Between the Scylla of the Semester and the Charybdis of the Holiday Course

The second-last week before the holidays is winding down:

Monday's Spanish class was online due to the BVG city transit strike and the icy conditions on the sidewalks. It really was quite dangerous until snow fell in the early morning hours on Wednesday, and laid a layer of soft powder over the ossified ice.

Tuesday we discussed El celoso extremeño by Miguel de Cervantes in the Spanish literature seminar. The subject matter — people exploiting power differentials to oppress women — was not very edifying (even if it was timely). Besides I like Cervantes's arch humour better when it's used on different topics, which sounds a bit worldly and learned so I should mention at once that I never finished reading Don Quijote.

Then, Wednesday, the Spanish class held a debate. Our topic: tourism in Berlin. The discussion ended up delving into the problems or advantages of AirBnBs, whether we should be attracting wealthy tourists or not, the responsibilities of local government and of tourists, and lastly the historical and sociopolitical importance of having people visit Berlin and understand what really happened especially in the 20th century.

Besides I found out that I received a 2,7 mark for my second Spanish essay. — That's not excellent, but it is a relief considering that I felt I was 'getting too big for my britches' after getting a 1,0 on the last assignment. It was awkward when I received the feedback sheet, however... I'd gotten top marks ... except that it was a classmate's sheet that the professor had given me by accident! So a classmate knows that I had a far worse mark than he did, my brief optimism withered, and the professor apologized to him but not also to me for the mix-up! Anyway, the mark should not have been high. Finishing writing the essay in the early morning hours, not proofreading it after a good night's sleep, and disabling spell check on my word processing app had led to spectacular grammatical and orthographical errors.

The essay's topic was cheerful, at least. I wrote about the economic effects of immigration.. and I started off my essay by mentioning the news that the Spanish government intends to 'legalize' around 500,000 undocumented migrants.

In the afternoon, in a different class, we discussed an early 20th-century Ukrainian novel, a Bildungsroman, which I prefer to forget about although the class itself was nice.

Today I had an online Greek grammar class. We struggled with when to use the present, imperfect, aorist, or pluperfect, in the subjunctive mood. The English equivalent would be e.g. 'If he had found a telephone, he would have reported his car breakdown.'

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I haven't had luck with the job search yet. Most recently, I sent off one application to a conversation research study that offered a chance to win a gift certificate, and another application to a law firm that needs help in their office. I'm also wondering whether to try to earn small sums here and there by writing, an idea that I'm sure will inspire a hollow laugh in many a person who has tried to do the same on a larger and more serious scale.

That said, I'd kind of prefer to dive into irresponsibility and have lots of time for journalistic outings. Finally visit the Danish embassy to write a piece about its cultural offerings and the contrast to the geopolitical storms surrounding it. Contact Canadian filmmakers who will be at the Berlinale film festival in order to write up their work. Attend a political protest again. Watch local winter sports and gain a little background knowledge instead of feeding the capitalist monster of the Olympics. Find out more about the Washington Post staff who were laid off in the Berlin bureau. Etc. Unfortunately, I don't think it's looking practical right now due to university commitments — not just the last tasks for this semester, but also the 'Allgemeine Berufsvorbereitung' technology course that I will take into mid-March.

In the meantime, I'm trying to lose some of my anxiety about life by revisiting TV shows about life in the 1950s, 'unplugging' to read print media, and doing more housework. Having already watched the Fifties episodes of Back in Time for the Weekend and Back in Time for Dinner, I've moved on to "The Supersizers Eat... The 1950s". Today I cooked a celery, carrot, turnip, onion and chicken soup from a 1900 recipe, as well as green peas, and baked a jam-carrot sponge with apricot jam for dessert. And, less thrillingly, I cleaned one of our bathroom sinks with baking soda, citric acid, hot water and a little muscle-power; took care of personal accounting tasks; and handwashed a load of dishes...

The pension fund windfall I'm expecting didn't arrive in January and I may be in a sticky situation in a year. But I think the worst part is just not having had a mini-job or part-time job since September; it is cracking my sense of self-sufficient independence. This might also not be so bad, however, if I weren't still uselessly self-flagellating about 'failing' at my previous full-time job.

Fortunately, brother Ge. lent his services to one of our aunts for a technical problem recently ... and she sent him chocolate truffles as a thank-you, and he shared the chocolate with us today! 

Ice in Berlin and Chaos Abroad

It has snowed again, after freezing rain, so after eschewing my bicycle and taking the U-Bahn to university, I walked between two stations on the way home to look at the scenery today.

