Answer time: trans characters and medieval times.

[terresdebrume]

Anonymous said: Hi, I'm working on a medieval/middle ages story, and according to my research, a very important thing in those days were heirs and such. I wanted to have the king legalize homosexual relationships, but I keep running into the heir problem. Do you have any tips? Also, do you have any sources on writing trans characters in medieval times? Thanks in advance :)))

Okay, I’m going to tackle the heir thing and the trans characters things separately because they don’t necessarily overlap that much.

Full disclaimer: the following are my opinions only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of others/historians. Also, whatever you’re thinking of changing or breaking, your first motto should always be research, research, research, and then ask questions to relevant people about that research.

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The Heir Thing

First of all, ‘Heir’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean ‘Child’. Sure, there’s this whole riff raff about it in most (modern/popular interpretations) of history, but that seems to be mainly a result of Catholicism’s weird obsession with penis-in-vagina-sex, who gets to do it, when, and for what reasons.
(This also exists in other branches of christianity and other religions but again, I’m sticking to what I know here).

However, even if you go for blood royalties, you could have a childless king be succeeded by his younger brother/nephew/cousin when he dies, so long as you find someone of the same bloodline, it’s all good. That’s how the French aristocracy is still fighting to know who’d be king of France if we somehow went back to that system.

So if you really want to go the legalized marriage route, I think you mostly need to ask yourself how to build a medieval place where the public would be ready to accept that, either by changing the religious/social context enough or going full medieval fantasy and creating a society that isn’t as obsessed with the idea of bloodlines.

 

If you’d prefer to be a little more historically plausible, though, you can also go the lover route. I mean, kings all over history had open mistresses in court, some of whom were occasionally considered more powerful than the current queen, and it isn’t like kings haven’t had male favorites either. (Note: According to both the French and English Wikipedia article, the term ‘Mignons’ was born at least partially out of homophobic propaganda and scare tactics, anachronistic as the terms are, but it doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been actual lovers hidden among them). For that route, I’d either build up the king’s power enough for him to be able to ignore the haters, just to be on the historically safe side.

Or, you know, go full-on gay fantasy and decide homophobia just doesn’t exist in your story/world. It’s not like people haven’t added unnecessary misogyny and rape to their historical fiction and/or medieval fantasy/alternate histories for decades.

 

The trans thing

I feel like I’m even less qualified for that part than the previous one so renewed disclaimer that all of this is opinions, not gospel, and you should probably take it with a pinch of salt.

The only source I can think of for this would be @scriptlgbt​, who have a super interesting database and might be able to link you to more thorough helping posts. As for the rest, my advice-slash-opinion-slash wishlist boils down to this:

Unless you’re going for complete trans fantasy, do not completely ignore the possibility of transphobia (and I would personally not reccomend going for that if you are not trans yourself) but also do not forget that there have always been people who loved us. You can live in the most homophobic and transphobic environment and there will still be people who see queer people as persons and who are ready to love and help them as fellow human beings, as friends and as family.

Sure, acceptance should not always come in the same flavors (ie. a medieval person would probably not go ‘gender is a social construct’) but that doesn’t mean it can’t be there.

 

I’m sorry this is really mostly advice and probably not very helpful but that’s all I can think of for now. Still, I really wish you the best with this endeavor! Best of luck to you nonny <3.