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Canemacar posted:I remember someone in the Ancient History thread said something like Pharaohs would marry their sister, yeah, but that doesn't mean they'd actually be banging. It was more of a ceremonial marriage than an actual one, with pharaohs knocking up a concubine to get a kid. True for some periods, but you're talking about a lot of history. There are other periods where Pharoahs are very likely marrying their own daughters and fathering kids with them
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Mar 21, 2016 15:27
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Canemacar posted:I remember someone in the Ancient History thread said something like Pharaohs would marry their sister, yeah, but that doesn't mean they'd actually be banging. It was more of a ceremonial marriage than an actual one, with pharaohs knocking up a concubine to get a kid. Tutankhamun was pretty loving inbred. Tutankhamun also impregnated his half sister Ankhesenamun (both kids were still born), Ankhesenamun had previously been married to her father who possibly impregnated her.
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Mar 21, 2016 15:29
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For gently caress's sake, royals. Could you stop screwing your close relatives for five minutes?
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Mar 21, 2016 15:53
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:For gently caress's sake, royals. Could you stop screwing your close relatives for five minutes? Kind of a problem when your rulership is based on family relation. You want to keep the family small, otherwise you have to share the power with too many people. And of course, the other families also don't look kindly on your family spreading too wide. Just look at the clusterfuck that was the Habsburg-France rivalry. And a need historic fact, this wasn't just something that happened in ancient and medieval times, royal intermariages managed to give a large chunk of European royalty hemophilia as late as the 19th and 20th century.
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Mar 21, 2016 16:10
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e X posted:Kind of a problem when your rulership is based on family relation. You want to keep the family small, otherwise you have to share the power with too many people. And of course, the other families also don't look kindly on your family spreading too wide. Just look at the clusterfuck that was the Habsburg-France rivalry. It was also common in the Inca kingdom.
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Mar 21, 2016 16:39
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e X posted:Kind of a problem when your rulership is based on family relation. You want to keep the family small, otherwise you have to share the power with too many people. And of course, the other families also don't look kindly on your family spreading too wide. Just look at the clusterfuck that was the Habsburg-France rivalry. I think this was, at least in part, so that the European powers would be less likely to go to war if they knew that they were going to be fighting their family members and having to awkwardly explain themselves to grandma Victoria at the royal family reunion. It was such a great plan that WWI happened. That's what happens when you leave international policy to the Habsburg Hillbillies, I guess.
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Mar 21, 2016 17:32
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Geniasis posted:I think this was, at least in part, so that the European powers would be less likely to go to war if they knew that they were going to be fighting their family members and having to awkwardly explain themselves to grandma Victoria at the royal family reunion. Well, that's a bit too easy. One of the major players of the start of the war (France) was a republic, and they certainly didn't have to be dragged into the war kicking and screaming. Austria's Kaiser had no relations to the rest of the extended Victoria family. Every single monarch had a government who advised him, and most of them counseled war. The royals of the day certainly aren't blameless (Wilhelm II most of all), but they are by no means solely or even mostly responsible for the war breaking out. ArchangeI has a new favorite as of 20:26 on Mar 21, 2016 |
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Mar 21, 2016 17:54
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ArchangeI posted:Well, that's a bit too easy. One of the major players of the start of the war (France) was a republic, and they certainly didn't have to be dragged into the war kicking and screaming. Austria's Kaiser had no relations to the rest of the extended Victoria family. Every singe monarch had a government who advised him, and most of them counseled war. The royals of the day certainly aren't blameless (Wilhelm II most of all), but they are by no means solely or even mostly responsible for the war breaking out. Considering that I did zero research of any kind before making my post, I'd say that analysis is more than fair.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:52
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10 Beers posted:I'm only on page 8 of this thread, but I legit want a picture of this hanging on my wall. Any clue what it's called? Ilya Repin might be one of my favourite painters, especially since he did a number of paintings of historical moments, including my personal favourite of Ivan the Terrible having killed his son.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:58
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Canemacar posted:I remember someone in the Ancient History thread said something like Pharaohs would marry their sister, yeah, but that doesn't mean they'd actually be banging. It was more of a ceremonial marriage than an actual one, with pharaohs knocking up a concubine to get a kid. Egypt was a matrilineal patriarchy (in fact, pretty much all monarchies are), which means it's not actually the son of the king that becomes ruler, it's the son of the queen. This is because you couldn't prove paternity, but you could prove maternity. The exception to this is adoption which generally wasn't common. It's also why eldest bastards don't inherit (although having the heir inherit the queens family money - if she had any - is a huge factor) So it was generally in the kings interest to make sure that the queen doesn't get around. In Egypt this was taken to the extreme, as since you could only prove royalty through being the child of a queen, you get lots of cases of brothers marrying sisters to prove the child was royal on both sides and recombined the blood line. This has a bonus effect of not splitting estates like the Franks did after Charlemagne died, which could have led to more civil wars Captain Postal has a new favorite as of 20:14 on Mar 21, 2016 |
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Mar 21, 2016 20:12
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Samovar posted:Ilya Repin might be one of my favourite painters, especially since he did a number of paintings of historical moments, including my personal favourite of Ivan the Terrible having killed his son. Somehow Ivan the Terrible doesn't strike me as the type of person that would regret killing anyone, let alone his son.
