fandomhigh | Mad Kings & Queens, Week XII [Monday, Period 4]

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Mad Kings & Queens, Week XII [Monday, Period 4]

"I'm deviating from the syllabus again," Ghanima announced from her perch on her desk, legs kicking against its front lightly as the students filed in. "Mostly because I am quite bored with it right now."

"So instead of Anna I of Russia, we're going to skip to a different Anna; Anna of Saxony, a woman that was not very good at dealing with limits."

"Anna of Saxony 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 postpartum 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 modesty and motherhood, 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. She wasn't just indiscreet with her lovers - she often conducted her affairs in public, without a care for who saw her," Ghanima said. "It's quite possible that Anna inspired some of the first public indecency laws. 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."

[~~Wait for the~~ OCD up!]

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She was right, and Reno knew it. He hated it. But he knew it.

"Maybe we should just leave the way they treat the peons offa the list entirely," he decided, and then he stuck the end of his pencil into his mouth and bit at the eraser. Which was intended to be slightly less annoying than the tapping he had been doing with it against the desk. "And move on to somethin' else. Mood swings? Not just fits, like tantrums or whatever, but real big differences between angry an' happy an' sad, for no apparent reason? That kinda seems like it might fit."

"'Less it's a super scary case of PMS, or pregnancy hormones," she said, making a face at that, and double-checking her list. "But then, if the leader goes batshit once a month you can make a pretty guess as to why."

"But if it's impossible to, like, time or anything, or predict then that's probably a pretty good indication." A beat. "Sometimes. Sometimes leader's do that crap 'cause it's good for making the minions underestimate them--I mean, I'd fear a leader who was insane, but it's not the same sort of fear that you'd have against someone who was coolly calculating everything, you know? So maybe that...?"

"On purpose or not, if it's somethin' that leads to dangerous shit goin' down, unpredictable actions like that mean it's probably a good idea to get 'em out before they do some kinda real lastin' damage, yo." He paused to think on that a moment more. "Within reason, I guess. There's a difference between suddenly demanding that your lackeys go out right now to get you a bathtub full of fish, and makin' them do it or else you'll hack off their head or somethin', yo."

"On the other hand," she said, grinning a bit at that, "them asking for a bathtub of fish ain't much of a threat to anyone 'less you're allergic to fish. So while that might get some seriously dubious glances, most of us would be all 'yes sir, right away sir' and go out and get the fish. It's nothing that would hurt anyone, 'cept the fish."

She was getting side-tracked by the fish, and twirled her pen around for a moment to try to get her focus back. "It depends on the unpredictability, maybe? If it's dangerous unpredictable shit, then they probably aren't going to stay in power for long, but if it's, like, a hankering for a guy wearing nightgowns with ruffles and lace, or bathtubs full of fish, it's not a big deal? As long as the orders for what's important are still on-kilter, then that doesn't sound too bad."

Reno nodded his agreement.

"Right. The boss before the last boss liked to coop up in an amusement park hotel and roleplay with his mistresses, yo. Was weirder'n shit, but it didn't never hurt nobody, yo."

Well. Until illegitimate offspring got cranky and decided to exact their revenge, but that wasn't really the assignment.

That was totally a different thing altogether.

"So, what," she said, frowning at her list, "we've got 'tough as hell (cockroaches), charismatic, and killing for the sake of killing'."

Ino looked a bit sheepish. "I don't think I can come up with another answer, and we need two more. I can rationalize most the rest of it and it depends a lot more on circumstances."

Edited 2009-03-30 16:48 (UTC)

Reno nodded stuck out his tongue at the list. That'd sure show it.

"Maybe we just come up with two things that show they're really just brats instead, like bein' whiny all the time or blowin' crazy amounts of money on stuff like shoes, and we can call that our five?"

She laughed. "Good, because I mean, even rereading the list I'm going 'but good leaders can be tough as hell and charismatic too' and then that leaves us with only one point."

Ino made a face at the list. "I think I'm kinda bad at this assignment." No kidding. "Should we put dangerous unpredictability/unreliability down?"

"I think we're both kinda bad at this assignment. Might as well jot that one down, yo. And then we can try not to think about that other stuff too hard, or else we'll be startin' from scratch."

Reno didn't care what anyone said, he still kind of figured that the crazy laugh thing belonged on the list.

She jotted that one down before either of them could rationalize it away.

"That's the bad thing 'bout this kinda assignment," she said, studying their list, "it all depends on what kinda world you've got going and what kinda job you've got in it. Um. So, bratty. Throwing temper tantrums in public? That'd erode the public opinion of you really quick 'less your publicists are pure masterminded geniuses."

"Tantrums is a good one. So's tryin' to overthrow your old man, who is old and gonna bump off soon anyhow, just because you want all the power to yourself right nooooooow," Reno added, making sure that his voice was extra whiny for that last bit.

