Sad over historical deaths?

[Personyouneedisnannymcphee]

Obviously death happens every day and there are many recent, very sad deaths. But some historical ones actually make me ache a little when I think about them I think due to the details and historical background of them more so than sometimes things I hear on the news. Some of these being:

-the Romanov children. Of course the Tsar was horrific but how they died thinking they were going to safety and then didn’t get killed by bullets as jewels in their clothes protected them so they were finished with bayonets.

-Anne Boylyn’s death because the details of her ladies not letting the men touch her afterwards for fears they’d violate her headless body.

AIBU for sometimes being incredibly sad over these people I never knew or do you have your own historical death that makes your stomach drop when you think of it?

I walk past a churchyard each day which has a gravestone for a little girl who died only 5 years old (100 years ago). It always makes me sad.

She was very clever, in that she managed to make the king marry her, and not just use and discard her as he had with so very many women - but ultimately she could not refuse him. He made sure that no other man would go near her.

She was initially sent back to England from France to be married off to a cousin; when that marriage fell through she joined Katherine of Aragorn's ladies-in-waiting where she met and became covertly engaged to Henry Percy - but his father and Cardinal Wolsey refused to countenance the marriage for political reasons.

She was then sent away from court to Hever, where she fell into King Henry's sphere - and he set his sights on her. She did well to hold him at arm's length as log as she did.

This ⬆

It beggars belief how much autonomy many people think women had in that time.

They were effectively pawns in sexual politics and their own feelings weren't taken into account.

I doubt that a sixteen year old girl would be likely to be enthusiastic about marriage to a middle-aged, morbidly obese, semi-invalid with a putrid, stinking leg ulcer which refused to heal and which rendered him bad-tempered and aggressive.

Poor girl.

One of my ancestors was shamefully closely involved in that affair.

People who know me say, "Oh cool, very Game of Thrones", but if you give even an iota of thought to it, it was awful.

I have often wondered if the reason it took her to complete the trilogy was that she had developed such affection for Cromwell that she couldn't bring herself to address his execution.

I know I did (three times reader here, too).

Postman's Park

My father took me here on one of our London tours, and I cried and cried! Ordinary people who died trying to save others.

@Emotionalsupportviper (brilliant name!) I think you might be right. She must have come so “close” to him in those years. God I could cry now thinking of the last few paragraphs. Such a clever woman she was.

I hadn't heard of the Jordanian pilot, but the fate of many Yazidi women and girls, captured and raped but the Taliban/ Daesh, was the same. Burned alive in cages for not wanting to please their vile abusers. It's not enough to be raped. it seems women have to pretend to enjoy being raped.

There is a novel based on the disaster "A Terrible Kindness". I had known of the disaster - I am of an age to remember the horror of it on the news - but the detail obviously escaped me. The book is very touching.

This is incredibly moving, too. For people not involved the awfulness of it shocks for a time, but then life intrudes, and it goes out of our minds; for those there it will never be finished with, I think.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47

she was absolutely hateful towards Katherine and Mary - also her own sister Mary.

She was frightened. She knew her own position was very tenuous, and that unless she gave Henry a son she was lost. And she was right.

Indeed.

TBH, I would wonder about people who aren't affected by such tragedy. There must be something very broken inside them.

I don't think that people really know the difference between the wives. Katherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves had powerful families that you didn't mess with.

The other four weren't important enough to refuse, however much influence they may have had temporarily. And they weren't important enough to keep alive.

And even taking account the misogyny of the era, most were actually pretty revolted at Henry's sexual etiquette. For example, wanting pictures of his potential brides - it simply wasn't the done thing to trot out a princess like a brood mare. You wanted the wealth and the alliance. And you treated your wife well (within context) because she was the link to the alliance that you had made.

His habit of marrying for lust and discarding the women was highly disreputable.

ohfook · 10/04/2023 21:45

The children who died in the Victoria hall disaster in Sunderland too.

