Mad Kings & Queens: Raving Royals and How To Survive Them (Wednesday, 4th Period)

[atreideslioness]

Ghanima was waiting on her desk, toying with the Dune Tarot as she waited for the students to arrive today.  Once the last one was seated, she shuffled the cards once more, flicking them into an expert stack before tucking it into one of the sleeves of her robe.  "Anna of Saxony," she began, was the only child and heiress of Maurice, Elector of Saxony, and Agnes, eldest daughter of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. She was the second wife of William the Silent."

"Anna was reputedly unattractive and lame, but her wealth drew many suitors. She accepted the suit of William I of Orange, and they were married on August 25, 1561. Her new husband, while thrilled about her dowry, soon discovered that Anna was unstable.  Her unattractive combination of melancholic, aggressive, and suicidal tendencies, an excessive lack of financial restraint, and propensity towards very public adultery made her a liability of unprecedented scale. 

"Anna's childhood had been troubled.  By the age of eleven she had lost bother her parents and she grew up a lonely and self-indulged only child.  She had a long line of mentally unstable relatives, and many of her uncles and cousins were said to have suffered from mental illnesses that ranged from severe depression to complete mental collapse."  

"It's unsurprising, then, that Anna's behavior was distinctly unconventional from the early days of her marriage.  Pregnancy apparently pushed her over the edge - most like a bout of what's currently known as post-partum depression - and it rendered her vulnerable to increasingly irrepressible emotional episodes.  Political pressures and war in the Low Countries took William away from home, leaving Anna alone, and free to indulge her excessive boredom by partying wildly and then wallowing in despair, during which times she refused daylight, food, and visitors for days on end.  The death of her first child in its early infancy, and two further pregnancies in rapid succession within the next two years only served to aggravated her psyche.  Abandoning all conventions of motherhood at the time, she overindulged in alcohol, neglected her children, and grew increasingly aggressive and suicidal."

"Events climaxed in 1564, when William decided to remove the children from her care for their safety.  Anna at once withdrew herself from court and turned a deaf ear to her husband's pleas for frugality and respectability.  While he was still off waging war, she began a very public campaign of her own, getting exceedingly inebriated, accusing him of sexual ineptitude, and living a life of outrageous and hedonistic excess.  Nevertheless, William continued to write to her, pleading with her to regain some sense of decorum and return home.  But his pleas for a more modest lifestyle were in vain.  Always in public, Anna mocked his letters and tore them up."

"She took up with her lawyer, Jan Rubens, in 1570 and gave birth to their illegitimate daughter, Christina, on August 22, 1571. It was the final straw.  News of this indiscretion reached her husband, who refused to acknowledge Christina as his own.  Anna was sent to Beilstein castle along with Christina. Her behavior became ever more deranged, until the servants were ordered to keep all knives away from her, lest she attack someone. Anna began to suffer from hallucinations and violent outbursts. Christina was removed from her care and sent to be raised with her half-siblings. William annulled their marriage, and Anna lived out the rest of her days in Dresden, until her death aged thirty-two in 1577."

Is A Cigar Just A Cigar, Wednesday, Period 3

[steel-not-glass.livejournal.com]

Cinderella had missed last week to take care of some...business...in Prague and then had stayed in the city for awhile to relax. Truth be told, she was starting to miss the excitement of her real job--though Fandom was often plenty exciting on it's own. But, for now, back to her cover as Cindy Perrault, literature professor.

"I hope you're ready to get back to work after two free weeks," she said as her class filed in. "We're moving on to the symbolism of colors today. ( Oooh. The colooooors )

The use of colors as symbols begins at birth, when baby girls are swaddled in pink blankets and baby boys in blue. That's a relatively new meaning, by the way, gaining cache only in the past two hundred years. Before then, pink was considered a manly color, because it was a hue of red, symbolizing passion and violence. What colors mean, which many people think of as innate, are just as fluid and prone to shifting as any other kind of symbol."

Cindy smiled. "Just something for you to think about."

Practical Mythology | Wednesday | March 7 | Period 2

[trickydemigod.livejournal.com]

Hercules wasn't standing at the front of the classroom today, but Luke was. He didn't look at all at ease standing there, but he didn't plan on being up there for long.

"Yeah, okay, Hercules isn't coming in and he left a message asking me to teach something. I really don't want to know how he got my number, but that's another story," Luke started. "Anyway, I didn't really feel like preparing anything because I've been playing video games for like the last twenty-four hours and you'd be surprised at how tired that could make you. So we're having a movie day."

Luke held up his copy of the meta version of Clash of the Titans. The remake, not the old cheesy one. "So we're gonna watch a movie about this guy named Perseus---not the one in the classroom. It's all very dramatic and there's a CGI kraken in it and a hot chick playing Io."

Because that was important.

"Anyway, enjoy."