alig 6 éves Mehmed követte, aki mellett szükség volt egy régensre. Az államférfiak Köszemet kérték fel a megtisztelő feladatra. A régensi pozíciót általában tanítók, pasák vagy édesanyák látták el (II. Mehmed esetében a nagyvezír volt régens, I. Ahmednél anyja és tanítója, IV. Muradnál és I. Ibrahimnál anyjuk), így Köszem volt az első nagymama, akiből régens lehetett. Erre a legelfogadottabb vélemények szerint azért kerülhetett sor, mert Mehmed édesanyja, Turhan Hatice még 25 éves sem volt ekkor, túl fiatal és tapasztalatlan volt a birodalom irányításához. Köszem tehát belekezdett harmadik régensségébe és folyamatosan semmibe vette Mehmed édesanyját, Turhant. Turhan fiatalsága okán talán tényleg nem lett volna jó régens, ugyanakkor a hárem irányításához minden joga megvolt. Köszem viszont ezt sem engedte meg a fiatal nőnek. Turhan tehát hiába volt a regnáló szultán anyja, minden feladatkörét Köszem uralta. Emellett Köszem a divánban is egyre több ellenségre tett szert, így a hárem és a divan is két oldalra szakadt: Köszem támogatóira és Turhan támogatóira.

Két, szemben álló oldal és a szereplők

Köszem oldala

Köszem évtizedeken át uralta régensként a birodalmat, amikor pedig nem régens volt, valideként követte figyelemmel az eseményeket. Életének korábbi szakaszában a legtöbb pasa mellette állt, ami nem volt elmondható harmadik régensségéről. Köszem első régenssége alatt is jelezte, hogy ő, mint az uralkodó reprezentálása ott kíván lenni a divan gyűléseken személyesen. Ezt akkor a pasák nem engedték meg neki, amit ő kénytelen-kelletlen el is fogadott. Harmadik régenssége során azonban szó sem lehetett arról, hogy meghajoljon bárki akarata előtt. Elveszítette összes fiát, legalább egy lányát is eltemette már, egész életét a birodalomnak áldozta, nem volt hajlandó többé bármiben is kompromisszumot kötni. Gyakorlatilag egyeduralkodóként kívánta irányítani a birodalmat. A divanban pedig aki nem értett vele egyet, azt eltiporta és menesztette. Köszem jogát az uralkodáshoz egyre többen kezdték el vitatni, egyik ilyen divan vita során hangzott el a jól ismert beszéde is. Ekkor Köszem megvádolta a nagyvezír Sofu Ahmed Pasát azzal, hogy meg akarta őt öletni, majd így folytatta: “Istennek hála négy uralkodót segítettem és én magam is hosszú ideig uralkodtam. A világ nem fog sem összeomlani sem megreformálódni a halálommal.”

Köszem azonban nem elégedett meg a pasák megalázásával, tanácsaik el nem fogadásával. Még csak nem is neki tetsző más pasákra cserélte le őket, hanem janicsárokat kezdett vezíri rangra emelni. A janicsárok Köszem első régenssége óta hűséggel szolgálták az asszonyt, amiért az mindenkivel szembe menve 1623-ban hatalmas trónralépési jussot adott a janicsároknak IV. Murad trónralépése után. Bár voltak lázadások és egyet nem értések, alapvetően a janicsárok - de legalábbis néhány hadtestük - hűségesek voltak Köszemhez. A janicsárok képviselete évszázadok óta működött, azonban az, hogy janicsárokat - vagy egyszerűen katonákat - tegyenek vezírré a kitanult államférfiak helyett, több volt a soknál. Mindenki úgy érezte a divanban, hogy Köszem egy katonai uralmat kíván kiépíteni, hogy a neki tetsző módon vezethesse a birodalmat. Így Köszem oldalán 1651-re tulajdonképpen csak a janicsárok néhány hadteste állt politikai értelemben. Bár a nép továbbra is szerette őt bőkezű jótékonykodása miatt, politikai értelemben az ő támogatásuk nem jelentett sokat.

Amellett, hogy a pasákkal egyre nőtt a feszültség, Köszem a háremben is riválisra akadt. Bár a legtöbb forrás tényként kezeli, hogy Köszem és menye, Turhan viszonya tragikus volt, nincs erre utaló bizonyíték. Kettejük viszonya csak az idő előrehaladtával kezdett megromlani, általánosan azonban inkább az mondható el, hogy Köszem egyáltalán nem foglalkozott menyével. Mindenbizonnyal lenézte és nem tartotta sokra Turhant, így komolyan sem vette a nőt. Köszemnek bár megvolt a saját hárem személyzete, a legbefolyásosabb eunuch nem volt a kezében. Mindemellett egyesek szerint szolgálói nagyrésze is méltatlannak találta, ahogy Köszem Turhannal bánt. Talán nem véletlen, hogy oly sok forrás említi a Meleki Hatun nevű szolgálót, aki híresen oldalt váltott és Köszemet elárulva Turhan oldalát kezdte erősíteni.