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Mar 21, 2016 20:18
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Alhazred posted:Somehow Ivan the Terrible doesn't strike me as the type of person that would regret killing anyone, let alone his son. He was usually terrible to people he didn't like, not his own kin. Otherwise he'd be known as Ivan The Childless Single Slav Dude. But taking green mercury as medication surely makes fools of us all.
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Mar 21, 2016 20:42
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I dunno, I think Ivan the Son-Stabber could catch on.
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Mar 21, 2016 20:44
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Ineffiable posted:I dunno, I think Ivan the Son-Stabber could catch on. It works both ways!
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Mar 21, 2016 20:44
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Alhazred posted:Somehow Ivan the Terrible doesn't strike me as the type of person that would regret killing anyone, let alone his son. If memory serves part of his reaction wasn't necessarily that he had killed his son but rather that he realized he ultimately destroyed his legacy in the process. Ivan the son was supposed to take the throne on Ivan the Terrible's death; the only other possible heir at the time was who ultimately ended up getting the throne. Feodor I was....let's just say a simple man. He was frail and probably a bit mentally retarded. He died relatively young and childless, which caused some nasty problems. He didn't have much interest in politics either which tends to lead to other ambitious people seeking to take his power for their own. Ivan and Ivan got along pretty well up until around that point. Then Ivan smacked a young lady around for being immodest, Ivan the son didn't like it much, they argued, and Ivan the Terrible bashed him no the head with his metal-studded cane, which gave Ivan the son a horrendous head wound that ultimately killed him slowly. Ivan the Terrible realized that he made a grievous error but couldn't do much to take it back.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:01
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ArchangeI posted:Well, that's a bit too easy. One of the major players of the start of the war (France) was a republic, and they certainly didn't have to be dragged into the war kicking and screaming. Austria's Kaiser had no relations to the rest of the extended Victoria family. Every single monarch had a government who advised him, and most of them counseled war. The royals of the day certainly aren't blameless (Wilhelm II most of all), but they are by no means solely or even mostly responsible for the war breaking out. I heard another factor was that a lot of the political landscape of Europe had been established by Otto Von Bismark, who was pretty much a political wizard. The only problem was that when he retired/died, no one could manage the diplomatic finesse that Europe needed and the whole system began to break down. He was also supposed to have accurately predicted the events that would lead up to WWI a good 20 years before they came to pass.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:15
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Here's a fact: Ivan the Terrible is a mistranslation, a more accurate name would be Ivan the Magnificent or Ivan the Great.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:19
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On the topic of Egypt. The pyramids were not built by slaves, but by local workers. Slaves are expensive, and they're not always suited to hard labor. Don't need to be that strong to hold up a shade while you sit outside. The pyramids were actually built by offering food and drink in exchange for work. Bread and alcohol would be offered to people in exchange for their labor. Get your workforce hooked on the booze and give 'em enough bread to live happily, and they'll build giant structures for you.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:27
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jyrka posted:Here's a fact: Ivan the Terrible is a mistranslation, a more accurate name would be Ivan the Magnificent or Ivan the Great. Yes, Ivan the Terrible has been traditionally well regarded in Russia. So has Stalin, so there's some accounting for a difference in perspectives to be made.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:32
