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Moon Tea


Angel Eyes

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So I understand that Moon Tea is a means of aborting pregnancies. But how much problems does it cause for future pregnancies? Will the drinker suffer numerous miscarriages, stillbirths and sickly children like Lysa Tully-Arryn did? Or will there be no ill effects for the mother or future offspring?

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I think that if it had widespread dangerous side-effects it would not be as popular as it is. Asha and Arianne use it frequently; I doubt they'd do so if they ran some risk of taking it. We also know Cersei used it to abort Robert's child, and while we don't exactly know the timeline of when that happened, we have to assume it happened fairly early on. So she would have at least given birth to Tommen after that. 

I think Lysa's problems carrying were just a mixture of her poor health and the fact her husband was old enough to be her father. So.. while Robert's seed was strong, his was not.

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I think the whole point of moon tea is that GRRM wanted a post-1963 attitude towards sex in a medieval setting. Before 1963, there was a lot of dread about withdrawing in time, only at the right time of the month, and having more kids than you could really afford already. Women in particular were not so keen to keep popping them out til their uterus turned inside out and flopped out with the baby. Or of that thing where every pregnancy leave them that much weaker and close to death. Especially when they are going to be survived by eight children under the age of ten, or something like that. If you look at marriage records from the medieval, it is not unusual for a widower to marry very shortly after his wife dies, not so much from affection as from a desperate need to find a housekeeper that can manage his dozen children while he spends every daylight hour finding a way to keep enough food on the table for them all.

There were abortifactants, and women took them, but they were drastic and unreliable. Haemorrhaging to death or to permanent disability was a side effect. Partial abortion and necrotic tissue leading to septicaemia and/or gangrene was another. Or sometimes, just violently ill, and still pregnant. Or still pregnant, but now with a child who was blind, deaf, deformed or intellectually disabled.

The easiest, most socially acceptable remedy for these ills was separate beds and minimally (or simply not at all) pleasurable sex followed by weeks of remorse, recriminations, resentment and bated breath as the potential parents wondered if they had got away with it this month.

And a whole lot of unwanted children that still had to be seen to and dealt with (although that was not so much an issue for noble families - in fact, one of the less accurate things about noble families is the lack of nannys and nursery maids. For example, Eddard has six children, and apparently only Jon had a wet nurse, and the only nanny they had was Old Nan, who isn't really up to the washing and mending and lifting and running around that small children entail. I would have expected at least two full-time nursery maids, as well as Old Nan, and at least one other wetnurse for Robb, and every subsequent child also having a wetnurse, even if Catelyn also breastfed, because she was lady of the manor, and the clothes that reflected that were not of a kind that made breastfeeding easy, and also because of status - we don't see Catelyn in the scullery rubbing river sand on the dirty pots, or at the well gathering water for the washing, and yet she apparently singlehandedly suckled every child.)

So GRRM doesn't want to write about the kind of sex his parents probably had, surrounded by drying diapers, with the constant distraction of children with the various scrofulas and distempers children get, reminding them of their broken dreams, and their already too numerous obligations. He wants at least the sadists to have fun every time. And he doesn't want his good guys forcing themselves on their partners and being deadbeat dads every time.

He wants Catelyn enjoying the good ache from Ned's speedy sex, and praying for another son. He wants Asha and Dany to be up for anything, captaining ships and flying dragons. Not lolling around all day like a beached whale, complaining about their feet, their back, their bladder. He wants Lysa to lurv Littlefingers deal, not worrying what would happen to her SweetRobin if the next miscarriage kills her. He wants us to feel no more sorry for Cersei than is strictly necessary. He wants us to feel that Cersei had heaps of control in her relationship with Robert, even if he raped her. That she planned her children. Also, he wants to write about a variety of sex. Except male homosexual sex - for that he takes the church line, but he doesn't want the church weighing in with their limiting opinions on head jobs, and lent, and fornication.

In real life you can have the patriarchy or you can have the good sex. In Planetos, every woman can get herself some moon tea when she wants it.

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According to the wiki and a Martin SSM, moon tea is based on real life natural abortifactants, with touches of fantasy added.  It includes substances such as tansy and pennyroyal, among others, that can be quite dangerous in the wrong dosages.  I'm guessing that moon tea would have to be very carefully prepared for that reason.  It also seems likely that the use of moon tea is probably not advisable on a daily basis, either.  As such,I would not be surprised if Lysa's fertility issues are at least partially related to improper preparation and/or use of moon tea.   

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9 hours ago, Walda said:

In real life you can have the patriarchy or you can have the good sex. In Planetos, every woman can get herself some moon tea when she wants it.

I think a big part of the perceived availability of Moon Tea in ASOIF is that the story is focused mostly on wealthy nobles who would have greater access to such things. Of course it sounds like the availability is still far greater in the novels than anywhere in real medieval times.

We do know from Lysa's experience that tansy isn't exactly gentle, and I think we're led to believe that it contributed to her unhealthy pregnancies later. It could be a matter of dosage - contraception vs abortion.

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I think it depends on dosage and individual reactions. What Lysa went through may have been because of a particular sensitivity to one or more ingredients, or the mixture being too strong because her father wanted to be absolutely sure that baby did not survive.

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

I think a big part of the perceived availability of Moon Tea in ASOIF is that the story is focused mostly on wealthy nobles who would have greater access to such things. Of course it sounds like the availability is still far greater in the novels than anywhere in real medieval times.

We do know from Lysa's experience that tansy isn't exactly gentle, and I think we're led to believe that it contributed to her unhealthy pregnancies later. It could be a matter of dosage - contraception vs abortion.