Turhan Hatice oldala

Turhan Hatice a háremben jobban állt, mint Köszem. Segítséget kapott egy befolyásos eunuchtól, Szulejmán agától. Szulejmán aga volt a hárem agák vezetője, aki nagy hatalommal és kapcsolatrendszerrel rendelkező, ambíciózus eunuch volt, jelentős politikai befolyással. A hárem tulajdonképpen két oldalra szakadt, Köszem és Turhan Hatice támogatóira. Mind a két oldalnak megvolt a saját főeunuchja, ami hatalmas káoszt okozott a háremen belül, az emberek nem tudták, kinek az utasításait kövessék. És bár a valide szultána titulus a szultán anyjaként Turhan Haticét illette meg, a köznyelv csak “kis valide”-ként hivatkozott rá, míg Köszem volt a “nagy valide”. Szulejmán Aga támogatása ugyanakkor aranyat ért. Az eunuch első sorban a saját érdekeit nézte egész élete során, azonban remekül értett ahhoz, hogyan használjon ki és vezessen meg embereket. Épp emiatt felmerül annak a lehetősége is, hogy Szulejmán volt az, aki Turhant felbújtotta és Köszem ellen hangolta. Talán Szulejmán volt az, aki saját felemelkedését remélve a fiatal validétől, meggyőzte arról, hogy vegye el ami a saját jussa. Emellett Szulejmán Aga az ifjú szultánnal is megkedveltette magát, egyfajta apafigurává vált a fiú számára. Természetesen nem célom alábecsülni Turhan szerepét az eseményekben, ugyanakkor úgy érzem, hogy Szulejmán Aga szerepe ténylegesen alábecsült és ezt szeretném mindneképpen érzékeltetni. Nem azt mondom, hogy Turhan egy naíva volt, akit megvezetett a csúf, rossz Szulejmán Aga, csupán azt gondolom, hogy Szulejmán támogatása és felbújtása nélkül, Turhan valószínűleg nem, vagy sokkal később szállt volna szembe Köszemmel.

Szulejmán mellett három másik jelentősebb eunuch is Turhan oldalán állt, Hoca Reyhan Aga, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Aga és Ali Aga. Hoca Reyhan Aga állt legközelebb Turhanhoz, mint társalkodója és vallási vezetője, de Lala Hajji Aga is hosszútávú partner volt Turhan életében. Az eunuchok mellett meg kell említenünk Meleki Hatunt is, akinek legendája jól ismert. Eszerint ő volt az, aki Köszem tervét elárulta Turhannak, ezzel megmentve a kis Mehmed szultánt a haláltól és trónfosztástól. A valóság azonban valószínűleg kevésbé romantikus. Valószínűtlen, hogy egy korábban sosem említett, jelentéktelen szolgáló, mint Meleki tudott volna Köszem terveiről és el tudta volna árulni. Minden bizonnyal Melekit csupán oldalváltása miatt ruházták fel nagyobb szereppel, mint ami valójában volt. Talán Meleki elvállalta, hogy lesz bűnbak, tanúskodik Köszem ellen, ha cserébe javakat kap. Legalábbis tekintettel arra, hogy Meleki milyen hatalmas vagyonra tett szert Köszem halála után, nem zárhatjuk ki ezt az opciót sem. Meleki ha a háremen belül hozott is támogatókat Turhan számára, az egész eseményre meglehetősen kevés ráhatása lehetett. A kulcs figura Turhan mellett Szulejmán aga volt, akinek komoly kapcsolata volt a divánnal is, így könnyedén tudta csapatukhoz kapcsolni a divan Köszemmel elégedetlen tagjait is. A legbefolyásosabb támogató nem volt más, mint a Nagyvezír, Siyavuş Pasa, de gyakorlatilag szinte a teljes divan Köszem ellen fordult eddigre. Azt is meg kell említeni, hogy bár a jancsiárok legtöbb alakulata pártatlan vagy Köszem párti volt, a szpáhik inkább húztak a Turhan támogatói csoport felé.

Mi vezetett a tragikus éjszakához?

Mielőtt a közvetlen okokra rátérnék, kicsit vissza kell ugranunk az időben, hogy jobban megérthessük Köszem viselkedését. Mint ismert, trónfosztása után, I. Ibrahimot a trónon fia, az alig 6 éves Mehmed követte, aki mellett szükség volt egy régensre. Az államférfiak Köszemet kérték fel a megtisztelő feladatra. Ugyanakkor a felkérés meglehetősen furcsa volt. Miért is? A régensi pozíciót általában tanítók, pasák vagy édesanyák látták el, Köszem pedig egyik sem volt. Sőt, Köszem a felkérést először elutasította arra hivatkozva, hogy már nincs ereje tovább uralkodni.

