Nerdy Cat Wold

On April 3, although war loomed, Pedro de Velasco, lord of Haro, held a lavish spring tournament in Valladolid. Fernando jousted. From a throne on a raised dais, Isabel presided, elegantly attired and wearing a crown; her fourteen ladies-in-waiting all wore coronets. Isabel had arrived on horseback, the harness of her mount trimmed in silver and adorned with flowers of gold. The nobles attending had spent prodigiously in vying with one another in rich attire and in the size and magnificence of retinues, down to dressing their pages in embroidered cloth of gold trimmed with furs of marten and sable. Beginnings are wonderful and that handsome and vibrant young couple exuded hope and promise commensurate with the season, and not least because Isabel was again pregnant. ‘It seemed,’ an onlooker would recall, ‘that God had come to the world to entertain us lavishly.’

All the caballeros jousted prodigiously, mindful of evoking the knights of the Round Table, responding to the dual imperatives of chivalry and courtly love, and despite being at odds with religious obligations. It was after all Eastertime, but the attitude was plainly ‘where affection, bravery, and gentileza are found, they always are more pleasing to the god of love than to [the God] of heaven.’ No heed was paid to such censure as the poet Iñigo de Mendoza addressed to troubadours for invoking the god of love for the service of the devil. Each contestant so gloried, an anonymous chronicler says, in seeking to serve his lady that, covered in sweat and although receiving great blows, none felt much pain.

Isabel was married to such a knight, whose gallantries survive in his letters to her, their phrases of devotion more usually found in love letters directed to an amiga* than to a wife. Fernando jousted with distinction that day, and throughout April he continued to participate in jousts and tourneys, prodded by companions who, deriding the Portuguese, assured him that Afonso would never dare to enter Castile.

Fernando’s chivalric device at Valladolid was an anvil, un yunque, its first letter the Y of Ysabel. It also stood for his current motto: ‘Like an anvil I keep silent and endure, because of the times.’ It signified physical strength and fortitude, and could be taken as combining comment on impending civil war, his lingering unhappiness with the extent of his authority in Castile, and even a current inability to counter Louis XI in Aragón. Silence and endurance were also aspects of his father’s favorite virtue, the most royal one, prudence. The anvil called to mind as well the blacksmith who forged and shaped strong weapons of war. Yet its message was scarcely inspiring, and he would soon exchange that device for another also beginning with Y, a yugo, or oxen yoke, a double yoke most patently emblematic of their joint power through working in harness; moreover, a yoke of oxen was known to signify the worldly riches of love.

Isabel’s own device remained a bundle of arrows, flechas, which returned the compliment in beginning with an F. Arrows were prime missiles of war and the execution of justice: in Castile common criminals were traditionally dispatched with bow and arrow. Her arrows, gathered together and bound, resembled as well Ceres’ bundle of wheat, and so fertility. That neat bundle conveyed too Isabel’s love of imposed order, and her readiness for war as well. Isabel and Fernando would throughout their lives continue to employ the celebratory and ceremonial appeal of those and other chivalric usages and to advertise their particular fusion of love and war; and war there would be.

„Isabel the Queen: Life and Times”, Peggy K. Liss

Robe à la française, 1770′s

… a lady was sitting, holding out a paper as though to look at it at arms length. I supposed her to be sketching, and to have brought her own camp-stool. It seemed as though she must be making a study of trees, for they grew close in front of her, and there seemed to be nothing else to sketch. She saw us, and when we passed close by on her left hand, she turned and looked full at us.

It was not a young face, and (though rather pretty) it did not attract me. She had on a shady white hat perched on a good deal of fair hair that fluffed round her forehead. Her light summer dress was arranged on her shoulders in handkerchief fashion … Her dress was long-waisted, with a good deal of fullness in the skirt, which seemed to be short. I thought she was a tourist, but that her dress was old-fashioned and rather unusual (though people were wearing fichu bodices that summer). I looked straight at her; but some indescribable feeling made me turn away annoyed at her being there.

The last letter of Marie Antoinette.

16th October, 4.30 A.M.

It is to you, my sister, that I write for the last time. I have just been condemned, not to a shameful death, for such is only for criminals, but to go and rejoin your brother. Innocent like him, I hope to show the same firmness in my last moments. I am calm, as one is when one’s conscience reproaches one with nothing. I feel profound sorrow in leaving my poor children: you know that I only lived for them and for you, my good and tender sister. You who out of love have sacrificed everything to be with us, in what a position do I leave you! I have learned from the proceedings at my trial that my daughter was separated from you. Alas! poor child; I do not venture to write to her; she would not receive my letter. I do not even know whether this will reach you. Do you receive my blessing for both of them. I hope that one day when they are older they may be able to rejoin you, and to enjoy to the full your tender care.

Let them both think of the lesson which I have never ceased to impress upon them, that the principles and the exact performance of their duties are the chief foundation of life; and then mutual affection and confidence in one another will constitute its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her age she ought always to aid her brother by the advice which her greater experience and her affection may inspire her to give him. And let my son in his turn render to his sister all the care and all the services which affection can inspire.

Let them, in short, both feel that, in whatever positions they may be placed, they will never be truly happy but through their union. Let them follow our example. In our own misfortunes how much comfort has our affection for one another afforded us! And, in times of happiness, we have enjoyed that doubly from being able to share it with a friend; and where can one find friends more tender and more united than in one’s own family? Let my son never forget the last words of his father, which I repeat emphatically; let him never seek to avenge our deaths.

I have to speak to you of one thing which is very painful to my heart, I know how much pain the child must have caused you. Forgive him, my dear sister; think of his age, and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not understand it. It will come to pass one day, I hope, that he will better feel the value of your kindness and of your tender affection for both of them. It remains to confide to you my last thoughts. I should have wished to write them at the beginning of my trial; but, besides that they did not leave me any means of writing, events have passed so rapidly that I really have not had time.

I die in the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion, that of my fathers, that in which I was brought up, and which I have always professed. Having no spiritual consolation to look for, not even knowing whether there are still in this place any priests of that religion (and indeed the place where I am would expose them to too much danger if they were to enter it but once), I sincerely implore pardon of God for all the faults which I may have committed during my life. I trust that, in His goodness, He will mercifully accept my last prayers, as well as those which I have for a long time addressed to Him, to receive my soul into His mercy. I beg pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evils that they have done me. I bid farewell to my aunts and to all my brothers and sisters. I had friends. The idea of being forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to my latest moment I thought of them.

Farewell, my good and tender sister. May this letter reach you. Think always of me; I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor dear children. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell! farewell! I must now occupy myself with my spiritual duties, as I am not free in my actions. Perhaps they will bring me a priest; but I here protest that I will not say a word to him, but that I will treat him as a total stranger.

I’m sick of Theron and Lana. I have a dozen of companions in the alliance and it’s always Theron and Lana.