title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen and Emma Kimiläinen competed together for Team Finland at the Race of Champions on 5–6 February 2022. He is set to again compete in the race in 2023 alongside Formula One driver Valtteri Bottas, who was originally going to be his partner at the 2022 edition before backing out.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: In December 2021, Häkkinen was announced as a Formula One analyst for the sports broadcaster Viaplay. From 2022 onwards, Häkkinen became part of a permanent team of analysts on-site at the Grands Prix. In the team of analysts, Häkkinen is accompanied by David Coulthard and Jos Verstappen.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen is known for his unique driving style; journalist Peter Windsor analysed in "F1 Racing" magazine that Häkkinen was an "oversteering" driver, resulting in driving faster on slippery surfaces and the preference of using "tail-happy" cars. This allowed him to perform better at circuits that have medium-speed corners. During his karting career, Häkkinen developed the skill of using the brake pedal with his left foot. He reverted to using his right foot when he participated in DTM, later discovering he became uncomfortable with this style and reverted to left-foot braking in mid-2006. He became known as a "late season driver"; the second half of a season suited Häkkinen due to experience on these tracks and allowed time for his car to be altered towards his preference.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen was criticized for being a poor car developer, though this may have been exaggerated due to his initial struggles with the English language early in his career. Adrian Newey, the designer of Häkkinen's championship-winning McLarens, described an instance of Häkkinen's approach to input on car development when Häkkinen kept telling him during the initial testing of the McLaren MP4/13 that the car was understeering. Newey subsequently adjusted the car to correct for understeer, but this only made it slower. After digging deeper into the test data and listening closely to what Häkkinen was describing Newey realized the car was not understeering but had rear end biased instability on corner entry that Mika was compensating for with understeer. This experience proved crucial for Newey's relationship with Häkkinen during their run together at McLaren, as after that Newey no longer had issues understanding Häkkinen's inputs on car development. Newey also said Mika's countryman, protege, and future McLaren driver Kimi Räikkönen also had a similar approach to input on car development.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: During his Formula One career, Häkkinen became known as a "taciturn" character—an individual who took lengthy pauses before answering questions placed before him and would give virtually nothing away to the media. This allowed him to prevent problems and potential scandals from within his team becoming public knowledge. Since his retirement, Häkkinen has often been voted among the greatest Formula One drivers. Michael Schumacher has stated that Häkkinen was the driver whom he gained the most satisfaction of racing against.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen has resided in Monaco since 1991. He also owns properties in France and Finland. On 18 May 2008, his newly completed mansion in France was burned down after a light in one of his trophy cabinets short circuited. No injuries were reported, although Häkkinen's collection of Formula One trophies was destroyed. Outside motorsport, Häkkinen enjoys skiing, swimming, tennis, scuba diving and jet ski. His favourite music acts are Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra and J. Karjalainen.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen married Erja Honkanen, a former TV journalist, in 1998. The couple have one son and one daughter. The couple applied for divorce in 2008. Häkkinen also has two daughters and a son by his Czech second wife Markéta Remešová.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen joined Johnnie Walker as Global Responsible Drinking Ambassador for Diageo in September 2006, campaigning for the message of responsible drinking. He also led the organisation's Join the Pact campaign to spread consumer commitments for the prevention of drunk driving. He is also brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and UBS. In 2016, he became an official brand ambassador for Nokian Tyres.


title: Mika Häkkinen

text: Häkkinen maintains a collection of McLaren hypercars, all of which he keeps in Monaco. His collection is valued at an estimated €6 million.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Charlton Brooker (born 3 March 1971) is an English television presenter, writer, producer and satirist. He is the creator and co-showrunner of the sci-fi drama anthology series "Black Mirror", and has written for comedy series such as "Brass Eye", "The 11 O'Clock Show" and "Nathan Barley".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker started his career as a cartoonist; he produced adverts for the second-hand video game retailer CeX before becoming a journalist for "PC Zone." He has presented a number of television shows, mostly consisting of satirical and biting criticism of modern society and the media, such as "Screenwipe", "Gameswipe", "Newswipe", "Weekly Wipe", and "10 O'Clock Live". He also wrote the 2008 horror drama series "Dead Set". He has written social criticism pieces for "The Guardian" and is one of four creative directors of the production company Zeppotron.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Charlie Brooker was born on 3 March 1971 in Reading, Berkshire. He grew up in a relaxed Quaker household in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire. His parents were fans of the television sitcom "Bewitched", and named him Charlton after a character in one episode and his sister Samantha after the series' main character. As a teenager, he first worked as a writer and cartoonist for "Oink!", a comic produced in the late 1980s.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: After attending Wallingford School, Brooker attended the Polytechnic of Central London (which became the University of Westminster during his final year there) to study for a BA in Media Studies. He says that he did not graduate because his dissertation was written on video games, which was not considered an acceptable topic. He has listed his comedic influences as Monty Python, "The Young Ones", "Blackadder", Chris Morris, and Vic Reeves.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker did some early work as a cartoonist, and worked in the video game department of Music and Video Exchange, a retailer in Notting Hill Gate, London. When one of the employees left to found the second-hand retailer CeX, Brooker worked in their first shop and produced cartoon advertisements.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: After some of Brooker's CeX cartoons were printed in the magazine "PC Zone", he was invited to write for the magazine. His first published review was of the 1997 game "Fallout". Brooker wrote for the magazine in the mid and late 1990s. Aside from games reviews, his output included the comic strip "Cybertwats" and a column titled "Sick Notes", where Brooker would insult anyone who wrote in to the magazine – and offered a £50 prize to the best letter. One of Brooker's one-shot cartoons caused the magazine to be pulled from the shelves of many British newsagents. The cartoon was titled "Helmut Werstler's Cruelty Zoo" and professed to be an advert for a theme park created by a Teutonic psychologist for children to take out their violent impulses on animals rather than humans. It was accompanied by photoshopped pictures of children smashing the skulls of monkeys with hammers, jumping on a badger with a pitchfork, and chainsawing an orang-utan, among other things. The original joke was supposed to be at the expense of the "Tomb Raider" games, known at the time for the number of animals killed, but the original title, "Lara Croft's Cruelty Zoo", was changed for legal reasons. In October 2008, Brooker and several other ex-writers were invited back to review a game for the 200th issue. Brooker reviewed "Euro Truck Simulator".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker began writing a TV review column titled "Screen Burn" for "The Guardian" newspaper's Saturday entertainment supplement "The Guide" in 2000, a role he continued through to October 2010.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: From late 2005, he wrote a regular series of columns in "The Guardian" supplement "G2" on Fridays called "Supposing", in which he free-associated on a set of vague what-if themes. From October 2006 this column was expanded into a full-page section on Mondays, including samples from TVGoHome and Ignopedia, an occasional series of pseudo-articles on topics mostly suggested by readers. The key theme behind Ignopedia was that, while Wikipedia is written and edited by thousands of users, Ignopedia would be written by a single sub-par person with little or no awareness of the facts.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: On 24 October 2004, he wrote a column on George W. Bush and the forthcoming 2004 US presidential election which concluded, "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, Jr. – where are you now that we need you?" that was criticised for Brooker's apparent encouragement of the assassination of the American president. "The Guardian" withdrew the article from its website and published and endorsed an apology by Brooker. He has since commented about the remark in the column stating:


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker left the "Screen Burn" column in 2010. In the final column, he noted how increasingly difficult he found it to reconcile his role in mainstream media and TV production with his writing as a scabrous critic or to objectively criticise those he increasingly worked and socialised with. Longtime covering contributor Grace Dent took over the column. He continued to contribute other articles to "The Guardian" on a regular basis, his most recent comment column appearing in May 2015.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In 2014, an article he wrote for "The Guardian"—"Too much talk for one planet: why I'm reducing my word emissions"—was published in the A-Level anthology "Voices in Speech and Writing: An Anthology".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: From 1999 to 2003 he wrote the satirical "TVGoHome" website, a regular series of mock TV schedules published in a format similar to that of the "Radio Times", consisting of a combination of savage satire and surreal humour and featured in technology newsletter Need To Know. A print adaptation of the site was published by Fourth Estate in 2001. A TV sketch show based on the site was broadcast on UK digital station E4 the same year.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In May 2012, Brooker was interviewed for Richard Herring's "Leicester Square Theatre Podcast" series. In 2019, he made a second appearance on the podcast, which was released during March 2020.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: From 1999 to 2000, Brooker played hooded expert 'the Pundit' in the short-lived show "Games Republic", hosted by Trevor and Simon on BSkyB.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In 2000, Brooker was one of the writers of the Channel 4 show "The 11 O'Clock Show" and a co-host (with Gia Milinovich) on BBC Knowledge's "The Kit", a low-budget programme dedicated to gadgets and technology (1999–2000). In 2001, he was one of several writers on Channel 4's "Brass Eye" special on the subject of paedophilia.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In 2003, Brooker wrote an episode entitled "How to Watch Television" for Channel 4's "The Art Show". The episode was presented in the style of a public information film and was partly animated.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Together with "Brass Eye"'s Chris Morris, Brooker co-wrote the sitcom "Nathan Barley", based on a character from one of TVGoHome's fictional programmes. The show was broadcast in 2005 and focused on the lives of a group of London media 'trendies'. The same year, he was also on the writing team of the Channel 4 sketch show "Spoons", produced by Zeppotron.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In 2006, Brooker began writing and presenting the television series "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe" on BBC Four, a TV review programme in a similar style to his "Screen Burn" columns in "The Guardian". After an initial pilot series of three editions in April, the programme returned later in the year for a second run of four episodes plus Christmas and Review of the Year specials in December 2006. A third series followed in February 2007 with a fourth broadcast in September 2007, followed by a Review of the Year in December 2007. The fifth series started in November 2008 and was followed by another Review of the Year special. This series was also the first to be given a primetime repeat on terrestrial television (BBC Two), in January 2009.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: "Screenwipe" editions have focused on a themes including American television, TV news, advertising and children's programmes. The last of these involved a segment where Brooker joined the cast of "Toonattik" for one week, playing the character of "Angry News Guy". An episode focused on scriptwriting, which saw several of British television's most prominent writers interviewed by Brooker.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: "Newswipe with Charlie Brooker", a similar show focusing on current affairs reporting by the international news media, began on BBC Four on 25 March 2009. A second series began on 19 January 2010. He has also written and presented the one-off special "Gameswipe" which focused on video games and aired on BBC Four on 29 September 2009.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker's "2010 Wipe", a review of 2010, was broadcast in December 2010. The end-of-year "Wipe" specials continued annually, the last one to date broadcast on 29 December 2016. Due to Brooker's commitments to "Black Mirror" and other projects, the annual Wipe went on hiatus from 2017


title: Charlie Brooker

text: "Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe" was first broadcast on BBC Two on 31 January 2013. It is an amalgam of "Screenwipe" and "Newswipe", with sections focusing on recent news, television shows and films. Along with the regular cast, it also features guests who discuss recent events. Two more series followed in 2014 and 2015. A 60-minute special, "Election Wipe", aired on 6 May 2015, focused on the events running up to the 2015 general election.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: A 45-minute BBC Two special, "Charlie Brooker's Antiviral Wipe", aired on 14 May 2020. It focused on life during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. It was produced during the UK lockdown, which had caused a series starring "Wipe" character Philomena Cunk to be postponed. Most of the crew from the series transferred to work on "Antiviral Wipe". Brooker initially turned down the offer to make the special but accepted when it was clear that production would be largely unchanged, the format of the series—with few characters appearing on the same screen together and extensive use of archive footage—well-suited to the lockdown rules. The editing process was the most affected.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker wrote "Dead Set", a five-part zombie horror thriller for E4 set in the "Big Brother" house. The show was broadcast in October 2008 to coincide with Halloween and was repeated on Channel 4 in January 2009 to coincide with "Celebrity Big Brother", and again for Halloween later that year. It was produced by Zeppotron, which also produced "Screenwipe".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker told MediaGuardian.co.uk it comprised a "mixture of known and less well known faces" and "Dead Set is very different to anything I've done before, and I hope the end result will surprise, entertain and appall people in equal measure." He added that he has long been a fan of horror films and that his new series "could not be described as a comedy". "I couldn't really describe what it is but it will probably surprise people," Brooker said, adding that he plans to "continue as normal" with his print journalism.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Jaime Winstone starred as a runner on the TV programme, and "Big Brother" presenter Davina McCall guest starred as herself. Dead Set received a BAFTA nomination for "Best Drama Serial".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In December 2011, three episodes of Brooker's "Black Mirror", a science fiction anthology series, aired on Channel 4 to largely positive reviews. As well as creating the show, Brooker wrote the first episode and co-wrote the second with his wife Konnie Huq. He also wrote all three episodes of series two. In September 2015, Netflix commissioned a third season of 12 episodes, with Channel 4 losing the rights to the programme. A trailer for the third season was released in October 2016. This was later split into two series of six episodes. The third season was released on Netflix worldwide on 21 October 2016. Brooker has solely written four of the episodes in series three, and has co-written the remaining two.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: The fourth season was released in December 2017, followed by a full-length interactive film "Bandersnatch" in December 2018. The fifth season was released in June 2019.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: The series is produced by Zeppotron for Endemol. Regarding the programme's content and structure, Brooker noted, "each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they're all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy."


title: Charlie Brooker

text: An Endemol press release describes the series as "a hybrid of "The Twilight Zone" and "Tales of the Unexpected" which taps into our contemporary unease about our modern world", with the stories having a "techno-paranoia" feel. Channel 4 describes the first episode as "a twisted parable for the Twitter age".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker explained the series' title to "The Guardian", noting: "If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where "Black Mirror", my new drama series, is set. The 'black mirror' of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone."