She stifled her need to laugh at that one. "Experience talkin'?" she asked, trying to figure out how to write that one down without giving into the urge to rationalize it. "Power-hungry? But... no, I don't think that'd work, um... impatience doesn't either... or 'persistent child-ish behaviour'... um... can we just stick with unwise public tantrums?"

That was the hardest one to think away.

"Experience talkin'," Reno agreed, smirking faintly. "Okay, we can lump it all together. What else can we throw in there? Havin' constant real weird but harmless demands? Kinda like the flipside of the irrational, dangerous ones, yo."

"That one works," she said, putting it down as tantrums, constant harmless but odd demands, "it's definitely bratty."

She studied the list, then shoved it over to him. It read, in the middle of a page fairly well doodled with intricate flowers:

1. tough as hell (cockroaches)
2. charismatic
3. killing for the sake of killing
4. dangerous unpredictability/unreliability
5. tantrums, constant mostly harmless but odd demands (fish, bathtubs of)

"I think we're done? I mean, 'less you desperately want us to come up with ones we can't talk our way around, 'cause the crazy is not so high on some of these."

"Oh, I can come up with crazy," Reno mused, "but it's always real specific stuff. How's 'destroying all life on a planet includin' yourself because you take tree-huggin' a little too seriously,' or the ever popular, 'drop a giant space-rock on a planet so that you and your disembodied alien head mom can use it as a space-ship to fly through the galaxy so you can drop other big space rocks on other planets,' sound?"

Reno was inclined to think that you couldn't really rationalize those ones away.

She made a face.

"I think that's too specific," she said, knowing he was being serious about that, "definitely crazy, but not a good indicator for general crazy. But, admittedly, half this list isn't that."

"I think general crazy is real hard to figure out until you see it at work in a specific kinda way," Reno concluded, frowning. "That second one, that was the hero of the whole damn world. Wasn't a person on the planet didn't look up to that guy. And then somethin' in his head just snapped one day. He burned down a town an' killed damn near everyone in it. Everyone thought he was dead. Surprise, he wasn't."

Reno rolled his eyes. "Cockroach, charisma, and pointless destruction, all wrapped up in a pretty package with long silver hair, yoto."

Edited 2009-03-30 17:44 (UTC)

She tugged at her hair.

"I don't think you can really make a guideline for crazy," she informed him. "'Cause there's always the situation to consider, and that makes a big difference."

"And, yeah, the packaging is important too. Did you, like, work with that bit of crazy there?"

"Yeah, the Turks did a little bit a work alongside the guy, here and there. I spent more time tryin' to clean up after him than I ever did runnin' missions with him, though. One-man-army, kinda deal." Reno shrugged. "Looks like we got a list, then. Maybe we write down that it's all real case-specific sorta stuff, and that there really isn't a clear sign of crazy to draw from unless someone is already good and far over the line, and then we call it good?"

"And maybe a comment 'bout how this is so very relative to, too the world you're on? Unless you think that's covered under the rest? I mean," she said, jerking her head over to where Liir and Eve were talking. Ino was shameless sometimes. "Listen to that. Not listening to caution apparently is a sign of madness too, and sometimes you've just gotta screw caution anyway."

"Caution is a pain in the ass anyhow," Reno agreed, raising an eyebrow. "There's a time and place. Sometimes, you don't got time for caution. Sometimes, the one bein' all careful is wrong to begin with. So, yeah. I think we can add that it really is relative to the situation an' we can settle for that, yoto."

"And sometimes everyone is wrong and there just ain't no right answer," she said, and that's just how it works out."

She set about scribbling out their final answer, tugging out a non-doodled on bit of paper to write it down.

1. tough as hell (cockroaches)
2. charismatic
3. killing for the sake of killing
4. dangerous unpredictability/unreliability
5. tantrums, constant mostly harmless but odd demands (fish, bathtubs of)

Ghanima-sensei, this is our answer, but Reno and I would also like to note that we're of the opinion that all of this is severely relative and what's insane in one situation may not be in another and so we can't definitively give an answer that would cover most situation. (Except, possibly, point three. But even that... well, mitigating factors and all.) -- Ino, and Reno

"How's that?" she asked impishly, when she was done. "Signed your name for you, and everything."

Reno looked over the list. A bare glance, really, as he already figured he knew what was on there. And then he nodded.

"Lookin' good to me, yo. I guess we're done."

It was a good thing Ino was the one writing it out, he decided. He didn't even know what the word 'mitigating' meant.

"Done the work," she said, with a grin, then flicked a bit of paper at him.

Got a mission this week, but if I recall right, there's still a living pink rhino kicking around somewhere that we could possibly look into making it less living.

Surely it was long enough that whoever had gotten her phone call that weekend would've forgotten, right?

Reno raised an eyebrow, reading over the note, and then grinning.

Really, he didn't need to be asked twice.

"Pick a day, and I'm all yours."

Re: Activity: Spoiled or Suffering?

intraspective - 2009-03-30 19:34 (UTC) - Expand

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