Yeah...this!

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I recently noticed (and mentioned in the 'wow I never noticed that' thread) that Cersei since AFfC (but not in ASoS or earlier) has lost her waistline, developed red, irritated eyes, pasty skin, sagginess. Also, possibly, mood swings (hard to tell, as we have, on the whole, seen Cersei through the eyes of other PoV up until AFfC, and it is hard to tell whether it is external circumstances, combined with the fact that she is a nasty, nasty woman, or if it is mood swings.

With Lysa it is clear the woman is unstable - other characters (including Cersei) observe she is a crazy imbecile and chalk it up to the miscarriages and the obsessive love she has for SweetRobin.

Cersei gets a lot of credit from people like Ned and her brothers for influencing the king, and plotting to be regent. She is viewed more as proud and ambitious rather than mentally unbalanced. There are plenty of signs that she might be, but they all have potentially rational reasons. Sansa sees her becoming a nasty drunk and  doing stuff like bashing Lancel in his chest wound and spreading doom and gloom about how they are all going to be raped tonight during the Battle of Blackwater Rush, but it seems more to show that Cersei was drunk and gave in to despair when it looked like they were done for, rather than that the woman is like, bipolar.

Tyrion quizzes her about why she did crazy things like execute Ned, which reveals that, while it happened on her watch, she had been expecting that Joffrey was going to graciously spare Ned's life and send him off to the Night's Watch. So even while she has to wear the responsibility as Regent, we can't take that decision as a fault of her judgement - she knew it was a crazy idea to kill Ned on the steps of the sept, but his head was off before she could intervene, and she had enough sense not to undermine her position still further by ranting at Slynt and Joffrey in public, which was sensible, not deranged.

Letting Barristan go ronin was not a great decision, as Renly and Tyrion and Tywin were quick to identify. And that it was done as an indulgence for her darling Joffy, a pat for the dog, so that does seem a bit Lysa-like. But it is surrounded by examples of Cersei being across things in ways that may be mean, ruthless, power-hungry, but are not irrational if the aim is to keep her family in power. Also, she is in power. She is paranoid but we know for a fact that people are out to get her. When we first hear her bitching to Jaime about how he should be hand, what she says not only seems to be rational reasoning, it does in fact come to pass, as she foresaw - when it is Joffrey's turn to succeed to the Iron Throne, Ned makes up excuses for not following Robert's command and intention, and tries to bastardise Joffrey and have him cast out as an abomination. There was the time she picks up Tyrion and swings him around and kisses him, after being furious with him, when he announces that Renly and Stannis are at war with each other, but external factors could explain that violent mood swing. Ditto when she breaks down in tears because he is shipping her daughter off to Dorne.

Once we are in her own head, however, we learn that Cersei is utterly irrational, totally delusional, psychotic. And the mood swings are in fact only tangentially related to what is going on outside her head. She wants to strangle Senelle because she is just like that Melara. Even when she imagines she is the boar that tusked Robert, ripping into Taena, she still can't get off. Her paranoia is every bit as loony as Lysa's. This is not what a nasty rational person would think.

For Cersei, the puffy face, expanded waistline, sobbing, come with a lot of miscarriage imagery (ie. imagery that has already been used to describe Dany's actual miscarriage). Also, she becomes breathless climbing stairs. Her eyes are red and her throat is sore as well. She shivers and trembles violently in AFfC where she never did before. 

Still, I'm not sure that the moon tea is the reason she is the way she is - SweetRobin is also pasty, red-eyed, paranoid, with mood swings and tremblings, long after the time he stopped drinking his mother's milk (which might have been full of moon tea, for all we know).

Catelyn has irrational moments that involve shaking fits, and bad judgement (eg. the whole time she was caring for Bran - ignoring Rickon and the house, laughing with relief as the library burnt down, obsessively guarding Bran, and then racing off to King's Landing before he was concious...and she had a trembling kind of fit at the time, too.)

Sansa had a trembling fit (just before she built the snow castle), and remembers things that may or may not have happened.

Boros Blount is also getting fat and puffy and red eyed, he is irascible, becomes red faced when angry, and looks increasingly grey-faced and saggy as Tommen's food taster, as well as becoming increasingly breathless. He doesn't tremble but he quivers.

Robert Baratheon also became bloated and jowly, had dark circles under his eyes, massive sudden mood swings, and was puffing even when walking down stairs. He shivers (although it is ambiguous- it is cold in the crypts, and on the barrowdowns, and while his deathbed was warm, he had lost a lot of blood). He had a milk-pale face in the end, too. And a raspy voice.

On the other hand, Asha apparently brews up a moon tea whenever she feels the need (not hard to lay your hands on tansy, wormwood and pennyroyal when you spend your life on the seas, going to all kinds of climes and places, apparently.) and she is fighting weight and 'flat as a boy'. Arianne is curvy, and not pregnant and  that is the only symptom of moon tea drinking for her. Jeyne Westerling is tearful enough, but quite capable of running out of rooms and still slim and lovely.

Also slim and lovely is Margaery, who apparently has had Pycelle make up moon tea for her several times. Although Cersei never gave him the opportunity to tell us why. If not for herself...who? why?

Lollys was not offered moon tea, although it seems she was delivered of a healthy baby at seven months...

Cersei knows what moon tea is, and what it is for, but where in the text does she explicitly claim to have taken it?

