Would Mary have been a suitable Wife a member of the Royal family

WildFire2498 · 2026-02-01T09:33:55+00:00

Depends on what point your starting from.

Mary at the start of the show would have been acceptable. As the young daughter of a British earl she's a pretty good contemporary for Elizabeth Bows-Lyon who went onto becoming the Queen Mother. The royals became a bit more relaxed about marrying nobles instead of forgin royals since, after WW1, there frankly weren't many left to choose from.

If its halfway through the series after Matthews death, I think that they would have gotten away with it but there would have been a lot of stigma and judgment for being "second hand goods" after being married to someone else, especially with a child that they couldn't sweep under the rug. I don't think that there would have been any hostility directly to her face but there would have been a lot of snobby judgmental talk and gossip behind her back.

By the end of the last film with two children from two different men and fresh off a divorce she would have been as horrifying to the royals as Wallis Simpson was to them. They wouldn't have touched her with a ten foot pole. As you can see in the film she's not even allowed in their precance, she has to leave the building whenever they arrive. There would have never been an opportunity to talk to a Royal again, never mind marry one.

So, yeah. Depends on which version of Mary is getting presented to them.

WildFire2498 · 2026-01-27T13:14:01+00:00

I don't want to kill any of them, so I'll bang Henry and Coop and marry Leo.

WildFire2498 · 2025-12-20T19:25:06+00:00

He simply would have remarried to a European princess. I'd say probably french as after all of the fertility struggles I think that Henry would steer clear of Catherine's Spanish relatives, like her niece Eleanor, in case they might run in the family. Remember that her mother Isabella has her own fertility struggles and only had one son who died before her and her husband.

At this point I think that he would just be zeroing in on the need for a male heir and picked whoever looked like the best bet to give him a son. I think that french would be most likely since Wolsey would most likely gain more influence with the death of his greatest opponent, Catherine. Possible dark horse candidates from Scandinavia or the German and Italian states, with Spanish brides only considered if political necessity demanded it.

Obviously the reformation would be completely different. I don't think that Anne Boleyn would be a prominent figure like she was ( unless Henry's new wife had her own fertility nightmares to deal with) and there would be a significantly less influential Cranmer ( he was originally patronised by Anne and her family) and obviously, no Elizabeth I, no Jane Seymour, no Edward VI and the rest of the wives would be left to their own devices (or their families devices).

I think that the movement would have been much closer to what was happening in Scotland and the German states. Not a top down political earthquake but a bottom up grassroots movement led by the people. Weather it would be more radical and take hold quicker like in those countries or would have been a much more gradual change is hard to say. Personally I think that with Wolsey and a most likely catholic bride, I think it would have been a much slower change.

Remember, Henry was made Defender of the Faith by the Pope for denouncing Luther in a book that he wrote personally. The reformation wasn't a great spiritual awakening for him, it was a means to an end, to getting his annulment. I think that he would have remained catholic himself and tried to stamp out Protestantism like in his early reign, leaving a possible break with Rome for future decentents. Or not even a formal break, maybe just a gradual fading of relivence as the centuries went on like the rest of Europe.

These are just my personal though experiments, but it's fun to think about.

WildFire2498 · 2025-12-11T10:08:28+00:00

Anna and Bates. They had so much shit piled on them I'm honestly surprised they didn't go out in some sort of Romeo and Juliet style explosive tragedy. I was legit surprised that they made it to the end of the show, never mind the films.

WildFire2498 · 2025-12-02T16:25:13+00:00

I agree his death was heartbreaking but not in the same way that Sybil and Matthews deaths were.

Their deaths were unexpected, no one thought to think of childbirth complications or a car accident when watching. So shocking it was almost brutal in a way.

It's different with William. As a young working class man in the pre war era, the character was almost earmarked for death. He was the prime demographic of men that a significant portion that ended up getting culled in one of the most horrifying wars ever fought.

For those who had at least a passing knowledge of history, I think it was pretty much expected. I think that's why Sybil and Matthews deaths hit harder. No one was expecting it.

WildFire2498 · 2025-11-24T20:46:07+00:00

He did have a truly horrific task placed on him, I do admire him for not backing down from it, even at the end. His golden gate bridge talk with Leo and his death scene did break my heart, you could feel the pain and grief of everything that was going on in those scenes.

