#david edwards

I'm headcanoning that Angela had twin girls (we gotta balance out Davy, Jai and the new baby).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as the deliberate extermination of a nation, race or ethnic group. The crown forces in Ireland killed a multitude but they did not do that; indeed, they were not constituted to do so. Genocide presupposes one nation or race setting about the annihilation of another, but in sixteenth-century Ireland none of the campaigns waged by the crown were simple English versus Irish affairs.(..) Genocide also presupposes a deliberate element, a plan. Tudor plans for Ireland and its better government have attracted an extensive historiography. This, tellingly, has often focused on political and administrative matters, from the formulation of crown policy to the relative importance of the viceroys, the Irish Council, and individual advisers and writers in its conception and implementation. In terms of all the fighting and campaigning, a lively debate has been conducted over the extent to which the monarchy intended to assert greater control over Ireland and its affairs by military or political means. While most scholars accept that, ultimately, the advocates of a military solution secured a strong and abiding influence, and that as a result the island was conquered piecemeal, it is nevertheless widely recognised that the Tudor monarchs usually preferred to avoid military-centred programmes of expansion, if only to escape the ensuing expense. In fact, it has been shown that non-military initiatives were often enthusiastically embraced at Whitehall. On various occasions the Tudors’ advisers contended that Ireland might be brought under tighter royal control by being made a sister kingdom of England; by the development of stronger crown institutions and the extension of English common law; by the erection of provincial councils and presidencies; by greater use of the Dublin parliament. Successive generations of Tudor officials were convinced that Ireland could be reformed by these means, thus greatly reducing the need for force. Far, then, from presenting a genocidal attitude towards Ireland and the Irish, it seems that the royal government looked to incorporate the island and its inhabitants into the Tudor state. And if cultural as much as physical extermination is vital to genocide as it is usually defined and understood, records of the Tudor court at Whitehall indicate that the monarchs themselves were eager to project the message that Ireland was an important part of the crown’s dominions and that the Irish were full subjects of the Tudor state. From 1541, medals and insignia struck for Henry VIII celebrated the creation of the kingdom of Ireland; later, the second great seal of Elizabeth I had the Irish harp prominently displayed on the reverse. Mary I had a Gaelic Irishman, Conor MacDermott, as one of her personal attendants and a Gaelic harper from Kildare, ‘Melanfyn Ourewerk’ (O’Rourke), may have played music at her court. Elizabeth was probably the most mindful of Ireland. Early in her reign she decided that the Bible should be translated into Gaelic, the better to spread Protestantism. She even expressed a desire to learn the rudiments of the Irish language: a special Gaelic primer was prepared for her use by a Hiberno-English nobleman from Co. Westmeath. Nor did she neglect Irish music. Through Elizabeth’s direct patronage Irish tunes became popular at her court, so that for a number of years ‘Blind Cruise’, a musician from north Co. Dublin, was in great demand in London and its vicinity. The genocide of a people and culture is not usually accompanied by promotion of their music.