Thoughts

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

In a country where politicians spend billions to make their children study in the best schools abroad, students work day and night to sit an exam that gets cancelled because of the government's incompetency, then the exam is rescheduled only for the results to be wrong.

Exam papers were wrongly printed, answer sheets had no space for certain questions, correct answers were marked as incorrect. All because of the education government's inability to correctly print 22 million sets of paper. Students used to getting an A+ got a D on the NEET because their answers were graded incorrectly.

And this isn't just about NEET. Many other government exams faced similar issues in 2025-2026.

Many students killed themselves due to all of this.

"Oh they could just request a re-check or resit it" -- that costs 100,000+ INR. A lot of students who sit such exams are from middle or lower class families, some even from families under the poverty line. They cannot afford such solutions, and even if they can, it often takes months or years to get a proper solution.

And when we tried to just peacefully protest all of this? The Delhi police spent days beating students from ages 6 to 26 with batons, sticks (with nails in them), bats, electric batons, pellet guns, tear gas, and more. Students have been detained, arrested, beaten up till their head is covered with blood. All for standing together peacefully with books in their hands and justice on their tongue. All for hosting a peaceful protest that is one of our constitutional rights.

India has had enough. Gen Z Indians have had enough. We are fighting for our rights not just in Jantar Mantar (Delhi) but almost every other major city in India. Yet the media hides this. Bollywood largely remains silent on this matter as well.

If global stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Aliyah Bhatt and Deepika Padukone even made one instagram post on the matter they could propel this movement to new heights. But they don't care. BJP doesn't care. Our education minister who refuses to resign certainly doesn't care either.

The government calls us anti-national. The police call students terrorists for walking the streets. During such times we need all the support we can get.

Nobility isn't just a vibe. Every title on this list used to mean something specific, land owned, duties owed, and exactly how much power a person had over the people beneath them. Here's the hierarchy, top to bottom, plus the special cases that trip people up.

The Sovereigns

Emperor/Empress — Sits above a king. Rules over multiple kingdoms or territories rather than just one, historically. Think the Holy Roman Emperor, or Queen Victoria's later title of Empress of India.

King/Queen Regnant — The sovereign ruler of a single kingdom in their own right. "Regnant" specifically means she rules, as opposed to a queen who's just married to one.

Tsar/Tsarina — The Russian equivalent, literally derived from "Caesar."

Kaiser — The German equivalent, same Caesar root, different flavor.

Archduke/Archduchess — An Austrian Habsburg-specific title, ranking above a regular duke but below an emperor. Useful if you want a tier between king and duke without inventing one.

Immediate Royal Family

Prince/Princess — A child or close relative of the monarch. In British tradition, it also extends to spouses of princes, which trips up a lot of writers who assume it's blood-only.

Crown Prince/Princess — Specifically the heir apparent, not just any prince.

Grand Duke/Duchess — Used for smaller sovereign states entirely (Luxembourg still has one) or for junior royals in places like Russia. Ranks below a king but above a regular duke.

Prince Consort — The husband of a reigning queen. Prince Albert is the textbook example, married to Victoria but never a king himself.

Queen Consort — The wife of a reigning king. Not a ruler in her own right, just married to one.

Country-Specific Heir Titles

Worth knowing if you want your world to feel less generically medieval-European and more specific:

Dauphin — the French heir apparent

Tsarevich — the Russian heir apparent

Infante/Infanta — Spanish and Portuguese term for a royal child who isn't the heir apparent

Regency & Special Circumstances

This is the section most lists skip, and it's exactly the kind of detail that makes a fictional court feel lived-in.

Regent — Anyone (a person, sometimes a council) who rules temporarily on behalf of a monarch who can't, usually because they're a minor, incapacitated, or absent.

Prince Regent — Specifically a prince acting as regent. The most famous real example is George, who ruled as Prince Regent for years while his father, George III, was unfit to rule, before becoming George IV himself.

Queen Mother — The mother of the current reigning monarch, once she's no longer queen consort or queen regnant herself. It's an honorary title, not a governing one.

Dowager [Title] — Applies to widows generally, not just queens. A Dowager Duchess or Dowager Countess is the widow of the previous title-holder, still using the title while her heir holds the actual position.

Heir Apparent vs. Heir Presumptive — An heir apparent can't be displaced by anyone born later. An heir presumptive can be, if someone with a stronger claim shows up (say, a son born after a daughter was next in line). This distinction alone can drive an entire succession plot.

The Peerage (hereditary, non-royal nobility)

Duke/Duchess — The highest rank below royalty. Historically ruled an actual duchy, meaning real territory and real armies, not just a fancy name.

Marquess/Marchioness — Ruled border territories, the "marches," that needed extra defense. That's genuinely where the name comes from.

Earl — The specifically British term for this tier. Comes from the Old English/Norse "jarl," and it's the oldest of the English titles, older than duke or marquess.