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Several news reports, including one by Chris Cillizza, political reporter for "The Washington Post", compared the 2016 Donald Trump political campaign to "The Waldo Moment", a 2013 episode of the "Black Mirror" TV series; later, in September 2016, Brooker also compared the Trump campaign to the episode and rightly predicted Trump would win the 2016 election.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: With Daniel Maier, he co-wrote a spoof crime drama for Sky1 called "A Touch of Cloth", which first broadcast on 26 August 2012 and starred John Hannah and Suranne Jones, both notable for having starred in genuine crime dramas. Two further series were broadcast in 2013 and 2014, with the latter starring Karen Gillan.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker has appeared on three episodes and one webisode of the popular BBC current affairs news quiz "Have I Got News for You". He appeared on an episode of the Channel 4 panel show "8 Out of 10 Cats", "The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2009", "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" and "Would I Lie To You?". In December 2006 he reviewed two games written by the presenters of "VideoGaiden", on their show. He also made a brief appearance in the third and final instalment of the documentary series "Games Britannia", discussing the rise and popularity of computer games.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In 2009, Brooker began hosting "You Have Been Watching", a panel comedy TV quiz on Channel 4 which discusses television. A second series was broadcast the following year.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: On 6 May 2010, Brooker was a co-host of the Channel 4 alternative election night, along with David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr and Lauren Laverne. The telethon was interspersed with contributions from Brooker, some live in the studio but mostly pre-recorded. Notably, these included an "Election Special" of "You Have Been Watching" and two smaller segments in an almost identical style to "Screenwipe" (the only noticeable difference being that Brooker was sitting in a different room). Brooker described the experience of live television as being so nerve-wracking he "did a piss" during the broadcast. A spin-off series, "10 O'Clock Live", started in January 2011 with the same four hosts.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In November 2020, Hugh Grant reported that Brooker was producing a mockumentary with Netflix "about 2020". Grant stated that he would star as "a historian who is being interviewed about the year." The mockumentary, titled "Death to 2020", was released on Netflix on 27 December 2020.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: In 2022, the animated interactive fiction "Cat Burglar" was released. Brooker was credited as creator.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: From 2010 to 2012, Brooker presented a BBC Radio 4 series celebrating failure titled "So Wrong It's Right", in which guests compete to pitch the worst possible ideas for new franchises and give the "most wrong" answer to a question. It aired 17 episodes across three series. In common with "Screenwipe's" use of a Grandaddy track ("A.M. 180") from the album "Under the Western Freeway" as its theme tune, "So Wrong It's Right" uses another track from the same album, "Summer Here Kids".


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker became engaged to former "Blue Peter" presenter Konnie Huq after dating for nine months, having met while filming an episode of "Screenwipe". They married on 26 July 2010 at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. They have two sons: Covey (born March 2012) and Huxley (born February 2014). Brooker's sister-in-law is Rupa Huq, Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker is an atheist and contributed to "The Atheist's Guide to Christmas". Due to his family's background, he has also described himself as a Quaker.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: For his work as creator and screenwriter of "Black Mirror", Brooker won three consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Television Movie and two consecutive for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special.


title: Charlie Brooker

text: Brooker won the 2009 Columnist of the Year award at the British Press Awards for his "Guardian" column. "Dead Set" was nominated for the 2009 Best Drama Serial BAFTA. In 2010, he was given the Best Entertainment Programme Award for "Newswipe" from the Royal Television Society. He has received three British Comedy Awards: Best Newcomer in 2009, Best Comedy Entertainment Show Award for "Newswipe" in 2011 and Best Comedy Entertainment Personality in 2012. At the BAFTA TV Awards 2017, his show "Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe" won for Best Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme.


title: Changeling

text: A changeling, also historically referred to as an auf or oaf, is a human-like creature found in folklore throughout Europe. A changeling was believed to be a fairy that had been left in place of a human (typically a child) stolen by other fairies.


title: Changeling

text: A changeling is typically identifiable via a number of traits; in Irish legend, a fairy child may appear sickly and will not grow in size like a normal child, and may have notable physical characteristics such as a beard or long teeth. They may also display intelligence far beyond their apparent years, as well as possess uncanny insight. A common way that a changeling could identify itself is through displaying unusual behaviour when it thinks it is alone, such as jumping about, dancing or playing an instrument – though this last example is found only within Irish and Scottish legend.


title: Changeling

text: "A human child might be taken due to many factors: to act as a servant, the love of a human child, or malice. Most often it was thought that fairies exchanged the children. In rare cases, the very elderly of the fairy people would be exchanged in the place of a human baby, so that the old fairy could live in comfort, being coddled by its human parents. Simple charms such as an inverted coat or open iron scissors left where the child sleeps, were thought to ward them off; other measures included a constant watch over the child."


title: Changeling

text: Folklorist D. L. Ashliman proposes in his essay 'Changelings' that changeling tales illustrate an aspect of family survival in pre-industrial Europe. A peasant family's subsistence frequently depended upon the productive labour of each member, and it was difficult to provide for a person who was a permanent drain on the family's scarce resources. "The fact that the changelings' ravenous appetite is so frequently mentioned indicates that the parents of these unfortunate children saw in their continuing existence a threat to the sustenance of the entire family. Changeling tales support other historical evidence in suggesting that infanticide was frequently the solution selected."


title: Changeling

text: Fairies would also take adult humans, especially the newly married and new mothers; young adults were taken to marry fairies instead while new mothers were often taken to nurse fairy babies. Often when an adult was taken instead of a child an object such as a log was left in place of the stolen human, enchanted to look like the person. This object in place of the human would seem to sicken and die, to be buried by the human family, while the living human was among the fairies. Bridget Cleary is one of the most well known cases of an adult thought to be a changeling by her family; her husband killed her attempting to force the fairies to return his 'real' wife.


title: Changeling

text: In medieval Scandinavia it was believed that trolls considered it more respectable to be raised by humans than by their own kind, and would consequently seize the opportunity to give their own children a human upbringing. Some believed that trolls would only take unbaptised children, since once a child had been baptized – and therefore received into the Catholic faith – the trolls were powerless to abduct it.


title: Changeling

text: Beauty in human children and young women, particularly traits which evoke brightness or reflectivity, such as blonde hair and blue or silver eyes, are said to attract fairies, as they perhaps find preciousness in these traits.


title: Changeling

text: In Scottish folklore, the children might be replacements for fairy children in the tithe to Hell; this is best known from the ballad of "Tam Lin".


title: Changeling

text: According to common Scottish myths, a child born with a caul (part of the amniotic membrane) across their face is a changeling, and will soon die (is "of fey birth").


title: Changeling

text: Other folklore says that human milk is necessary for fairy children to survive. In these cases either the newborn human child would be switched with a fairy baby to be suckled by the human mother, or the human mother would be taken back to the fairy world to breastfeed the fairy babies. It is also thought that human midwives were necessary to bring fairy babies into the world.


title: Changeling

text: Some stories tell of changelings who forget they are not human and proceed to live a human life. Changelings who do not forget, however, in some stories return to their fairy family, possibly leaving the human family without warning. The human child that was taken may often stay with the fairy family forever. Feeling connected to the fate of a changeling, there are families who merely turn their changeling loose to the wilderness.


title: Changeling

text: Some folklorists believe that fairies were memories of inhabitants of various regions in Europe who had been driven into hiding by invaders. They held that changelings had actually occurred; the hiding people would exchange their own sickly children for the healthy children of the occupying invader.


title: Changeling

text: The Mên-an-Tol stones in Cornwall are said to have a fairy or pixie guardian who can make miraculous cures. In one case, a changeling baby was passed through the stone in order for the mother to have her real child returned to her. Evil pixies had changed her child, and the stones were able to reverse their spell.


title: Changeling

text: In Germany, the changeling is known as "Wechselbalg", "Wechselkind", "Kielkopf" or "Dickkopf" (the last both hinting at the huge necks and heads of changelings).


title: Changeling

text: In Ireland, looking at a baby with envy – "over looking the baby" – was dangerous, as it endangered the baby, who was then in the fairies' power. So too was admiring or envying a woman or man dangerous, unless the person added a blessing; the able-bodied and beautiful were in particular danger. Women were especially in danger in liminal states: being a new bride, or a new mother.


title: Changeling

text: Putting a changeling in a fire would cause it to jump up the chimney and return the human child, but at least one tale recounts a mother with a changeling finding that a fairy woman came to her home with the human child, saying the other fairies had done the exchange, and she wanted her own baby. The tale of surprising a changeling into speech – by brewing eggshells – is also told in Ireland, as in Wales. Various legends describe other ways to foil a would-be fairy kidnapper. One was to shout ""Gairim agus coisricim thú" " (I bless you) or "God bless you," which would cause the fairy to abandon the child it was trying to steal. Another possible tactic was to insert oneself into an argument over who would keep the child; shouting out "Give it to me" would trick the fairy into releasing the child back to a human.


