u/KatsumotoKurier

Title basically bears it all but last August I was in Bloomfield, Prince Edward County, and while having ice cream from the famously excellent Slickers, I was randomly and without any provocation stung by a very large, dark, erratic and aggressive bee.

While this was nearly a year ago already now, this came up in conversation today and I realized I never quite figured out why it stung me. Contrary to what a lot of people nervously do, I remained completely still with the hope that it would check me out and merely buzz off, but unfortunately it was actually to my detriment to do so because I effectively gave it an in to attack me.

We were seated right outside the ice cream shop and so it really didn’t feel like we were intruding upon the bee or harassing it with our presence.

That aside, I’ve tried looking up what subspecies it would have been, but I’ve had no luck. I distinctly recall that it was unusually greyish and dark in colour and had virtually no yellow on it at all. Of course it could have been just a psycho and it might not be subspecies related at all, but I am wondering if anybody knows or can relate!

I am currently reading through Thomas Asbridge’s The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshall, The Power Behind Five English Thrones, and on page 144, pertaining to the discussion of extramarital affairs and adultery, Asbridge said the following:

It is also the case that, in William's world, male adultery was commonplace — indeed, most noble-born men were expected, as a matter of course, to have mistresses, and some chroniclers actually expressed amazement at the very idea that a lord might stay faithful to his wife. King Henry II had a number of well-known mistresses, including ‘Fair' Rosamund Clifford and the Welsh noblewoman Nest Bloet. It was also rumoured that Henry took King Philip II’s half-sister Alice of France as a mistress, even though she had been betrothed to his son Richard. Nobles serving in the king's household were not expected to see their wives, instead official royal whores catered for their sexual needs.

I’m typically not in the habit of questioning historians on claims like this, and this book especially does seem very well researched, but this one claim does seem rather peculiar and even a bit outlandish to me.

I’ve always understood that some kings, like Henry II, had indeed many mistresses, however, I feel like most historians don’t tend to describe their relations as one of concubinage, which is to me what a station of official, royally-employed sex workers implies. Even then, concubinage can often denote an element of sex slavery as well, whereas mistresses are implied to be acting freely and not ‘owned’ or ‘possessed’ by the men they are in their usually discreet relationships with.

So with these “official royal whores” as Asbridge describes them… were they more like castle household employees? Were they on regal payroll, or were they more or less concubines? And to what extent was this practice widespread across and throughout medieval European regal households?

I got to realizing that King John was King of England when Genghis Khan’s empire began rapidly expanding in the early 1200s. This got me to wondering just how long exactly it took for that news to reach Western Europe, especially since King John for example was still on his throne until late 1216.

Would he and other kings of neighbouring realms have heard about Genghis Khan and the Mongols’ massive expanses by that point? Or did it still take years more for this news to reach the other side of the Old World?