On the streets and sidewalks, the weather brought us compacted ice, a sprinkling of snow rather like powdered sugar (footprints and tire treads stenciled out of it), and crushed gravel sprayed by the diligent snowplows of the Berliner Stadtreinigung and others. Around the bodies of cars, fringes of icicles were hanging. And where trees and bushes were not gloved in ice, they were frosted white.

I looked at paw-prints of dogs in the snow as I walked parallel to the U-Bahn tracks in Dahlem, and the glowing rose hips and red hawthorn berries in the hedges, the male hazel catkins with dark glossy blots where ice had settled. Two Nordic walkers energetically approached, but the rest of us who didn't wield pointy sticks were a little more careful.

Of course the stairs into the U-Bahn were gritty and splotched brown with the crushed gravel that we were tracking in.

I'VE BEEN a bit psychologically hung over from the weekend, since Saturday was unusually busy and besides my sleep pattern has been disrupted by e.g. a funny burning smell in our apartment keeping me awake past 5 a.m. one day. But part of the activity on Saturday was lunch in Prenzlauer Berg, in good company. To go into too much detail about the more trivial part: French toast served with finely chopped pineapple, kiwi and strawberry slices, halved grapes, lashings of maple syrup, and whipping cream (all of it reminiscent of the summer weather that is currently far, far away). For my drink I had fresh ginger tea with mint leaves and a fragment of orange. And afterward, in a small family evening get-together, we commemorated Papa with music and conversation and food; he would have turned 73 the week before last.

Due to the 'hangover,' I've already skipped two university classes this week. That said, the marks on my Spanish class presentation came in, and the professor was so impressed that he gave me a 1,0. Not very well deserved, perhaps, but it's comforting for academic and professional reasons to edge closer to the official B2 European language level in Spanish.

RETURNING to the café meal: In my budget, there is less room for discretionary spending. At a guess I still power through some €1250 per month, however. Of course the rent that I pay my mother is not extortionate (not to mention that my siblings and mother have repeatedly urged me to decrease the payments), and the biggest other expenditure is health insurance. So some of the rest still goes to fun stuff, like French toast. But I recently received good news: a private pension fund, into which my employer paid for two years, has been dissolved. So I am expecting a windfall of around €2500 after taxes etc.

On the job front, I've been offering myself as a tutor (partly because I've liked instilling knowledge, partly also because I really want to mother-hen somebody again). I also applied to be a participant a.k.a. guinea pig in a medical study. The second possibility has withered a little: when I'd filled out the screening form, they replied saying that my migraines rendered me ineligible.

AS FOR LESS personal events, the news has been despicable.

Firstly, I'm not too keen on the EU Commission's pursuit of new free trade agreements with South America and India as a way out of our dependence on the whims of the Queens real estate magnate in the White House: surely we have learned that free trade needs to be approached carefully. If I understand correctly, one long-term effect of past agreements like NAFTA seems to have been collapsing industries that help keep rural areas or specific towns economically and socially thriving, thereby fuelling populism and unlivable hardship in those areas. Being locked in Faustian bargains with the Mileis and Modis of this world also does not seem much better than being locked in Faustian bargains with the Trumps of this world. But so far those concerns also pale in comparison to the bloodshed in Minneapolis.

As for the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, I was (like many others) especially happy about Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech. Specifically I liked that he acknowledged that international law has not been followed consistently in the past, but embraced the idea of 'middle powers' cooperating with each other, all while quoting Thucydides and displaying considerable backbone. But Chancellor Friedrich Merz's speech was worrying. Merz should have pointed out that the 'brutal new reality' that he describes in world affairs goes against the laws and best practices that Germany is obligated to defend, given the lessons of its own Fascist history. Instead, as far as I could tell, he suggested hopping on the bandwagon, although with an eye to extracting advantages for the EU. Similarly I think that NATO's head Mark Rutte is taking a page out of Trump's amoral book by negotiating over Greenland and Denmark's heads.

If indeed US and EU security experts, as the New York Times reported, agree that Russia and China seem to have little interest in Greenland at present, Merz's suggestion at Davos that Russia is the main threat was also especially toadying and embarrassing. As for the other speakers, I didn't bother watching Trump's speech. Much though I liked aspects of France's president Macron's speech, I felt that like Ukraine's president Zelensky's speech, it represented a descent into a Trumpian style of airing everything that pops into one's head.

