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JSTOR-DAILY posted:
Happy Women’s History Month! To continue our series, let’s dive a little into Leonie G Pinelli.
She was a general in the Unification War, holding multiple positions throughout the conflict. Hers is a rags-to-riches story; she came from a poor background and held multiple positions in the Leicester military. Our favorite thing about her, though? There was a jingle written about her! Click the link below to listen to a recording, see more historical portraits, and read more about this History-making Woman!
HISTORY-HUNTER reblogged this and added:
Really, JSTOR, you’re not even going to mention how she was a Queer Mom(TM)? Guess I gotta do it myself.
Leonie Pinelli, in addition to having catchy-ass song written about her and being, uh, hot, was also a historical Queer Mom.
Some backstory in case you didn’t click through and read the JSTOR article (although you should; it’s good):
- Leonie Pinelli was born in Sauin, which was a podunk nowhere town in Gloucester (I said, writing from my personal podunk nowhere town in Gloucester)
- Her family was poor, but they went in to debt to send her to the Officers Academy in Garreg Mach, where she was part of the Class of 1181. (That should ring a bell; 1181 is when the Unification War broke out, at Garreg Mach, while the students were there.)
- After the Battle of Garreg Mach (again, the first battle in the Unification War), she went on the road as a mercenary, working with different companies.
- In 1186, she and the rest of her class reunited at Garreg Mach, and the “active” phase of the Unification War began.
- She served in several positions throughout the Unification War, including commanding a fort and participating in the Battle of Enbarr
- During the war, she married her former classmate Lorenz Gloucester, who was incidentally her liege lord
- She and Lorenz became teachers at the rebuilt Officers Academy at Garreg Mach and lived, if not happily ever after, then happily enough for a long, long time.
BUT what that summary leaves out is that when she turned up for the big reunion, she had a kid in tow. We don’t know much about this kid except that they were “approximately eight years old” and named Piper. She introduced them as her apprentice, but it was pretty obvious to everyone at the time that she’d basically adopted them. We don’t know where Piper was from specifically, but there’s strong evidence that they were a war orphan.
We don’t really know what Piper’s gender was. I’ll go with nonbinary, but they could have been agender or genderfluid or anything that falls under the nb umbrella. The gulf of history is just too wide, and there aren’t enough sources to really know. There are multiple sources to confirm that Leonie was queer, and we have Lorenz’s letters and journals to confirm his sexuality. As for Piper… we know they were the first kid Leonie adopted, and we know their approximate age, and we know what they went on to do later in life (work in government)… and we know that they are only ever referred to with they/them pronouns. There are literally no records indicating if they were AFAB or AMAB or anything. (Also, amazing and depressing that people in 1186 were better at respecting pronouns than the people in my hometown lolfuck)
We also know that Piper is the reason Leonie and Lorenz ended up adopting a lot of kids. There’s a letter where Leonie’s basically bitching to Lorenz about how she’s going to tie them to her horse to keep them from wandering off and bringing home strays.
In no particular order, here are the kids Leonie and Lorenz raised:
- Piper (first kid, came to them at about 8, nonbinary as already mentioned, went on to serve in government)
- Erika (daughter, adopted second, older than Piper, bi, went on to become an actress)
- Sevi (token straight cis daughter? Became a scholar)
- River (trans girl, became master woodworker)
- Kelton (gay boy, went into government, gay, followed in his father’s footsteps in the form of writing and saving a million letters)
- Marley (trans boy, gaaaaay, general do-gooder in an outdoorsy kind of way)
And there were more kids who are mentioned in Leonie and Lorenz’s letters, just not as consistently? All of these kids are mentioned, over and over, for years. And when Kelton moves out, we also have all of his letters too. As for the other kids who don’t get mentioned as often… Some might have been actual apprentices, and others might have been kids they fostered but who ended up living with other families.
Oh, Hunter, how do you know all those kids were queer? Well, again, acknowledging that it’s hard to know anything this personal across this much time, it all come back to the letters and journals. Her husband was a prolific writer, and he kept all their letters, and he kept a journal for most of his life, and a bunch of other papers besides. If you read through, sometimes there’s stuff that’s pretty obvious (Lorenz talked to Erika about being bi and then journaled about it; Kelton was Extremely Gay and wrote many happy letters about beautiful youths to his family) and some stuff is more subtle.
And, well. I might be wrong about some of them. It might be wrong to be trying to label them. But.
The internet is great for letting us know that we’re not alone, that there are other people like us somewhere in the world. Even if you’re the only queer kid in your town, even if you’re in the closet, you’re not alone. It can be a lifeline.
But Leonie and her little family also help me feel less alone. They help me to remember that we have always been here. And we have been carving out spaces for our own happy endings, our own families, our own futures, for as long as we’ve existed. Examples, not just of queer people in history, but of queer people who got happy endings from history, are like constellations in the night sky: distant, but bright, and sometimes able to help us navigate.