Miért vállalta el Köszem mégis a feladatot? Valóban vissza akart vonulni?

Ahhoz, hogy megértsük Köszem gondolatait, még egy kicsit visszább kell ugranunk az időben. Köszem Ibrahim uralkodása során száműzetésben volt éveken át. Száműzetéséből pedig többször kísérelt meg puccsot saját fia ellen. Egyik száműzetésben írt levele alapján egyértelmű, hogy részese volt a puccsnak, mely végül fiát trónfosztotta. Kifelé azonban egészen más képet mutatott. Miután Ibrahimot elzárták, trónra szerették volna léptetni fiát, Mehmedet. Köszem szultána ekkor találkozott a Topkapi Palotában az államférfiakkal, hogy megvitassa velük mi legyen Ibrahim sorsa. Órákon át tárgyaltak, Köszem azonban végig megtagadta, hogy kiadja Ibrahim legidősebb fiát, Mehmedet. Így pedig nem lehetett őt kikiáltani szultánnak. Az államférfiaknak órákon keresztül kellett nyilvánsoan győzködniük Köszemet. Az a Köszem, aki korábban mindent elkövetett fia trónfosztásáért, most fia mellett állt ki. Miért? Természetesen sosem fogjuk megtudni, hogy Köszem fejében pontosan mi játszódott le. Valószínűnek tűnik azonban, hogy Köszem szerette volna megtartani a katonák és nép előtt a szerető anya képét, melybe nem fért bele saját fiának trónfosztása. Ezért egy álvitát tartott a pasákkal, hogy ne veszítse el a nép szimpátiáját, de ugyanakkor a birodalomnak is jót tegyen. Köszem tapasztalt politikus volt, aki éveken át tudott vezető szerepben maradni, ehhez pedig nélkülözhetetlen volt az imázs is. Így végül Köszem beleegyezésével elzárták Ibrahim szultánt, Mehmedet pedig új szultánjukká kiáltották ki. Talán a régensség első elutasítása is egy ehhez hasonló színjáték része volt. Köszem talán úgy érezte, hogy a nép ezt várja tőle, ezért felajánlotta visszavonulását, miközben talán a háttérben már régen megegyezett a pasákkal.

És a divan tagjai miért hagyták, hogy Köszem legyen a régens? Hiszen a divan tagjai közül akárki vagy akár Mehmed tanítója is jelentkezhetett volna a feladatra. Ez pedig hatalmas befolyást tett volna a férfiak kezébe. Miért engedték hát akkor át ezt a lehetőséget Köszemnek?

I. Ibrahimot 1648. augusztus 18-án kivégezték. Egyesek szerint Köszem szultána beleegyezését adta fia kivégzésébe, ám az sem zárható ki, hogy a kivégzés a háta mögött történt meg. Mint már fentebb említettem a trónfosztott vagy meggyilkolt szultánok édesanyja a tradíció szerint a Régi Palotába vonult vissza, ahol politikamentesen élték hátralévő éveiket. Köszem esetében azonban nem ez történt. Ez felveti annak eshetőségét, hogy Köszem nem tudott Ibrahim kivégzéséről és a pasák ezzel a gesztussal igyekeztek kiengesztelni az összetört nőt. De akkor ki rendelte el Ibrahim kivégzését? Gyakorlatilag bárki megtehette az államférfiak közül, de akár Szulejmán aga vagy Turhan is aláírathatta a fetwa kérvényt a kis szultánnal, melyet aztán a Seyhülislam teljes joggal engedélyezett, hiszen Ibrahim nagyon kártékony volt a birodalomra nézve. Akárhogyan is, Köszem a kivégzés után megváltozott. Vagy azért fordult a pasák ellen - akikkel korábban mindig együttműködő volt -, mert azok átverték őt Ibrahim kivégzésével kapcsolatban; vagy egyszerűen anyai szíve nem bírta elviselni, hogy beleegyezését adta fia kivégzésébe és megbomlott az elméje. Bármelyik verzió is igaz, azt tisztán látjuk, hogy az a Köszem, aki IV. Mehmed mellett régens lett, már nem ugyanaz az ember volt, akit korábban a birodalom imádott anyjának tekintettek.