Returning to the aforementioned Chancellor, I was reasonably happy with Angela Merkel as chancellor, though rarely ecstatic. I'm also trying to give Merz the benefit of the doubt because the role of chancellor is so demanding, and I'm sure he's trying. But, as a happily irresponsible member of the peanut gallery, I'll just frankly divulge did not expect her successor to fall as short in terms of percipience, charm, and moral stature, as he has.

That said, Davos offered one comfort. Last year I stopped watching any videos from the Forum because the pro-Trump paeans from roundtable discussion moderators etc. were nauseating. It also wasn't surprising to me to read from the point of view a New York Times reporter who has been to Davos repeatedly, that the Forum has lost any genuine desire for sustainable policy and business practices that it once pursued. Instead it has dedicated itself to empty "virtue signalling" (once signalling DEI and climate change reduction, and now signalling more Trumpian 'virtues'). But this year at least there was some intellectual friction.

INSPIRED mostly by the not-at-all-unhinged situation around Greenland, I've been taking notes on how to put together an emergency kit:

I've gotten as far as putting 1.5 L (per the Red Cross it should be 1 gallon) of water in my room. Next up: putting together a supply of survival food, Item #2 on a 31-item list. As I told my brother Ge., at least I haven't gone so far as to consider iodine tablets or a Geiger counter... These paranoid preparations, which I'd admittedly scoff at any other time, should be useful in case someone decides to sabotage parts of Berlin's electrical supply again, too.

And once the university semester is over — 2 or 3 weeks of classes, 2 essays, and 1 class presentation are left before mid-February — maybe I will finally take that First Aid course...

In the meantime I've signed up for another food-sorting shift at the same Berlin charity whose challenging field of work inspired me to write the whiny descriptions of rotten carrots etc. over the summer. The shift should take place next weekend.

The Ominous First Ten Days of 2026

New Year's Eve was much calmer this year in Berlin, so if the U.S. government hadn't decided to invade Venezuela a few days later it would have been a quiet transition into 2026. Even the New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic was, I thought, a pleasing balance between the traditional, modern, and absurd; if the Canadian conductor was a little obsessed with his own presence at the event, I still thought he wove his knowledge of late 19th century French impressionist composers into Strauss and his contemporaries in a way that gave the first half of the concert different nuances. (In the second half I felt he ran out of steam, especially after the Egyptian March.) I liked the first ballet performance a lot, too: elegant dancers pretended to emerge from a diplomatic vehicle, and pranced around a Viennese building in pastel-coloured pantsuits. It felt like a fantasy of a world order where diplomacy isn't Steve Witkoff grinning shyly across a Kremlin table at Vladimir Putin, alongside a poker-faced Jared Kushner.

But as it was, on January 3rd I cycled to a demonstration against the Venezuela intervention, which had been registered with Berlin's police earlier that day. It was an adventurous ride: for the first two minutes it felt like the snowflakes were lacerating my eyeballs, and even after the snowfall lessened, my tires slipped and skidded on the bicycle paths. A few beleaguered bicycle deliverymen were undertaking the same route. Then I decided to switch into the car lanes, after walking partway along the sidewalks while pushing my bicycle, and somehow I arrived in one piece at Brandenburg Gate, beside the U.S. Embassy. A crowd had gathered and police officers were surveilling a line of security fences, set up on two sides of the mass of people, designed to protect the Embassy. I was undecided at first to be part of the protest as a private citizen or whether report as an observer, but since a lot of agendas were mixing in the crowd, I eventually decided for the second. It seemed to me that most of the protestors were German-speaking, and belonged to a coalition of far-left and communist groups. I counted well over 100 people— a police officer told me he'd estimate about 250 — and I felt it was a decent turnout, especially given the short notice.

A massive power outage happened on the same day due to sabotage. It wasn't in my part of Berlin, so I have no firsthand experience to report except that — unlike some politicians and part of the press — I am not particularly scandalized that the city's mayor popped out for an hour of tennis practice on the first day. I will say that in general the U-Bahn seemed less crowded, but that might be because of the parlous state of Berlin's icy sidewalks for the past week.

My youngest brother shared with me an apt meme adapted from Hergé's comics: Captain Haddock sits, exhausted, at a bar while Snowy eyes his glass of whiskey, and exclaims "What a year, huh?" Tintin replies, "Captain, it's January 3rd."