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“Your Robert got me with child once,” she said, her voice thick with contempt. “My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He never knew (AGoT, Ch.45 Eddard XII)

'clense' could be any method of abortion. Interesting mission for Jaime, who has never slept with a woman other than Cersei. I should imagine her other brother would have found what she needed faster - presumably whores use moon tea regularly. Although not Barra's mum, obviously. Or S'vrone.

When Tyrion lectures Lancel about coitus interruptus,  Lancel tells Tyrion that Cersei had already insisted on it. So apparently she wasn't using moon tea there. Her rational for assaulting Taena Merryweather 

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She is no worse than most men. At least there is no danger of her ever getting me with child.(AFfC, Ch.39 Cersei IX)

also suggests she is not using moon tea. To the best of our knowledge, she has slept with Osmund not at all, in spite of her confession and what Tyrion claimed to Jaime. Osney she has slept with once - and no sign that she took any moon tea after. We don't see her asking Pycelle to make her any moon tea, and he doesn't accuse her of asking him.

Lysa too does not seem to have made a habit of taking moon tea. We know there was the one time that Hoster made her take moon tea. But the miscarriages after that

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Lysa had miscarried five times, twice in the Eyrie, thrice at King’s Landing(ASoS,Ch.02 Catelyn I)

the very fact that Catelyn knew Lysa had miscarried, when she had not been around to observe her sister, but did not know she had taken moon tea when she was around to observe her sister, suggests that Lysa had not intended to avoid those pregnancies by taking moon tea.  If it had been deliberate, why would she wait until it was clear she was with child? Why would she write to her sister with the news? Why would her uncle know about it?

It is possible that the first dose of moon tea left her prone to miscarriage, but it seems to me that if she didn't want a child to Jon Arryn, she would have taken the moon tea days or weeks after having sex, not months. And nobody would know she had been pregnant.

Also, there is no reason to suppose Lysa has been taking moon tea after she became a widow. There is a long time when Lysa is in the Eyrie and Littlefinger is in King's Landing, where Lysa is fat and powder-faced and mentally unhinged, but apparently celibate. (Or maybe she has been fucking Eon Hunter, Nestor Royce, and Lyn Corbray, for all I know.) 

When she marries Petyr Baelish, she doesn't seem to be using any contraception

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“Make me a baby, Petyr,” she screamed, “make me another sweet little baby. Oh, Petyr, my precious, my precious, PEEEEEETYR!”(ASoS, Ch.68 Sansa VI) 

and indeed, she claims that after her father had tricked her into terminating her pregnancy to Petyr Baelish, she wanted no truck with moon tea

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Lysa put her hands flat against her belly, as if the child was still there. “When they stole him from me, I made a promise to myself that I would never let it happen again. Jon wished to send my sweet Robert to Dragonstone, and that sot of a king would have given him to Cersei Lannister, but I never let them … no more than I’ll let you steal my Petyr Littlefinger. (ASoS, Ch.80 Sansa VII)

So, all in all, I'm inclined to suspect that Cersei and Lysa were being slowly poisoned by wine, or at least something other than moon tea. Maybe accidentally (the way, in real life, mercury and arsnic were taken as medicines and tonics. with all kinds of drastic side effects) or maybe by someone who knows what they are very gradually doing.

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I'm currently on a Cersei re-read (working on a theory). Both her expanding waistline (which is only ever mentioned in Cersei's own POV, never in Jaime's IIRC) and her excessive drinking put us in mind of Robert, whom Cersei herself, ironically, often favorably compares herself to (“Robert would have been too drunk to rise, let alone rule”). Her alcoholism slowly seems to turn her into her own abuser, Robert. She even tries to play the role of Robert in the famous Myrish swamp scene.

 

The physical symptoms Cersei exhibits can IMO be chalked up to alcoholism or withdrawal (when she is held captive by the Faith), respectively.

The sagginess is easily explained by Cersei having carried and nursed three children and being in her mid-thirties now, as well as her weight fluctuating recently. I believe what is relevant here is her own realization of it. Jaime's POV gives us no hint of any weight gain or sagginess, interestingly (again, IIRC).

 

Cersei has sex with Osney Kettleblack twice – once as a reward for him for killing the High Septon, and then again when she talks him into “confessing” to the High Sparrow about Margaery.

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On ‎3‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 0:07 AM, Renly's Banana said:

I think Lysa's problems carrying were just a mixture of her poor health and the fact her husband was old enough to be her father. So.. while Robert's seed was strong, his was not.

 

Exactly. We have to remember that Jon's first wife, Jeyne Royce, died while giving birth to a stillborn daughter. His second wife also left him childless, but she died of a winter cold. Not saying it's definite that Jon has a weak seed, but the fact is that he couldn't father a child on two wives when he was younger. I don't know exactly how much younger, but considering the man he appointed his heir after his first two childless marriages, Elbert Arryn, died with Brandon's party when he went to King's Landing, it must have been before 282 AC, which leaves Jon - at the oldest - 64 at the time. A few years had probably gone by (Jon had to mourn, then appoint an heir, then we don't know how long Elbert was heir before he went with Brandon to King's Landing), but I know of plenty of cases of 60 year old men providing fertile seed.

My gut feeling leads me to believe it is more the fault of Jon's seed than Lysa's childbearing ability. It would be easy to sway my belief though, depending on just how long Lysa carried Littlefinger's child before she used the moon tea to abort it. A late abortion would definitely be able to cause Lysa's fertility problems. Let me clarify: It was not the moon tea itself that caused fertility problems, but the timing of the administration of the moon tea.

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On ‎3‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 0:05 AM, Angel Eyes said:

So I understand that Moon Tea is a means of aborting pregnancies. But how much problems does it cause for future pregnancies? Will the drinker suffer numerous miscarriages, stillbirths and sickly children like Lysa Tully-Arryn did? Or will there be no ill effects for the mother or future offspring?

