Syntagma Media’s “Paranormal Watch” blog has been renamed “Supernatural“. This is because of all the blogs in the SynMed stable, it was not forging ahead strongly. We felt the name was wrong, maybe too scientific for the subject matter, and so the change was made. Please visit if you like to be scared witless [Slight exaggeration].

We have also launched a new blog, Make The World Better, our 8th. MWB is a nonprofit, collaborative voice for making the world a better place. Anyone can post, provided they have a sensible idea, are not offensive, and can put a sentence or two together. If you would like to contribute to our Christmas week launch, just send a post to: John (at) SyntagmaMedia (dot) com.

Our 7th blog has also gone live: Tertiary Blogging. This is about blogging for influence, reputation and income. It has a new sidebar feature dedicated to jobs for tertiary bloggers. There’s also a call for contributions to the Writers’ Blog Alliance anthology for 2005.

Thanks for your attention.
John
Syntagma Media

Ashley’s Charles II throws much light on Charles II’s mistresses. In the following anecdote we hear about Barbara Villiers, the Countess of Castlemaine:

Lady Castlemaine was a termagant. Charles was little concerned over her infidelities but mocked them. When she took up with the handsome John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough, and Charles found them together in Barbara’s apartments, he said to Churchill, “Go, you are a rascal, but I forgive you because you do it to get a living.”

Lady Castlemaine could not stand the King’s sarcasm. She told him once that it very ill became him to reproach the one woman in England who least deserved it; that he never ceased to pick quarrels with her since his low tastes had first declared themselves; that to gratify his base desires he needed only stupid geese like Stuart and Wells and that little slut of an actress [Nell Gwyn] he had recently taken up with.

Floods of angry tears accompanied these storms; after which, taking on the part of Medea, “she would close the scene by threatening to massacre her children and burn the palace over his head”. As for Frances Stuart, she constantly provoked the King by increasing his ardour “without diminishing her virtue by making the final sacrifice.” …

When King Charles II’s mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism, Charles remarked with spirit that he never concerned himself with the souls of ladies, but with their bodies, in so far as they were gracious enough to allow him.

Adapted from Charles II by Antonia Fraser (1979).

Check out the best price for “The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England” by Antonia Fraser.

You know it’s a slow news day when a story about a member of the Royal Family taking a ride in an RAF jet is plastered all over the tabloids.

The Prince, who is on work-experience with the RAF in North Wales, boarded a Hawk jet on a standard training flight to an airfield near Sandhurst Military Academy. Later, he went on to Sandhurst to be fitted out with his new uniform, including the much-bandied boots.

The flight was said to cost the taxpayer £20,000. In fact, it cost nothing extra, since the flight was routinely scheduled in any case.

ICWales reports:

Royal biographer Brian Hoey argued that being part of the Royal Family brought with it certain privileges, which, in context, Prince William took only limited advantage of. “Let’s face it ~ we live in a monarchy and if we want our Royal Family to live in the style to which they are accustomed, and to which the rest of us would love to be accustomed, it’s going to cost money,” he said. “I don’t think we can expect Prince William to fly EasyJet.

“He doesn’t spend a huge amount of money, especially given he’s a multi-millionaire in his own right, and he doesn’t live an extravagant life.