O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.
Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won’t even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we’ll conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t own a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
– Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.”
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire
In case anyone needed a dramatic reading of the above historical letter.
I’m dying!
Oh my god.
I’m now dying to know what happened next.
Period invective at its finest, even if it may not be quite as period as you think.
(NB – Peter Capaldi’s reading is probably NSFW without headphones.)
Here’s a link to much larger versions of the painting. Take a look at the full-size one: the facial expressions are a treat.
Also, check out Repin’s later, revised but uncompleted “sketch” version, which seems to have Vlad Dracula as a guest star just right of centre.
Listening to Capaldi’s reading you can really imagine this crowd of bros around a table yelling at the guy with the pen not to forget their favourite insult.
Turkish mail and plate coat, each individual link is inscribed, “Power is in obedience. Wealth is in contentment. May the end be to the best.” Late 15th century.
from The Royal Armouries Collection
@wearepaladin I understand paladins tend to favor plate or chain, but I think you might like this.
“The rise to power of the imperial harem is one of the most dramatic
developments in the sixteenth-century history of the Ottoman Empire. From
almost the beginning of the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, who came to
the throne in 1520, until the mid-seventeenth century, high-ranking women of the Ottoman dynasty enjoyed a degree of political power and public prominence greater than ever before or after. Indeed, this period in the empire’s history is often referred to, in both popular and scholarly literature, as “the sultanate of women.”The women of the imperial harem, especially the mother of the reigning sultan and his leading concubines, were considerably more active than their predecessors in the direct exercise of political power: in creating and manipulating domestic political factions, in negotiating with foreign powers, and in acting as regents for their sons. Furthermore, they played a central role in what we might call the public culture of sovereignty: public rituals of imperial legitimation and royal patronage of monumental building and artistic production.” – Leslie P. Peirce. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire.
The women of ‘The Sultanate of Women’ in TIMS’s Magnificent Century & Magnificent Century Kösem
Steel Phoenix Studios 