I've been wondering from time to time what to do if Canada is invaded. For some reason my paternal grandfather pops into my head as the person whom I'd ask, if he hadn't died twenty years ago. He of course served on the wrong side in World War II. I feel that he would frown on any idea of fixing the problem by taking up arms myself, but would approve my general tendency to want to get a sound training in First Aid, if not a paramedic's training, and put that training to use. Especially after seeing what home care aides go through, I figure that providing health care is harrowing and psychologically risky enough to count as a dedicated service.

The university semester is picking up speed again. I skipped two classes last week, and two classes were cancelled, so I had one in-person class and three online classes. For Wednesday I need to prepare a presentation in Spanish, which is leading to the usual low-level classroom stress. It will be about the effects of migration on children.

Bookworming in the Last Week of December

This morning one of my brothers went out to fetch the usual Saturday breakfast of croissants and a baguette, telling us after he returned that the pavement had been slippery with black ice. Our mother had also observed pedestrians from the window taking tiny careful steps as they navigated the streets. Yesterday evening I'd heard the whooshing of a Berliner Stadtreinigung snowplow on the larger street, but wasn't sure if the side streets and sidewalks had been sprinkled with salt or crushed gravel this time.

Last evening we had stove-related excitement again, as a while after I'd laid three more coals on the fire in one of our tile stoves, I smelled a 'hot iron' scent. I nervously checked the fire a few times but it seemed all right. Then some minutes later Ge. checked the stove and felt even more nervous, deciding to evacuate most of the coals. Based on the fierce heat that radiated from many of the tiles even for hours afterward, the whooshing draughts, the dry and frosty weather, and Ge.'s googling, we surmised that the draught must have been too strong and the fire too bright, so that old deposits of creosote may have started smouldering in the hidden upper niches of the stove. The piping hot tiles were a comfort insofar as we concluded that whatever deposits were there were hopefully still burning off so that they would stop being dangerous. Overnight we let the stove cool entirely, then in the morning restarted it.

I've been devoting most of my time to 'self-care': an hour of ballet and yoga yesterday, and a lot of reading. Short stories by contemporary Italian writers translated into German, an old romance novel by Mary Burchell translated into Portuguese, news from the New York Times and on the websites of Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg and Tagesschau, and an even older romance novel from the early 1900s that was set amongst tourists in the Netherlands. The Dutch setting, and my Wikipedia searches for locations, were surprisingly relevant to my one university-homework-related enterprise: reading about 17th-century philosophy to figure out what an Enlightened man looks like. I finished the Spinoza chapter in A History of Western Philosophy, and have now hopped over to a biography from the 1960s published by the German house Rowohlt. Spinoza grew up as the son of Jewish parents who had escaped the Inquisition from Spain via Portugal to the Netherlands, and while much of the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam was razed during the Nazi occupation, two 17th-century synagogues, a church, and at least one stately house remain.

In turn, the history of 17th-century Amsterdam ties into late 16th-century trade, which is relevant to the Tudor era Beauty-and-the-Beast story that I'm trying to write again. The challenge I'm facing right now is the 'world building,' which is necessary if I want to write an interesting take rather than a thoroughly effete fan fiction. So, taking techniques from my university courses, I've been reading a long and rambling Elizabethan work by Sir Philip Sidney and taking notes on many of the 'topoi' (e.g. sheep: shepherds, lambs, piping, ...) I come across in it, to research Elizabethan Britain. It's startling how much in the English language has not changed over time, for example the colloquialism 'busy as a bee'; and Sidney uses a rich emotional vocabulary, ranging from depression to envy, which feels startlingly New Age.

I've been thinking of making the Beast a Spanish person who is hiding in England during the Armada. First of all, the challenge of being able to see an 'enemy' as a fellow human being is, I think, a very contemporary topic. As the granddaughter of Germany's fascist generation it's always boggled my mind how after World War II there seemed to be a wild range of reactions e.g. amongst American or British veterans toward Germans, ranging from the famous 'Little Vittles' operation (distributing chocolate and raisins to Berlin's children) to the opposite, and I think some of the same challenges are arising for example between Ukrainians and Russians. Secondly I seem to remember that the original French tale emphasized that the Beast didn't even have esprit (wittiness) to recommend himself. I think that the original tale was pressuring women to go along with arranged marriages, even if they are not attracted to their future husbands; so not all aspects of the source material are ones that I'm willing to pursue. But what I'm willing to pick up is the fear of seeming stupid — and few of us can help feeling stupid when trying to express ourselves in a second language, for example, so creating language differences between the protagonists will bring out that dimension. Thirdly, being an enemy of the state would explain why the Beast would need to live in secrecy. Lastly, the Spanish angle will let me weave in literature and history that I'm studying... That said, a lot of difficulties remain. A central problem with that era and its trade is, of course, the birth of colonialism; and it would be silly to write a story about e.g. a nice cozy winter spent at the fireside, if the more salient and less threadbare backstory is that one logged and stole the neighbour's forest for fuel.