TAGS: Whoops I had an emotion again, Leonie Pinelli, Women in history, History, Feminism, Queer history, Queer youth, Adoption, JSTOR, Senpai please notice me, Hunter is this really how you want to spend a Friday night, Hell yes, History rules, Also last time I went out I got egged, It was gross
Birds-and-beans reblogged this.
Happy-as-a-clam reblogged this and added, “THANKS hunter now I have feelings again. Internet hugs for you.”
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zippy-doo reblogged this and added the following:
Not to be all “well, actually” but well actually, Lorenz was never her liege lord? He was the heir to Gloucester, so he was supposed to inherit control of the territory, but he never actually did.
The G in Leonie G Pinelli stands for Gloucester. And Lorenz was actually, legally, Lorenz Gloucester Pinelli.
Since Leonie was a peasant, Lorenz knew his parents would never approve of the match, so they got married in secret during the war. His family disowned him after, and I want to say control passed to a cousin? So he was never, technically, her liege lord.
Terminology (nomenclature?) note: Since the Gloucester name is better known, and he was born Lorenz Gloucester, his name gets shortened to Lorenz Gloucester, but really it’s Lorenz Gloucester Pinelli.
HISTORY-HUNTER replied: Good point, zippy-doo! Thank you!
Hole-Up reblogged HISTORY-HUNTER and added, “WAIT how do you know she was trans?”
HISTORY-HUNTER replied:
I’m so glad you asked. It’s Friday again, and that means there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here on Tumblr talking about
LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY
You might not realize this, but Gloucester is basically the paperwork capital of the world. On the one hand, bureaucracy, bleh. On the other hand, copious written records! The Gloucester family, which did at that time still control the government of the area, was bonkers for written reports. This is how we know* Leonie was trans. (*As close as we can to knowing something as personal and complicated as gender identity across such a vast gulf of time.)
We have records of marriages, births, and deaths for every year, and we have census records every twelve years. (They did it every 12 years, don’t ask.) So we see Margerie F Pinelli (17) and Oswold Pinelli (19) – born, a son, year 1160. And then on the next census, 5 years later, we see the Pinelli family again, and they list the mother, father, 2 sons, and 1 daughter. And then, on the next census, we see Pinelli family again: mother, father, 4 sons and 2 daughters.
BUT if you comb through the records year by year, there’s a discrepancy between the annual birth reports and the census report. If the annual reports are correct, there should have been one more Pinelli boy and one fewer Pinelli girl.
This boggled my mind when I realized it! (Actually, so much so that I then went back and did a similar exercise with 2 other families just to see if that sort of thing happened a lot, and the numbers were consistent, so I did some more, and… did I mention that I’m super fun to party with on the weekend?) No only was Leonie trans, but we also know a) that her village was at least willing enough to let her transition to fudge the paperwork, and b) a window of time in which she transitioned. Because of that second census entry, we can deduce that she had to have transitioned before she was 17.
Leonie enrolled in the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach when she was 20, and she enrolled as a woman, under the name Leonie. She is remembered by history as Leonie.
TAGS: Leonie Pinelli, Women in history, History, Feminism, Queer history, Trans history, Trans women, History rules, When your hometown is less accepting than a random rural village in the 1100s
Birds-and-beans reblogged this.
Happy-as-a-clam reblogged this and added, “Hunter I love u”
5 others reblogged this.
Hole-Up reblogged this and added, “First of all, that’s awesome. Second of all, your historical-records-combing skills are FIRE.”
zippy-doo reblogged this and added, “legit. Are you a historian or…?”
HISTORY-HUNTER replied, “Ha, I wish. I’m just a nerd with no life. I literally spend hours on Google Scholar, JSTOR, the Fodlan Open Archives, that sort of thing. I have a post about my favorite historical sources here [link.]”
TAGS: Shameless self-promotion, Hunter what’s your problem, how to be a nerd, Google Scholar, Fodlan Open Archives, JSTOR, Senpai please notice me, goddess I wish there were more free ways to access historical records, this is why I have no friends
birds-and-beans reblogged this.
Happy-as-a-clam reblogged this and added, “u have friends tho… ilu”
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HISTORY-HUNTER reblogged this and added:
Wow, this is blowing up. Do y’all want to hear more about how Lorenz (Leonie’s husband) was a historian’s wet dream?
I think I mentioned this before, but he was a prolific letter writer, even for the time. He not only saved the letters he received, he also saved many of the drafts of the letters he sent. He kept a journal too (and wrote poetry)!
His letters and journal give us a huge amount of insight into his personal and family life, but there’s more.
