Bloody Days Mini Event ‘Goddesses at Hampton Court’
𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟓𝟓𝟗: I bid thee a most hearty welcome to attend a spectacle of both grandeur and splendor...
Join King William and his court for our first Bloody Days mini event, Goddesses at Hampton Court, and witness a spectacle of sensualism, majesty, and pageantry as the fair ladies of the palace don their finest robes and laurel wreathes. Invoking the spirits of Athena, Demeter, and Aphrodite, they swish across the stage with light-footed grace, tossing figs and favours into the riotous crowds, drinking from fountains bubbling forth with sweet wine. With magnificent torches in hand and cloth-of-gold canopies swaying above their heads, all those in attendance shall summon the immortal spirits of the Greek pantheon, each styling themselves as a particular figure of mythology as they revel in the half-divine presence of the court’s silk-strewn, flowing goddesses. The Great Hall itself embellished with Greek motifs – the gilded trident, mighty thunderbolts, and bows and arrows crafted from sugar – King William’s palace is a sight to behold, glowing amber as it sprawls along the river’s banks. But keep your eyes peeled, and your sights bright: for rarely, in this court of splendor and treachery, is anything what it appears ...
OOC Details:
Please make sure to assign your muse a particular god or goddess on our Google Doc sheet (linked in the Discord server). As a mini event, there will be no specific start or end date, so write until your hearts content – but beware the machinations of a masochistic admin team... >:O
Event-related challenge:
While not obligatory, we encourage members to post their characters' attire for the evening, as well as any insight into their role in the pageant! As a reminder, this is a ladies-led challenge, with men being the spectators and not the architects behind such splendour.
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according to court records, in the late november of 1559, isobel percy attended the goddess pageant as the infamous helen of troy, the most beautiful woman in the world. her dress had been inspired by once real grecian fashion, consisting of the traditional peplos and cloak made of swan-white silk embellished with golden thread and flower emblems. her most noticeable feature on that evening had, undoubtedly, been her long hair, the cascade of dark curls that had enveloped her like a cloak— a stark contrast to the fair-haired image of helen. during the beginning of the ceremony, isobel wore a translucent veil that had changed in the light, presumably made of dhaka muslin that was still at the time largely unfamiliar to the english court. later historical facts show that isobel had always been a fashion pioneer, introducing new textiles and designs to england. she was also amongst the last women to perform and had sung only one song, offering the attendants her voice instead of a dance. her veil, during the aforementioned performance, was swept aside and replaced by a golden laurel. there was one thing in particular, however, that had captured the attention of the courtiers from certain angles. isobel wore an emerald necklace, grand in size, wrapped just above her right ankle. only the necklace has survived to the present day and most likely later on belonged to her daughter grace. it's currently being kept in the tower of london.
the resemblance between isobel and the mythical helen hid in their perpetually ambiguous personas. the burden of beauty, the struggle to be seen and not only looked at, and the contradictory interpretations of both women, had only enhanced the painful resemblance. still, the myth of both helen and isobel lives on.
‘One such woman who managed to invariably alter the sartorial landscape of court, and therefore its practices of courtly love, was Madeleine de Limeuil, who, then part of Caterina de Medici’s household, represented the goddess ‘Medea’ in the Goddess Pageant of 1559. Her choice in goddess was as explicit as it could be, a woman famed for her rage, jealousy, and desire for revenge, Madeleine set upon the English court with a fury, in the words of her divine persona taking ‘on the armor anger,’ she ‘prepared for destruction, possessed by fury.’ We are told that, on that clandestine night, Madeleine arrived on the right-hand of the Queen, with her long, dark hair pulled into a loose plait and dappled with jewels. The lady’s costume was of particular note, and considered so scandalous to the deeply-pious English that one witness, George de Clere, chronicled Madeleine’s appearance in deep – and mostly disapproving – detail.
She wore a thin white gown of loose muslin, the decolletage being so 'low and tightly bound to her breasts' that throughout the night, Madeleine’s dusk-capped nipples repeatedly escaped, causing the English to blush furiously in her presence. To our modern eyes, Madeleine’s choice in attire was mildly inappropriate – a far cry from the half-dressed celebrities that proudly strut the steps of the Met, she appeared, in any event, a glistening, radiant woman, in white from head to toe, save for the thick gold chain around her waist – recorded by de Clere as ‘no thicker than a greedy gentleman’s wanton handful.’
Tragically, nothing else of Madeleine de Limeuil’s influential yet brief foray into King William’s pious world exists.’