Since moon tea was influenced by real world practices as the ingredients are the same as real world herbal abortifacients. I am assuming it would have similar consequences such as bleeding, infection due to incomplete expulsion, and liver dysfunction or death if the ingredients were too concentrated.  There is nothing I have seen to suggest a likeliness for future miscarriages or unhealthy children. 

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6 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

infection due to incomplete expulsion

pelvic infection can result in permanent infertility even when expulsion is complete.

While the main cause of PID is chlamydia, there are other bacteria (and even threadworms) that can get in when the cervix opens,  causing scarring of the uterus and of the fallopian tubes, forming cysts on the ovaries. Women with pelvic inflammation are more likely to have etopic pregnancies (where the egg embeds in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. Such a foetus will miscarry, and if the woman survives it, her fallopian tubes will be severely and permanently damaged, if they were not before). If there is lots of scarring in the uterus, even if the fallopian tubes do their job, the egg is less likely to implant in the endometrium (almost half of all fertilized eggs do not successfully implant, anyway - but the scarring decreases the odds of a successful implanting) and if it does implant, there could be problems with placental attachment, causing the fetus to miscarry when the egg sac is exhausted because it did not get the oxygen and nutrients it needs, or not enough of them.

Wormwood and pennyroyal are extremely toxic, tansy less so, but all can cause convulsions and brain damage and kidney damage as well as liver damage, if the concentration of thujone (the active ingredient) is high enough. The concentration of thujone in the plant varies depending on environmental conditions (a stressed plant, eg. one that has survived frost or drought, could have four or five times more than it did before it was stressed.) So it was possible for a druggist to make up a recipe using exactly the same amounts and techniques, of exactly the same types of plants, yet have an end product that was five times less or more effective.

By far the most common effect of tansy tea was that it made no detectable difference. Women took it to bring on a period, rather than to terminate a pregnancy. We know that when it worked it was because it terminated a pregnancy, but to medieval thinking, the start of the second trimester was when pregnancy started. The quickening was a sign that a divine soul had infused with the vegetative mass that had congested the womb and was shaping itself into human form. So first trimester abortion was seen more as a purge of the filthy blood that was festering in the womb from some disorder of the humours, than as an abortion. Or just as a remedy for nausea or an upset tummy.

There is not a lot of evidence to suggest women were taking it 'to keep their belly flat'. It wasn't reliably good at doing that, anyway. The start of the second trimester, when the belly starts to curve, and the pregnancy is just visible, and when to the medieval mind pregnancy begins, is at least six weeks too late. A woman who didn't know the minutiae of pregnancy symptoms,(had never had a child or didn't have pronounced symptoms in their first pregnancy) might not realise they were pregnant until it was too late anyway. But in Westeros there is this hyper-aware modern (well, nineteen seventies) style of sexual awareness, so single girls like Asha  know very well how to whip up a brew of moon tea, which always does the trick, without pain or harm, and any woods witch can show you how to brew it, and even Tormund knows that, along with every wildling girl.

In real life, child bearing was such a risky and mysterious business that it was hard to distinguish even very deliberate attempts to abort from accidents. The first abortion laws were in the 19th c. and were designed primarily to convict men who violently attacked their pregnant wives or girlfriends in an attempt to rid himself of the inconvenience of providing for or being known as the father of an unwanted child. There were strict laws on the birthing of bastards, which became stricter due to the Elizabethan poor laws. for example, midwives had to get the name of the father before participating in the delivery of a child, so the parish should not be burdened with the cost of raising his bastard or legitimate child while he had the capacity to earn money. Even where the child was raised by the parish, the putative father was expected to pay its expenses.

Of course, a man could discipline his wife by whatever means he chose, if he felt she was out of order. He and she were considered to be the same person, the law could not protect a person from himself, however, the unborn child, while not a person, was clearly not bound by the marriage contract. So the first abortion laws were really intended to deter men from committing horrific kinds of domestic violence against pregnant women. The short title reflected it's purpose - it was the Malicious Shooting Act 1803. It's full title "An Act for the further Prevention of malicious shooting, and attempting to discharge loaded Fire-Arms, stabbing, cutting, wounding, poisoning, and the malicious using of Means to procure the Miscarriage of Women; and also the malicious setting Fire to Buildings; and also for repealing a certain Act, made in England in the twenty-first Year of the late King James the First, intituled, An Act to prevent the destroying and murthering of Bastard Children; and also an Act made in Ireland in the sixth Year of the Reign of the late Queen Anne, also intituled, An Act to prevent the destroying and murthering of Bastard Children; and for making other Provisions in lieu thereof."

It did not apply to women attempting to induce an abortion on themselves, and it did not apply to any man or woman attempting to induce an abortion in the first trimester, before the quickening.

Since the Tudor era there were laws against exposing or abandoning or murdering newborn bastards, or abandoning babies, as well as punishments for women bearing bastards, and sometimes the men who sired them as well. Although going into marriage without the expectation of having children one day was grounds for the annulment of marriage, the church and civil courts had laws that forbade the annulment of marriage or the abandonment of a wife who failed to bear children (ie.was 'barren' or had passed childbearing age, or repeatedly miscarried). It also didn't count if the things a woman did or ate or drank caused miscarriage, and the medieval church encouraged  celibacy in marriage in many ways - by banning sex on fast days (half the liturgical year was fast days) for example, or by allowing men and women who were married but celibate to join abbeys and (men only) enter the priesthood. The ecclesiastical courts were very down on begetting bastards and on fornication, but there was no legal grounds for "drunk of moon tea, to murder the fruit of her fornications in her womb".

