Lincoln, Francis Ferdinand, Kennedy

Is there some kind of connection?

Heads of state assassinated. More than these three. (Hoch Dollfuss!)

But there is a chronology thing ... from Lincoln to Kennedy, the time is 100 years, 7 months, 8 days excluding the end date.

Now, the two other spaces up to and from Francis Ferdinand come fairly close to half.

Lincoln to Francis Ferdinand = 49 years, 2 months, 14 days excluding the end date.

Francis Ferdinand to Kennedy = 51 years, 4 months, 25 days excluding the end date.

Now, is there any other then chronological connection? I think so.

Lincoln wanted slavery to end and not to be replaced with Racism (no, not Xenophobia. Racism.) Also not to be replaced with Carpetbaggers, I think, but I could have got that wrong.
Francis Ferdinand wanted Serbs and Muslim Bosniaks to live in peace with each other and with Croats.
Kennedy went after the Deep State. And C. S. Lewis, whose death was overshadowed by the assassination, one hour later, went after fashionable Atheism and Liberal Theology./HGL

Fourteenth Amendment ...

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Usually considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved Americans following the American Civil War.

Text of the Citizenship Clause:

Constitution of the United States: Fourteenth Amendment
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

A certain lawyer just said that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means subject to the FULL jurisdiction of it. As opposed to some legal limbo, presumably.

Given the year, as originalist, one would arguably rather say "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" as opposed to that of Liberia. Or that of the homecountry of the parents, if one was born during a visit and they moved back home.

If I had stayed in Austria from my birth to my eighteenth birthday, I would arguably have had, not automatic Austrian citizenship, but at least an eligibility for application, and this kind of rule was modelled on the Fourteenth Amendment. Another part of it, clearly related, is, one is a citizen of the state in which one resides. Presumably, if you move from Texas to Oklahoma, as an US Citizen, you cease to be a Texan and become an Oklahoman, with presumably some delay for paperwork.

nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In other words, admit personhood of the unborn, and you are legally obliged to a total ban of abortion./HGL

"If you are a good king, things will be all right" (GRRM resumes the political thought of Tolkien and dismisses the notion)

Answering GRRM on JRRT's character Aragorn · "If you are a good king, things will be all right" (GRRM resumes the political thought of Tolkien and dismisses the notion)

Actually, Chesterton had a share of GRRM's scepticism.

See this line in a play called Blondel the Troubadour, which takes place in a novel called The Return of Don Quixote, the words being in the mouth of King Richard:

Shall I who sing with the high tree-tops at morning
Sink to be Austria; even as is that brute
And brigand that entrapped me, or be made
A slave, a spy, a cheat, a King of France?
And what crowns other shadow this the earth?
The evil kings sit easy on their thrones
Shame healed with habit; but what panic aloft
What wild white terror if a king were good!
What staggering of the stars; what prodigy.
Men easily endure an unjust master
But a just master no man will endure
His nobles shall rise up, his knights betray him
And he go forth, as I go forth, alone.

I happen to be born in Austria and so not quite sharing the sentiments of Richard Coeur de Lion in the play, at least not the ones about Austria.

But the point in the play is not the badness of Austria, alias Duke Leopold V, or supposed such, it's the comparison between Richard, valiant knight, and his brother John Lackland, capable of marrying off his daughter Joan before her eleventh birthday to a man (king of Scotland) who maybe didn't consider that in such cases waiting with consummation could be a thing, which led her to a less than satisfactory married life, and probably contributed to provoke the Pope Gregory IX to make 12 the legal minimum for a marriage valid and consummate for a girl (with some dispensations possible).

The other point is, Richard, the good king, was a failure. The play centres on a conspiracy theory according to which Richard didn't leave his reins to John by dying, but by going into exile ... because the good king was so much more opposed than the evil king.

So, I guess, apart from the more technical quibbles on taxation policies of Aragorn, GRRM had a fair point. A good king can be a blessing for the land if accepted. But it is likely that a good king is a disaster because rejected. Now, the fact is, the function of a king is to both symbolise and practically arrange the moral unity of his people. Even if he's not elected, he has a certain mutual agreement with his "constituents" ... if they are very bad, a good man cannot succeed in becoming and remaining, and that effectively and not as a puppet, their king. Precisely as if he is very bad, he won't be a success with a decently good people.

England in the time of the War of the Roses was hardly sufficiently bawdy (at least not about people better considered than peasants, confer the provocation against Wat Tyler) to fully accept the kind of royalty depicted by GRRM in Westeros. Edward II lost his crown due to sodomy or suspicion thereof. And the actual real life inspirations behind GRRM, as enumerated by Nancy Bilyeau, are not just outside the War of the Roses, but in more than one case probable smear campaigns, i e, if substantiated, it would have meant loss of power. Or even life.