title: Changeling

text: Changelings, in some instances, were regarded not as substituted fairy children but instead old fairies brought to the human world to die.


title: Changeling

text: Irish legends regarding changelings typically follow the same formula: a tailor is the one who first notices a changeling, the inclusion of a fairy playing bagpipes or some other instrument, and the kidnapping of a human child through a window.


title: Changeling

text: The modern Irish girl's name, Siofra, means an elvish or changeling child, deriving from Síobhra(í) meaning fairy(/fairies). The Aos sí, "siabhra" (commonly anglicised as "sheevra"), may be prone to evil and mischief. However, the Ulster folk song 'The Gartan Mother's Lullaby' also uses "sheevra" simply to mean "spirit" or "fairy".


title: Changeling

text: The Isle of Man had a wide collection of myths and superstitions concerning fairies, and there are numerous folk tales that have been collected concerning supposed changelings. Sophia Morrison, in her "Manx Fairy Tales" (David Nutt, London, 1911) includes the tale of "The Fairy Child of Close ny Lheiy", a tale of a child supposedly swapped by the fairies for a loud and unruly fairy child. The English poet and topographer George Waldron, who lived in the Isle of Man during the early 18th century, cites a tale of a reputed changeling that was shown to him, possibly a child with an inherited genetic disorder:


title: Changeling

text: "Nothing under heaven could have a more beautiful face; but though between five and six years old, and seemingly healthy, he was so far from being able to walk, or stand, that he could not so much as move any one joint; his limbs were vastly long for his age, but smaller than an infant's of six months; his complexion was perfectly delicate, and he had the finest hair in the world; he never spoke, nor cried, ate scarcely anything, and was very seldom seen to smile, but if any one called him a fairy-elf, he would frown and fix his eyes so earnestly on those who said it, as if he would look them through. His mother, or at least his supposed mother, being very poor, frequently went out a-charing, and left him a whole day together. The neighbours, out of curiosity, have often looked in at the window to see how he behaved when alone, which, whenever they did, they were sure to find him laughing and in the utmost delight. This made them judge that he was not without company more pleasing to him than any mortal's could be; and what made this conjecture seem the more reasonable was, that if he were left ever so dirty, the woman at her return saw him with a clean face, and his hair combed with the utmost exactness and nicety."


title: Changeling

text: In the Anglo-Scottish border region it was believed that elves (or fairies) lived in "elf hills" (or "fairy hills"). Along with this belief in supernatural beings was the view that they could spirit away children, and even adults, and take them back to their own world (see Elfhame). Often, it was thought, a baby would be snatched and replaced with a simulation of the baby, usually a male adult elf, to be suckled by the mother. The real baby would be treated well by the elves and would grow up to be one of them, whereas the changeling baby would be discontented and wearisome. Many herbs, salves and seeds could be used for discovering the fairy-folk and ward off their designs. It was also believed that, in order to force a changeling to reveal itself, it must either be surprised into speech or made to laugh.


title: Changeling

text: In one tale a mother suspected that her baby had been taken and replaced with a changeling, a view that was proven to be correct one day when a neighbour ran into the house shouting "Come here and ye'll se a sight! Yonder's the Fairy Hill a' alowe" (i.e. "the Fairy Hill is on fire"). To this, the elf got up, saying "Waes me! What'll come o' me wife and bairns?" and made his way out of the chimney.


title: Changeling

text: At Byerholm near Newcastleton in Liddesdale sometime during the early 19th century, a dwarf called Robert Elliot or "Little Hobbie o' The Castleton" as he was known, was reputed to be a changeling. When taunted by other boys he would not hesitate to draw his gully (a large knife) and dispatch them, however being that he was woefully short in the legs they usually out-ran him and escaped. He was courageous however and when he heard that his neighbour, the six-foot three-inch () William Scott of Kirndean, a sturdy and strong borderer, had slandered his name, he invited the man to his house, took him up the stairs and challenged him to a duel. Scott beat a hasty retreat.


title: Changeling

text: Child ballad 40, "The Queen of Elfland's Nourice", depicts the abduction of a new mother, drawing on the folklore of the changelings. Although it is fragmentary, it contains the mother's grief and the Queen of Elfland's promise to return her to her own child if she will nurse the queen's child until it can walk.


title: Changeling

text: The Mamuna or Boginki is a Slavic spirit that exchanges babies (making them into odmieńce) in the cradle. The changelings left by the Mamuna were said to have a noticeably different appearance; an abnormally large abdomen, unusually small or large head, a hump, thin arms and legs, a hairy body, and long claws. Mamuna changelings would also get their first set of teeth prematurely compared to a human baby.


title: Changeling

text: In order to protect a child from being kidnapped by the Mamuna, the mother would tie a red ribbon around the baby's wrist, put a red hat on its head, and keep it out of the moonlight. Other preventative methods included not washing diapers after sunset and never turning their head away from the baby as it slept. Still, even if a child was taken by the Mamuna, there was a way to force her to return it. The mother would take the changeling child to a midden, whip it with a birch stick, and pour water from an eggshell over it, all while shouting "Take yours; give mine back." Typically, the Mamuna would feel sorry for its own child and would return the human baby to its mother.


title: Changeling

text: In Nordic traditional belief, it was generally believed that it was trolls or beings from the subterranean realms that exchanged children.


title: Changeling

text: Since most of the supernatural beings of Scandinavian folklore are said to be afraid of iron, Scandinavian parents would often place an iron tool such as a pair of scissors or a knife on top of the cradle of an un-baptised infant to prevent its being abducted by the trolls. It was believed that if a human child were still taken, in spite of such measures, the parents could force the return of the child by treating the changeling cruelly, using methods such as whipping or even inserting it in a heated oven. In at least one case, a woman was taken to court for having killed her child in an oven. In Sweden, it was believed that a fire must be kept lit in the room housing a child before it is christened, and furthermore, that the water used to bathe the child should not be thrown out, since both of these precautions will prevent the child from being taken by trolls.


title: Changeling

text: In one Swedish tale, the human mother is advised to brutalize the changeling ("bortbyting") so that the trolls will return her son, but she refuses, unable to mistreat an innocent child despite knowing its nature. When her husband demands she abandon the changeling, she refuses, and he leaves her – whereupon he meets their son in the forest, wandering free. The son explains that since his mother had never been cruel to the changeling, so the troll mother had never been cruel to him, and when she sacrificed what was dearest to her, her husband, they had realized they had no power over her and released him.


title: Changeling

text: The tale is notably retold by Swedish children's story author Helena Nyblom as "Bortbytingarna" in the 1913 book "Bland tomtar och troll". (which is depicted by the image), a princess is kidnapped by trolls and replaced with their own offspring against the wishes of the troll mother. The changelings grow up with their new parents, but both find it hard to adapt: the human girl is disgusted by her future bridegroom, a troll prince, whereas the troll girl is bored by her life and by her dull human future groom. Upset with the conditions of their lives, they both go astray in the forest, passing each other without noticing it. The princess comes to the castle whereupon the queen immediately recognizes her, and the troll girl finds a troll woman who is cursing loudly as she works. The troll girl bursts out that the troll woman is much more fun than any other person she has ever seen, and her mother happily sees that her true daughter has returned. Both the human girl and the troll girl marry happily the very same day.