In the real medieval, a marriage like Margaery and Tommen's was not legally binding until Tommen was old enough to consummate, and Tommen not being of an age to consummated it was sufficient grounds for annullment. In the real world, Margaery's fornications, if discovered, were punishable, but not treason, especially as she was not trying to impose bastard children on anyone.

Tansy was mostly used as a culinary herb (actually, all the herbs mentioned as part of moon tea had culinary as well as medicinal uses, but the other three were used more sparingly). It gives a bitter taste, and a greenish colour. Easter puddings, called tansy puddings or just 'Tansies' used it as an ingredient because it recalled the bitter herbs mandated in the bible for the passover meal.

It is like an omelette, only green and bitter.

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Breke egges in bassyn and swyng hem sone,      Break eggs in a basin and beat them some
Do powder of peper þer to anone;                       Add some allspice to them anon
þen grynde tansy, þo iuse owte wrynge,               Then squeeze out the juice of the tansy
To blynde with þo egges with owte lesynge.         And beat into the eggs thoroughly
In pan or skelet þou shalt hit frye,                          In a pan or a skillet you should fry it
In buttur wele skymmet wyturly,                              With butter completely clarifi-ed

Or white grece þou make take þer to,                   Or clear white fat if you prefer it                  
Geder hit on a cake, þenne hase þou do,             Brown it til it holds its shape
With platere of tre, and frye hit browne.                Or let it set on a warming plate
On brode leches serve hit þou schalle,                 Serve it on slices of bread
With fraunche mele or oþer metis with alle.          With pudding, or other treats instead

Liber cure cocorum, ca. 1430

It is not an especially accurate translation. I'm not sure if white grece here means any white fat or clear oil that doesn't have a strong taste of its own, or if it refers only to the fat of fig-pecker birds, which was a luxury ingredient, rendered down from hundreds of tiny fattened birds. Duck fat might work as a substitute.

Brode leches, 'thick slices' might mean trenchers of stale white bread, or it might be toast. Fraunche mele is a type of bread pudding made with breadcrumbs and sheep tallow coloured with saffron and flavoured with spices, boiled or roasted in a sheep stomach, and then cut into slices. Or sometimes it is made with spiced eggs and cows-milk cream and light meats (eg veal), but still coloured with saffron and cooked in a sheep's stomach.

Oþer metis are 'other meats' but 'meat' did not necessarily mean meat - it was a general term for 'foods'. On the other hand, meat was included in both savoury and sweet courses, and as an Easter treat, after a month and a half with no meat but fish, the other meats might very well be meat. But other types of pudding, or sweet (and optionally meaty) porridge type things (eg. frumenty, blandissory) might do as well.

The not great rhyming scheme is all mine. Sorry. All the recipes in the original manuscript are in verse.

By the 17th century cooks were cutting down on the bitter tansy, and using sorrel or spinach to make it really green rather than a pale yellow. Sometimes they left tansy out of the tansy altogether, and sometimes the sorrel or spinach too.

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I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tanzy and two neats’ tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette.

(Pepys Diary, Wednesday 26 March 1662)

By Peyps time a tansy was any sweet solid custard or eggy kind of pudding or cake, optionally green and not bitter (except especially for Easter).  Here is an 18th c. tansy (an Easter one) and a tansy-free Apple Tansy (very popular in colonial Virginia, where settlers grew apple trees to prove their land was inhabited and to keep their land claim).

Tansy tea was used as a tonic in spring, to stimulate the appetite and prevent indigestion, and also as a cure for various complaints like colds, sea-sickness, rheumatism. Tansy is plentiful in spring, while poppy tea is made from the seed capsules of white opium poppies that ripen in autumn in the fens, (north eastern English swamplands, nor unlike the Neck, before they were drained in the 18th c.),  so it is possible that the use of tansy for colds/flu/chest congestion, and as a spring tonic, was more about being out of poppy tea and having nothing else that would serve that early in the year. Because the tansy had a bitter taste, and the fens had endemic malaria, it was used to treat ague (fever, typically malarial fever) too. It was also used to purge worms (quite a few of the herbs to make periods regular are also used to shit out threadworms), and paradoxically, as a fertility potion. The fresh new shoots in the spring are the least toxic and most edible.

In France, tansy and other bitter herbs infused in water were used as a mouthwash, or with a toothpick, to remove the remains of food between the teeth, and keep the breath smelling fresh.

So, in real life there would be lots of non-scandalous reasons why Margaery would have a moon tea-like preparation made up for her. Even if she was taking it for scandalous reasons, it would be the fornications that were scandalous; the broken maidenhead, not the drinking of herb tea to keep her periods regular. And neither would be sound legal proof - for prosecuting a case of fornication, actual witnesses of fornication would be required, or evidence of an actual bastard child. Evidence of avoiding having a bastard child didn't count, unless there was witchcraft involved. And then the charges were witchcraft, not drinking tansy tea.  

It is still used as one of the bitters in bitters. In the 18th century it was added to various kinds of distilled alcohol as a health-giving tonic, with other bitter botanicals. In the middle of the 19th century, wormwood and tansy and pennyroyal were all used in Absinthe, the thejune in them supposedly having a mild psychotropic effect and was credited with driving people insane. It might have contributed to the brain and liver damage, but Absinthe also had concentrations of alcohol more appropriate for cleaning than for drinking. Of course, it was supposed to be served with water, which diluted it. Even so, absinthe was a good way to absorb a lot of alcohol quickly, quite enough alcohol to cause brain damage, psychosis, liver damage and addiction all by itself with no assitance from the botanicals that colour and flavour it.  The tansy contributed to the green colour and the bouquet of the botanicals, although overall, the liquorish taste of the fennel predominates.