The Royal Incest That Inspired the Writing of ‘Game of Thrones’
Nancy Bilyeau | Jul 26, 2019
https://tudorscribe.medium.com/the-royal-incest-that-inspired-the-writing-of-game-of-thrones-d2f8455f12ce

Less than a century later, Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, was accused of incest with her brother, George, along with adultery with four men as part of the trial proceedings against her.

So, no, just as Aragorn could not have ruled in Westeros, the Lannisters could not have ruled in the England of the War of the Roses. But the thing is, what Gondor is described as is not the rotten atmosphere of Casterly Rock, we have people like Prince Imrahil and the captain of the guards Beregond and the loremaster who is a pain in the ... of a know-it-all, but not wicked and perfectly able to obey orders when insisted on, and the old woman who has some athelas. People who no doubt make the task easier for a good king than the Night's Watch killing off Jon Snow.

I think this part of GRRM's remark has also been answered.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Conversion of St. Paul, First Vespers
24~25.I.2025

Conversio sancti Pauli Apostoli, quae fuit anno secundo ab Ascensione Domini.

Apud Damascum natalis sancti Ananiae, qui fuit discipulus Domini, et eumdem Paulum Apostolum baptizavit. Ipse autem, cum Damasci, et Eleutheropoli, alibique Evangelium praedicasset, tandem, sub Licinio Judice, nervis caesus et laniatus, ac lapidibus oppressus, martyrium consummavit.

Chesterton's work is available on this link (the poem is around the midpoint of scrolling), here:

THE RETURN OF DON QUIXOTE
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/Don_Quixote.txt

... and there was a Time when the Cross Stood for Freedom of the Young

There Was a Time When England Stood For the Cross · ... and there was a Time when the Cross Stood for Freedom of the Young

If ever Lewis XVI is canonised, given he died on January 21st, the feast of St. Agnes, I don't think his day of death or heavenly birthday is likely to be his feastday.

Because the martyrdom of St. Agnes is greater and more foundational, especially in terms of the Christian civilisation. I think it very likely that the 1000 years of Apocalypse 20 are the medium length of the reign of a saint in heaven. So, let's take the medium length of St. Agnes and the probable martyr king's reign in Heaven?

2025		2025		1720
-305	-	1793		+232
1720		0232		2052

If St. Agnes has reigned in heaven with Her Lord and the Spotless Lamb of God, for 1720 years (it could be 1721), for Lewis XVI it is probably 232 and for these two, the medium is 1026 years, so, Armageddon and Doomsday should already have happened.

But not only has she reigned longer. She is also foundational for Lewis XVI. There could have been no Lewis XVI without a France. There would arguably not have been a France without Sts Genevieve, Clotildis and Radegundis. And there would not only not have been a St. Genevieve without her supernatural visioconferences with St. Simon Stylites, St. Simon the Pillar Saint, there would also have been no St. Genevieve with no Christian freedom to chose one's path between marriage and monastery.

And that freedom was won by ... taking them in order of the calendar ... Sts. Cecily, Barbara, Lucy, Agnes and Agatha. Whom I ask to intercede for the daughters of Abdel-Aziz of Saudi Arabia. Dear reader, do so too!

So, it is likely that the feast day of St. Lewis XVI, if ever there is one, will be today, since yesterday is the one of St. Agnes.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Vincent
22.I.2025

PS, it could also be today would also not be free, since today is St. Vincent Deacon and Martyr. The Deacon Martyrs are obviously Stephen and Lawrence and Vincent:

Valentiae, in Hispania Tarraconensi, sancti Vincentii, Levitae et Martyris; qui, sub impiissimo Praeside Daciano, carceres, famem, equuleum, distorsiones membrorum, laminas candentes, ferream cratem ignitam aliaque tormentorum genera perpessus, ad martyrii praemium evolavit in caelum; cujus passionis nobilem triumphum Prudentius luculenter versibus exsequitur, et beatus Augustinus ac sanctus Leo Papa summis laudibus commendant.

There Was a Time When England Stood For the Cross

There Was a Time When England Stood For the Cross · ... and there was a Time when the Cross Stood for Freedom of the Young

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsWQRI6VuzQ

Celebrity Catholics in History

• St. Albert the Great
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton
• Jacques Maritain
• Gertrud von LeFort

I would think it is evident that ideas that Celebrity Catholics are a bad substitute for Online Evangelists is false.

Given what four of the five were doing, I would say that the idea that a big preponderance of rebuttals is not bad either. No, the exception (as far as I know) is not one of the canonised saints, it's Gertrud von LeFort./HGL