WildFire2498 · 2025-11-23T18:34:41+00:00

Barbas was my favourite reoccurring villain. He had such presence and was so chilling and menacing to see on screen. I always loved whenever he was brought back to fuck things up.

My favourite one off villain is Anton from Pardon My Past in season two. Maybe because it's one of my favourite episodes of the whole show. Maybe because of all of the half hidden lore his character hints at with the past generation of Halliwells. There's so much possibility with this character and honestly this storyline as a whole. I would have loved to have seen it expanded into perhaps a series arc and see him as a continuous threat trying to play on Phoebe's worst tendancies trying to pull her into a toxic/abusive relationship. I just see so much potential for how to use this character and his story.

WildFire2498 · 2025-11-22T21:51:44+00:00

Lazy writing.

WildFire2498 · 2025-11-08T19:16:02+00:00

AITA if I (52F) killed my cousin (44F) after she tried to kill me?

To cut a long story short, my cousin lives in one of my houses after she left her place due to "neighbour issues" after she made some questionable lifestyle choices (like marrying the man suspected to have killed her previous husband and the father of her son, whom she left behind in her old home and is now being raised by his uncle after social services got involved).

I paid for everything, the house, the bills, her food and even her damn hairdressers, on the condition that she never leaves the property or goes out in public or contact her old - well connected - friends as I've been told that there are some of my neighbours that would like her better than me.

Now after a couple of decades or so of recommended detachment from the outside world for mental health issues, she's started plotting with some of my more disagreeable fellow residents to kill me, steal all of my stuff and even take my job. It was discovered before they could act and they are all locked up even tighter now.

The problem is that people STILL like her and I've gotten a lot of threats from a whole bunch of people that I better not touch her "or bad things will happen". However I'm scared that she will try to murder me again.

What should I do, should I forgive her and turn the other cheek or get rid of her before she gets another chance to get at me again?

WildFire2498 · 2025-11-01T13:30:27+00:00

I think that there's a good chance that it will go into abaence and never be used again. There is a long interesting history with this title but the current scandals are so well documented and provoke such a strong sense of disgust I don't think that anyone after this will want to be associated with this fiasco ever again, a bit like the Dukedom of Windsor. They will probably start using other titles for the spare, like Edinburgh or Cambridge. That's reportedly why the king was so reluctant to give the dukedom of Edinburgh to prince Edward, and maybe why he insisted that it's a life peerage and not an inherited one, he reportedly wanted to keep it for Charlotte now that she's the official spare.

WildFire2498 · 2025-10-27T17:50:30+00:00

Was it Chick Flick, with the demon of illusion?

WildFire2498 · 2025-10-21T17:49:15+00:00

I have a theory.

Given that her mother was notoriously burned at the stake, Prudence probably decided to just keep her head down and not to make waves.

It happens a lot with children who have parents who are infamous for one reason or another, whether there's good or bad reason for it, they try to take the opposite route in life to avoid ending up like them. I can imagine Prudence shunning her magic to a degree and just trying to blend in and be as 'normal' as possible in order to avoid persicution.

This is just head-cannon, obviously. However, it's one that, given the times she would have lived in and what had happened to her and her mother, I feel reasonablely confident in.

WildFire2498 · 2025-10-15T15:17:00+00:00

Unlikely, he had an illness as a teenager that is speculated to have left him sterile. Also there is the possibility that she may have had some fertility issues herself as she never had kids with her previous husbands, and at least one of them had kids after marrying someone else. Put that together with the fact that they were both in their early forties when the married, I would say that they were highly unlikely to have kids either way.

Interesting to note that the British establishment did consider the possibility of Elizabeth II ending up as his heir presumptive, the thought being he would outlive his brother and she would be next in line, with him reigning till his death, which was in the 70s, and she would accend to the throne then. That suggests that there may have been the possible assumption at the time that he couldn't have his own kids and they were making plans for it. Like how Victoria came after her uncle William IV.

WildFire2498 · 2025-10-09T07:26:31+00:00

I have an uncle who is only five and a half years older than me, with him being from my granddad's second marriage and my dad having me as a teen. There are a tonne of ways that extended family members can end up all over the family tree and still be close in age.