Whenever I feel weltschmerzy and guilty, I've been reducing my carbon footprint by deleting old Twitter news digest emails from five years ago. It's disconcerting how much the world has changed since then, and how optimistic it was from my lefty point of view. For example, debates about weaponry that emerged in the German national news often referred to the ethics of exporting German-manufactured arms to countries that don't respect human rights. Xenophobic sentiment was attributed to and espoused by an extreme fringe, instead of a mainstream. And a gay rights activist who supports trans rights claimed, after she spoke out about a political debate, that 'J.K. Rowling never disappoints' ...

In the meantime, we still have a lot of uneaten Christmas gingerbread and chocolate and marzipan in our pantry. The revelry goes on!

Christmas Morning, 2025

Christmas Day is bright and clear, at the expense of the temperature: it was already -7°C yesterday evening, and it hasn't become any warmer. Car traffic is sparse, but more audible now, although one can hear the church bells well despite the layer of sound.

The youngest brothers, my mother and I have had breakfast: bread rolls with or without raisins, cheese, cold cuts, with tea and coffee. We have also started on our Christmas plates: Spekulatius, chocolate-coated gingerbread hearts filled with jam, Nürnberger Lebkuchen, fondant stars and shapes, sugar-speckled jelly shapes, Marzipankartoffeln, Pfeffernüsse, and satsuma oranges. Aside from the poinsettia-patterned tablecloth that my father's mother gave us in the 1990s, we also lighted tapered candles and tea lights. Then we sang two Christmas carols in the living room, beside the tree, which J. decorated yesterday evening.

Early this afternoon, a neighbour rang our doorbell to pick up a parcel, and we've been mildly busy on social media; but aside from that we've had little contact with the outside world.

I've been reading a book and thinking about whether I really feel like going outside again.

At midnight I'd had a little excursion to take photographs and out of sheer curiosity about who is still up and about at 11:59 p.m. at Christmas Eve in our neighbourhood. Frost was forming on the windowpanes and roofs of cars, Christmas lights twinkling sparsely from the apartment blocks, pedestrians were far and few between, but quite a few windows were alight. And at Nollendorfplatz, as always, the fluorescent bands of rainbow colour were glowing on the cupola of the U-Bahn station.

Shakespeare's Complete Works Reading Challenge: Sixth Day of Henry VI

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? Last year I had a hankering to half-liveblog all of Shakespeare's plays ... in chronological order, onward from Henry VI, Part 1: written by Shakespeare (b. 1564) in 1591. Time travel to Elizabethan Age literature also feels strangely Christmassy, and therefore seasonal again.

Previous Henry VI blog posts

Act I Scene 1: Henry V's funeral | Scenes 2, 3 & 4: French dauphin meets Joan of Arc, Duke of Gloucester clashes with Bishop of Winchester, the Earl of Salisbury is killed in fighting in Orléans | Scenes 5 & 6: Joan of Arc fights Lord Talbot, French celebrate lifting of siege on Orléans | Act II Scene 1: The English reconquer Orléans | Scenes 2 & 3: Charles VII and Joan of Arc are defeated & on the lam. Countess of Auvergne tries and fails to kill Lord Talbot.

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December 1
10:20 p.m.

Act II.
Scene IV.

Mary would have certainly disapproved of fighting...
La Vierge nourrissant le Christ, miniature d'un livre d'heures paris
by the Master of the Munich Golden Legend (fl. 1420-1460)
via Wikimedia Commons

A squabble amongst English lords takes place in London, in a garden where roses grow, beside the Temple Church that is run by the Knights Hospitaller and serves generations of lawyers-in-training. The future Duke of York lodges in a chamber at the Temple, too. Richard of York (Plantagenet) is the leading figure on one side of the squabble, the Duke of Somerset on the other side.

They want the Earl of Warwick to decide who is right.

Warwick diplomatically (albeit with arguably false modesty) offers a refusal:

Between two Hawks, which flies the higher pitch,
Between two Dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,
Between two Blades, which bears the better temper,
Between two Horses, which doth bear him best,
Between two Girls, which hath the merriest eye,
I have perhaps some shallow spirit of Judgement

...But, he adds elaborately, in this case he doesn't have a clue.