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Arcsquad12 posted:On the topic of Egypt. The pyramids were not built by slaves, but by local workers. Slaves are expensive, and they're not always suited to hard labor. Don't need to be that strong to hold up a shade while you sit outside. The pyramids were actually built by offering food and drink in exchange for work. Bread and alcohol would be offered to people in exchange for their labor. Get your workforce hooked on the booze and give 'em enough bread to live happily, and they'll build giant structures for you. The fact they were professional workers doesn't mean they were treated better than what we would consider to be slaves today. Egyptian expeditions to large quarries from which their got stone for monumental constructions (they were far away from civilization, and only operated by strong kings who could afford sending people to work them) were essentially death marches, and excavations of settlements of the people in charge of maintaining and building the Valley of Kings suggest the builders overwhelmingly suffered from debilitating ailments caused by work related stress, and we know that at points the builders would be brought to the point of starvation when the bureaucracy didn't bother to keep them supplied with basic necessities. Part of the problem was in the fact that the builders were deliberately insulated from the general populace into secretive towns, to protect the secrets of royal tombs, so they were entirely at the mercy of the central supply system, prohibited from arranging deliveries from other communities without royal intermediaries.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:39
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jyrka posted:Here's a fact: Ivan the Terrible is a mistranslation, a more accurate name would be Ivan the Magnificent or Ivan the Great. I've seen Grozny translated as "awe-inspiring" several times. I guess the most accurate translation would be Ivan the Awesome. 
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Mar 21, 2016 21:50
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Comrade Koba posted:I've seen Grozny translated as "awe-inspiring" several times. I guess the most accurate translation would be Ivan the Awesome. Or Ivan the Awful
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Mar 21, 2016 21:53
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Ivan the Sicknasty
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Mar 21, 2016 22:00
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Ivan the Terrific works best in my opinion.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:04
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Canemacar posted:I heard another factor was that a lot of the political landscape of Europe had been established by Otto Von Bismark, who was pretty much a political wizard. The only problem was that when he retired/died, no one could manage the diplomatic finesse that Europe needed and the whole system began to break down. It wasn't that complicated. Bismarck correctly predicted that France would seek revenge for the humiliation of 1871, so his political goal was simply to keep France diplomatically isolated and to always have at least one, better yet two, strong allies to back him up. The concert of Europe was one of five powers (Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary). Having two allies means you are pretty much set. if you only have one, you better work to ensure one of the other three stays out of it (which Britain often did). After he went out of office, the arrangement with Russia lapsed, and the French were able to create an alliance. That need not happen. France was a republic at the time, and Russia had just barely abolished serfdom. To keep that alliance from happening requires only the very smallest of efforts. The prediction about the Balkans isn't that special. It's the equivalent of someone today claiming that things will get ugly in the Middle East.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:07
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Canemacar posted:I heard another factor was that a lot of the political landscape of Europe had been established by Otto Von Bismark, who was pretty much a political wizard. The only problem was that when he retired/died, no one could manage the diplomatic finesse that Europe needed and the whole system began to break down. I'm not sure on the prediction of future events, but yes, he was basically forced into retirement by the Kaiser, whose people promptly spent the next 30-40 years turning a political situation where they were friendly with Russia and Austria and basically neutral with Britain to one where they were close allies with Austria-Hungary and hostile with Britain and Russia (who had previously been involved in the Great Game with each other in Central Asia). Well done, guys!
