idk, plantagenets was my first dan jones book, i tried reading his crusades one after and it's just too much...cishet dude history. not interested. i'm not interested in anything that doesn't create space for queer people to exist in any period of history. it's boring.

i also read doing unto others, the quintessential academic book on medieval sexuality and in its fourth edition, this year which kinda took for granted that richard probably did, indeed, fuck dudes.

pretty sure the dan jones' book is also the one which was like "oh yeah the debate around richard i's sexuality is totally settled on Didn't Fuck Dudes" and...is it? that's news to me.

yes, i am biased because i love him and he is my hyper-fixation, but, come on, a man who has been called england's worst king cos he fucked men for 700 years cannot have justice done to him is a hundred pages.

no. please no. his section on edward is really bad. he is not really a historical figure you can get a short, succinct overview on. his historiography is too fucked up for that.

"being trans goes against nature"

my brother in christ, they used to say that about a woman being on top, be serious.

"two men sitting alone drinking wine, bit suspect innit?"

like, i have no proof that jones is homophobic, but he sure as shit has unaddressed biases pertaining to men having sex with each other in the medieval period. i also would not be surprised is jones was homophobic. his work has that energy.

and richard i fucked dudes, come on. not saying he did so exclusively or even fell in love with guys, but he had sexual contact with men.

like, i've never really thought there was anything between richard ii and oxford except some inter-war all boys public school type dynamics, but i might start insisting they fucked to spite people like jones.

i am talking about dan jones. except he's not a historian, he's an author, but you know. but he does is twice (arguably three times, but it's hard to do with my boy edward) in his plantagenet book.

which is funny cos the notebook itself is a "shakespeare insults" one i got when i went to the rsc production of edward ii earlier this year, and now it's full of quotes about and from my main man hugh.

he is the point where my autism and my gender converge and, honestly, i am never happier then when i'm doing anything related to him.

or maybe i'm just immediately bitter cos jones is going with the 'worst king ever' narrative with edward ii.

as someone who approaches all history from a post-modernist, post-foucauldian, and largely marxist position, but actually only cares about queer history, pop medieval history is so lacking in actual interest and challenge it's staggering that anyone bothers.

angus wilson wrote a whole ass comedic novel about it nearly seventy years ago and nothing has changed.