Period Drama - Tumblr Posts

get to know me meme // [1/5] favourite tv shows → rome

you boys play too rough for me. knives in the senate house? i didn’t know you had it in you.

Women of Rome | Livia Drusilla (58 BC – 29 AD)

Livia was the most important woman of her time. Her character, discretion, and intellect complemented her strategic skills and were enhanced by the advantage of a long life. […] Born on January 30, 58 BC, […] Livia married twice. Her first husband, whom she married at the age of 15 or 16, […] was Tiberius Claudius Nero, quaestor in 48 and a distant relative. She gave birth on November 16, 42 BC to Tiberius, the future emperor. […] In 39 BD Livia became pregnant with her second child. She also began an affair with Octavian. […] He sought an opinion from the college of pontifices about contracting a marriage with the still-pregnant Livia. They ruled in his favor. […] The two became a model Roman husband and wife and remained married for 50 years, until the death of the emperor in 14 AD. […] After their marriage, even before Octavian became Augustus, Livia’s elevated status was clear. In 35 BC, Livia and Octavian’s independent-minded sister Octavia were accorded the status of tribunica sanctissima, which made any assault upon their person as if an attack on the state. Never previously held by a woman nor ever again. […] The office also gave the women independent authority over property and wealth. […] A wealthy woman to begin with, Livia managed people and property well. Her alliances with other women, many of whom were also influential in the public and private aff airs of the period, constituted a circle within which she did business and traded favors. […] Livia and Augustus’s relationship joined both family and the affairs of state, and sometimes the two were indistinguishable. […] Augustus regularly asked her advice. Often he took it. […] In all Livia worked unceasingly, especially, to enhance the interests of her family and particularly the future of her own sons. […] In her husband’s will, Livia was named Julia Augusta and was adopted into the Julian gens. […] Augustus left her one-third of his estate, and her son, Tiberius, two-thirds. She also became the priestess of her husband’s cult after his deification. […] Members of the Senate proposed a number of possible titles for Livia, such as parens patriae (Parent of her Country) or mater patriae (Mother of her Country). Others wanted to add Iuliae filius (Son of Julia [Augusta]) to Tiberius’s name. Tiberius claimed history had no such honors for women and added that he would also refuse similarly nontraditional honors for himself. […] Livia died in 29 AD at the age of 86. Tiberius did not attend her funeral and would not allow her to be deified. He also refused to execute her will. […] Her eulogy was delivered by her grandson and future emperor, the young Gaius Caligula, who had lived for a short time in his grandmother’s house. He called her Ulixes stolatus, “Ulysses in skirts”. When he became emperor, he executed her will, and when Claudius, who also had lived in her household, became emperor, he deified her. [x]

Women of Rome | Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla (148/150 - 182 AD)

Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla, the daughter of emperor Marcus Aurelius, organized an unsuccessful conspiracy against her brother, the emperor Commodus. She was born in 148 C.E., the daughter of the younger Annia Galeria Faustina and Marcus Aurelius. Had she been born a son rather than a daughter, she may well have been a worthy successor to her father. […] In 164 her father arranged her marriage with Lucius Verus, whom he had made co-emperor in 161. The marriage took place in Ephesus, and she was given the title Augusta. She was some 18 years younger than her weak and ineffectual husband, who died in 169 on his way back to Rome from the Danube. Against her will and the wishes of Faustina, Marcus Aurelius immediately had Lucilla marry the much older Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, a native of Antioch. She was 21 and he was probably over 50. Her new husband was her father’s trusted friend and had been a commander in all of his campaigns. His father had been prefect of Egypt and the family was descended from rulers in the East. Lucilla undoubtedly considered the marriage beneath her and detested the sedentary country life that suited her ailing husband. Marcus Aurelius died in 180 and was succeeded by his son Commodus. […] Commodus treated his sister Lucilla respectfully. She sat on the imperial seat at the theatre and retained other privileges. However, she hated her sister-in-law, Crispina Bruttia, and recognized her brother’s limitations. In 182 Lucilla had uncovered sufficient discontent with her brother’s rule to organize a conspiracy for his overthrow. Members of the group included […] Claudius Pompeianus Quintianus, who was to do the actual stabbing. He was arrested while announcing to Commodus his intention to stab him. Lucilla was banished to Capri and soon afterwards killed. Her son, Claudius Pompeianus, was later murdered by the emperor Caracalla. [x]

Medici: Masters of Florence

Episode three ► Pestilence

→ anonymous asked: Egypt

Pegah Ferydoni as Cleopatra VII Nadia Roz as Cleopatra IX Kathryn Hunter as Charmian

macbeth 2015

this is the very painting of your fear. 

