The Manor

Sometimes art just makes you STOP in your tracks, and this is one of them for me. Female sculptor @brigittelajoinie had created this powerhouse of a metal sculpture: "La Femme qui marche" (2017) - photographed by @zoeforgetphotography

and it’s not because I have the same name as her or anything (even tho it’s definitely a factor - because how cool is that?!? - and I kinda used - and sometimes still use, let’s be real here - that as an excuse to call myself a queen because reASONS and shut up you would do the same)

but because that shit is like the stuff of legends and there is a whole myth surrounding their love story and the supposed place where she was killed - on the king’s orders near a fountain in the farm where she secretly lived with prince Pedro - because there’s a red stain there and it’s said that when she was stabbed she cried for the king’s men to spare her children (if memory serves me right) and her tears landed on the fountain and turned red because she was terribly devastated and in pain thinking only of her children and how she was going to leave them without a mother when in the last moments of her life…

and also, you know that prince? before he did that thing when he exhumed her just to make her ~officially~ his queen - and have everyone who ever opposed to them and their love kiss her clothes to pay her homage and the respect she did not have in life?? like that shit savage bro - he did another thing, even more savage than that

he searched the whole country for the two dudes who stabbed her (there was a third but I think he died or smth), even went to spain because one of them fled the country after the king died, and he fucking RIPPED their hearts out (one from the front and one from the back, because Inês was stabbed from both sides too) and tortured them in public, y'know, as you do

and that, my dear friends, is why the story of Pedro and Inês is considered one of the best love stories on our country (and I would say the world too because that shit better than anything Shakespeare or Nicholas Sparks ever wrote and it was fucking real)

my boy Pedro didn’t fuck around when you fucked with his lady, and you lyin’ if you say you don’t want you a freak like this - this Extra™, this ride or die, this savage - when it comes to love.

listen up, girls and boys, take note: follow their example and get yourselves a freak who would crown you queen after you were killed

Afonso IV was one of the very few, if not the only Portuguese king who had no known children outside the marriage. It is said that he saw how his mother suffered with his father’s multiple affairs and bastard children, as such, he remained faithful to his wife. Which was a big deal for that time. It comes as no surprise that, when his son took a mistress, he did not take it well.

And that’s not all. Said mistress, Inês, had been fostered by, of all people, Afonso Sanches, the half-brother Afonso IV had always hated. One can’t help but think that was a factor in Afonso IV’s hatred for her.

Maggie Cheung wears a different cheongsam dress in each scene. There were 46 dresses in total, though not all made it to the final cut.

In the Mood for Love I 花樣年華 (2000), dir. Wong Kar-wai

Selected Works from Elizaveta Sergeyevna Kruglikova

Elizaveta Sergeyevna Kruglikova was born in the Russian Empire on January 31, 1865. She was a multi-disciplinary artist, forging great talent as a printmaker, painter, etcher, and more. Her life and work quietly challenged the gender and sexual norms of her era. While there is much we do not know about Kruglikova, historians and contemporaries give us an idea about her relationships and place in history. She never married.

Kruglikova was best known for her mastery of monotype — a medium she helped popularize in Russia — as well as her sensitive portraiture and atmospheric printmaking. Trained in Paris and connected to avant-garde artistic circles, she combined Russian influences with French modernist techniques, producing work that was both technically innovative and emotionally rich. Her monotypes, especially, revealed a rare ability to capture fleeting expressions, interiority, and mood with minimal line and dramatic contrasts. A gifted teacher and an important figure in the transmission of European printmaking techniques to Russian students, Kruglikova’s legacy stands not only in her artistic achievements but in her quiet, steadfast commitment to living and creating on her own terms.