Leonie’s, and later their children’s, letters to him give us a huge insight into what life was like in Leicester during that time period. When they traveled, they sent back descriptions of the places and customs they saw. We know that by 1197, for example, trade between Fodlan and Almyra was sufficiently established to allow even merchants on the western coast to afford cane sugar, which was one of Almyra’s chief exports. (Their daughter wrote to them about a dessert she ate, which she noted was ‘as brightly snow-white as any you could buy in the Capital.’ Since most of Fodlan’s sugar was rendered from beets that gave the resulting goods a pinkish tinge, it’s reasonable to assume cane sugar was involved.) That’s a hyperspecific example, I know, and most of the letters are just, well, letters. But still! Pretty cool. (Link to the article about the sugar thing, by the way: [Link.] Thanks JSTOR!)
Even more than the letters, though, are a book Lorenz wrote. It wasn’t a history book, funnily enough, it was a textbook. When Lorenz and Leonie settled down and began working at the Officers Academy at Garreg Mach, Lorenz took a dual position teaching reason and logistics. At the time, there were no good textbooks, so he wrote one himself. It was super dry and boring… and we know this because he kept his original draft with annotations. (My fellow history nerds out there are probably seeing where this is going.)
Here’s a photo of a page of the original draft.
[Image: a very old piece of paper covered with flowing handwriting. The margins of the paper are heavily annotated. Inspection of the annotations reveal that there are two sets of handwriting: one that matches the main body of the work, and another that is more cramped and spiky. In some areas, the sets of handwriting alternates, indicating conversation back and forth.]
Leonie wrote all over the margins of his draft, suggesting things to add and things to remove. The published copy is significantly different from Lorenz’s first draft, and a lot of the changes match Leonie’s suggestions. Each chapter ends with an account, drawn from Lorenz and Leonie’s experiences in the Unification war, that illustrates the principle the chapter covers. These real-world examples are already useful enough, giving us a rough estimate of things like how many pairs of boots a battalion of 100 men would typically be issued, but a few years ago historians found the draft of those sections and lost their minds. Look at this:
[Image: a very old piece of paper covered with handwriting. Large sections of it have been crossed out and Leonie’s spiky handwriting appears next to the crossed-out section.]
This is Lorenz’s draft of the boots example, and in it he actually goes into detail about different types of boots issued for different terrain and climate! Leonie convinced him to cut that level of detail for the published edition. For students, that’s a good call. For future historians, the fact that she didn’t make the section illegible is a gift from the goddess herself. Oh, and on the back of the next page she writes a note about a different kind of boot that was apparently only used in one specific set of circumstances, which is the sole (if you’ll pardon the pun) source of description for that style of boot. The only one, scribbled on the back of someone else’s notes.
And the other miracle, of course, is that Lorenz saved these papers, and we found them again.
TAGS: History rules, Lorenz Gloucester Pinelli, Leonie Pinelli, JSTOR, senpai please notice me, you never know what’s going to end up being important to someone some day
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Hole-up reblogged this and added, “omg the tags. Senpai, please notice them. #JSTOR.”
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10 people reblogged your post, “LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY”
47 people reblogged your post, “LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY”
100+ people reblogged your post, “LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY”
HISTORY-HUNTER reblogged this and added:
Holy cow, this is blowing up AGAIN. Um, hi, I’m Hunter, I’m a queer history nerd in rural Leicester, and if you want you can buy me a coffee on ko-fi? I only need, uh, 40k coffees to afford college tuition lol. [link]
5k+ people reblogged your post, “LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY”
JSTOR-DAILY reblogged your post, “LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY”
HISTORY-HUNTER posted:
What the fuck, JSTOR just reblogged me???
zippy-doo reblogged this.
Birds-and-beans reblogged this and added, “Yes!”
Happy-as-a-clam reblogged this and added, “OMG!”
Hole-up reblogged this and added, “xD senpai noticed them!”
94 others reblogged this.
HISTORY-HUNTER posted:
omg who are you people? [blushing face emoji]
300+ reblogged this.
HISTORY-HUNTER posted:
omg seriously why [GIF of an otter bashfully covering its face]
10K+ people have reblogged your post, “LEONIE PINELLI: TRANS WOMAN OF HISTORY”
Pinelli-Institute-Official reblogged your post and added, “History-Hunter, please DM us.”
zippy-doo replied, “omg.”
Birds-and-beans replied, “omg.”
Happy-as-a-clam replied, “omg.”
Hole-up replied, “xDDDD”
100+ people reblogged this.
HISTORY-HUNTER posted:
You guys. You guys. I am literally in tears right now.
If you see this, it means either you follow my stupid little tumblr or you saw it on the reblog, and you guys.
I… will be attending the University of Fodlan: Leicester Campus in the fall, on scholarship from the Pinelli Institute.
YOU GUYS. You made this happen, you took my little post about Leonie, and you shared it and shared it, and now… I, too, will be leaving my podunk nowhere town to go to a school I have no business attending.
I don’t know what the future will hold, but from the bottom of my heart: thank you. I’ll do my best to make you (and Leonie! And her whole, queer family) proud. Thank you.
TAGS: Surprisingly not about history, history rules, real life stuff, I’m literally literally crying, thank you