A gyilkosság

Ahogy a fenti összefoglalásból is kiderül, Köszem egyeduralmat próbált kiépíteni, melyben néhány janicsár hadtesten kívül senki nem támogatta, így hatalmas csapat gyűlt össze ellene. A jól ismert verzió szerint, idővel a viszály Köszem és az államférfiak között odáig fajtult, hogy Turhan Hatice támogatásával az államférfiak megpróbálták Köszemet eltávolítani pozíciójából. Köszem válaszul erre azt tervezte, hogy trónfosztja IV. Mehmed szultánt és helyette másik unokáját ülteti a trónra. Ehhez a janicsárokat be kívánta engedni a palotába, hogy azok az éj leple alatt elvégezzék a puccsot, emiatt nyitva hagyatta éjszakára a hárem bejáratát. Köszem terve azonban ellenségei fülébe jutott, egyesek szerint egy Meleki nevű szolgáló által. Így amint Köszem emberei 1651. szeptember 2-án, kinyitották a kaput, Turhan Hatice emberei, a főeunuch Szulejmán Aga vezetésével bezáratták azt és kivégzőosztagot küldtek Köszem szultána lakrészébe. Mikor emberei Köszem lakrészéhez érve bekopogtak az ajtón, Köszem azt hitte, hogy saját emberei jöttek, ezért kikiabált nekik, hogy “Megjöttetek?”. Erre azonban a janicsárok hangja helyett Köszem az eunuch Szulejmán Aga hangját hallotta meg, amitől bepánikolt és menekülni kezdett. Nem pontosan tudni, hogy hogy jutott ki lakrészéből vagy ki jutott e egyáltalán, mert a leírások nem egyeznek. Egyesek szerint lakrészén belül bújt el egy szekrényben, mások szerint megpróbált kijutni a janicsárokhoz, azonban a zárt kapun keresztül nem tudott, így végül a kapu melletti szobában bújt el. A kivégzőosztag, amely több eunuchból (Szulejmán Aga, Hoca Reyhan Aga, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Aga és Ali Aga, valamint néhány ismeretlen eunuch) állt folytatta a keresést. Köszem egy szekrényben rejtőzött el, melyből ruhájának széle kilógott, ezzel felfedve rejtekhelyét. Amikor megtalálták, kivégzői elé pénzt dobott, ezzel próbálva lefizetni őket, ám esélye sem volt Turhan hű embereivel szemben. A legenda szerint a férfiak próbálták lefogni a validét, miközben füléből kitépték gyémánt fülbevalóit, melyeket Ahmed szultántól kapott; ruháját is megtépkedték, ahogy próbálták leszedni róla az értékes díszeket. Köszem túl a hatvanon is erősen ellenállt kivégzőinek, ám végül felülkerekedtek rajta. Egyesek szerint saját hajával, mások szerint egy függönnyel fojtották meg. Az első fojtogatási kísérlet után még magához tért, a másodikat azonban már nem élte túl.

Van azonban több olyan pont a fenti történetben, ami kétségeket ébreszt:

- Köszem problémája nem Mehmed volt, hanem a pasák, Turhan és Szulejmán Aga. Miért nem tőlük szabadult meg? Nem lett volna egyszerűbb és jogszerűbb meggyilkoltatni ezeket az embereket, mint trónfosztani az egyik gyermek szultánt egy másik gyermek javára? Természetesen megindokolhatjuk annyival a dolgot, hogy Köszem nem volt már épelméjű, így ne is keressünk logikát cselekedeteiben. Ugyanakkor felmerülhet az is, hogy talán Köszem teljesen vagy legalább részben ártatlan volt az egész eseménysorozatban. Elképzelhető, hogy nem tervezett semmit a janicsárokkal, az egész terv csak Turhan és emberei által lett kitalálva, hogy legitimizálják saját tetteiket. Ennek azonban ellent mond, hogy a janicsárok a tragikus éjszakán valóban gyülekezni készültek, az pedig nem valószínű, hogy Turhan és csapata sikerrel vezette meg a janicsárokat úgy, hogy Köszem erről ne szerzett volna tudomást. Lehetséges, hogy Köszem valóban készült egy kisebb puccsra, de az talán nem Mehmed ellen irányult. Köszemnek látnia kellett, hogy a pasák mellett Szulejmán Aga a fő felbújtó Turhan és Mehmed "rebellis" viselkedése mögött. Úgy vélem, Köszem egy kisebb puccsot tervezett, melyben megszabadult volna a neki nem tetsző eunuchoktól, szolgálóktól és ráijesztett volna Mehmedre és Turhanra. Ezzel biztosíthatta volna saját hatalmát és azt, hogy többé se Turhan se Mehmed ne kérdőjelezze őt meg.

- Miért gyilkolták meg Köszemet ilyen furcsa módon? Hiszen a jogszerű, szokásos kivégzési mód kivégző osztag által, Seyhülislami fetwával és selyemzsinórral történt. (Fontos ugyanakkor megjegyezni, hogy a dinasztia nő tagjain nem alkalmaztak korábban kivégzést, a nőket jellemzően száműzetéssel büntették.) Köszemet ezzel szemben képzetlen eunuchokkal, hamis fetwával és a saját hajával vagy egy függönnyel gyilkolták meg. Felmerül a kérdés, hogy talán Köszem kivégzése nem is volt eltervezve. Ha a kivégzés el lett volna tervezve, könnyedén tudtak volna kivégzőket szerezni selyemzsinórral és a fetwa kikérésének körülményei is egyértelműek lennének. Volt természetesen fetwa, de az időbeliséget kissé megzavarja a tény, hogy a régi Seyhülislamot ugyanakkor váltották le Turhan egyik megbízható emberére, mikor a kivégzés zajlott. Épp emiatt, és a kivégzés szokásostól eltérő brutalitása miatt, felmerülhet annak a lehetősége is, hogy talán Köszem kivégzése nem volt eredetileg eltervezve, csupán menet közben csúszott ki az irányítás Turhan kezéből és a pillanat hevében az eunuchok kivégezték Köszemet. Utólag pedig, hogy legalizálják az eseményeket gyártattak egy fetwát az új Seyhülislámmal.