– Xandra Murray, 'Fashion in the Court of King William III.'
𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫, 𝟏𝟓𝟓𝟗: At the tip of everyone’s tongue is the blackened name of the Lady Talbot.
It is early morning. Seditious news travels across the court, wafting with the mists and salt-airs of the Thames, on 9 September 1559 – a day which historian Alison Weir will coin, four hundred years later, as ‘one in which an almost assuredly innocent woman was put in peril of her life.’ As Lady Elizabeth Talbot, sister of the Duke of Norfolk, travels by barge to the Tower of London, a welter of dark, chilling rumors ripple across Hampton Court like the river’s turbulent, white-capped crests. Rumours mount into hearsay; hearsay twists into whispers of heresy and treason. But truth, in this haunted Tudor court, tends to be stranger than fiction…
Received by the ominous traitor gates of the White Tower, Elizabeth’s mood ricochets between anger, despair, hope, and grief – concealed beneath a facade of protested innocence. Lady Talbot had tread a dangerous course by employing her maidservant, Margery Hallows, to dispatch a letter to far flung Catholic relatives in France – her words containing ominous, but largely innocuous, predictions about the King’s life. Intercepted in Calais, Margry and three of her kinsmen – George, Arthur, and Walter Hallows – are hauled back to London, thrown into the Tower’s keep, and sentenced to death. Lady Talbot is tried in a private court before a council composed of the King’s greatest magistrates – including Lord de Vere, Lord Cecil, Sir Walsingham, Lord Wiltshire, Lady Talbot’s brother, and the Duke of Northumberland – and declared guilty. She remains lodged at the Tower, her fate held in the King’s mercurial hands.
But today, on the morning of 13 September, the King and his court will observe three men – George, Arthur, and Walter Hallows – take their final, desolate journey from Tower to the Green and beg for the King’s mercy, their faces bound in white masks. Then, as cannons shot out from the Tower’s keep honour the hour – a knell of death – the traitors will be made to place their head upon the block and die, in the presence of all the court. The ginger-bearded Boleyn King, seated on his throne, watches distractedly: behind him standing a cluster of grave-looking, richly-dressed relatives.
A dark ditty circulates across the crowds:
When the Tower is white, and another place green,
Then shall be beheaded three men before the queen.
But as the September wind rages and howls, the headsman’s ax will tremble over the traitor’s necks. It will take three botched swings of the hatchet to dispatch George’s head from his shoulders; two to deliver Arthur to God’s outstretched hands, and four for Walter, afterwards held up by his long, fair hair before the shell-shocked crowd, his mouth still trembling. Gore soaks the ground; the traitor’s heads dribble onto a bed of straw; the faces of those closest to the scaffold, hungering for a spectacle, are speckled in blood. Minutes later, a hysterical Margery mercifully joins her brothers in death: a single stroke of the sword ending her life.
When all is said and done, the King and his court will migrate to a breakfast banquet held in the Great Hall of Hampton Court, where the Tudors’ mercy will openly mingle with their cruelty. They will feast to justice and triumph with wine, roasted swans dressed in their original feathers, seasonal fruits, delectable confections, and a spread of blood-red pomegranates, musicians still beating at their joyous dirges – as if the entire gruesome morning had been long forgotten.
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𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟓𝟓𝟗: It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old; from angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold.
With the arrival of the celebrated Yuletide, the court of William III travels upriver via royal barge to sit out the hard frost of December in the cheery splendour of Greenwich Palace – escaping the encroaching sickness of the city, and to rehabilitate with fresh, roaming air and ample opportunity to partake in exhilirating hunts. As the varied colours of fresh plants wither with the coming of nippy airs, the servants bring forth the evergreens to celebrate the continuous burst of life — holly, ivy and mistletoe adorn every wall and archway. Dried fruits swimming in bowls of wine are found at every corner; plums are offered to every pacing maiden, in exchange for punchy kisses. Alms are also passed out to the surrounding towns and hamlets to engorge the King's image of majestic generosity, and at every banqueting table magnificent roasts are served alongside endless gifts and trinkets, doled out to His Majesty's favourites. Each evening the feasting table erupts in boisterous cheer, toasts are made with hot ale and cider, pageants are orchestrated and delighted in, and as the clock strikes midnight, a mischievous Lord of Misrule will be chosen by pure happenstance to become the Earl of Ormond – ensuring no shortage of royal entertainment.
