Backroom Errata

[Montmorency]

No, that was yet another example of you jumping all over me because you don't like my opinion.

"Source look dodgy, possibly dishonest" is an opinion on a source. I don't like shoddy historiography, you're reading too much into it.

It's not a valid opinion. It's beyond the pale.

So, ellipsis at the end of a quotation begs the question what is missing.

The allegation of dishonesty is what begs the question, fallaciously.

But hey, it's not like I'm an expert on academic writing, is it?

Between you, after all said, and an academic work where content and context present no indication of misrepresentation, you shouldn't expect an appeal to your authority to carry any clout.

This flagrant malicious arrogance and self-righteous dishonesty is what totally tarnishes my esteem of you, which perhaps has been perniciously inflated all along. :(

Who are "the rest"? They're a minority. In reality you have slaves, the Royal family, the Thanes, and the churls are "the rest".

Yes. What are the logical entailments?

This is an anachronistic interpretation of medieval society, it grossly under-estimates the medieval reverence for monarchy. This is a society where good people burned other people alive for having the wrong beliefs.

Such a dramatic claim, that everyone below the King in medieval societies was essentially a willingly-servile wretch with no concept of self-worth beyond the wellbeing and prosperity of the King, would of course demand prodigious evidence, and at least a response to the counter-evidence. Every monarch has claimed divine legitimacy in some form, yet we know for a fact that there has been great variation in the strength of these regimes. We know for a fact that people at all levels of courtly society have always jockeyed for influence among each other. A king is just a man, with finite resources and transactable loyalties. He cannot grant, or retract, a prerogative without a price.

I suppose you think I'm joking again, or trolling.

I don't even understand what that section means.

No, I just think it sounds silly. Seeing religion as the "opiate of the masses" and referring to historical wealthy, non noble, classes anachronistically as "bourgeois" makes you look like a Marxist. You claim not to be a Marxist, though, even though you look like one.

I used "bourgeois" in reference only to modern (in the broad sense) groups.

Capital, class, and factors of production are terms used by Marx. They are also common to all other modes of economic analysis. I'm not doing anything special when invoking very diffused terminology. Opiate is a metaphor and not economic terminology, and a conservative or non-ideological writer would have no barrier to applying it where she deems appropriate in the sense of a distracting or neutralizing force. A common alternative in use is "soma."

The thing that stands out the most to me is that they both have quite long faces, which is not really a trait that I would particularly associate with the British Isles. The guy in the second photo looks almost German, though I suppose something could feel off about that assignment. But knowing their nationalities, my assessments are of course compromised.

One of the difficulties I would have is - since I'm a visually weak person - describing in detail what the similarities or differences are between their faces. It's not about the length per se. All I can tell you is that they look like basically the same face to me, with minor variation. Without examples (though IMO a greater number of instances in my perception) I would further add that Australians tend to have a certain highly-common facial type of archetypical character. The question remains whether there is some systematic prevalence here, or if it is just a coincidence. Half of Australians are first or second generation immigrants, so even if some archetypes could be characterized whether there would be any correlation to self-reported or genetic heritage is another question.

Now this, this is probably a coincidence.