title: Changeling

text: In Asturias (Northern Spain), there is a legend about the Xana, a sort of nymph who used to live near rivers, fountains and lakes, sometimes helping travellers on their journeys. The Xanas were conceived as little female fairies with supernatural beauty. They could deliver babies, "xaninos," that were sometimes swapped with human babies – some legends claim this was in order for them to be baptized, while others claim that it is because the Xana cannot produce milk. The legend says that in order to distinguish a "xanino" from a human baby, some pots and egg shells should be put close to the fireplace; a xanino would say: "I was born one hundred years ago, and since then I have not seen so many egg shells near the fire!".


title: Changeling

text: In Wales the changeling child ("plentyn cael" (sing.), "plant cael" (pl.)) initially resembles the human child for which it has been substituted, but gradually grows uglier in appearance and behaviour: ill-featured, malformed, ill-tempered, given to screaming and biting. It may be of less than usual intelligence, but may equally well be identifiable on account of its more-than-childlike wisdom and cunning.


title: Changeling

text: The common means employed to identify a changeling is to cook a family meal in an eggshell. The child will exclaim, "I have seen the acorn before the oak, but I never saw the likes of this," and vanish, only to be replaced by the original human child. Alternatively, or following this identification, it is supposedly necessary to mistreat the child by placing it in a hot oven, by holding it in a shovel over a hot fire, or by bathing it in a solution of foxglove.


title: Changeling

text: King Charles I of England (1600 - 1649) was reportedly rumored to have been a changeling due to his "peevish nature" as a child and a nursemaid's claim that a figure appeared mysteriously at his bedside and cast a cloak over the sleeping baby's cradle.


title: Changeling

text: Children identified as changelings by the superstitious were often abused or murdered, sometimes in the belief that changelings could be forced to admit their true nature by beatings, exposure to fire or water, or other trials.


title: Changeling

text: Two 19th-century cases reflect the belief in changelings. In 1826, Anne Roche bathed Michael Leahy, a four-year-old boy unable to speak or stand, three times in the Flesk; he drowned the third time. She swore that she was merely attempting to drive the fairy out of him, and the jury acquitted her of murder. In 1895, Bridget Cleary was killed by several people, including her husband and cousins, after a short bout of illness (probably pneumonia). Local storyteller Jack Dunne accused Bridget of being a fairy changeling. It is debatable whether her husband Michael actually believed her to be a fairy; many believe that he concocted a "fairy defense" after murdering his wife in a fit of rage. The killers were convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, as even after the death they claimed to be convinced they had killed a changeling, not Bridget Cleary herself.


title: Changeling

text: The Igbo people of eastern Nigeria traditionally believed that a woman who lost numerous children, whether stillborn or early in infancy, was being tormented by an "ogbanje", a malicious spirit that reincarnated itself over and over again. One of the most commonly prescribed methods for ridding oneself of an "ogbanje" was to find and destroy its "iyi-uwa", a buried object tying it to the mortal world.


title: Changeling

text: Many scholars now believe that "ogbanje" stories arose as an attempt to explain the loss of children with sickle-cell anemia. Even today, infant death is common among children born with severe sickle-cell anemia, especially in areas of Africa lacking adequate medical resources.


title: Changeling

text: The similarity between the European changeling and the Igbo "ogbanje" is so marked that Igbos themselves often translate the word into English as "changeling". The "abiku" was a rough analogue of the "ogbanje" among the related Yoruba peoples to the west of Igboland.


title: Changeling

text: The word oaf, meaning a clumsy or stupid person, is derived from the historic English word for a changeling, "auf". This, in turn, is believed to have originated from the Middle English "alven" and "elven", and ultimately from the Old Norse word for elf, "alfr".


title: Changeling

text: Medical experts now believe some changeling tales developed in an attempt to explain deformed, developmentally disabled, or neurodivergent children. Among the diseases or disabilities with symptoms that match the description of changelings in various legends are spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, PKU, progeria, Down syndrome, homocystinuria, Williams syndrome, Hurler syndrome, Hunter syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Prader-Willi Syndrome, and cerebral palsy. The greater incidence of birth defects in boys correlates to the belief that male infants were more likely to be taken by fairies. Psychologist Stuart Vyse writes that modern parents have higher expectations of childbirth and when "children don't meet these expectations, parents sometimes find a different demon to blame." A condition known as regressive autism, where children appear to develop normally in their early years and then start to show symptoms of autism, can also be compared to marks of a changeling child.


title: Changeling

text: In particular, it has been suggested that autistic children would be likely to be labeled as changelings or elf-children due to their strange, sometimes inexplicable behavior. For example, this association might explain why fairies are often described as having an obsessive impulse to count things like handfuls of spilled seeds. This counting preoccupation has found a place in autistic culture. Some autistic adults have come to identify with changelings (or other replacements, such as aliens) due to their experiences of feeling out of place in the world. (Compare the pseudoscientific New Age concept of indigo children.)


