Downton Abbey Advent Calendar - 31

Door no. 31:
(Had to be done given the name of my blog)

All the best for 2020!

From The Mind of Merc - Sapphire Jubilee

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics and occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking about the sapphire jubilee.

2017 marks the 65^th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and is consequently her Sapphire Jubilee. Yet despite all her previous jubilees there has been no celebration or seemingly even acknowledgement of this fact.

True there has never been another monarch who celebrated their sapphire jubilee – Victoria reached her diamond but fell 1 year and 5 months short of the sapphire and George III missed out on his diamond by 1 year and 9 months. True also that at the start of this year the queen was plagued with ill health so perhaps the more superstitious amongst her entourage may have not wanted to rock the boat. True finally that there are still 2 months left of this year but, as her accession was February and her coronation June and both these months have passed, the lack of any festivity seems strange.

I have watched as each month passed with no celebration, no fete to commemorate this historic event. I think it is incredible for a king or queen to live this long and I am at a loss to understand why it seems to have been overlooked. I can only hope that (unlike her previous jubilees) the plan for some reason is to celebrate it in the 65^th year of her actual coronation (it’s not as if only jubilees for years ending in a 0 are the only ones celebrated – for example, Queen Elizabeth’s 25^th or silver jubilee in 1977)

Yet this seems strange both for the reasons mentioned above and because Victoria’s subjects (or perhaps her ministers) were so eager to celebrate their queen’s longevity that they brought forward the idea of a diamond jubilee (which is technically the 65^th year) to mark Victoria’s 60^th – an action that was mirrored in 2012 for Queen Elizabeth. (Maybe that’s it – this is technically her proper Diamond Jubilee – which has already been celebrated and so hasn’t been marked this year) But why would the Brits want to pass up an excuse for a party?

Even if this milestone was to go unmarked there was also the fact that this year is the 70th or Platinum Wedding Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip but, yet again, this appears to have gone by unremarked and unhailed.

I am not an out-and-out royalist but I still think for a monarch to reign for 65 years should be commemorated somehow.

Anyone else with me?

Victorian Vacancies Part 2 - !!!NEW!!!

Even if you survived childhood, things wouldn't get much better. Finding employment would still be high on your priority list to prevent starvation. But what would available? Another flick through Pauper's Weekly reveals all.

Victorian Vacancies Part 1- !!!NEW!!!

Surviving in Victorian times was tough - especially if you were a child. A lot depended on whether you were able to find employment. But just how would they do that/what kind of jobs were available for Victoria's youngest subjects. Let's have a look at the classified section of Pauper's Weekly to find out.

From The Mind of Merc - Historical Pet Peeves

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics and occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking over the errors that are made in films in the name of dramatic license.

Could I just clarify something? Dramatic license as I understand it means emphasising an emotion or event to make it more dramatic - it does not mean altering history so that it's a better fit with the writer's plot line.

Here are just a few examples of (often repeated) mistakes:

• When an actor with dark or brown hair is cast as Henry VIII. Especially when a redheaded girl is cast as Princess Elizabeth – hint: she didn’t get it from her mother
• When Catherine of Aragon is portrayed as having dark hair - check the portraits, people!
• When someone says Richard III murdered his nephews in the Tower - please give me one good reason why he would.  (And anyone who says they stood in his way please go and look up the Titulus Regius)
• When a precise figure is given for the victims/survivors of Titanic (given the number of stowaways and no-shows it is impossible to create a correct, exact figure)
• When someone says the TV series 'The Tudors' is historically accurate (why this point is wrong would take a whole blog to explain but I will just some it up in one word: Margaret!)
• When someone says Edward VI died aged 16 - he was born in Oct 1537 and died in Jul 1553 - you do the math. Also when they say Edward was a sickly child - he was a perfectly healthy child who contracted Tuberculosis in his teens. (Any ill health as a baby would have been commented on by ambassadors)
• When Mary Queen of Scots is referred to as Bloody Mary (Oh - so that’s not the queen who had almost 300 Protestants burned at the stake) Also when Mary Queen of Scots is portrayed with a Scottish accent - even though she spent the first 18 years of her life in France
• When 1501 is given as Anne Boleyn's birth year (this is a relatively new one but important - for further details see below *)
• When Anne Boleyn is claimed to be the older sister (ok - so this can't be proved but there are several pointers which suggest Mary was older - the most striking being that she was married off first)
• When it is suggested that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays (even though all his contemporaries said he did). Also when it is suggested that Shakespeare was an unparalleled genius (as in BBC's Dr Who) – he wrote a lot more plays than his rivals – this doesn’t make him a genius, it just makes him prolific
• When Jack the Ripper is blamed for the death of Martha Tabram – different MO, guys
• When Marie Antoinette is credited with saying ‘Let them eat cake’ (when actually it was her mother Marie Therese)
• When people think the film 'Braveheart' is historically accurate - sure – had an affair with a 5-year-old, did he?
• When Thomas Becket is referred to as Thomas á Becket (guess again)
• When Queen Victoria is credited as having said ‘We are not amused’ (no record of her ever doing so) - hence the title of this blog

* Anne Boleyn birth year is mentioned by William Camden as being 1507 (and, before people start suggesting that a 1 was mistaken for a 7, it's written in Roman numerals). Jane Dormer, the Duchess of Feria also remarks in her memoirs that when Anne was executed in 1536 "she was not twenty-nine years of age"

Queen of England - Horrific Histories

This is one of the songs I penned for Horrible Histories that I didn't submit.
It's based on the only child of King George IV and his wife Caroline - Princess Charlotte.

Queen of England not by Jamie O’Neal
Born to be heir
Child of George the Fourth the king
Public thought I was just the thing
To bring change in

Married a prince
And dreamed of starting a family
But when I had my first baby
It finished me

Queen of England
Was gonna be, queen of England but no more
Queen of England
Won’t get to be, Queen of England anymore

After I died
My uncles hurried to get wed
And with George and William dead
Victoria led                                                               

Alternative last verse:
When my father died 
His brother then niece took over 
My husband Leo showed to her 
Her true suitor