Hand in Violent Hand

General Historical Notes

This is all general for all of the Violent Delight's series. Stuff we reference throughout, but I'm making clearer here since I hate it when we pause a narrative for two paragraphs to describe fashions.

Overall I tried to keep most terms correct unless it took out of the narrative to backdate the language. We're not speaking in Old English, so they are going to swear using modern words, instead of 'zounds' or 'forsooth' or something that to the modern reader would sound silly. Similarly, in all technicality, Jasper and Edmund Tudor were declared H6's 'uterine' siblings, instead of his 'maternal' siblings. Uterine is an odd word to us, we say maternal, so I just said maternal for clarity and ease of reading. John Green, Henry's manservant basically, I call a manservant, or wardrobe master. Technically he was 'master of the bed(chamber)' which sounds funny to us, so again, to avoid breaking the suspension of disbelief I updated the terms. The same goes for things like the Bible—they didn't call it a 'bible' then, that's a modern term, it was Scripture. But I wanted lines to have gravity and sometimes the archaic terms make it sound comedic. As a rule, I try to keep all other references as period appropriate as possible.  The characters through the books have used the word 'fuck', which does date back at least to the 1500s (when it was first written down, it was likely used before that), however again, the entire language has grown and evolved so we're speaking in modern english, with appropriate euphemisms. As a side note, Henry's 5 and 6 were both against swearing. H5, however, only banned this with his army. Given that he was rather contradictory in other aspects I take the assumption he'd swear in private with his brothers/friends, he was simply acting holy. Considering he, you know, burned people alive, murdered innocent people, tortured people, I'm guessing he had no real problem swearing. H6, however, was apparently like that all the time. None of this would be written down, because all the remaining letters we have are formal.

In the same vein they didn't have 'doctors' in the Middle Ages... they had surgeons, who would perform actual surgery and get an arrow out of your head. And physicians who would bring you like, herbs, and maybe opioids, or something. In the series I call them 'doctors' as again we're not speaking in old english. I also call their staff 'nurses' as again it's most relatable—they probably would just be a physician's assistant, or the like. Nurses were usually for children, not necessarily the ill. But for understanding again I unified the terms.

On that note, language evolves, heavily, to where words had different connotations years ago, that we may not even know. For example the word 'naughty' had severe, nay religious, connotations of evil in the Middle Ages, you'd not call a child 'naughty'....but again I'm not writing in old english. For another example, Courtenay is referred to (by others) as being 'very pretty', that was, at least to some extent, a euphemism for 'gay'. He may not have been attractive (particularly) at all, they my have been saying he seemed gay, or they knew he was (this is implied in the novels). Things like that, we may not even know what the implication was at the time, though linguists have done their best to translate these things. They call him the 'Flower' of Devon that's probably implying they thought he was gay, but we don't fully know, it seems others (french priests he met) also said he was 'fair' or well spoken or handsome, we'll assume he was a looker.   Similarly, it was very traditional in england (and to an extent still is), to call people by nicknames, as a rule, even within the family. That's because so many people shared a name. So, all these Henries? Probably none of them were even called Henry, Harry, or Hal, to their face. It wasn't going to be written down (or if it was we didn't know who it was to), but they were likely calling one another all sorts of things. We know some nick-names, as an example. Edward III, they called him Lionel, after a knight in Arthurian legends, (and Suffolk was called 'Jackasnapes' for the bird). As in, we're pretty sure his wife, everyone was just calling him that not Edward. There's no way to guess that, they likely did it with their kids and so forth. This is addressed a little in the novels, but I'm probably using names way more than they ever did. Supposedly R2 was called 'Hart' and R3 was called 'Boar' and we have one letter where someone called him 'Dickieson' so maybe they called him that, but those are just the ones we know of.  People like Jasper Tudor, who has a unique name, probably got a pass, but the Welsh called him Tarw Du. But all the Henries were probably being called something else by their families, could have been anything we're not going to know, there was usually some convoluted reason, and the girls got the same treatment. John of Gaunt had two sons named Henry...they clearly weren't calling them both Henry, in fact they probably were calling neither Henry. Similarly, nobody even called the Henry's, Henry, except in extremely formal writing. Everywhere it was Harry, King Harry, Harry of Monmouth, that sort of thing, like unless it's a formal document, they are usually calling them Harry. H6 and R3 both went by Henricus and Ricardius as king, to latinize their names. Again, I had to go with something set, and simplify nick-names, and I was trying not to make too many up, but in a few cases I had to settle on something (like calling H5 Hal, that was an appropriate abbreviation, Shakespeare uses it for him so I did...I don't know if he ever used it. They call him (and his father), King Harry or Prince Harry, if they're not being super formal so it seems Henry was automatically Harry sort of like today Richard is Rick, or William is Bill, you rarely hear the full name).