this blog is 50% serious interest in history and 50% getting absurdly overexcited over learning about some 300 y/o drama because people have always been ridiculous and that’s wonderful

ltwilliammowett:

Early Royal Navy Uniforms and dress of an Admiral - Vice Admiral - Post Captain - Lieutenant - Midshipman - Sailor, c. 1760, by unknown, c. 1913

fluorescentbrains:

citationless behavior

tricornonthecob:

sometimes I feel bad about having multiple primary skillsets and ping-ponging between them, but then I think about best-selling author, humanist gremlin, and unhinged ginger Thomas Paine.

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emilyofmindelan:

can’t believe historians have the gall to call Emilie du Châtelet “Voltaire’s mistress” when SHE’s the one who housed him at her own estate, she was the one of them that was actually married, AND she was higher class than him. you seriously want to tell me that SHE was the mistress of this relationship? I think the fuck not. 

Unfortunately, there is no male version of the word mistress in English.

In light of this fact, petition to call Voltaire “du Châtelet’s kept man” in all biographies and philosophy textbooks and such from now on. It’s only fair.

motifcollector:

What is it that moves us when we see a man animated by some great passion? Is it his words? Sometimes. But what never fails to stir us is cries, inarticulate words, a broken voice, a group of monosyllables with paused in between, a murmur, impossible to describe, deep in the throat or between the teeth.

Denis Diderot, from “Conversations on The Natural Son” in Selected Writings, excerpted in Theatre/Theory/Theatre, ed. Daniel Gerould

bisexualkingdavid:

victor hugo invented clickbait in 1862 with “wherein will appear the name of enjolras’ mistress”

lethal-liability:

autistic-prince-cinderella-deac:

“The Brothers Grimm were important contributors to popular cultural European literature” and “The Brothers Grimm were violently antisemitic and misogynistic” are two facts that can and should coexist with each other.

werewolfetone:

My knuckle tattoos say ROUS SEAU and they’re always getting me into fights with my neighbour whose knuckle tattoos say VOLT AIRE

chaotic-history:

“the sort of thing ambitious women aiming to become kings’ mistresses used to do” oh my fucking GOD

get his nonexistent ass

your-disobedient-servant:

peglarpapers:

peglarpapers:

i love it when male biographers talk shit on women for rejecting their male biographees bc the misogyny inevitably goes so far it turns into homoeroticism naruto-style

like how dare she reject the proposal of a weird guy who was 20 years older than her and constantly flat broke and always going on extremely life-threatening naval exploratory voyages. what a shallow evil bitch. i wouldn’t have rejected him. he was a good man. he had a soft touch. i wish he’d touch me softly. i wonder if in the dark antarctic night he ever felt his heartbreak so keenly he contemplated the comfort of another man’s arms. i could have been that man. anyway magnetic readings were taken at

AJSDGSHFJSJS

I also present: the introduction to Besterman’s bio of Voltaire. he SLEPT in his blorbo’s BEDROOM…????

next level shit