title: Changeling

text: Several species of birds, fish, and arthropods regularly practice brood parasitism, or non-reciprocal offspring-swapping. Rather than raising their young on their own, they will lay their egg in another's nest, leaving the burden of raising their young on the unsuspecting parents, which are of another species altogether. More often than not, the invading species hatches sooner than its "step-siblings" and grows faster, eventually hogging most nourishment brought in and may actually "evict" the young of the host species by pushing them out of their own nest.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Honkai Impact 3rd () is a free-to-play 3D action role-playing game (originally a mobile exclusive) developed and published by miHoYo, and later ported to Microsoft Windows. It is the spiritual successor to "Houkai Gakuen 2", using many characters from the previous title in a separate story. The game is notable for incorporating a variety of genres, from hack and slash and social simulation, to elements of bullet hell, platforming, shoot 'em up and dungeon crawling across multiple single and multiplayer modes. It features gacha mechanics.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: In addition to the game, the storyline of "Honkai Impact 3rd" spans multiple supplementary media including an anime series, multiple manhua series, and promotional videos.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: The word "Honkai" based on the Japanese 崩壊 (ほうかい, "collapse" or "decay"), pronounced "hōkai", which is the direct translation of the Chinese 崩坏 (bēng huài) used in the original Chinese title. (The "Impact" part of the title is absent from both the Chinese and Japanese versions, but may be a reference to the cataclysmic "impacts" that occur in the Japanese mecha anime series "Neon Genesis Evangelion".) Additionally, in the game, Honkai Impacts, also referred to as Honkai Eruptions and Outbreaks, are large-scale Honkai disasters that coincide with the birth of a Herrscher. The game starts out in the post-3rd Impact era.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: "Honkai Impact 3rd" has players control a team of up to three characters, known as "Valkyries", in real-time combat against various enemies. During battle, players may freely move their character around the battlefield and switch between their three deployed Valkyries in real-time. Each Valkyrie has unique attack, evasion, switch, and ultimate skills, as well as a type. The three types Mech, Biologic, and Psychic are based on a rock-paper-scissors-based system where types are advantaged and disadvantaged depending on both the enemy type and their own type. Additionally, the two types Quantum and Imaginary exist and are disadvantaged over each other, neutral towards the above three types, and advantaged over themselves. Valkyrie stats and skills can be changed with various weapons and equipment, which can be improved by using in-game resources. New equipment (known as "Stigmata"), weapons, and Valkyries can obtained either through in-game crafting or through a gacha system.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Single-player game modes include the "Story" campaign, consisting of stages punctuated by dialogue in cutscenes and full motion videos (FMVs), "Chronicles", a series of brief side stories that explore Valkyries' backstories or other aspects of the world, and "Open World", allowing exploration of several large open-ended fields to gather materials and complete various challenge tasks, coupled with their own storylines.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: The game features various multiplayer cooperative and competitive modes such as "Co-op Raid", where players team up to progress through several stages and obtain legendary weapons and related rewards; "Memorial Arena", where players compete against a set of bosses for the highest score across the server; and "Abyss", where players attempt to progress as far as possible through a gauntlet of battles to compete for high scores against others in a small group. Players are able to join groups of other players, called "Armadas", which allow for more opportunities for events and rewards. Armadas allow for limited requesting of materials and resources from other players in the Armada.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Outside of battles, "Honkai Impact 3rd" allows players to interact with the Valkyrie and Stigmata characters through the "Dorm" mode. Upon completing character specific tasks, different characters may be able to move into the dorms, whereupon new character information and dialogues between those characters can be seen. Players can craft various pieces of furniture and design the layout of the dorm rooms to increase the "comfort" of the Valkyries and Stigmata therein. Greater comfort levels allow players to level up their dorm limits for more elaborate decoration. Players are able to visit and view each other's decorated dorm layouts.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Secondary gameplay mechanics include various minigames incorporating bullet hell, platforming, and shoot 'em up elements that allow players to gather various crafting and experience materials. Limited-time seasonal events may also include gameplay styles such as dungeon crawling and battle royale which are not normally seen in the main gameplay modes.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Each Valkyrie can equip one type of weapon. The weapon types in the game are dual pistols, blade (katana), heavy (cannon), two-handed (greatsword), cross, fists (gauntlet), scythe, lance, bow, and chakram.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: After reaching player level 81 and weapon level 50, some weapons can be further upgraded into Pri-Arms, changing their design, attributes, and effects.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Each Valkyrie can equip three Stigmata. Players can increase their characters' attack, defense, critical chance, and other attribute effects while those characters wear various Stigmata.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: The Stigmata system can be divided into three types: top, middle, and bottom, which correspond to the types of attack, defense, and auxiliary. Players can also activate different set effects when wearing two or three Stigmata of the same set. Players can obtain Stigmata through the gacha, stage completion, events, and crafting. After players obtain a Stigmata, they can enhance, upgrade, and refine it to improve the Stigmata's stats and effects.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Players can enhance Valkyrie stats by "enhancing" (leveling-up) weapons and Stigmata. Stigmata level up requires a different exp item type than weapons. Upon "enhancement", the equipment can get a better attribute effect bonus.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Players can improve the attribute effect of equipment by upgrading weapons and Stigmata. All weapons or Stigmata can upgrade the star level through an "upgrade". After upgrading, the maximum level limit increases, allowing stronger effects. More advanced weapons and Stigmata require more advanced upgrade materials. Players can obtain upgrade materials by challenging stages, pulling in the gacha, and purchasing in stores.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: The main currencies are crystals and coins, which have various non-premium obtaining methods. Asterite is a currency obtained from various miscellaneous sources throughout the game and can be exchanged for supplies in specific shops. Many of the game's gameplay modes and events each have their own corresponding currencies and shops.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: "Honkai Impact 3rd" is set in an alternate version of Earth, plagued by catastrophes resulting from "Honkai" (in Chinese translates as "Chaos", while in Japanese, it is said "Houkai".). Honkai is largely viewed as a malevolent force with a will of its own, able to corrupt humans into undead creatures, manifest itself in the form of various monsters, and select various individuals known as "Herrschers" to imbue them with god-like powers able to trigger apocalyptic events. The Honkai is a cyclic phenomenon, returning to end civilization on Earth each time it gets too advanced - the Previous Era ended 50,000 years prior to the game's start, after the 14th Herrscher defeated humanity.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: In the present day, various global factions exist to combat or take advantage of the power of Honkai. These include "Schicksal", a European-based peacekeeping organization that deploys human warriors known as Valkyries to combat the Honkai; "Anti-Entropy", formerly the North American branch of Schicksal that objected to the use of human soldiers in favor of mechanized robots; and "World Serpent", a shadow organization manipulating events since the end of the Previous Era.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Prior to the story's start, three Herrscher awakenings (or "Impacts") have occurred in the Current Era: the Herrscher of Reason who became the leader of Anti-Entropy instead of fighting humanity, the Herrscher of the Void who was defeated by Schicksal and Anti-Entropy in 2000, and the Herrscher of Thunder who was prevented from fully awakening and sent to train her powers as a Valkyrie at Schicksal's St. Freya Academy.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: The production team for "Honkai Impact 3rd" grew from a 7-person start to employing over 200 employees in 2018. miHoYo offers small amounts of in-game currency to users that fill out surveys about their experience in the game, allowing the game's developers to adjust future events and tweak the game. As a result, "Honkai Impact 3rd" is under a continuous-update system, patching bug fixes and changing or adding content multiple times per year. The game has had many significant changes since launch, including rewriting the entire first two chapters of the story in a December 2018 update. The developers stated that their decision to make "Honkai Impact 3rd" be in the free-to-play monetization system (rather than a premium, or paid, game) with the purpose of making the game more available to players. "Devil May Cry" and "Bayonetta" significantly affected the game makers' ideas for the fight system of "Honkai Impact 3rd".


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: After a few years of users emulating "Honkai Impact 3rd" on computers and an update making emulation more difficult, the game's official PC version was developed, releasing to the public on December 26, 2019.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: "Honkai Impact 3rd" features an ongoing serialized manhua of the same name in Chinese and in English. The manhua begins before Chapter 1 of the main game story arc that aims to supplement and flesh out the in-game plot, and often includes character origins. Several in-game battlesuits worn by the Valkyries are illustrated in the manhua as well. The manhua has three prequel titles and one main title.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: A non-canon slice of life cooking television anime series featuring 19 short episodes "Cooking with Valkyries" () was released from July to September 2020. The Bilibili releases are available in Mandarin Chinese, while the Japanese broadcast versions are in Japanese.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Another non-canon anime called "ELF Academy" with 10 episodes was released from July to September 2021. There is a finished version in Mandarin and a Japanese version that is still airing. This series is about ELFs (Equipment: Living Form), which are autonomous weapons created to replace living soldiers, going to school and interacting with each other.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: The game first attracted a large fanbase in Asia before spreading globally: first released in China in late 2016, it reached 1 million downloads in Japan 11 days after release, and IGN reported that "Honkai Impact 3rd" gathered a total of 35 million downloads worldwide as of March 28, 2018. The game has been released in Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, and supports multiple languages including Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, French, German, and Indonesian.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: In an article from 2017, "Ungeek.com" says that the game has some later-game systems that are unintuitive, and cites the large download size for a mobile game as a negative. The review praised the game's visual quality and the ease of learning to play the game, as well as the overall quality of the game, and positively recommended it. The article mentioned that the quality of the game was comparable to console games.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: On April 22, 2021, as part of the 3rd anniversary of the game's global server, a music video titled "Brilliant Bright" in collaboration with Myth & Roid, was released on miHoYo's Honkai Impact 3rd YouTube channel. While the video featured characters wearing bunny-girl outfits, none of the outfits were actually made available in-game - the cosmetics were solely for the purpose of the video. The backlash from the Chinese players was immediate and severe, with many considering it insensitive and unfair to release content for international players only. Two days later, on April 24, one Chinese man, armed with a knife, was reported to have infiltrated the developers' office of miHoYo in Shanghai, in an allegedly planned, but failed attempt to assassinate the miHoYo founders, before he was apprehended on the spot and sent in police custody.


title: Honkai Impact 3rd

text: Since the incident, the special video from Honkai Impact 3rd was removed from their channel, although the video itself is still available online, through fan reuploads. The Japanese band Myth & Roid have pulled out from the collaboration, and also had their special video single removed, but Brilliant Bright will still be available through streaming platforms and will be released as their digital single. In the game, any content related to 3rd-anniversary bunny girls, with the exception of the correlating event stigmata, are now removed as according to the game's official statement and was instead given 500 crystals for every GLB player as compensation. Chinese server players were given greater compensation (10 focused supply cards = 2800 crystal), despite not actually having any content removed in the Chinese version.