Enjoy this God-ordained land where Kings have been born and bred, for surrounded by wintry countryside they are blessed to enjoy the fruits of English wilderness, with bountiful hunts arranged for almost every other day in the name of that merry Yuletide. With each day emerges a new, sparkling competition to take part in – by order of the King, there will be jousts on marvellous horseback with knights of the holy garter fighting for the favour of any particular young maiden, the prize naming one the Champion of Yuletide. Hand-to-hand combat will also take place beneath a canopy of regalia; watch as metal clinks and children laugh and coins specially minted for the occasion are passed between gloved hands. Alongside the brawn of William's court are gentler affairs for the sweetened courtiers to take part in: recitals of poem, caroling and prayer will be followed by gift-giving and dances spun beneath flickering candelight. Each evening will be adorned with wondrous feasts in remembrance of the table set by the late King Henry VIII – yet amidst the joyousness, courtiers will find to moments of quiet contemplation to reflect on the true meaning of the holiday, for at the Tudor court, solemnity and piety lives in perfect harmony with the festive cheer. (As does, we might add, continuous scheming, plotting, and the hatching of nefarious plots...)
OOC DETAILS.
The game moves to Greenwich Palace to celebrate Yuletide and escape sickness running rampant in London. On December 15th (irl date May 26) the court will erupt in celebration with jousting, melee tournaments, merry recitals and humble gift-giving (competition will come down to the roll of a dice, and more details will be available in the discord!)
Handy Christmas Guide:
FOOD:
Leech: a sweet made from milk, sugar and rose-water, which has cut into cubes.
Sugar-plate: made from sugar, egg-white and gelatin, crafted to look like walnuts, eggs and other food like marzipan is today
Gilded-fruit: lemons were gilded and used to decorate the banquet table
The Marchpane: an arrangement made from almond past which was iced or gilded and then decorated with sugar figures and crystallised fruit, was the centrepiece of this court
Christmas Pudding: made from meat, spices and oatmeal and then cooked in the gut of a boar
Gingerbread: made from bread, ginger, spices, sugar and wine into a stiff paste which was then moulded
Mulled wine: wine heated and infused with sugar and spices
Syllabub: a hot milk drink flavoured with rum or wine and spices
Lambswool: a drink made from mixing hot cider, sherry or ale, apples and spices, the mixture was heated until it "exploded" and formed a white "woolly" head
The Christmas "minced pye": contained thirteen ingredients to symbolise Jesus and his apostles. It was a rectangular, or crib shaped, pie as opposed to our present day round ones, and it also contained minced meat rather than just dried fruit and suet, with the mutton symbolising the shepherds to whom the Angel Gabriel appeared
Events:
The Lord of Misrule: a commoner would be chosen as the "Lord of Misrule" and would be in charge of organising the entertainment and revelry for the Twelve Days of Christmas
Mummer's Plays with music and Morris dancing
Christmas Carols: sung around the great halls in the mornings
Wassailing: The enjoying of a communal cup of spiced ale.
𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟓𝟓𝟗: The English court must wage a war for the soul of their nation on two fronts.
The King, Queen Dowager, and Princess Elizabeth have not been seen by their subjects for over a week, driven from the heady epicenter of Hampton Court by highly secreted and contentious negotiations between England and Spain that leave the English court in frightful limbo. As rumours rage across the palace, attempting to rationalize the King’s absence – some suggesting that William and his sister had fallen ill of plague – the King and his council make swift preparations for travel. With only a small delegation of courtiers William and his Lady Mother ride fiercely out to Dover, bound by restraints of privacy and, all the while, facing a tide of betrayal, opposition, and distrust from within and without their inner sanctum …
On the sixth day of the King’s exile, however, the rains that have been driving relentlessly over England come to a sudden halt and, like a bolt from the blue, a merry messenger arrives from Calais. The King, so the courier reports, has received his sister, Queen Mary of Spain, in a great show of pomp, ceremony, and national accord. Mary and her husband, Philip of Spain, have agreed to spend the autumn with the King and his court, ostensibly holding an olive branch out to her half-brother, though tongues wag the Queen has her eyes on much more than merely diffusing tensions – perhaps intending to bestow favour upon England’s Catholic subjects, promoting the case of the Greys, and pressing the suit of her sister-in-law, Joanna of Spain – a task for which she has been intimately primed by the Emperor.
