wardenwyrd

Grimoire of A Witch

A writer with their grubby hands dug into fantasy | Avid enthusiast of all things spooky and queer | She/They

23 posts

Whats The History Of Executioners As A Societal Class? Im Ready

Whats the history of executioners as a societal class? Im ready

In some cases, butchers were roped in to become executioners, or convicts were offered the job as an alternative to their own deaths. But typically, executioners came into the jobs through family ties; most in the profession were men whose fathers had been executioners before them, Harrington explained. Even the diarist Schmidt was descended from an executioner. His father had unwillingly received the job when randomly ordained by a prince as a royal executioner.

Over time, this passing of the baton from father to son created what Harrington called long-standing "execution dynasties" that spread across Europe during the Middle Ages.

But the existence of those dynasties also reveals the poor image executioners had at the time. People were trapped in this family cycle of employment because, in reality, they had few other opportunities to work, according to Harrington. People whose professions revolved around death were people that the rest of society did not want to associate with. So executioners were typically consigned to the fringes of society — and even forced to literally live at the edge of town.

"People wouldn't have invited executioners into their homes. Many executioners were not allowed to go into churches. Marriage has to be done at the executioner's home," Harrington said. "Some schools would not even take the children of executioners."

This social isolation meant that executioners were left to consort with others forced to occupy society's underworld, "undesirables" such as prostitutes, lepers and criminals. That only boosted public suspicion of executioners and their families.

Executioners, therefore, were a conundrum: crucial for maintaining law and order, yet shunned because of their unsavory work. "Attitudes toward professional executioners were highly ambiguous. They were considered both necessary and impure at the same time," said Hannele Klemettilä-McHale, an adjunct professor of cultural history at the University of Turku in Finland who has studied representations of executioners.

this article provides a pretty good quick but in-depth summary on the subject. it's a really interesting case study in social exclusion and class/caste system dynamics!

More Posts from Wardenwyrd

wardenwyrd

1 year ago

Fop surgery. It's like top surgery but it turns you into a Victorian dandy. Is that anything

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♡ reblog ♡ this is so brandy core... who knew being a reality melting victorian thingcreature made you so fashionable nobody does transgenderism like supernatural victorians oc: brandy

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wardenwyrd

10 months ago

the great thing about medieval literature is that it returns us to a time when men were men and women were women, *insert gritty realism gif here*, featuring such important and eternal gendered characteristics such as

(M) Why Would I Learn To Think Critically When I Could Find a Random Damsel In The Woods To Tell Me What To Do

(F) Demands To Be Brought The Heads Of Her Enemies

(M, to F) Be Mean To Me, No, Meaner Than That

(F) Meticulous Maintenance Of Social Connections And Alliances Via Writing Letters

(M) Crying

(M) More Crying

(M) Even More Crying, While Being Held Tenderly By Brother In Arms

(F) Necromancy

(M) Meticulous Maintenance Of Social Connections And Alliances Via Mistaking Friend’s Identity, Attacking Him, Then Kissing And Making Up

(F) Expert Medical Practitioner

(M) Self-Care By Episodes Of Madness In The Woods

(F) Owner Of Haunted Castle

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medieval literature relatable

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wardenwyrd

1 year ago

Thumbprint Challenge

Thanks for the tag @moondust-bard !

RULES: Look back on your work, both past and present, finished and unfinished. What are five to ten narrative elements or tropes that continuously pop up in your work? Give a list of these things!

Inhumanity as a neutral thing rather than 'good' or 'bad

Things™️ are not what they seem to be

Body horror

Fae or fae folklore inspired elements

Intricate magic systems heavily interconnected with the setting

Gods as eldritch entities

Neurodivergent characters. Everywhere.

Misfortune striking but the character is just a bit too fucked up to be bothered all that much

Distorted environments

Tagging: @sparrowrising, @violets-in-her-arms-writes, @tea-and-mercury

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tag game writeblr writer writeblr community

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wardenwyrd

1 year ago

WtW Character Event - Day 1 Protagonists

Square moodboard with nine images: a knife in glass, a quote: (Crooked grins, sly hands, and one dangerous voice), image of eye with black sclera, image of hands with black fingertips covered in jewellery, a spiky mouth-only gasmask, two arms blackened with shadow, a haze of black smoke, a quote: (Are you flirting or fighting?), and a crow on a sign that says 'Dead end'.

His voice sits on his tongue like a blade: each cackle spilling rivulets of blood

Ingram (Any/All), my favourite queer disaster crow hoe < 3

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wtwevent wtwcommunity writeblr OC: Ingram This is like a day late but better late than never Posting about my gay little oc character moodboard

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wardenwyrd

1 year ago

Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky

—Maria Michela Sassi, "Can we hope to understand how the Greeks saw their world?" (pub. Aeon) [ID in ALT]

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♡ reblog ♡ quotes lit this made my neurons crackle a bit

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