never be royals

[kindkit]

From the question-a-day meme?

August 11: Everyone always thinks they’d be royalty or a knight if they were born in Medieval times, but let’s be honest, you probably wouldn’t be. So, what kind of person do you think you’d be if you were born in medieval times?

I don't think that I'd have been royalty or a knight, because I've actually read some history.

In any case, my ancestors immigrated to the United States from Sweden and Scotland at various points in the 19th century in order (I presume) to escape being landless, impoverished, exploited peasants. Presumably that's what I would have been too, had I been born much before about 1920.

(Assuming I didn't die in childhood. But I probably would have because lots of children did, and in particular, lots of children with chronic bronchitis and pneumonia did, because no antibiotics. So in fact if I'd been born much before 1950, I probably wouldn't have lived. I was born in 1969, so I feel like I had a fairly narrow escape. Medieval!me isn't really a possibility.)

Comments

[lilliburlero]

It's very difficult to imagine yourself shaped by a completely different set of material circumstances: makes me realise there is no "me" as such. I think the best outcome for me in medieval England would have been monastic life, but my ability to access that from whatever the equivalent of my parents' circumstances would have been very much depends on when in the medieval period, because you know, not a monolith. On the other hand, I was born in Iran, and for the most part I'd much rather live a medieval life there than in England.

[kindkit]

Yes, that too. The person who is "me" could not exist in another era, because everything that shaped me would have been different. (Also, the person who is me would be very unlikely in a literal sense, because my existence depends on my maternal (mostly Scottish) lineage and my paternal (Swedish) lineage getting together. Which could have happened in the middle ages, but is a lot more likely in the context of American settler colonialism.)

I do wonder how I might have understood my trans-ness in another era. I spent plenty of time not understanding it in this one, so who knows if I could ever have put it into words beyond "I wish I had been born a man"? Neither marriage and children nor the religious life sounds great to me, although a convent does sound like the least worst option.