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Mary Stuart Masterson (born June 28, 1966) is an American actress and director. She has starred in the films "At Close Range" (1986), "Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987), "Chances Are" (1989), "Fried Green Tomatoes" (1991) and "Benny & Joon" (1993). She won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1989 film "Immediate Family", and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the 2003 Broadway revival of "Nine".


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson was born June 28, 1966, in Manhattan (some sources cite Los Angeles, CA) the daughter of writer-director-actor-producer Peter Masterson and singer-actress Carlin Glynn. She has two siblings: Peter Jr., and Alexandra. As a teenager, she attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York with actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Cryer. Later, she attended schools in New York, including eight months studying anthropology at New York University.


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson's first film appearance was in "The Stepford Wives" (1975) at the age of eight, playing a daughter to her real-life father. Rather than continue her career as a child actor, she chose to continue her studies, although she did appear in several productions at the Dalton School. In 1985, she returned to cinema in "Heaven Help Us" as Danni, a courageous teen running the soda shop of her gravely depressed father. She appeared with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken in the film "At Close Range" (1986) as Brad Jr's girlfriend Terry, a film based on an actual rural Pennsylvania crime family led by Bruce Johnston, Sr. during the 1960s and 1970s. She later starred as the tomboyish drummer Watts in the teenage drama "Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987). As a result, she is loosely connected with the Brat Pack. The same year Francis Ford Coppola cast her in "Gardens of Stone" in which she acted with her parents who were hired by Coppola to play her on-screen parents. In 1989, she played in "Chances Are" alongside Cybill Shepherd, Ryan O'Neal and Robert Downey Jr., and she starred as Lucy Moore, a teenage girl giving up her first baby to a wealthy couple, played by Glenn Close and James Woods in "Immediate Family". For her work in that film she received a "Best Supporting Actress" award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson continued acting in films and television during the 1990s. In 1991, she starred in "Fried Green Tomatoes", a film based on the novel "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe". The film was well-received, with film critic Roger Ebert applauding Masterson's work. The following year she was invited to host "Saturday Night Live". In 1993, she played opposite Johnny Depp in "Benny & Joon" as Joon, his mentally ill love interest. In 1994, she acted in "Bad Girls", playing Anita Crown, a former prostitute, who joins with three other former prostitutes (played by Madeleine Stowe, Andie MacDowell and Drew Barrymore) in traveling the Old West. In 1996, Masterson acted alongside Christian Slater in the romantic drama "Bed of Roses".


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Although Masterson carried on her work in the film industry, by 2000 she had made a move towards television. In 2001, she produced her own television series, "Kate Brasher", which was canceled by CBS after six episodes. In 2004, Masterson played Dr. Helen Taussig in the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning HBO biographical drama "Something the Lord Made". Between 2004 and 2007, she made five guest starring appearances on "" as Dr. Rebecca Hendrix. A decade later, she appeared in a recurring role as FBI director Eleanor Hirst in the second and third seasons of "Blindspot".


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson has appeared in Broadway theater productions, and was nominated for a 2003 Tony Award as "Best Featured Actress in a Musical" in the Maury Yeston musical "Nine: The Musical", directed by David Leveaux.


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson has narrated several audiobooks, including "I See You Everywhere" by Julia Glass, "Book of the Dead" by Patricia Cornwell, "The Quickie" by James Patterson and "Look Again" by Lisa Scottoline.


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: In May 1993, Masterson revealed she had written a screenplay for a film tentatively entitled "Around the Block", a romantic comedy about a "woman who conquers her fears by becoming a singer"; in a cover story about "Benny & Joon"s box office success, she told "Entertainment Weekly" she was going to direct it herself, with principal photography expected that autumn.


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: In 2001, she began her directing career with a segment titled "The Other Side" in the television movie "On the Edge".


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson made her feature film directorial debut in 2007, with "The Cake Eaters", which premiered at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival as well as the Ashland Independent Film Festival where it received the 'Audience Award – Dramatic Feature' prize in 2008. Of her move to directing, Masterson said in an interview, "When I signed to do this, I wasn't scared but, yes, it was scary. I'm already 40, although we don't want to talk about that. In '92, I wrote my first screenplay, which I then was to direct, but I ended up taking an acting job because it takes forever to get a movie made."


title: Mary Stuart Masterson

text: Masterson was married to George Carl Francisco from 1990 to 1992 and to filmmaker Damon Santostefano from 2000 to 2004. In 2006, Masterson married actor Jeremy Davidson after they starred together in the 2004 stage production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". In October 2009, Masterson gave birth to their first child, son Phineas Bee. She gave birth to twins in August 2011, son Wilder and daughter Clio.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: The country in which a motor vehicle's vehicle registration plate was issued may be indicated by an international licence plate country code, formerly known as an International Registration Letter or International Circulation Mark. It is referred to as the Distinguishing sign of the State of registration in the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic of 1949 and the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of 1968.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: The allocation of codes is maintained by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe as the "Distinguishing Signs Used on Vehicles in International Traffic" (sometimes abbreviated to DSIT), authorised by the UN's Geneva Convention on Road Traffic and the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. Many vehicle codes created since the adoption of ISO 3166 coincide with ISO two- or three-letter codes. The 2004 South-East Asian "Agreement ... for the Facilitation of Cross-Border Transport of Goods and People" uses a mixture of ISO and DSIT codes: Myanmar uses MYA, China CHN, and Cambodia KH (ISO codes), Thailand uses T (DSIT code), Laos LAO, and Vietnam VN (coincident ISO and DSIT codes).