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22 hours ago, Lynesse said:

I'm currently on a Cersei re-read (working on a theory). Both her expanding waistline (which is only ever mentioned in Cersei's own POV, never in Jaime's IIRC) and her excessive drinking put us in mind of Robert, whom Cersei herself, ironically, often favorably compares herself to (“Robert would have been too drunk to rise, let alone rule”). Her alcoholism slowly seems to turn her into her own abuser, Robert. She even tries to play the role of Robert in the famous Myrish swamp scene.

....

 

The sagginess is easily explained by Cersei having carried and nursed three children and being in her mid-thirties now, as well as her weight fluctuating recently. I believe what is relevant here is her own realization of it. Jaime's POV gives us no hint of any weight gain or sagginess, interestingly (again, IIRC).

Maybe Jaime was sent away before Cersei started to gain weight (?). But even if not, I don't think Jaime would care or even notice if Cersei is fat or not. Jaime does not seem overly interested on bodily appearances.

BTW. The hints of Cersei's weight gain are somewhat subtle. She doesn't recognize the symptoms. She blames the washerwomen for her shrinking dresses, etc.

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1 hour ago, rotting sea cow said:

Maybe Jaime was sent away before Cersei started to gain weight (?). But even if not, I don't think Jaime would care or even notice if Cersei is fat or not. Jaime does not seem overly interested on bodily appearances.

BTW. The hints of Cersei's weight gain are somewhat subtle. She doesn't recognize the symptoms. She blames the washerwomen for her shrinking dresses, etc.

The hints of Cersei's weight gain (those hints are indeed subtle - she is narcissistic, and her psychopathology makes her an unreliable narrator, which is probably why I find her POV so fascinating to read) I found in Cersei V:

Whilst Jocelyn was making certain that all was in readiness for the supper, Dorcas helped the queen into her new gown. It had stripes of shiny green satin alternating with stripes of plush black velvet, and intricate black Myrish lace above the bodice. Myrish lace was costly, but it was necessary for a queen to look her best at all times, and her wretched washerwomen had shrunk several of her old gowns so they no longer fit. She would have whipped them for their carelessness, but Taena had urged her to be merciful.” (AFFC, Cersei V)

Jaime appears in the same chapter and still acknowledges her beauty:

His glance fell to the water beading in the golden hair between her legs. He still wants me. "Pining for what you've lost, brother?" Jaime raised his eyes. "I love you too, sweet sister. But you're a fool. A beautiful golden fool." (AFFC, Cersei V)

There is another hint of her weight gain in Cersei VI, when she goes to see the High Sparrow for the first time:

If I had known I was going to have to walk, I would have dressed for it. She wore a white gown slashed with cloth-of-gold, lacy but demure. It had been several years since the last time she had donned it, and the queen found it uncomfortably tight about the middle.” (AFFC, Cersei VI)

I believe there are more but I can't find them right now.

Jaime used to taunt Brienne about her looks (though perhaps mostly because it is an easy way to get to her) and thinks about Cersei's beauty rather a lot when thinking about her. (I should read up on that.)

With regards to Cersei's mood swings, I've been wondering whether they can be explained entirely by her personality disorder, the alcoholism, or perhaps a combination of factors? She is becoming increasingly short-tempered and cruel even towards loved ones (Jaime, Tommen). Mood swings can also be an early sign of pregnancy, as is bloating.

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9 hours ago, Walda said:

pelvic infection can result in permanent infertility even when expulsion is complete.

While the main cause of PID is chlamydia, there are other bacteria (and even threadworms) that can get in when the cervix opens,  causing scarring of the uterus and of the fallopian tubes, forming cysts on the ovaries. Women with pelvic inflammation are more likely to have etopic pregnancies (where the egg embeds in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. Such a foetus will miscarry, and if the woman survives it, her fallopian tubes will be severely and permanently damaged, if they were not before). If there is lots of scarring in the uterus, even if the fallopian tubes do their job, the egg is less likely to implant in the endometrium (almost half of all fertilized eggs do not successfully implant, anyway - but the scarring decreases the odds of a successful implanting) and if it does implant, there could be problems with placental attachment, causing the fetus to miscarry when the egg sac is exhausted because it did not get the oxygen and nutrients it needs, or not enough of them.

Wormwood and pennyroyal are extremely toxic, tansy less so, but all can cause convulsions and brain damage and kidney damage as well as liver damage, if the concentration of thujone (the active ingredient) is high enough. The concentration of thujone in the plant varies depending on environmental conditions (a stressed plant, eg. one that has survived frost or drought, could have four or five times more than it did before it was stressed.) So it was possible for a druggist to make up a recipe using exactly the same amounts and techniques, of exactly the same types of plants, yet have an end product that was five times less or more effective.

By far the most common effect of tansy tea was that it made no detectable difference. Women took it to bring on a period, rather than to terminate a pregnancy. We know that when it worked it was because it terminated a pregnancy, but to medieval thinking, the start of the second trimester was when pregnancy started. The quickening was a sign that a divine soul had infused with the vegetative mass that had congested the womb and was shaping itself into human form. So first trimester abortion was seen more as a purge of the filthy blood that was festering in the womb from some disorder of the humours, than as an abortion. Or just as a remedy for nausea or an upset tummy.

