𝐂𝐘𝐆𝐍𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐈𝐒.

𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐐𝐔𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐃  :  a  dependent  rp  blog  for  𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐘𝐃𝐀𝐘𝐒𝐇𝐐.  written  by  𝐗𝐀𝐍. (using beta editor)

𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐘 — of northumberland .

sibella could not say for certain whether she'd come for contemplation, distraction, or mere disappearance. between the swell of the newfound feelings she'd discovered in the depths of her ribcage, there was the matter of edmund's wedding to katharine grey, a matter which hung over the entirety of the percy household like the executioner's axe. it truly confounded her; only just did he wax and wane on of duty, of unconditional deference (or at least the pretense of it) to the king. and yet his secret union to the dowager duchess of suffolk — a woman whose very presence, whose very daughters were a sword aimed at the crown — was anything but.

she did not know what to make of it. the redemption of the percy name had been promised over raised cups at private dinners at alnwick, drilled into her heart by her howard mother. the king's affection for isobel was a badly-kept secret; sibella dutifully joined his councilmen to find edward seymour despite her catholic sympathies. edmund, too, had only just been appointed to william's council. instead of now taking his rightful place at the table, he and his bride departed court entirely. the consequences of the union had yet to befall upon the rest of their respective households, and all sibella could do was hold her breath.

and hide, she finally decided. in truth, while she held a book in her arms, she could not concentrate on the words before her. she was filled with relief when someone entered, more so when she realized that it was her newly anointed in-law. "do you, too, seek solace among the pages of a book?" sibella pierces the air with the question, helplessly shutting the book. "i have come to the altar of knowledge only to find that it has forsaken me."

the sumptuous dinner table had been pushed to the edges of the room to make way for impromptu dancing, encouraged by lady hastings, who never refused the opportunity display her wanton talents. before the proceedings of autumn she'd been virtually unknown at court, but a shadow upon the wall known as edmund percy's other sister, another body that filled the halls of king william's court. but upon this private invitation from the hastings, sibella's suspicions were confirmed: her mother's scheming and plotting had indeed succeeded.

though wine flowed freely all throughout the dinner, the byzantine walls of her usual facade would not let. she would not be tempted into impolite conversation, nor would she allow herself to drunkenly expose the contents of her heart to those she did not trust. her resolve would have kept her silent for the entire night had she not spotted a figure in the corner. percy blue skirts swayed across the room to meet him. "master shakespeare," sibella greets, awe in her voice, as if to say, we finally meet. she glanced over her shoulder at the festivities, and turned to him with upturned lips, amused that she would find him on the dark fringes of the room, a mere observer and decidedly not a participant. "i had believed poets to to be in possession of a proclivity for dancing, for is it not a kind of corporeal poetry? there is at least, logic in my feet of lead, for as you know i am a woman of reason, and must be persuaded into a dance. i can find no justification in your stillness."

𝐏𝐀𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐓-𝐃𝐄 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐄. (insp.)

see below for notes and details for third generation. see image descriptions for accessible graphic text and faceclaim information.

julian de vere and mary hatt met in 1548 and after a short courtship, married the same year. mary gave birth to their first child and only son, gideon, in 1551. in 1553, katherine was born. three years later, mary succumbed to an unexplained sickness. shortly before the death of his father in 1557, julian succeeded him as both earl of oxford and lord great chamberlain.

julian met sibella percy, the youngest daughter of privy council member james percy, duke of northumberland, in 1559. shortly after meeting they began a two year-long courtship. while there is evidence of both mutual romantic feelings and a marriage proposal, sibella ultimately married tobias paulet, marquess of winchester in january of 1563. their only child and son, edmund paulet, earl of wiltshire, was born in november of the same year. in june of the following year, tobias died from tuberculosis. his son succeeded him as marquess of winchester, but with no near male relatives, his mother governed the marquessate in his stead until he turned eighteen.

in 1566, shortly after the death of her father in february, sibella and julian rekindled their romance and married. in december, sibella gave birth to twins: emmanuel de vere, lord vere and lady esther vere.