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Mar 21, 2016 22:10
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Not even that long, Bismarck was sacked in 1890 and poo poo hit the fan 24 years later (though there were a number of diplomatic crises the years before that almost led to an earlier outbreak of the war, the Tangier Crisis of 1905 comes to mind for example)
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Mar 21, 2016 22:22
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steinrokkan posted:we know that at points the builders would be brought to the point of starvation when the bureaucracy didn't bother to keep them supplied with basic necessities. Part of the problem was in the fact that the builders were deliberately insulated from the general populace into secretive towns, to protect the secrets of royal tombs, so they were entirely at the mercy of the central supply system, prohibited from arranging deliveries from other communities without royal intermediaries. But if that happened they could strike and unlike the strikes in the US in 19th century the pharaoh didn't kill them but gave them what they demanded. The laborers also had a pretty generous sick day arrangement, being hung over for example was considered a valid reason to take out a sick day. Fun fact about Egypt and slavery: Being a temple slave was considered such a sweet deal that people would actually pay to become one.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:23
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Alhazred posted:But if that happened they could strike and unlike the strikes in the US in 19th century the pharaoh didn't kill them but gave them what they demanded. The laborers also had a pretty generous sick day arrangement, being hung over for example was considered a valid reason to take out a sick day. It was a decent deal under good pharaohs, an awful one under weak ones.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:26
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Elyv posted:I'm not sure on the prediction of future events, but yes, he was basically forced into retirement by the Kaiser, whose people promptly spent the next 30-40 years turning a political situation where they were friendly with Russia and Austria and basically neutral with Britain to one where they were close allies with Austria-Hungary and hostile with Britain and Russia (who had previously been involved in the Great Game with each other in Central Asia). Well done, guys! Some people just really, really want to pick fights. Which is, incidentally, one of the reasons WW1 happened at all. A looooot of people just wanted an excuse to hammer on their neighbors for a variety of reasons. Some were a history of animosity, others were just "they have land and we want more land let's go crack some heads." Imperialism was still A Thing at that point. This was one of the reasons everything was so diplomatically precarious; everybody in Europe basically knew that a massive poo poo gently caress show of a war could be kicked off by a pin drop nanoseconds after the carefully cultivated network of alliances shifted in anybody's favor. Then it turned out that instead of glorious conquests, expanding empires, and a return to cool and awesome ambitions of the colonial era they got World War I instead. Whoops!
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Mar 21, 2016 22:38
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e X posted:Kind of a problem when your rulership is based on family relation. You want to keep the family small, otherwise you have to share the power with too many people. And of course, the other families also don't look kindly on your family spreading too wide. Just look at the clusterfuck that was the Habsburg-France rivalry. Charles II of Spain was so inbred that I suspect time travel was involved.  
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Mar 22, 2016 03:01
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He's so inbred he probably hosed himself
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Mar 22, 2016 03:04
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The last outbreeding in his family tree was a century before his birth.
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Mar 22, 2016 03:10
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I was always struck that there are no fewer than three different dudes in that tree who were like "yeah it would be politically advantageous to nail my sister's daughter" and European nobility was such that they were apparently right about that
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Mar 22, 2016 05:12
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Alhazred posted:Speaking of gods and rulers. The reason why the pharaohs had fake beard was that Horus had beard and since the pharaoh was the living embodiment of Horus beard was mandatory. Even Hatshepsut who was a woman had to follow this rule. This was also the reason why the royals was okay with incest, after all Horus married his sister and what's good enough for Horus is good enough for the pharaoh. In the ~200 years between Ptolemy and his descendant Cleopatra VII (ie the one you know about) there are about 30 people in the family tree. Not 30 people added to the family tree, not 30 branches of the family tree, not 30 people descended who were alive at the same time as Cleopatra, 30 people total. 
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Mar 22, 2016 10:11
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They didn't have a great imagination when it came to naming their kids either it seems.
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Mar 22, 2016 10:55
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When your genetic diversity is that low everyone kind of ends up looking the same anyway.
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Mar 22, 2016 11:34
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tacodaemon posted:I was always struck that there are no fewer than three different dudes in that tree who were like "yeah it would be politically advantageous to nail my sister's daughter" and European nobility was such that they were apparently right about that When you end up with massive amounts of land and wealth being attached to lineage who you hump matters a great deal. Nobody really knew a ton about genetics at the time so it's reasonable to assume that many people just plain didn't know that inbreeding that badly was a problem. It's also likely that if they did they didn't consider long term problems that would come from it because right now we can keep our massive holdings by not marring out of this particular pool of lineage. There was also pressure to marry as high as you could which ended up with people high up on the nobility chain marrying cousins all the time simply because nobody else was available. Then there were the alliances, etc. The choice was either gently caress your family or be at risk of losing wealth, land, and status.
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Mar 22, 2016 13:47
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Feudalism as an economic system is an ouroboros which fucks itself.
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Mar 22, 2016 15:34
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I always found it was weird that nobility never saw the connection that their family had all these weird problems from inbreeding that the common people didn't have.
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