"The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed."

tiny-librarian:

On June 8th, 1795, Louis Charles died of a chronic and longstanding infection in the Temple Prison at the age of just 10 years old. The only surviving son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, he became nominal King of France as Louis XVII when his father was executed.

Six months after his father’s death, he was forcibly taken from the arms of his mother, and given to a “guardian” who was supposed to look after him. The child never saw his mother again, and was coerced into giving vile and disgusting testimony against her during her trial.

There were many people who claimed to be the young King in the years following the revolution, but DNA testing proved that the preserved heart believed to be his did belong to him, and that he had indeed died in prison. The heart was interred in the Basilica of Saint Denis, near the remains of his parents.

penthesileas:

LITERATURE MEME - nine poems: “winter song” by wilfred owen [3/9]

READ IN FULL HERE

 I always felt Will would be a very difficult character to portray on screen, if you didn’t have those sequences and also if you don’t see him at home with his dogs. The two give a full balance of who he is, that he has something he holds very dear to him, which is really quite loveable and heart breaking. Will is so lonely and protects himself with his fishing rods and his dogs and his whiskey and his little house. Then he goes to work and has to deal with these absolutely horrific situations. - Hugh Dancy

What’s your favourite pairing? (+)

s0mmerspr0ssen:

No, it makes me PHYSICALLY ANGRY, because the reboot Star Trek cast is flawless and their talent and chemistry and everything is wasted on bad scripts and sexism and how they are the least forwards science fiction ever. Gene wanted 50% female personnel on Star Trek and was refused and in the 21st fucking century where we could easily have 50%, it’s still so many fucking males. And neither do we get awesome race and gender discourse, not a single moment do we question the gender binary or really, any fucking binary there is, I AM SO MAD, Gene wanted to change the world and JJ has the perfect cast and so much money and he wastes it on lense flairs and Victoria Secret push-ups and casting get-me-all-the-crazy-fangirl-viewers-Cumberbatch for an iconic POC character, and I don’t even usually care that much about things like this, but Star Trek was a vision of the future, a better vision of humankind, and JJ and his shitty scriptwriters fucked it all up.

"If we can’t write diversity into sci-fi, then what’s the point? You don’t create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones."

thesmithian:

…up to 200,000 people angry with high costs and poor public services took to the streets. Protesters in Rio de Janeiro burned cars and looted buildings as police attempted to disperse them with teargas and rubber bullets. Aerial images showed thousands of people attempting to storm the congress building in Brasilia. The rallies…are some of the biggest ever seen in the country…

more.