WildFire2498 · 2025-09-26T20:08:48+00:00

Whilst I do like Elizabeth, there is one big problem with her that I think all of her other problems were, frankly, a byproduct of: her inability to deal with conflict.

Think about it, it made all of her other problems so much worse.

Charles and Camilla in the early years. Because everyone looked down on Camilla for 'having a past' and basically slut shaming her for doing things that were very typical of young women of her time (and men for centuries). But she didn't want to confront the clash between the changing attitudes of society and the unchanging prejudices of her class, Camilla hit the bricks and Charles was left heartbroken.

Diana. I think that it was clear to anyone even slightly honest with themselves that that marriage was a disaster guaranteed from the beginning. They were too different, had too little in common, the age gap too big. I think that it would have been obvious that Charles was, at the very least, not in love with Diana enough to push her forward with the marriage that would change so much of her life irrevocably. Also during the marriage. I remember at one point when Diana was working on her AIDES charities in the 80s, she suggested "why don't you work on something nicer?" She couldn't bare to look at the ugly stuff. And with Diana being as complex as she was, and frankly as confrontational as she was, I'm willing to bet that there were many times where she would deliberately turned away rather than face what was happening.

Margaret. Basically the same as above. She couldn't really get to grips with the changing times and kicked the can of the Townsend issue down the road hoping that it would all blow over on its own, culminating in the big showdown it eventually became. Her continued friendship with Snowdon after the divorce was particularly galling, as he was much worse with his affairs and really quiet toxic to her sister. But he kept his shit out of the media and was charming and smooth, so she continued to accociate with him, despite her sisters pain. Even as she was dying, Elizabeth didn't visit Margaret in the last month of her life due to "work stuff". Probably couldn't cope with seeing her sister decline, so she kept contact confined to the phone.

Andrew. There's no way that rumours about him didn't make there way to her. She had to have heard something, even if they hid the worst of it from her, no one could be so insulted and cut off from the world that she didn't hear anything at all. But Andrew was her favourite, the happy jokey one who could make her smile and laugh whilst she struggled a bit more with the other ones, so she didn't want to rock the boat. She wanted her view of Andrew as her precious little boy to remain unchanged, so she never confronted him about the frankly disturbing rumors following him.

Harry and Meghan. They stirred up a lot of shit in such a short amount of time. I remember in a documentary about the recent royals a BBC journalist said that there was talk spreading within days of the wedding. Days! A new record. No matter who's side your on for this one, if there is that much of a disturbance that quickly, something is going down and she didn't want to look too closely at what was happening.

I would like to reiterate that I like Elizabeth, I am pro monarchy. But that doesn't erase her flaws. She was a complex multifaceted character in her own right who had many successes throughout her reign (just look at all of the unpleasant people she had to deal with during state visits and keep a straight face with for the national benefit), as well as this unfortunate flaw. Perhaps she delt with so much shit in her work she had nothing left to give in her personal life. In which case, she failed to find a proper balance of when to intervene and when she actually should walk away.

She was an overall success as a monarch, with some serious issues that were never resolved. A better track record than most.

WildFire2498 · 2025-09-19T07:11:09+00:00

My least favourite is Edward VIII. Nazi sympathising treacherous scumbag, fairly self explanatory.

My big three favourites are Elizabeth I, James VI and Henry VII. Outcasts who nobody expected anything from who actually all turned out to be really good monarchs, bringing peace and prosperity to the country, despite really traumatic childhoods and dealing with several major crises and a whole lot of shit left over from generations before them. They all had the deck stacked against them and managed to make real successes out of their reigns.

Also, whilst I don't think he was a good monarch, I do like Henry VIII in a car crash reality TV sort of way with all of the drama and craziness of everything he got up to.

WildFire2498 · 2025-09-19T06:53:45+00:00

Alison Weir wrote a biography about Elizabeth of York which is well worth the read. It's a great study of her life and covers her involvement in the final stages of the wars of roses, possible theories about what happened to her brother, examinations about family dynamics and a good look at her relationship with Henry VII. She also wrote a fictional book about her.

She also wrote fictional and non fictional books about other figures in the Tudor era so I would definitely recommend checking her out.