- De akkor ki és miért döntött végül úgy, hogy Köszemnek meg kell halnia? Turhan nem volt jelen az események során, és mivel a gyilkosság nem volt előre eltervezve, őt kihúznám a gyanúsítottak listájáról. Természetesen az nem zárható ki, hogy Szulejmán Agával beszéltek erről az eshetőségről is. Valószínűbb azonban, hogy eredtileg csupán rá akartak ijeszteni Köszemre, megmutatni neki, hogy leleplezték, eljárt felette az idő. Véleményem szerint Turhan azt remélte, hogy Köszem beismeri vereségét és egyszerűen visszavonul a Régi Palotába. Túl kockázatos lett volna megölni egy ennyire tisztelt és szeretett validét, úgy, hogy korábban sosem végezték ki a dinasztia egyik nőtagját sem. Nem vall épelmére szánt szándékkal előrekitervelten, ilyen módon megölni Köszemet. Valószínűleg le akarták mondatni, Köszemnek azonban eddigre már nem volt vesztenivalója. Az egyetlen dolog, ami még éltette az a hatalom volt, így minden bizonnyal ellenkezett a kényszer visszavonulás gondolatától. Mikor Szulejmán Aga felismerte, hogy Köszem nem hallgat rájuk, talán félelemből úgy döntött meg kell őt ölniük. Hiszen ha a felbőszített Köszem kijutott volna a palotából Szulejmán és a többi eunuch azon nyomban fej nélkül találta volna magát. Bár nem utal rá bizonyíték, de személyes véleményem az, hogy Szulejmán talán az első perctől kezdve ezt akarta, hiszen tudta jól, hogy Köszem sosem fog visszavonulni. Akárhogyan is az eunuchok végül professzionálisnak egyáltalán nem mondható módon legyűrték az idős validét és kivégezték.

- Teljesen kizárható, hogy legális fetwa és kivégző osztag végzett Köszemmel? Sajnos ezt sem zárhatjuk ki. Az angol követ például arról számolt be, hogy kivégző osztag ölte meg Köszemet, az ifjú szultán által kért fetwa után, Mehmed szeme láttára. Igaz, hogy az angol követ nem a legjobban informáltak közé tartozott. Valószínű, hogy mindenki úgy hitte akkoriban, hogy a fetwa előre volt kiadva, csak később, a történészek kutatásai világítottak rá arra, hogy a fetwa feltehetőleg Köszem kivégzése után készült el. Azt pedig, hogy Köszemet a 10 éves Mehmed szeme láttára végezték volna ki, nem tartom valószínűnek. Turhan nagyon erősen igyekezett óvni fiát, nem valószínű, hogy kitette volna őt egy ilyen traumának. Mustafa Naima abban egyetért az angol követtel, hogy a kivégzés előre megtervezett volt, ám szerinte nem eunuchok, hanem kivégző osztag végzett a valide szultánával. Azonban akkor miért volt brutális a kivégzés? Miért nem volt selyemzsinór? Miért alkalmatlan eunuchok vitték véghez?

A gyilkosság utóhatása

Hogy megakadályozzanak bármiféle ellenállást, Turhan Hatice és emberei az éjszaka folyamán minden olyan államférfit eltávolítottak posztjáról, aki veszélyeztette volna őket. Az első ember, akit kineveztek akkor éjjel, az Ebu Said Efendi lett, az új Seyhülislam. Ő volt az, aki végül kiadta a fetwát Köszem kivégzésére (utólagosan). Ezekután Turhan megüzente az összes államférfinak és katonának, hogy azonnal menjenek audienciára, ahol hűséget fogadnak Mehmed szultánnak. A legtöbben félelemből vagy őszinte érzések által vezérelve, azonnal a szultán elé járultak, akik pedig nem, azokra az új Seyhülislám fetwat adott ki. Így vált jogszerűvé Köszem támogatóinak kivégzése is, hiszen ők sem jelentek meg a szultán előtt. A lázadó janicsárok pedig így árulóként lettek megbélyegezve és legálisan kivégezték őket. A nép szemében végül ők lettek bűnbaknak kikiáltva Köszem haláláért. Köszemet a gyilkosság után a Régi Palotába szállították, ahol előkészítették testét a temetésre. Birodalmi temetést kapott, Isztambul népe pedig önkéntesen 3 napos gyászt tartott, bezárva minden boltot és üzletet. Köszem mindig népszerű volt az emberek között, ám érdekes módon ugyanaz a nép, nem fordult Turhan ellen Köszem halála miatt, sőt, Turhan hasonlóan szeretett és tisztelt valide szultána lett, mint amilyen Köszem volt.

