Difference between revisions of "Talk:Edward II"

Revision as of 02:47, July 22, 2012

Gaveston and the Despensers get guernseys in History solely for their relationships with Edward. Unless one is to do the WP thing and mention everything it is simpler to leave them where they are. I will put them into Search though. AlanE 15:47, 4 November 2008 (EST)

Query

Hey, I just saw that the Edward II article was pretty bad, and I have access to a number of sources on him at the moment so I was going to fix it up a bit, providing I have enough time. I have a question though: in your manual of style or somewhere it says that we should avoid mentioning a person's sexuality unless they have self-identified as something. As it stands the entire article basically spends it's time skirting around the issue of his sexuality, without either addressing it directly, or talking about anything else. The question I was wondering was how should I fix this? As I see it the options are to remove mention of it completely (this is the less satisfactory option as his sexuality was considered politically important at the time and also in modern works) or to move discussion of this part of his life to a separate section where I would (very) briefly outline the arguments in recent scholarship both for and against his supposed homosexuality (or bisexuality or whatever they had back then) and why this is at all relevant. If you could tell me which would be more appropriate from a policy standpoint that would be good.Cmurphynz 06:57, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

This post should really be at the relevant talk page. From my knowledge of Edward II I would say that his possible sexuality is relevant because rumours of it had a big impact on his reign. He was clearly very close to certain men who then took on important roles within his administration. I should caution that there is no real credible evidence that he was actually homosexual - rumours and innuendo were apparently as rife then as they are now, and all "accounts" of his homosexuality tend to come from much later biographers. I would put it in a section at the start, and then tie in the issue to his administration and its legacy later on in the article. --DamianJohn 08:16, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

The above has been copied and pasted fromUser Talk:Aschlafly AlanE 20:08, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

I wrote this article, and most of my others on this site, with the aim of giving a teenager - in other words, one of Andy’s homeschoolers - a resource that gave them the bones with some flesh but not so much as would confuse the issue. Something that whetted their appetite sufficiently to want to enquire further. (You may not know, but back in the early days of this project, that resource was the stated aim of Conservapedia, one I embraced and (poor fool me) still think is right. I asked : “what would I have wanted if I came across a reference in a novel or magazine or article on a kindred subject when I was 14 to 16?” I have shown a series of these articles to high school teachers – both State and private – and two lecturers in Medieval History at the local university. One quibbled about this, others about that, but generally the articles were of about the size of what they would have written given the same parameters and generally correct unless you want to quibble. Their quibbles were almost always on matters of emphasis rather than fact.

I know I was followed about by CP’s resident professional historian, Dr. RJJensen and my forays into classical music by JDWPianist, now a Doctor of Music in Vienna. Not a lot was changed - more in the Music, but John D. had the decency to discuss his modifications. Recently I have read them for the first time in 3 years or so and seen improvements I can make. (I did do them in a bit of a hurry.) But, given the criteria stated above, none of them is “pretty bad”. At least not to a person of good will and a person who understands their stated aim.

If you want to lift the age of the target audience, go for it. I would, though, appreciate your mentioning it to me first instead of doing a deliberate offside and plastering it all over the Owner’s user page.

I would be most happy to help. AlanE 22:47, 21 July 2012 (EDT)