Many of them a buried in the cemetery, on Chester Road, there's a memorial, too.

And the Hartley Pit disaster, 167 men and boys killed, because the mine just ignored the law on having two shafts and the authorities winking at it. I live less than 3 miles away and when there's been a winter storm, the old workings get exposed.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/48541674@N00/273371793/in/dateposted/

9 boys from one family killed underground. The youngest ( on another part of the memorial) was 8 years old.

A lot of the New Hartley families are still in the village or thereabouts. The entrance to the pit is now a memorial garden.

It’s taking me ages to finish it which is so unlike me. I keep stopping to absorb and reflect on what I’ve read. He is currently in the tower so the end is near. It’s made me curious now to read more about him.

Last year I read a really interesting book about the history of the Romanov family. I had to stop part way through when I reached the story of Ivan Dmitriyevich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarevich_Ivan_Dmitriyevich. My daughter was about the same age as him when I read his story (a really terrible ending) and it made me feel really sick. He was so small and he must have been so scared. Who does that to a three year old?

There are awful parallels between Aberfan and Grenfell. The warning from the villagers/residents that were dismissed and the awful lack of accountability. The contempt for the poor/working class hasn't gone away...Jacob Rees Moggs awful comments about common sense.
The one that really breaks me though, is Jamie Bulger. Perhaps because we know so much about what happened to him and those heartbreaking photos of him being led away. I can't bear to think about what he went through.

Bearfrills · Today 19:03

A lot of the New Hartley families are still in the village or thereabouts. The entrance to the pit is now a memorial garden.

Yes, my ex's mam is from Shiremoor and there are five people on the monument with her surname. I mentioned it to her and she was upset - they were all from her ancestor's family.

The Kalavryta massacre always fills me with sadness.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalavryta_massacre

And then there's Katyn. 22,000 Polish prisoners executed by the Russians in 1940. They blamed it on the Nazis at the time and for a long time afterwards.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

WW2 is a whole other level of evil. I remember reading Captain Corelli's Mandolin and what the Germans did in Greece is horrifying.

OP, that guy Richard Poncher, who was buried face down in the crypt above Marilyn Monroe, is no longer there. His widow auctioned off his crypt and removed his remains. Although probably replaced by another weirdo I suppose.

April Jones. Baby P. James bulger. Aberfan, Dunblane and that village in France where the nazis rounded everyone up in the school and shot everyone and burned it down.

There is a picture called Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Rubens senior. It has been painted over to make the content less distressing, so looks like men are trying to kill animals or take bundles of food from their mothers but there are small children on the under paint and their parents are pleading with the men. It is based on the story of Herod killing all the first born sons under two, a story that always made me feel really sad.

All the people buried on Hart Island which is basically a mass grave in New York for unclaimed and unidentified people including infants, it was also utilised during the AIDS epidemic and again during COVID. Prison labour was used to operate the site and until as recently as 2019 families of the deceased weren't allowed to visit as it was not open to the public. Many families today don't even know where on the island their loved one is buried.

A charity called the Hart Island Project campaigned for families to have access and is working to identify individuals buried there and their burial locations. They maintain a database on their website and every individual has a clock/timer on their entry which starts counting from the moment they are buried and is stopped when someone claims them by posting a story/memory/photo of them. It's so sad how many have been counting for years without being claimed and then, for the ones who have been reunited, the stories are heartbreaking.

https://www.hartisland.net/about

Not only was no-one held responsible, but the massive amount of money collected for families of the victims by public donations was not distributed to them. They were given a tiny portion to cover funeral costs and a family holiday (the irony!) because "they weren't used to money and wouldn't know what to do with it",

NOTHING can compensate a family for the loss of a child, but this could have helped traumatised families to have a slightly easier life when just getting up in the morning was a dreadful chore (some families lost ALL of their children) - money donated exactly for that purpose and which was "re-directed" (I can't remember what it was put towards - but it wasn't what it was raised for. Fraud, effectively.