There is not a lot of evidence to suggest women were taking it 'to keep their belly flat'. It wasn't reliably good at doing that, anyway. The start of the second trimester, when the belly starts to curve, and the pregnancy is just visible, and when to the medieval mind pregnancy begins, is at least six weeks too late. A woman who didn't know the minutiae of pregnancy symptoms,(had never had a child or didn't have pronounced symptoms in their first pregnancy) might not realise they were pregnant until it was too late anyway. But in Westeros there is this hyper-aware modern (well, nineteen seventies) style of sexual awareness, so single girls like Asha  know very well how to whip up a brew of moon tea, which always does the trick, without pain or harm, and any woods witch can show you how to brew it, and even Tormund knows that, along with every wildling girl.

In real life, child bearing was such a risky and mysterious business that it was hard to distinguish even very deliberate attempts to abort from accidents. The first abortion laws were in the 19th c. and were designed primarily to convict men who violently attacked their pregnant wives or girlfriends in an attempt to rid himself of the inconvenience of providing for or being known as the father of an unwanted child. There were strict laws on the birthing of bastards, which became stricter due to the Elizabethan poor laws. for example, midwives had to get the name of the father before participating in the delivery of a child, so the parish should not be burdened with the cost of raising his bastard or legitimate child while he had the capacity to earn money. Even where the child was raised by the parish, the putative father was expected to pay its expenses.

Of course, a man could discipline his wife by whatever means he chose, if he felt she was out of order. He and she were considered to be the same person, the law could not protect a person from himself, however, the unborn child, while not a person, was clearly not bound by the marriage contract. So the first abortion laws were really intended to deter men from committing horrific kinds of domestic violence against pregnant women. The short title reflected it's purpose - it was the Malicious Shooting Act 1803. It's full title "An Act for the further Prevention of malicious shooting, and attempting to discharge loaded Fire-Arms, stabbing, cutting, wounding, poisoning, and the malicious using of Means to procure the Miscarriage of Women; and also the malicious setting Fire to Buildings; and also for repealing a certain Act, made in England in the twenty-first Year of the late King James the First, intituled, An Act to prevent the destroying and murthering of Bastard Children; and also an Act made in Ireland in the sixth Year of the Reign of the late Queen Anne, also intituled, An Act to prevent the destroying and murthering of Bastard Children; and for making other Provisions in lieu thereof."

It did not apply to women attempting to induce an abortion on themselves, and it did not apply to any man or woman attempting to induce an abortion in the first trimester, before the quickening.

Since the Tudor era there were laws against exposing or abandoning or murdering newborn bastards, or abandoning babies, as well as punishments for women bearing bastards, and sometimes the men who sired them as well. Although going into marriage without the expectation of having children one day was grounds for the annulment of marriage, the church and civil courts had laws that forbade the annulment of marriage or the abandonment of a wife who failed to bear children (ie.was 'barren' or had passed childbearing age, or repeatedly miscarried). It also didn't count if the things a woman did or ate or drank caused miscarriage, and the medieval church encouraged  celibacy in marriage in many ways - by banning sex on fast days (half the liturgical year was fast days) for example, or by allowing men and women who were married but celibate to join abbeys and (men only) enter the priesthood. The ecclesiastical courts were very down on begetting bastards and on fornication, but there was no legal grounds for "drunk of moon tea, to murder the fruit of her fornications in her womb".

In the real medieval, a marriage like Margaery and Tommen's was not legally binding until Tommen was old enough to consummate, and Tommen not being of an age to consummated it was sufficient grounds for annullment. In the real world, Margaery's fornications, if discovered, were punishable, but not treason, especially as she was not trying to impose bastard children on anyone.

Tansy was mostly used as a culinary herb (actually, all the herbs mentioned as part of moon tea had culinary as well as medicinal uses, but the other three were used more sparingly). It gives a bitter taste, and a greenish colour. Easter puddings, called tansy puddings or just 'Tansies' used it as an ingredient because it recalled the bitter herbs mandated in the bible for the passover meal.

It is like an omelette, only green and bitter.

It is not an especially accurate translation. I'm not sure if white grece here means any white fat or clear oil that doesn't have a strong taste of its own, or if it refers only to the fat of fig-pecker birds, which was a luxury ingredient, rendered down from hundreds of tiny fattened birds. Duck fat might work as a substitute.

Brode leches, 'thick slices' might mean trenchers of stale white bread, or it might be toast. Fraunche mele is a type of bread pudding made with breadcrumbs and sheep tallow coloured with saffron and flavoured with spices, boiled or roasted in a sheep stomach, and then cut into slices. Or sometimes it is made with spiced eggs and cows-milk cream and light meats (eg veal), but still coloured with saffron and cooked in a sheep's stomach.

Oþer metis are 'other meats' but 'meat' did not necessarily mean meat - it was a general term for 'foods'. On the other hand, meat was included in both savoury and sweet courses, and as an Easter treat, after a month and a half with no meat but fish, the other meats might very well be meat. But other types of pudding, or sweet (and optionally meaty) porridge type things (eg. frumenty, blandissory) might do as well.

The not great rhyming scheme is all mine. Sorry. All the recipes in the original manuscript are in verse.

By the 17th century cooks were cutting down on the bitter tansy, and using sorrel or spinach to make it really green rather than a pale yellow. Sometimes they left tansy out of the tansy altogether, and sometimes the sorrel or spinach too.