Count/Countess — The Continental European equivalent of an earl. Oddly, there's no male "earless" counterpart term, an earl's wife is still called a countess.

Viscount/Viscountess — Literally "vice-count," acting as a deputy to a count. A step down, still meaningful.

Baron/Baroness — The lowest formal rank of the peerage, but still a direct vassal to the crown rather than to another noble.

Titled but Not Peerage

Baronet — Hereditary, but not technically part of the peerage. A British-specific quirk that trips people up constantly.

Knight/Dame — Granted for life, not inherited. Earned through service rather than blood, which makes it a useful title for a character who rose up rather than was born into power.

Prince-Bishop — A real historical oddity, a bishop who also held temporal, political power over territory, common in the Holy Roman Empire. Genuinely useful if your world blends religious and political authority.

Lord/Lady — A general courtesy title that gets applied loosely across several of the ranks above. Not a rank on its own so much as a way of addressing one.

Untitled but Still Someone

Esquire/Gentry — Landowning, educated, socially significant, but no actual title. Your side character who's clearly well-off but not nobility probably belongs here.

Chatelaine — Not a rank, but a real functional role, the woman (often but not always the lady of the house) who ran an entire castle's household. Worth knowing if you want a character with real day-to-day power that has nothing to do with her title.

Quick note on forms of address, since getting this wrong is its own kind of tell: monarchs are "Your Majesty," dukes and duchesses are "Your Grace," most other peers are "My Lord/My Lady," and knights are addressed by first name with "Sir" or "Dame" in front of it, never the surname alone.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

Like yes!!! Your f/o(s) is/are comically head over heels for you!!! Your f/o(s) yearn all day every day for you and you only!!!

“I had time to run home and pack a bag and get to the beach where the boats were waiting,” said a member of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation (Collins). “We literally had minutes to get on the boats and flee before it took our town. “Once we left my house finally after packing what I could in a pack sack, the fire was right behind our place. We had to run to the beach and once we got there, it was only moments before the fire had jumped over the (train) track and was coming for us.”

it has since been confirmed that namaygoosisagagun first nation has completely burnt to the ground. if you would like to help the community navigate an ongoing crisis, i urge you to donate to the anishinabek nation 7th generation, a registered charity seeking to improve the lives of first nations people. donations are going directly to members of namaygoosisagagun first nation.

Their page on CanadaHelps / CanaDon:

ICE is attacking immigrants for now, but their goal is to subjugate all of us. Fighting for our neighbors today is a way of fighting for ourselves tomorrow.

Map the infrastructure that ICE depends on. Publicize their vulnerabilities. Popularize simple, reproducible ways to impose consequences every time that ICE inflicts harm on a community. Don't just react to their attacks—choose the time and place of confrontations. Take the initiative.

https://crimethinc.com/zines/seven-steps-to-stop-ice

"If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.

"If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night."

Not every fight needs a sword or bow or axe. Sometimes your character just grabs whatever's closest, or you need a more unique weapon for a scene, or you’re just tired of writing ‘they drew their blade’. Here are 15 weapons to use for those moments: 

Modern Weapons

1. Kitchen Knife: Unglamorous and painfully realistic. It's already sitting on the counter. Great for a fight that isn't planned.

2. Baseball Bat: Blunt force, easy to swing, awful to actually get hit with. Works well for a character who isn't trained but is angry enough to land a solid hit.

3. Crowbar: Menacing without being flashy. Good for a break-in gone wrong.

4. Broken Bottle: Messy, improvised, and can be tied into what the character was doing right before this fight.

5. Chain: Heavy, awkward, and genuinely hard to use well, which makes it great for a character who's improvising and losing.

6. Garrote/Wire: Quiet, brutal, but not the best for a spur-of-the-moment fight.

7. Cast Iron Pan I will die on the hill that this one's underused. Rapunzel convinced me pans are the ultimate fighting tool.

8. Nail Gun Modern, industrial, and genuinely terrifying in a construction site or warehouse setting. Rarely used in fiction, which is exactly why it stands out.

9. Belt: Simple, always available, and works both as a weapon and as a way to restrain someone. 

Classic Weapons

10. Letter Opener: Small, sharp, and easy to hide in a sleeve or a desk drawer. Perfect for a quiet, up-close kind of danger.

11. Hunting Knife: Practical and often already on hand for characters who spend time outdoors. Less dramatic than a dagger, more believable.

12. Fire Poker: Sitting right next to the fireplace, which is exactly why it works so well. What's in reach also says something about where they are.

13. Hatchet: Smaller and more manageable than an axe, but still does damage. Good middle ground for a character who needs a real weapon but isn't a trained fighter.

14. Cane/Scepter: Sharp tip, solid shaft, and completely inconspicuous until it isn't.

15. Hot Wax/Candle: A nicely aimed throw can end up blinding, burning, and even permanently scarring an opponent. 

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