in 1573, gideon de vere married anne gamage. they had three children (in birth order from left to right):

in 1578, katherine de vere married james devereux, earl of essex. they had three children (in birth order from left to right):

additionally, in 1578, sibella's brother, edmund percy, duke of northumberland died. henry percy, his only son with his wife, katherine brandon, succeeded him at the age of 16 and becomes sibella's ward. he died to smallpox two years later. (not pictured, see howard-percy family tree)

in 1587, edmund paulet married georgiana daubeny. they had five children (in birth order from left to right):

emmanuel de vere died unmarried due to sweating sickness in 1612. it is believed that he fathered a number of children with numerous women; the best known is katherine wainwright, likely born between 1605 and 1609. her mother is unknown. after her father's death she became a ward of his twin sister, esther. (see leftmost below).

in 1589, esther de vere married andrew talbot, earl of shrewsbury. they had ten children that survived past infancy, but only two that make it to adulthood (in birth order from second left to right):

master  shakespeare,

i  am  writing  to  you  with  utmost  urgency  as  i  am  in  need  of  advice.  i  apologize  beforehand  for  my  unladylike  familiarity,  as  we  are  not  properly  introduced  though  i  have  been  an  audience  to  your  work  for  as  long  as  i  have  been  at  court.  upon  finishing  your  poem  a  lover's  complaint,  i  have  decided  that  only  you  have  ownership  of  the  wisdom  that  i  seek.  i  hope  that  you  forgive  my  transgressions  and  illuminate  my  young  and  naive  mind.

i  once  believed  that  i  would  never  dally  in  matters  of  the  heart.  my  sister  oft  attributed  it  to  a  myriad  of  things:  my  preference  for  books  over  people  and  our  isolated  upbringing  near  the  english-scottish  border  among  them.  even  when  i  came  of  age  and  made  my  introduction  at  court,  i  half-expected  some  fine  courtier  to  sweep  me  off  of  my  feet,  or  at  least  ask  my  father  for  my  hand.  instead  these  two  years  have  been  filled  with  no  affection  of  the  romantic  sort,  until  now.

our  meeting  was  never  proper  and  it  previously  brought  me  much  grief.  in  fact,  he  came  upon  me  in  a  moment  of  unbearable  grief,  much  like  the  narrator  and  the  young  lady  in  the  poem.  and  yet  i  find  that  he  is  moreso  the  casanova  over  whom  the  woman  grieves  than  the  old  man  to  whom  she  grieves.  i  say  that  more  so  in  the  sense  that  he  is  beloved  by  those  who  know  him,  though  i  have  witnessed  one  too  many  a  volta  that  my  heart  breaks  with  each  step,  only  to  be  mended  if  i  might  take  the  lady's  place.  i  even  listen  intently  now  to  my  father's  eludication  of  council  meetings  to  seek  the  thrill  of  hearing  his  name;  i  peer  through  his  papers  so  i  might  see  his  hand  and  feel  close  to  him.  oh,  master  shakespeare,  i  have  been  consumed!

and  it  is  this,  precisely,  that  i  fear.  i  do  not  wish  to  become  the  pitiful  protagonist,  so  devoured  by  her  love  that  her  honor  be  shattered  irreparably.  i  do  not  believe  that  he  would  lead  me  to  such  a  trap,  for  i  believe  that  he  is  an  honorable  man.  but could  one  love  with  only  the  heart  and  not  the  body?  for  all  of  his  loveliness,  both  inside  and  out,  i  do  not  wish  to  lay  with  him,  but  i  wish  to  spend  my  life  with  him  —  are  those  two  things  not  one  in  the  same?