By Peyps time a tansy was any sweet solid custard or eggy kind of pudding or cake, optionally green and not bitter (except especially for Easter).  Here is an 18th c. tansy (an Easter one) and a tansy-free Apple Tansy (very popular in colonial Virginia, where settlers grew apple trees to prove their land was inhabited and to keep their land claim).

Tansy tea was used as a tonic in spring, to stimulate the appetite and prevent indigestion, and also as a cure for various complaints like colds, sea-sickness, rheumatism. Tansy is plentiful in spring, while poppy tea is made from the seed capsules of white opium poppies that ripen in autumn in the fens, (north eastern English swamplands, nor unlike the Neck, before they were drained in the 18th c.),  so it is possible that the use of tansy for colds/flu/chest congestion, and as a spring tonic, was more about being out of poppy tea and having nothing else that would serve that early in the year. Because the tansy had a bitter taste, and the fens had endemic malaria, it was used to treat ague (fever, typically malarial fever) too. It was also used to purge worms (quite a few of the herbs to make periods regular are also used to shit out threadworms), and paradoxically, as a fertility potion. The fresh new shoots in the spring are the least toxic and most edible.

In France, tansy and other bitter herbs infused in water were used as a mouthwash, or with a toothpick, to remove the remains of food between the teeth, and keep the breath smelling fresh.

So, in real life there would be lots of non-scandalous reasons why Margaery would have a moon tea-like preparation made up for her. Even if she was taking it for scandalous reasons, it would be the fornications that were scandalous; the broken maidenhead, not the drinking of herb tea to keep her periods regular. And neither would be sound legal proof - for prosecuting a case of fornication, actual witnesses of fornication would be required, or evidence of an actual bastard child. Evidence of avoiding having a bastard child didn't count, unless there was witchcraft involved. And then the charges were witchcraft, not drinking tansy tea.  

It is still used as one of the bitters in bitters. In the 18th century it was added to various kinds of distilled alcohol as a health-giving tonic, with other bitter botanicals. In the middle of the 19th century, wormwood and tansy and pennyroyal were all used in Absinthe, the thejune in them supposedly having a mild psychotropic effect and was credited with driving people insane. It might have contributed to the brain and liver damage, but Absinthe also had concentrations of alcohol more appropriate for cleaning than for drinking. Of course, it was supposed to be served with water, which diluted it. Even so, absinthe was a good way to absorb a lot of alcohol quickly, quite enough alcohol to cause brain damage, psychosis, liver damage and addiction all by itself with no assitance from the botanicals that colour and flavour it.  The tansy contributed to the green colour and the bouquet of the botanicals, although overall, the liquorish taste of the fennel predominates.

Chlamydia and moon tea are totally independent of themselves.  Chamydia does not need an open cervix to cause PID and the infection and infertility you are referring to are caused by scarring of the fallopian tubes, no scarring of the uterus (at least to the point that it would cause infertility which is why in-vitro is still an option for these patients).  Moon tea does not cause scarring of the fallopian tubes.  There really is little risk for infection as long as there is a complete expulsion.   

2nd Trimester?  You think a woman would wait an extra SIXTY days after her missed period to start drinking some moon tea? 

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No, I think a woman drinking tansy tea in the middle ages would not see herself, or be seen by others, to be attempting to terminate a pregnancy. She would take it because she felt unwell, or to bring on a period.

But yes, now you mention it, I do think that for some women, the magical moon tea would be administered only when there were visible signs - we have two examples of it being administered to women without their knowledge, against their will (Lysa and Jeyne Westerling). It is quite possible medieval women would wait an extra sixty days after their period - even in the early 19th century the medical profession were arguing amongst themselves about whether missed periods were a reliable symptom of pregnancy, and even the physicians that believed they were relied more on changes in the cervix than on what women said. People miss periods for a variety of reasons, and have spotting and breakthrough bleeding and miscarriages that can be mistaken for periods.

And the medieval mind did not believe women laid eggs, or that periods necessarily had anything to do with pregnancy.

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4 minutes ago, Walda said:

No, I think a woman drinking tansy tea in the middle ages would not see herself, or be seen by others, to be attempting to terminate a pregnancy. She would take it because she felt unwell, or to bring on a period.

But yes, now you mention it, I do think that for some women, the magical moon tea would be administered only when there were visible signs - we have two examples of it being administered to women without their knowledge, against their will (Lysa and Jeyne Westerling). It is quite possible medieval women would wait an extra sixty days after their period - even in the early 19th century the medical profession were arguing amongst themselves about whether missed periods were a reliable symptom of pregnancy, and even the physicians that believed they were relied more on changes in the cervix than on what women said. People miss periods for a variety of reasons, and have spotting and breakthrough bleeding and miscarriages that can be mistaken for periods.

And the medieval mind did not believe women laid eggs, or that periods necessarily had anything to do with pregnancy.

you forgot uterine size and ballotment on bimanual

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Can I just come back to breastfeeding?  It always stuck out to me that Cersei breastfed her own children (without finding a quote it's something like no man making her feel as good as when Joffrey was feeding).  I find this so incongruent.  Not only because of Cersei's position and the sett, but also her personality.  it was one thing that warmed me a little to her.  It seems wet nurses are only mentioned where the mother cannot care for the child, not as a matter of course.

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5 minutes ago, Neddy's Girl said:

Can I just come back to breastfeeding?  It always stuck out to me that Cersei breastfed her own children (without finding a quote it's something like no man making her feel as good as when Joffrey was feeding).  I find this so incongruent.  Not only because of Cersei's position and the sett, but also her personality.  it was one thing that warmed me a little to her.  It seems wet nurses are only mentioned where the mother cannot care for the child, not as a matter of course.

:agree: 

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