Warrior Queen Princess Aethelflaed in every episode - s03e03

Daisy Ridley in the new trailer of Ophelia (2019) [x]

Ladies of The Spanish Princess:

Rosa de Vargas [6/7]

Synnove Karlsen as Clarice Orsini on Medici: Masters of Florence, episode 2.04 “Blood with Blood”

Synnove Karlsen as Clarice Orsini on Medici: Masters of Florence, episode 2.06 “Alliance”

Synnove Karlsen as Clarice Orsini on Medici: Masters of Florence, episode 2.07 “Betrayal”

→ History by period + Period/historical dramas → The Renaissance ( aprox. 14th - 16th Century)  Used footage: Da Vinci’s demons (2013), Romeo and Juliet (2013), Borgia (2011), The Borgias (2011)

asoiaf meme: ESTERMONT EDITION location → Estermont island (remake)

The Targaryens were of pure Valyrian blood, dragonlords of ancient lineage. Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria (114 BC), Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer and moved with all his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, kin, and children to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the narrow sea.

At its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center of civilization. Within its shining walls, two score rival houses vied for power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an endless, subtle, oft savage struggle for dominance. The Targaryens were far from the most powerful of the dragonlords, and their rivals saw their flight to Dragonstone as an act of surrender, as cowardice. But Lord Aenar’s maiden daughter Daenys, known forever afterward as Daenys the Dreamer, had foreseen the destruction of Valyria by fire. And when the Doom came twelve years later, the Targaryens were the only dragonlords to survive.

ladies of ice and fire: daenys targaryen

// Gaia Weiss as Daenys Targaryen

Vassili Schneider and Anamaria Vartolomei in "Le Comte De Monte-Cristo" (2024)

7th September 1533 | Anne Boleyn gives birth to Elizabeth

At 3 O’clock in the afternoon, on this day in 1533, Anne Boleyn gave birth to Princess Elizabeth at Greenwich. The jousts that Henry VIII had planned to commemorate the birth of his son were cancelled as the birth of princesses did not warrant a large public celebration, but a herald immediately proclaimed this first of Henry’s legitimate children, while the choristers of the Chapel Royal sang the Te Deum. The circular letters prepared before the birth by the royal clerks, announcing the deliverance and bringing forth of a Prince were amended to read Princes. 

Elizabeth was not the male heir that Henry and Anne had hoped for, but the consolation was that she was healthy and had a full head of Tudor red hair. So the royal couple put on a brave face, as they had no reason to fear that sons would not follow. It is reported that when Henry visited his wife after the birth and Anne expressed disappointment at the sex of their child, Henry responded by saying that they were both still young and by God’s grace, boys will follow. At the time, apart from upset at the baby’s sex, many people were simply relieved that the Queen had not only had a fairly easy delivery, but that she had lived through it at all.

Given how close Elizabeth had been born to one of the great festivals of the Virgin, it would have been expected for the baby princess to receive the baptismal name of Mary. However, the King already had a daughter with that name, from his first marriage. With that union’s annulment, Mary Tudor had lost the title of princess, and there were rumours in the Spanish Embassy that the new Queen planned to christen her daughter Mary, anyway, in the hope that the new Princess Mary would utterly eclipse the old one in the public’s mind. As with so many of the Spanish-started rumours about Anne Boleyn, this story was groundless, for there doesn’t seem to have been any hesitation on either the King or the Queen’s part in naming their new daughter, Elizabeth. It was the most logical name to go for: both the King and the Queen had mothers with that name. And so it was probably as a mutual maternal tribute that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn selected the name for the baby that was destined to be their only child together and thus christened the girl who would arguably become the single most famous woman in her country’s history. (x | x)

mia goth as harriet smith in emma (2020) dir. autumn de wilde || infanta isabella of spain (1851–1931) by vicente palmaroli

miss helen dunham by john singer sargent (1892) // uma thurman as cécile de volanges in ‘dangerous liaisons’ (1988) dir. stephen frears