#shakespeare.

She had heard him before she had seen him, and wondered little over the true talent of a somewhat lower classed bard — for the gaggle of girls she found herself perched by would not stop singing the praises of the newly supported William Shakespeare; an apparent new favourite of the Princess, a thespian and a certain flavour of the women who were often met with balding, toothless men. Who would have blamed them then once they were met with a handsome young man? Even Héléne, who rarely ever fell folly to the desire of her heat, looked at him with curiosity. Unlike the others perhaps, she approached, breaking the sea of hangers-on who thought to curry favour with a man who may, if he was so lucky, influence the court itself. The French court had always been champions of art and culture, after all, and Héléne had never been the kind of girl to turn her nose up to any loose end.

“They say that England has unearthed a new gem, would you support such rumours?”

the sisters are my faves too! and i do have a fondness for edmund bc “gods stand up for bastards” is one of my favorites. we performed parts of the play for a shakespeare festival in high school which is where my attachment started bc it was the first play that i studied extensively. and it paved the way for my own attachments to characters like the house of atreus, the idiots from succession lol, the corleone family and the hargreeves. just the idea of dynastic decay, that the people who brought you into the world are also the ones that are going to take you out of it is so interesting to me

it’s also the dichotomy of personal hubris vs familial love that’s dramatically and theatrically appealing. the simultaneous brittleness and resoluteness of the former going against something that’s supposed to be unconditional and unbreakable, revealing that familial love is coconstitutive to the gravity of tragedy. the fact that cordelia is right there and lear is too lost in his ego to recognize what she meant when she says “nothing” and it’s in this blind(ed) man’s flaw that ultimately brings his madness and destroys his house and legacy.