Mi történt a valódi bűnösökkel? Turhan és Mehmed természetesen megúszták, ugyanakkor kérdéses, hogy a gyilkosságban egyáltalán volt e részük. Igaz egy 1656-os lázadás komolyan megrengette hatalmukat, de végül nem veszítették el azt. A lázadásnak a legnagyobb oka a gyenge nagyvezírek, az újjáéledő Celali lázadás és a velenceiekkel vívott háború voltak. A körülmények miatt nem jutott elég gabona a fővárosba, a katonák nem kaptak rendesen fizetést, de az egyszerű emberek is egyre elégedetlenebbek voltak, különösen dühítette őket a szultánhoz közelállók extrém gazdagsága. Végül a janicsárok és szpáhik vezetésével a nép fellázadt 1656 március negyedikén. A lázadás során a szultánhoz közelállók közül többeket brutálisan kivégeztek, az egész fővárost feldúlták. A csőcselék Mehmed 31 közeli emberét a Kék Mecset mellett akasztotta fel egy egy fára. Köztük volt Meleki Hatun is, akit a szultán különösen szeretett. Bár korábban is rázták meg lázadások a fővárost, ehhez fogható még sosem történt. Nem csak a katonák lázadtak fel, a nép is egy emberként állt ki a katonák mellett és állt be mögéjük. Mindenki bezárta boltjait, általános sztrájk lépett érvénybe a lázadás idejére.

Szulejmán Aga már nem volt hatalmon amikor a lázadás megtörtént és talán ez tartotta helyén a fejét. Szulejmán Köszem meggyilkolása után a fő hárem eunuch lett, ám a pozíciót csupán 1652 júliusáig élvezhette. Szulejmán tovább nyújtózkodott, mint a takarója ért, olyan politikai témákba is igyekezett beleszólni, amihez semmi köze nem volt. Turhan Hatice is kezdte felismerni, hogy Szulejmán egyáltalán nem az ő oldalukon áll, hanem csak a saját magáén. Külön érdekesség, hogy az a Lala Ibrahim Aga győzte meg erről Turhant, aki maga is részt vett Köszem kivégzésében. Lala Ibrahim Aga Turhan személyes eunuchja volt és maga sosem vágyott (vagy bölcsen nem mutatta ki) ennél magasabb pozícióra. Turhan így végül 1652-ben megfosztotta pozíciójától Szulejmán Agát és száműzte Egyiptomba. A rafinált eunuch még a száműzetésben is feltalálta magát, befolyásos személlyé nőtte ki magát, aki Kairó helyi politikájának egyik főszereplője lett. 1676/7-ben halt meg.

Epilógus

Valószínűleg sosem fogjuk pontosan megtudni, hogy mi vezetett a kivégzéshez és hogyan zajlott az le. A poszttal nem is az volt a célom, hogy egy tökéletes megoldást mutassak be Hercule Poirot módjára, csupán szerettem volna rávilágítani arra, hogy az általánosan ismert és elfogadott teória, inkább megszokásból tekintendő a legáltalánosabban elfogadottnak, nem pedig alapossága miatt. Rengeteg a kérdőjel, kétes információ és helyzet a kivégzés körülményei között, ami egyértelműsíti, hogy ez az egész helyzet bonyolultabb volt annál, minthogy két nő harcot vívott a hárem feletti uralomért.

Köszem volt az a szultána, aki a legmagasabbra tört, aki sokáig lehetett a csúcson, azonban a nagy magasságból zuhant végül alá és vált az egyetlen meggyilkolt valide szultánává. Élete során több címet is kapott: Naib-i Sultanat (az Oszmán Birodalom régense), Umin al-Mu'minin (minden muszlimok anyja), Büyük Valide Sultan (nagy valide szultána), Valide-i Sehide (a mártír anya), Valide-i Maktule (a meggyilkolt anya), Valide-i Muazzama (a csodálatos anya).

Felhasznált források: M. Kocaaslan - IV. Mehmed Saltanatında Topkapı Sarayı Haremi: İktidar, Sınırlar ve Mimari; L. Peirce - The Imperial Harem; Ö. Kumrular - Kösem Sultan: iktidar, hırs, entrika; C. Finkel - Osman’s Dream: the History of the Ottoman Empire; M. P. Pedani - Relazioni inedite; N. Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; G. Börekçi - Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I and His Immediate Predecessors; F. Davis - The Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul; Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; F. Suraiya, K. Fleet - The Cambridge History of Turkey 1453-1603; F. Suraiya - The Cambridge History of Turkey, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839; Ö. Düzbakar - Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations In The Ottoman; G. Junne - The black eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire, Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan.