most  sincerely,

all  of  king  william's  courtiers  gathered  in  the  great  hall  as  soon  as  the  sun  began  to  set,  buzzing  with  the  sensual  exhiliration  of  discarding  their  stuffy  court  fashions  for  those  of  the  ancients.  though  she  had  conspired  soberly  with  her  seamstress  to  create  her  raunchy  ensemble,  it  required  more  than  a  few  glasses  of  wine  to  put  the  thing  on,  and  an  additional  glass  to  leave  her  apartments.  like  night  herself  she  kept  to  the  outskirts  of  the  room,  sneaking  figs  off  of  their  platters  and  placing  them  promptly  in  her  mouth,  the  juices  bursting  into  her  mouth.  sibella  spotted  a  familiar  bundle  of  blonde  curls  accented  with  red  roses.  "mademoiselle  peithos!"  she  exclaims,  making  her  way  over  to  her.

"my,  my,  how  stunning  you  look,"  sibella  mused  giddily.  "you  and  your  seamstress  have  certainly  outdone  yourselves."  as  daughters  of  the  nobility  they  were  acquainted  with  the  other.  though  the  two  ladies  were  more  than  unalike,  bridget  was  her  unlikely  savior  during  her  brief  stay  at  the  french  court.  the  french  courtiers  were  heathens  and  hedonists  and  the  blonde  reveled  in  their  customs  but  her  blood  was  english,  and  that  was  solace  enough.  with  bridget's  guidance  she  navigated  the  french  court  with  less  friction  than  before,  and  were  it  not  for  her  nor  the  splendor,  she  would  have  recalled  her  time  there  even  less  than  fondly.  "now  tell  me,  my  lady  peithos,"  she  grinned,  interlocking  their  arms.  "see  you  any  fledgling  lovers  you'd  tether  together?  or  more  interestingly,  any  you'd  see  flung  apart?"

as  lady  richmond  finished  her  opening  remarks,  sibella  slowly  ascended  the  stage  alone,  the  onyx  silk  of  her  dress  trailing  behind  her.  the  first  slow  strums  of  the  lute  resounded  throughout  the  great  hall  and  she  begins  to  move  her  arms  and  hips  in  accordance,  depicting  the  creation  myth  of  chaos,  of  whom  her  character  was  born.  her  costume  was  wildly  unlike  anything  she  deigned  to  wear  before.  where  she'd  altered  isobel's  dresses  to  conceal  her  décolletage,  the  entirety  of  her  endowment  was  exposed  for  all  of  court  to  see.  it  exhilarated  her,  however,  knowing  that  one  person  might  see  her  in  all  her  glory.  from  the  dais  she  scans  the  room  underneath  the  sheer  of  her  eyelashes,  her  eyes  pausing  a  moment  on  every  costumed  gentleman  before  deciding  that  he  was  not  the  one  she  sought.  with  the  last  notes  of  the  ominous  hymn  she  finished  her  dance  to  roaring  applause,  though  in  her  mind  she  attributed  that  to  freefalling  wine  than  her  performance.

exiting  the  stage  and  immersing  herself  in  the  crowd,  her  feet  carry  her  to  him.  she's  stopped  by  a  vision  of  a  man  in  swaths  of  dark  grey  fabric,  the  hair  on  his  head  so  perfectly  tousseled  that  she  may  have  believed  that  a  deity  was  before  her.  she  instantly  recognized  him  as  her  counterpart  and  delighted  in  the  fact  that  perhaps  there  was  some  unspoken  invisible  tether  between  them,  or  that  maybe  he'd  made  his  decision  based  on  hers.  such  devotion  was  once  unknown  to  her  and  now  she  reveled  in  it.  she  took  a  sip  of  wine  from  the  glass  she  held  and  set  it  down  on  some  table,  praying  that  it  might  embolden  her.  "my  lord  erebus,"  sibella  called  from  behind.  "i  thought  i  might  find  you  in  the  shadows,  or  perhaps  greeting  lost  souls  to  the  underworld."  she  stopped  a  passerby  servant  with  a  plate  full  of  figs  and  took  two.  she  offered  one  to  him,  and  she  took  a  slow  bite  out  of  the  other,  never  once  deterring  her  eyes  from  his.

𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐘 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐎𝐃𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐏𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐓 is  another  record  of  the  youngest  percy's  fashions  albeit  they  are  not  so  thorough  as  other  event  ensembles.  sibella  percy's  writings  are  comparably  scant  from  november  1559,  when  the  goddess  pageant  took  place,  and  january  1561.  it  is  widely  accepted  that  she  destroyed  these  writings,  as  opposed  to  having  not  written  at  all  in  this  two  year  span.

however,  according  to  court  records,  sibella  attended  the  pageant  as  nyx,  the  primordial  goddess  of  night.  temperance  shackleton,  the  tailor  to  whom  the  percys  of  northumberland  frequented,  wrote  sibella's  ensemble  required  a  bolt  of  thin  black  silk.  a  tie  was  made  to  create  a  halter  around  her  neck,  and  the  fabric  was  draped  into  a  floor-sweeping  dress  to  drape  upwards  into  a  head  covering.  temperance  noted  that  it  was  worn  without  any  undergarments  save  for  a  simple  black  cotton  petticoat.  having  her  breasts  exposed  was  a  sharp  divergence  from  her  usual  dressing  tendencies,  as  shackleton's  records  are  full  of  alterations  to  make  secondhand  gowns  more  modest.  the  simple  yet  daring  dress  was  paired  with  a  band  of  diamond  stars,  worn  across  her  forehead.

julian,

i  have  sat  alone  at  my  writing  desk  for  nearly  an  hour  attempting  to  convey  with  exquisite  precision  how  my  heart  moves  for  you.  for  all  my  fine  education  and  erudition,  i  am  sorry  to  say  that  i  have  failed  thus  far.  and  yet  i  would  conjecture  that  such  exact  words  have  yet  to  be  created  or  discovered  by  his  majesty  the  king's  finest  wordsmiths.  but  i  will  muster  on  with  this  letter,  for  as  my  heart  longs  for  you,  it  too  longs  to  make  itself  and  its  feelings  known  to  you.  but  know  that  whatever  i  may  impart  to  you,  i  feel  tenfold.  perhaps  more.

though  our  business  there  was  less  than  pleasant,  when  i  feel  the  now-familiar  tug  at  my  breast  i  return  to  the  dusty  streets  of  florence.  oh,  julian,  god  has  forsaken  you!  for  you  will  never  know  how  divine  you  seemed  underneath  that  continental  sun.  forgive  my  blasphemy,  or  perhaps  it  is  my  bias,  but  you  were  more  seraphim  than  man  beneath  the  chapel’s  candlelight.  i  admit  that,  with  the  exception  of  that  afternoon  i  do  not  recall  the  expedition  fondly,  especially  with  this  damning  knowledge  rattling  in  my  mind.  but  i  am  content  to  suffer  if  it  means  that  those  for  whom  you  care  are  protected  under  this  omission.

it  pains  me  when  we  pass  in  the  halls  under  pretense  of  hatred,  or  worse:  indifference.  with  time  the  lead  in  my  shoes  has  dissolved  and  my desire  to  dance  with  you  is stronger  than  that  to  grieve  the  loss  of  my  dearest  aunt.  though  i  understand  if  you  do  not  wish  to  dance  with  me  in  the  open;  i  will  not  pretend  to  understand  council  politics  with  the  death  of  my  father’s  sister  somewhat  fresh  in  our  memories.  you  did  not  know  her,  and  i  know  you  believe  her  to  be  a  traitor,  but  the one  thing  she  longed  for  above all was  my  happiness.  i know she is  at  peace  knowing  that  i  have  found  the  thing  in  you.  i  would  be happy dance  in  the  gardens,  in  the  dark,  in the stables even, so  long  as  it  meant  that  i  could  dance  with  you.

i  would  write  more  but  i  fear  i  might  write  in  circles.  if  i  felt  less  perhaps  i  might  have  been  able  to  write  more.

most  ardently  yours,