History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[JohannaK]

They were behind the overthrow in a police action by Spanish forces of Boris I, self-proclaimed King of Andorra in the 1920s.

 

[Dachs]

They were behind the overthrow in a police action by Spanish forces of Boris I, self-proclaimed King of Andorra in the 1920s.

lol, very nice deep cut

fwiw, for non-Catalans: this actually happened and it was GLORIOUS, but it was in the 1930s and the Americans weren't actually involved (certainly not the CIA which didn't exist yet)

 

[JohannaK]

Ah, dangit, didnt quite remember if 20s or 30s.

 

[r16]

oh , how do we know that ? Maybe they captured the Bell of Nazis ?

 

[caketastydelish]

I'm writing a fictional novel that I want to be at least somewhat historically accurate.

I need a female character of the following description:

28 years old, attractive, living in Roman Briton in a villa owned by father, she comes from wealth and there could even be slaves on her father's plantation.

The trick is she isn't married, and I know girls were married at literally half that age at the time. For her not to be married would mean there would have to an exception to the norm. I'm sure there were exceptions at some point like there are for almost everything else. But: what would be a plausible exception?

 

[Cutlass]

Too many of the appropriate men were killed off in a war.

 

[Arakhor]

She could previously have been married and is now living in her late husband's home, looking after his children? If she was in her 30s and in Rome, she'd be a shoe-in for a retired Vestal Virgin.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Christian with a vow of chastity?

Keep in mind, though, that most of these scenarios will severely affect the sorts of stories you will be able to tell.

Just because you might find an excuse to not have your protagonist encumbered by a husband doesn't mean you're now free to have her do whatever you want. The fact that you're looking for a plausible excuse, any excuse, for your protagonist to be unmarried is a bit of a worrying start for the basis of this story.

 

[caketastydelish]

Ok. I can do 'previously married' perhaps. Her ex-husband died or something... and she's looking for a new husband. Is that plausible?

edit: Or I'll just screw what's plausible lol.

thanks everyone

 

[innonimatu]

It should be her family looking for the husband, romans being patriarchal... I guess she'd have to lack male direct relatives (father, uncles, brothers...) to be on her own doing that?

 

[r16]

have her attached to some dictator or whatever . Even if the times were flexible in Rome .

 

[Gori the Grey]

Over on the OT forum, there's a thread on theocracy, in which Owen makes the following observation about Thomas Aquinas:

In Christian academia there were a handful of figures so influential as to be granted a 1-name epitaph. Paul was The Apostle, Averroes was The Commentator, Augustine was The Doctor. Thomas Aquinas is The Theologian.

Coming forward in time from the middle ages, I can think of only Shakespeare (The Bard) as someone who gets one of these The [one noun] epithets (until The Donald). Are there others?

 

[Dachs]

Coming forward in time from the middle ages, I can think of only Shakespeare (The Bard) as someone who gets one of these The [one noun] epithets (until The Donald). Are there others?

There's a couple-three guys from the 1930s and 40s who went by some version of "The Leader".

 

[Gori the Grey]

Hmmmmm. I'm trying to think if that fits.

 

[Traitorfish]

Coming forward in time from the middle ages, I can think of only Shakespeare (The Bard) as someone who gets one of these The [one noun] epithets (until The Donald). Are there others?

"The King" is widely understood as referring to Elvis Presley, although how readily that's understood would probably depend on the rest of the sentence.

I think that Shakespeare has an advantage here because there aren't a lot of context in which there are more than one potential "bard".

edit: Wait, I've just discovered the conversation that this span off from, and Elvis was already addressed. My bad.

 

[W|M]

O Rei (The King) can also refer to Pelé

 

[schlaufuchs]

Reposting from original thread for fun and profit:

Yep, those are good ones. [viz: Elvis Presley as The King and Bruce Springsteen as The Boss]

They aren't really the same thing though. Those are just nicknames. The ones I listed are appellations that are making a statement about their importance within Christian scholasticism.

