henry's oldest living children are growing up.
as a restless teenager, mary tudor would get bored at the castle and go to visit king james V and marie de guise, and their live-in border hans holbein. there she grew curious about the ways of love, watching the amorous king and queen.
mary agreed to sit for a portrait for master holbein, and their friendship grew. soon hans was visiting mary at the castle. they could dance and have fun, but since she was a teen and he an adult, their romance could not truly blossom.
still, mary enjoyed taunting hans with her sexuality, and the minute she became an adult, she received her first kiss.
they married as soon as they could, and they moved into their own little house. will mary ever wear the crown? perhaps, perhaps not. king hans holbein? prince consort? who knows.
poor arthur, harold and greensleeves. in a kingdom where just about everyone was either their half-sibling or someone their father has to marry, they had very few dating options.
arthur was getting friendly with "scot", the maid... but things really didn't go anywhere. and then there was the fire. so unfortunate. this was a fire, as opposed to a "fire" that "happened" and in which all the princes "died" (quote marks mean you should picture me clicking and mousing and dispatching them all to their deaths in a conveniently ordered -- by me -- kitchen fire.) this fire really just happened, and even though i tried to save arthur (my favorite), they all just died. for real.
arthur -- last remaining son of henry and catherine of aragon. dead. harold and greensleeves, for whom i had great hopes of evil despotism, sons of henry and anne boleyn -- dead. boring, and dead.
henry does still have three illegitimate (and fictional) daughters with bessie blount, and they are still alive -- maxine, and the twins peak frean and mushy pea. but for them, henry only has the legitimate, historically accurate children he would have had to begin with -- mary (by catherine of aragon), elizabeth (by anne boleyn), and edward (by the recently dead jane seymour). i think the power of history is forcing my hand.
princess elizabeth, since i wanted her to be as formidable as her historical counterpart, has a lot of skills. logic, creativity, charisma -- she is a well endowed girl. alas, her possibilities for romance are also limited, because her only peers are her half-sister maxine, and of course, mary queen of scots.
i guess there is something i should explain about mary queen of scots. at the time marie de guise gave birth, this was a very boring house to play, and when the baby was born a boy, i did not know how to force-quit ben's computer properly, and he was a few rooms away, busy doing something. so i yelled "do you want to come force-quit this machine, or do we want mary queen of scots to start life as a boy and become a tranny?"
so you see which option we chose. mary queen of scots is a force to be reckoned with though -- having maxed out on logic in childhood.
but, remember -- mary queen of scots IS still a male teenager, and is NOT related to elizabeth -- and currently, until i make a new houseful of auxilliary characters, is her ONLY chance at a bloodline.
there is much yummy, nearly rapturous information to be had about elizabeth's clothes, and i will be damned if i'm not going to get my hands on it. and i had not known until recently about mary queen of scots' needlework, which contained secret messages. that mary has her fans. isn't it fantastic?
there's something that needs explaining about the illegitimate maxine fitzroy as well. lovely as she is, she went through a stage of temporary dwarfism heretofore unseen in this game, at least by me.
here is my best guess at what happened. when you play the sims, time is only passing in the house you occupy while you are playing. therefore, babies born on the same day (if you played both houses that day ) will not age at the same rate if you spend more time in one house than in the other.
also, if a sim is a visitor in the house you are playing -- even if when in their "own" house you can boss them around -- they are out of your control. not only that, but, say, a girl goes to a party at a neighbor's, and you stop playing that house while she is sitting there eating cake. go back to the house that girl "lives" in -- and she will be there, because it is a different time and day in that house.
got that?
maxine fitzroy went to the birthday party of mary queen of scots. maxine went to this party as a child. while maxine was still at the party, i closed the house and started playing the house where maxine actually lived.
while playing the house where maxine lived, maxine herself age-transitioned from child to teenager. quite attractively i might add.
but when i re-entered the home of mary queen of scots, and the frozen-in-time birthday party -- maxine was still there. and dwarfism, however temporary, was the very upsetting result.
this whole weird ugly squatness of maxine revisits a fear i had as a little girl -- a fear and dislike of an illustration in a facsimile reproduction of lewis carroll's alice's adventures underground. it was not disneyfied. and carroll's drawings were a little primative and upsetting to me. in that book, when alice grew small, her head was the same size as it had been when she was herself -- and her expression really bothered me.
this is 18 count linen, and so much nicer than the aida cloth. also, i used a crewel needle rather than a tapestry needle and felt much more in control of my stitches. this is for use with the bits.
here's a front, and here's a back! not bad!
always remember: the ugly may be beautiful, the pretty never. that one is attributed to both paul gaugin and mary baker eddy -- but is worth remembering, particularly in response to this project.