Amid nearly a week of feasting, tourneys, and private political summits held at Dover, the royal family must contend with bitter familial feuds whilst staving off the enmity of Mary’s Spanish retinue, many of which cast overt doubts upon the King’s legitimacy…
Whilst only a small group of courtiers were employed by the Boleyns to travel to Dover, those who remain in London have themselves a game of cat-and-mouse – or, for some, life-and-death – to play. Soon after the merry messenger departs for Calais, another cloudburst arrives at the court’s doorstep, and this time, the news is far from auspicious. The de’ Medici family in Florence announces that a certain Edward Seymour – presumed, for over two decades, dead – has turned up, seeking favour and aid. If England’s troops will not assist in warding off Papal encroachment into Florence, Edward Seymour – the illegitimate son of Henry VIII’s Catholic mistress – will be given the funds and mercenary necessary to muster a coup upon William’s yet fragile kingdom, returning England to the holy Catholic fold.
Immediately dispatched to Florence are James Cecil, Thomas Walsingham, and Julian de Vere to determine incognito if this imposter is truly the ‘lost’ Edward Seymour, or a mere pretender to the throne. At home, however, courtiers must face the mission of a lifetime in snuffing out juicy intel from those who knew the Seymours. And for recusant Catholics in particular, hiding their delight at news that Catholic hope may thrive again in sodden England will be no easy task…
Will the feuds between brothers threaten to cleave England at its core?
NOTE TO MEMBERS: This plot drop will be accompanied by over a dozen unique new Bloody Days muses that will be released in the coming days/hours/weeks/years (we prefer to spring it on you, so beware!). Mary Tudor will also be making an appearance here at Bloody Days, played by our own Bonnie (more details to be announced). Lastly, this event marks the end of the month of September.
OOC Details:
Welcome to our second plot drop / third event! This event will last from Saturday (noon EST) until Sunday the 23rd; however, if you so choose, by Thursday you may begin posting non-event related threads. 'ARWT’ will take place, in character, at two separate locations: Hampton Court and Dover Castle, Kent, the 'Key to England'. Four characters (Walsingham, de Vere, Cecil, and Sibella Percy) will be absent while undertaking espionage in Florence. All characters have been asked to participate – so please be sure to join us! Tag all threads and starters with #bd.event003.
𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫, 𝟏𝟓𝟓𝟗: Join the King and his Family in the Knot Garden for an open-air viewing of 'The Spanish Tragedy' at Hampton Court. Take in the scenic views of the Thames, enjoy a spectacular firework display, and, most importantly, enjoy the show. Feast, drink, and make merry, but try not to get caught in the sudden storm that drenches the Palace.
As another jade-scented evening settles over Hampton Court Palace, the brash sound of hammering and worker's chatter can be heard from the courtyard. Twinkling stars shed a milky glow over a sea of stages and wooden platforms, constructed for this very purpose, awash with glittering London actors flitting to and fro, and an ample spread of imported wines, seasonable fruits, and sugared delicacies for the court to feast upon – and, if necessary, to toss at lackluster performers.
His Majesty the King wishes to invite the entirety of court to join His Grace and the Royal Family in the Hampton Court knot garden for an open-air viewing of budding young bard Thomas Kyd’s ‘The Spanish Tragedy.’ At random, members of the court may be summoned to come up on stage and regale the rest of the court with their singing or dancing abilities – but they, too, will be subjected to the cruel tossing of ripe fruit. The night will be cinched with a grandiose firework display over Hampton Court's magnificent towers and a lavish feast of confections and wine by the river, lit by the glow of torches along the banks and a number of royal barges floating over the dark depths of the Thames.
The weather is balmy, but the air swirls with an impending rain, so dress appropriately – and beware the rumbling of the skies above, and the ever-present grumblings of plots and schemes afoot.
For this special occasion, courtiers have been asked to sport their most glamorous (if not downright ostentatious) garments to impress the foreign guests summoned to join the English court in London. For ease of introduction, each guest present must sport some sort of badge, pendant, or symbol upon their person related to their identity, family, or political sway.
NOTE TO MEMBERS: As the clock strikes midnight (mere minutes after the last blaze of fireworks zing through the smoky sky) a sudden onslaught of rain descends over the court. There is no paucity of places to run to at court, just remember, where – and with whom – you escape to the cloak of safety will be watched by everyone, enemies and allies alike.
OOC Details:
Welcome to our first event, post-revamp! This event will last from Tuesday (noon EST) until Sunday the 5th; however, if you so choose, by Thursday you may begin posting non-event related threads. 'Play in the Park' will take place, in character, at Hampton Court’s Knot Garden. All characters have been asked to participate – so please be sure to join us! Tag all threads and starters with #bd.event002.