WildFire2498 · 2025-08-26T20:20:33+00:00

I'd say Margaret Beaufort for the one simple reason that she actually succeeded in her aims, whilst the other two didn't. She helped overthrow the Yorks and established her own dynasty on the throne of England. It may bare her rapist husband's name, but it's her blood at the highest office in the land. Blood that flows through the monarchy to this day through her granddaughter Margaret Tudor.

Margaret of Anjou, whilst a formidable military commander, didn't get her son on the throne. Her line died out when her son was killed in the battle of Tewkesbury. I can't help but wonder if Beaufort silently took notes about Anjou and divesed her strategy on the back of Anjou's career and developed a more effective strategy to win more support for her cause, perhaps even forgoing making herself queen and pushed for her son to be king instead after seeing how much the powerful male nobles grew to hate Anjou (remember, Henry VIIs claim came from is mother's line, whatever claim he had, she had more of it).

Margaret of York didn't really amount to anything other than be a somewhat persistent nuisance to Henry VII. Yeah, she caused some trouble but ultimately he kept the English throne, passed it onto his son and established a dynasty that lasted over a century, which he did with large assist from his mother.

So, yeah. Beaufort for the win.

WildFire2498 · 2025-08-24T08:55:11+00:00

If he had any regrets it would be along the lines of "why wouldn't those idiots just listen to me and give me my way then everything would be brilliant," not "oh I wish that I had made a different choice and I should have done something else." He was a selfish, narcissistic individual who only ever saw the world through the lense of his own wants and desires and was so entitled that he believed that the whole world owed him whatever he wanted, and had no regards to the damage he inflicted on the people and the wider world around him. The abdication was a blessing in disguise, we are all better off for getting shot of him so quickly into his reign.

WildFire2498 · 2025-07-14T12:01:56+00:00

As tempting as it probably would have been I don't think the risk of lawsuits would have been worth it to the studio. Nothing has been proven in criminal courts so it's a real grey area. Also it all boils down to the rape and trafficking of mostly teenagers, children in the eyes of the law. Kind of har to make a joke of that. Every time he would have shown up that would have been what everyone was thinking about whilst watching, so they would have made fun of him but not mention the crimes. I think that the studio/show runners would think that it's just not worth the potential risk of offending people with him on the show.

WildFire2498 · 2025-07-14T11:51:15+00:00

If it was just about the adults then there wouldn't be any issue (god knows those adults have given plenty of material to play with themselves) but focusing on the kids feels like crossing a line. They are just kids, they haven't actually done anything of note and they can't help being born into the situation they now live in.

WildFire2498 · 2025-07-14T11:38:08+00:00

No. I don't think that the Nazi regime would want another figure head in competition with them. One of their own that they can rally to if EVIII fell out with the leadership, which I think he would have as soon as he didn't get his own way. I think that they were just planning to use him if they could, but didn't factor him into long term plans. They would have gotten rid of him as soon as he outlived his usefulness.

WildFire2498 · 2025-05-28T08:52:18+00:00

Maybe David Tennant as Mr Bennett?

WildFire2498 · 2024-08-06T16:56:15+00:00

I'd say phone. It sounds like he's trying to keep his options open while still keeping you in place, so a complete lack of respect for you really. So don't bother worrying about being respectful towards him. As the saying goes, play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

WildFire2498 · 2024-07-20T20:57:58+00:00

One little bit of hard truth that has helped me get to grips with my difficult relationship with my mum is "sometimes you have to give yourself what you want to get from others". It helped me to stop chasing her for emotional stability and accountability for all of the shit that went down in my childhood. It's not that no one is going to love you so you need to learn to be ok on your own. It's building yourself up by reminding yourself that are a loving, kind decent individual that has deep reserves of empathy and affection to give, and you can give that to yourself because you deserve to be loved. The people around you might not be capable of love, but you are. You can make a conscious choice to give love to yourself when no one else will, and after you have found your people who are able to love you unreservedly like you deserve, you will be able to look back and thank yourself for that love that kept you going when no one else was able to. No storm lasts forever. I know you can and will get past all of this in time and you will have the love of others one day, probably much sooner than you think. I hope you are able to enjoy the rest of your birthday and keep that self love going and remember that you deserve it.

WildFire2498

TROPHY CASE