Augustine is The Doctor because his position as a Church Father (Doctor = "teacher" in Latin) is so pre-eminent that the implicit assumption when talking about a Church Father is that you must surely be talking about Augustine. Likewise for Paul as The Apostle Here is an example of it happening in Peter Abelard:

Cum igitur totus in superbia atque luxuria laborarem, utriusque morbi remedium divina mihi gratia licet nolenti contulit. Ac primo luxurie, deinde superbie; luxurie quidem his me privando quibus hanc exercebam; superbie vero que mihi ex litterarum maxime scientia nascebatur, iuxta illud Apostoli "Scientia inflat", illius libri quo maxime gloriabar combustione me humiliando.

Spoiler :

Thus when I was laboring wholly in arrogance and extravagance, divine grace brought to me, however unwilling, a remedy to both ailments. First for extravagance, then for vanity; [the cure for] extravagance indeed by depriving me of those things by which I used to practice it, in the case of arrogance, however, since it was largely begotten in me from the knowledge of the writings [i.e. theology and philosophical study], as The Apostle says, "Knowledge puffs [one] up," I was therefore cured of the ailment of arrogance by humiliating me by burning that very book of which I was most proud

It's not an honorific, and it's not a nickname. It's simply a statement based on the assumption that no other Apostles matter, if you are talking about an apostle in the context of theological exegesis, you must surely be talking about Paul, and if you weren't talking about Paul, then you would specify who instead you were talking about, as, e.g. in the case of Einhard:

Colebat prae ceteris sacris et venerabilibus locis apud Romam ecclesiam beati Petri apostoli; in cuius donaria magna vis pecuniae tam in auro quam in argento necnon et gemmis ab illo congesta est

Spoiler :

He venerated before all other sacred and worshipful places, the church of St. Peter the Apostle located in Rome. In whose treasure-chamber, a large quantity of riches – as much in gold as in silver, to say nothing of gems, was accumulated by him.

The point is that neither "The Boss" nor "The King" are comparable here. If you are talking about Apostles, then surely you mean Paul; no others matter, and if you weren't talking about Paul then you would have specified. If you were talking about Doctors then you must be talking about Augustine, because no other Doctors matter. You can't analogize this to Springsteen or Elvis. Calling Springsteen The Boss is not making a statement about his preeminence among bosses, and that no other bosses matter, likewise for Elvis and The King. These epithets only make sense in the context of talking about those people. If you, apropos of nothing, were to say "I'm a fan of The King" you would probably get a quizzical look and be asked to specify "which king"?

The Bard is a good example, though, and you can see it making the same essential point when the epithet was first attributed in David Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769:

Be proud of the charms of your County;
Where Nature has lavished her bounty.
Where much she has given, and some to be spared
For the Bard of all bards, was a Warwickshire Bard;
Warwickkshire Bard:
Never paired;
For the Bard of all Bards, was a Warwickshire Bard

He is ascribed the epithet of The Bard because no other bard is implied to matter. If you are talking of Bards, you must surely mean Shakespeare, and if you weren't talking about Shakespeare, you would have specified.

You can see a similar epithet in Samuel Johnson's 1765 Preface to The Plays of W. Shakespeare, in which Shakespeare is called The Poet.

A comparable example in California might be referring to San Francisco as The City, again, carrying the implicit assumption that if you are talking about a city you must surely be talking about SF, as no other cities matter, and if you had meant another city you would have specified as such. But this is an extremely regional thing which exists in the hinterland of basically every major city, and Californians get pretty heavy pushback whenever they talk to non-Californians about The City referring to SF.

pc+1

 

[Olleus]

In that case "Der Fuhrer" certainly works in German. There are lots of leaders, but if you are not specifying which leader you are talking about, then it must be Hitler.

 

[Cutlass]

The Father of his Country?

 

[r16]

that one became the Eternal Chief only when his replacement tried to to follow the standart cult of the leader and became the National Chief, but saw it might not be exactly be profitable even in WW II when there was still a Führer in Germany to keep balances .