York and Somerset reply heatedly that it's not such a tough question, each one claiming that anyone who has eyes to see could see that they are in the right.

Then, eager to end the dispute, York (who seems the cleverer character of the two) asks the men around him to pluck flowers from the red rose bush to show that they are on his side.

The Bard doesn't make clear which legal matter York and Somerset were arguing about — Wikipedia suggests that the matter was trivial. Essentially, however, the two lords are discussing the line of succession to the throne of England. York's mother's parentage has given him a strong claim; but York's father was considered a traitor, imprisoned, and beheaded when young Richard was fewer than five years old.

It is the rosebushes in Shakespeare's telling that eventually led Sir Walter Scott and his 19th-century contemporaries to refer to the English civil wars of 1455 to 1487, i.e. the fight between the House of York and the House of Lancaster for the throne, as the Wars of the Roses:

At any rate, the men who believe in York's side of the argument are instructed to pick white roses; the men who believe in Somerset should pick red roses.

Warwick begins the selection, picking a white rose from a bush. Next Suffolk picks a red one.

But Vernon intervenes. He says that the lords should only keep up the exercise if it would truly end the dispute: the side that ends up with the fewest roses should concede defeat.

Although at first York and Somerset both agree with Vernon's intervention, the losing side changes its mind. As more and more white blossoms are picked, Somerset and his friend the Duke of Suffolk exchange insults with the York faction rather than give up.

York concludes by telling his enemy,

And by my Soul, this pale and angry Rose,
As Cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,
Will I for ever, and my Faction wear,
Until it wither with me to my Grave,
Or flourish to the height of my Degree.

Suffolk and Somerset flounce off the stage.

Somerset: Farewell ambitious Richard.

Afterward Warwick predicts,

And here I prophecy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send between the Red-Rose and the White,
A thousand Souls to Death and deadly Night.

York thanks his supporters, and as they leave the stage he tells them,

Come, let us four to Dinner: I dare say,
This Quarrel will drink Blood another day.

Rather than plucking flowers to decide whether 1. Shakespeare's version of history or 2. my doubt of Shakespeare's version of history, is correct, I've checked with Wikipedia. In fact the Bard was not very accurate. It is beyond the scope of this blog to properly research the leading figures and events and causes of the Wars of the Roses. But I recommend a quick look at the biographies of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, and Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, because they are entertaining tales in themselves.

"Detail on the West Door of Temple Church, London"
by Ethan Doyle White (2018)
Temple Church had to be reconstructed after WWII
but I am fairly certain that Shakespeare might have seen these capitals
in their original state.
via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

December 2

6 p.m.

Scene V.

The dying Lord Mortimer, uncle to Richard of York, is released from prison. York arrives for a friendly family visit. In this ahistorical scene, Shakespeare changes a few small details — like the fact that the real Lord Mortimer had revealed York's father's plot against Henry V and later sat on the commission that passed the father's death sentence.

I'm wondering whether to borrow Lord Mortimer's terminology the next time I visit the doctor:

Even like a man new haled from the Wrack,

So fare my Limbes with long Imprisonment:

And these gray Locks, the Pursuivants of death,

Nestor-like aged, in an Age of Care,

Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.

These Eyes, like Lamps, whose wasting Oil is spent,

Wax dim, as drawing to their Exigent.

Weak Shoulders, over-borne with burdening Grief,

And pith-less Arms, like to a withered Vine,

That drops his sap-less Branches to the ground.

Yet are these Feet, whose strength-less stay is numb,

(Unable to support this Lump of Clay)

Swift-winged with desire to get a Grave,

As witting I no other comfort have.

He later adds, to let his nephew know without ambiguity that he is tottering on the brink of death:

the Arbitrator of Despairs,

Just Death, kind Umpire of men's miseries,

With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence

In real life, Lord Mortimer was sent to Ireland because he had a confrontation with the Duke of Gloucester. There he died of the plague, at the age of only 33 years — three decades before the Wars of the Roses began. That said, York really was his heir.

In Shakespeare's play, York tells his uncle Mortimer of the Duke of Somerset's insults in the Temple garden (Somerset had unkindly mentioned York's father's execution). He embraces his uncle's (fictional) cause to install the House of York on the throne of England.

Lord Mortimer is more cautious, telling York,

With silence, Nephew, be thou politick,

Strong fixed is the House of Lancaster,

And like a Mountain, not to be remov'd.

And so Richard leaves for Parliament, to settle the score with the Duke of Somerset...