#mahpeyker kösem #Kösem sultan #kösem #kosem #Mahpeyker #valide-i muazzama #valide sultan #valide kösem sultan #Turhan Hatice Sultan #turhan hatice #turhan #Mehmed IV #süleyman aga #suleiman agha #valide-i maktule #valide-i şehide #valide-i sehide #büyük valide sultan #büyük valide #küçük valide #küçük valide sultan #naib-i sultanat #umin al-mu'minin #umin almuminin #umin al-muminin

[thedragonnerd]

Rayaari headcanon - let's keep Disney magic with The Lion King AU

(inspired by this lovely anon)

To the people of Heart, Benja is their King, an admired ruler who is fair to his citizens and listens to their troubles. To Raya though, he is simply her father Ba, and one of her best friends.

Her mother passed away when Raya was young, but she has an uncle who lives at the palace. Raya can't actually remember his real name - his nickname has been 'Druun' for as long as she can remember.

The role of being a ruler does not particularly appeal to Raya at her young age. She much prefers to spend her time having adventures around Heart, much to the annoyance of her bodyguards.

Namaari is the Princess of Fang, Heart's neighbouring land and close ally. Raya has known her since they were babies, with Benja and Virana often holding diplomatic meetings. While these discussions are going on, Raya finds ways to drag Namaari into whatever important adventures she may find.

After one particularly chaotic visit to Fang, where Raya and Namaari had tried to climb out of the window in Namaari's room and ended up being caught on the roof instead, Benja wakes Raya early. He is determined to instill a sense of responsibility in her, and so he leads her up the great mountain in the darkness of the early morning. They arrive at the temple just as dawn is breaking, and together they watch the sun rise slowly across their lands.

'Over there is Fang,' he points to his right, and Raya peers into the distance. 'Everywhere the light touches is our land, Raya...our people of Heart. One day, the sun will set on my time here as leader, and rise with you as Queen instead. And you must be ready for it.'

Raya sweeps her gaze across the land of Heart, before it finally alights on a dark and shadowy speck on the horizon. 'What about that shadowy place?' she asks, intrigued. Benja grasps her shoulder tightly. 'That's beyond our borders, Raya, and into Spine territory. You must never go there.' The adventurous side of Raya can't help but be intrigued.

On her way back to the palace, Raya runs into her uncle, and can't help but mention this to him - interested to know if he'll share more information with her. 'Ah yes, the forests of Spine,' Druun mentions with a sneer. 'But your father is absolutely right! You must never go there, Raya. It's a beautiful land, covered with snow for much of the year, but only the most hardened of warriors can go there. It's far too dangerous for a little girl like you.'

Raya is both annoyed by the implication that she cannot face down a Spine warrior, and fascinated by the idea of the land's magical forests, which Heart children know only from stories.

Namaari and her mother are visiting Heart the following day, and Raya doesn't hesitate to grab her friend by the hand and drag her away from the adults. 'I have a really cool place to show you,' she whispers to Namaari.

They manage to evade their royal guards, and steal away after the midday meal, riding Namaari's serlot out to the borderland. When they slip across the boundary into a land of cold snow, tall trees, and a buzzing sense of magic in the air, Raya is entranced. She's so busy exploring her new surroundings that she doesn't notice the danger from three Spine warriors until Namaari tugs on her sleeve, an urgent 'Raya' hissed in her ear.

The Spine warriors are delighted to discover the children of their enemies standing right within their territory, and they attack before Raya and Namaari even have a chance to run. The two girls try to fight them off, but they don't have the skill to face down an entire group of adult warriors.

Suddenly, Benja and Virana arrive, alerted by an eagle-eyed scout, and fight back the Spine men with ease, dragging their daughters away. Once they are safely back in Heart territory, Benja turns his disappointment on Raya.

Virana takes Naamari back to Fang that very day, also angry at her own daughter. Raya feels terrible when she realizes Namaari could have gotten hurt or worse during their adventure, and can barely wave goodbye. Years later, she wishes she had hugged Namaari instead, not realizing it would be the last time she'd see her for a very long time.

A week later, Raya happens to cross paths with Druun, when he reaches out to stop her, sharp fingers digging into her shoulder. 'Your father's looking for you,' he says shortly. 'Something about wanting to train you to fight properly, after that Spine fiasco.' Raya is slightly hurt by the idea that she is a poor fighter, but she goes down to the empty training grounds to wait for her Ba.

Instead of Ba, she is set upon by an even larger group of Spine warriors, who have clearly entered Heart with deadly intent. She sprints back towards the palace, hearing their heavy breaths close behind her as she flees.

Benja flies past her in the other direction, sword already raised to meet them in combat. 'Raya, run!' he yells, and the fear in his voice makes her listen.

