And so Am I Not

Perseus O'Brien

Summary
Final work

MTU Cork School of Music graduate with a 2nd class honours bachelor’s degree in Western Music Studies. An ambitious, hard-working and attentive individual with a strong passion and working knowledge in arts. Previous experience in Vintage fashion and fabric retail. Strong interpersonal skills developed while interacting with clients and providing tailored fashion and design advice/recommendations. Excellent eye for detail developed through styling different colours, materials and choosing complementary accessories. Effective team player with the ability to build strong workplace relationships, particularly when working towards team deadlines. Leadership skills developed through managing a team at The Goose Boutique. Skilled at designing costumes for stage, screen, film, and TV. Top of the class in Costume and Make-up module at university level, and scholarship recipient for MA Costume for Performance at UAL. Particularly interested in historical clothing, ceremonial robes and uniforms, Irish clothing through the ages, and the history of LGBTQ+ fashion and masculinity in fashion. Skilled at sewing by both machine and hand. Familiar with machine embroidery and adept at PES Design 11 software. Skilled in all areas of fashion, particularly, silhouette and accessorizing. Excellent working knowledge in styles and looks past and present.

MTU Cork School of Music graduate with a 2nd class honours bachelor’s degree in Western Music Stu...

“Her perfect life in all extremes, her patient heart did show,

For in this world she never found, but doleful days and woe.”

-Anonymous, 1558/9; The Epitaphe upon the Death of the Most Excellent and our late vertuous Quene Marie, deceased, augmented by the first Author.

On the 18th of February 1516, Katherine of Aragon, wife to England’s King Henry VIII gave birth to a healthy child after 3 stillbirths and the death of a baby boy. However, the baby was girl, and so her birth was a disappointment to her father, who famously longed for a son, and would tear his kingdom apart to get one.

They named the child Mary, and she would go on to become one of Europe’s most infamous rulers. Her reign was defined by the Marian persecutions, which saw nearly 300 people executed as heretics for their protestant beliefs-mostly by being burnt at the stake resulting in a slow and painful death. The religious persecutions resulted in her earning the monicker ‘Bloody Mary’ and she would be remembered as a fanatical tyrant, and even go on to inspire an urban legend about a demonic entity lurking behind the glass of a mirror.

However, this reductive summary of her life is the result of centuries of anti-Catholic propaganda and misogynistic historical analysis, and to this day most people only know Mary as a ruthless queen. In recent years, historians, particularly female scholars have begun to examine her life with a more contextualized view.

By understanding the circumstances of her birth, childhood, adolescence, ascension to the throne and her marriage, we get a more faceted view of Mary Tudor.