She turns back when she thinks she is at a safer distance, just in time to see Ba be kicked to the ground. One of the Spine warriors brings his blade swinging down, and she screams at the sight.

The invaders leave as soon as the deed is done, Benja lying prone on the ground. Raya stumbles over to him as fast as she can, ignoring the retreating backs of Spine for a moment. 'Ba?' she whispers, kneeling in the bloodied dirt beside him and grasping one of his hands. 'Ba? Please wake up.'

'Raya, what have you done?' Drunn says, appearing from behind her. 'Your little excursion into Spine must have brought them here for revenge. What will your people think...What will Fang think? You've just caused your father to be killed, and started a war.'

'I didn't mean to,' Raya sobs, dropping her forehead to rest on Benja's chest, with her fingers clenching at his clothes. 'What do I do?'

'Run,' Druun says. 'And never return.' Raya runs, still covered in her father's blood.

She can't bring herself to go to Fang; instead, she flees through Spine, narrowly avoiding their hunting parties, and then through Talon. It's only when she arrives in Tail, the farthest land she can be from Heart, that she can breathe properly. The heartbreak threatens to overwhelm her.

She's found in the midst of the Tail desert by Sisu, a loud but kind-hearted individual who immediately introduces Raya to the rest of her family, an eclectic group of outcasts in their own rights.

Years pass, and Raya makes herself a new home in Tail, alongside Sisu and the rest of her family. It's a simple life, and she does everything possible to forget her past, choosing to live always in the present instead.

During rare times where she does allow herself to reminisce, she can't help but miss Namaari fiercely as well as her Ba. She knows she will never see her friend again, but wishes they could have talked at least once more in life.

One day, Raya is out on a hunting trip, stalking her prey for a long time to find the perfect shot, when an arrow shoots out from behind her. Spinning around, she sees a beautiful young woman, carrying a crossbow.

'That was my dinner,' Raya says in annoyance, but the other woman just snorts. 'No way, binturi...this is all mine.'

The voice is so familiar, so Raya squints at her opponent for a second, before recognition suddenly springs to mind. '...'Maari?' she whispers, and she can see the moment Namaari recognizes her in return. She rushes to Namaari, who picks her up and spins her around before settling into an embrace, both of them talking excitedly over each other. 'I thought you were dead,' Namaari says, arms tight around Raya's waist.

Later, when they have calmed down, Namaari tells her she is on a mission to find food...and help. Heart is apparently in disarray, with Druun allowing Spine to bring in their own forces and use up many of the natural resources. Fang has held out against their desire for further expansion for now, but war between Heart/Spine and Fang is imminent.

'I will not let our people kill each other for the whims of a mad king,' Namaari tells her passionately. 'They are starving and desperate, and we need to find a way to remove Spine's influence from Heart. But Raya, this is perfect. You can return and challenge your uncle...Take your place as rightful leader of Heart.'

Raya feels sick to her stomach at the idea of returning to Heart, wanting more than anything to avoid facing her past and the blame that lies at her feet. But Namaari is a shining beacon in front of her, burning with a righteous passion about saving everyone. Raya never could say no to Namaari.

Raya and Namaari return together, riding side by side into the desolate wasteland that has befallen Heart, with Sisu and her siblings following not far behind. It hurts to be back home, especially seeing it in this state, and as Raya marches up the stairs to the palace, she draws strength from her anger.

'Raya, what a surprise to see you...alive,' Druun says, when she bursts into the throne room. His eyes glance towards the Spine warriors at his side.

'Uncle, stop whatever madness that has you waging wars against our allies, whilst our enemies now take from our lands as they choose,' Raya says, trying to appear strong, but Druun merely gestures his hand in order to amass his Spine fighters around him.

'I should have killed you and Benja with my own hands, rather leaving it to these imbeciles to do it for me,' Druun snaps, and then he is upon her with his sword. Raya fights back with everything she has, white-hot rage fueling her as she realizes what he means by those words.

But Druun is a seasoned warrior, with strong backup, and soon Raya finds herself surrounded.

'FOR HEART!' a yell sounds, and then Heart soldiers are streaming into the palace, accompanied by hundreds of Fang warriors, led by Namaari.

Spine soldiers are pushed back towards their own borders, although Raya pays little attention when she has Druun at the end of her blade. 'I should execute you for what you did to my father,' she snarls, but relaxes when she feels Namaari gently touch her shoulder. She watches instead as he is dragged away to prison, to await proper justice.

Heart is almost in ruins, her people hungry, desperate and lost, but Raya feels as if she can breathe again properly for the first time in years, just by being back.

There is a warmth by her side, and then Namaari is there, smiling down at her. 'Welcome home, dep la,' she says, and Raya reaches out to hold her hand.

#rayaari #raya and the last dragon #ratld #raya and namaari #raya #namaari #raya x namaari #namaari might not be from Heart #but they are her allies #so she will be damned if Fang and Heart start to kill each other #Lion King AU #back to the headcanoooons