title: International vehicle registration code

text: The Geneva Convention on Road Traffic entered into force on 26 March 1952. One of the main benefits of the convention for motorists is the obligation on signatory countries to recognize the legality of vehicles from other signatory countries. When driving in other signatory countries, the distinguishing sign of the country of registration must be displayed on the rear of the vehicle. This sign must be placed separately from the registration plate and may "not" be incorporated into the vehicle registration plate.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: The display of a national distinctive mark on a white oval plate, 30 cm × 18cm with black letters was first introduced by the 1909 International Convention with respect to the Circulation of Motor Vehicles signed in Paris. The plate was required to be affixed to the rear of the vehicle, separate from the number plate displaying the vehicle's national registration mark. The 1909 convention only allowed distinctive marks to be of one or two Latin letters.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: The term "distinguishing mark" was adopted by the 1924 International Convention Relative to Motor Traffic signed in Paris, which extended the maximum length of mark from two to three Latin letters, and permitted not just distinguishing marks for states, but also for non-sovereign territories which operated their own vehicle registration systems.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: Since the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic entered into force on 21 May 1977, in signatory countries it replaces previous road traffic conventions, including the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, in accordance with its Article 48. According to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, the distinguishing sign of the country of registration must be displayed on the rear of the vehicle. The sign may either be placed separately from the registration plate as a white oval plate or sticker, or be incorporated in the vehicle registration plate. When the distinguishing sign is incorporated in the registration plate, it must also appear on the front registration plate of the vehicle.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: The requirement to display a separate distinguishing sign is not necessary within the European Economic Area, for vehicles with license plates in the common EU format, which satisfy the requirements of the Vienna Convention, and so are also valid in non-EU countries signatory to that convention. Separate signs are also not needed for Canada, Mexico and the United States, where the province, state or district of registration is usually embossed or surface-printed on the vehicle registration plate.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: There are unofficial codes in common use, such as "AS", "A" or "AST" for Asturias, "CAT" for Catalonia, "SCO" for Scotland, "CYM" for Wales, "BZH" for Brittany, "VL" for Flanders, "V" for Vojvodina/Vajdaság, "TS" for Transylvania, "PR" for Puerto Rico, "CSB" for Kashubia and "SIC" for Székely Land (from Latin "Terra Siculorum"). Some of these, such as "VL" which is used by Flemish separatists, are used despite being specifically illegal under local laws.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: In addition, in some areas, vehicle-style stickers have been used to denote and promote other entities, such as towns, islands, businesses, and even associations. These irregular stickers almost always bear an explanation of the code in small print near the edge of the sticker, as the codes used may be unfamiliar.


title: International vehicle registration code

text: A separate system is used for vehicles belonging to the diplomats of foreign countries with license plate from the host country. That system is host country-specific and varies largely from country to country. For example, TR on a diplomatic car in the USA indicates Italian, not Turkish. Such markings in other countries (e.g. Norway) are indicated with numbers only, again different from international standards (e.g. 90 means Slovakia in Norway).


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: Jonathan Malangu Kuminga (born October 6, 2002) is a Congolese professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A consensus five-star recruit and the top small forward in the 2021 class, he chose to forgo his college eligibility and reclassify to the 2020 class to join the NBA G League Ignite. Kuminga finished his high school career at The Patrick School in Hillside, New Jersey.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: The Warriors selected Kuminga with the seventh overall pick in the 2021 NBA draft. During his rookie season, he won an NBA championship with the team.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: Kuminga began playing basketball in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at age two. In 2016, he moved to the U.S. to play high school basketball.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: As a freshman, Kuminga played basketball for Huntington Prep School in Huntington, West Virginia. For his sophomore season, he transferred to Our Savior New American School in Centereach, New York and averaged 25 points, five rebounds, and five assists per game. In January 2019, Kuminga was named most valuable player of the Slam Dunk to the Beach showcase after scoring 40 points, a single-game record at the event, in a loss to Gonzaga College High School. He earned MaxPreps National Sophomore of the Year honors. After the season, Kuminga averaged 20.8 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game for the NY Rens at the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League, facing many players older than him. He scored 43 points, shooting 7 of 11 from three-point range, against the Texas Titans, a team featuring top recruits Cade Cunningham and Greg Brown.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: For his junior season, Kuminga transferred to The Patrick School in Hillside, New Jersey. On December 23, 2019, he made his season debut, scoring 20 points in a win over Roselle Catholic High School, after having been ruled ineligible for 30 days by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association due to transfer rules. On January 3, 2020, Kuminga suffered an ankle sprain that sidelined him for about a month. As a junior, he averaged 16.2 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: As a high school sophomore, Kuminga emerged as one of the best recruits in the 2021 class, with most recruiting services ranking him first in his class by the time he was a junior. On July 15, 2020, he reclassified to the 2020 class and announced that he would bypass college basketball to join the NBA G League Ignite over offers from Texas Tech, Auburn, Duke and Kentucky, among other college programs. At the end of his high school career, he was a consensus five-star recruit and the best small forward in the 2020 class. He was considered the third-best player in his class by Rivals.com and the fourth-best by 247Sports.com and ESPN after reclassifying .


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: On July 15, 2020, Kuminga signed a one-year contract with the NBA G League Ignite, a developmental team affiliated with the NBA G League. On February 10, 2021, he made his debut, recording 19 points, four assists and four rebounds in a 110–104 win over the Santa Cruz Warriors. Kuminga averaged 15.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: The Golden State Warriors drafted Kuminga as the 7th pick in the 2021 NBA draft. On August 3, 2021, he signed with the Warriors. On October 30, Kuminga made his NBA debut, putting up three points and one steal in a 103–82 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. On December 18, in his first career start, Kuminga put up a career-high 26 points in a 119–100 loss to the Toronto Raptors. On February 18, 2022, Kuminga participated in the Rising Stars Challenge game for the 2022 NBA All-Star Game weekend, replacing the injured Chris Duarte. Kuminga ended his rookie season as an NBA champion after the Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics in the 2022 NBA Finals. At 19 years and 253 days, he became the second youngest NBA champion, behind Darko Milicic.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: In August 2022, Kuminga joined the DR Congo men's national basketball team for the African 2023 World Cup qualifiers. His older brother, Joel Ntambwe, was also on the roster. On August 26, 2022, he scored a team-high 18 points along with 6 rebounds for Congo in a 69–71 loss to Cameroon.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: Jonathan Kuminga is able to defend multiple positions and has elite potential to be a lockdown defender, with his near 7' wingspan and 6'8 feet height and elite athleticism and vertical. He can also slash to the rim really well, and has great scoring potential but is however a poor shooter. He also shows great potential to be a ball-handler, and alpha dog mentality, pointed as one of the key players to extend the Warriors' dynasty. Lastly, his passing vision has improved in his rookie season.


title: Jonathan Kuminga

text: Kuminga's older brother, Joel Ntambwe, played college basketball for UNLV before transferring to Texas Tech in 2019. Two of his cousins play professional basketball: Emmanuel Mudiay in the NBA, and Omari Gudul in Europe. Kuminga's first language is French, and he is continuing to learn English.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by British author Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. Set in the 12th century, the novel covers the time between the sinking of the "White Ship" and the murder of Thomas Becket, but focuses primarily on the Anarchy. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture, and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory and village against the backdrop of historical events of the time.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Before this novel was published, Follett was known for writing in the thriller genre. "The Pillars of the Earth" became his best-selling work. It was made into an 8-part miniseries in 2010, and a video game in 2017. The book was listed at no. 33 on the BBC's Big Read, a 2003 survey with the goal of finding the "nation's best-loved book". The book was selected in the United States for Oprah's Book Club in 2007. It is the first book in the Kingsbridge Series, the others being a sequel, set 150 years later, entitled "World Without End" (2007), and "A Column of Fire" (2017) set in Elizabethan England. A fourth novel, "The Evening and the Morning" (2020), a prequel set in 997 AD, was released on September 15, 2020.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: In the 1999 preface to "The Pillars of the Earth", Follett tells readers that he grew up in a Puritan-based family, whose worship space was very sparse. In preparing for writing, he was reading about medieval architecture, and:


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: The novel's Kingsbridge is fictional. Follett set it in Marlborough, Wiltshire; he chose that location because the cathedrals of Winchester, Gloucester, and Salisbury could be reached from there within a few days on horseback. Kingsbridge Cathedral as described is based on the cathedrals of Wells and Salisbury. The Preface includes the following sources: "An Outline of European Architecture," by Nikolaus Pevsner, "The Cathedral Builders," by Jean Gimpel, and "The Medieval Machine," by Jean Gimpel.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: As well as the story of building a cathedral, and closely connected with it, the book depicts the growth of Kingsbridge from a backwoods village to a major town, the increasing wealth and assertiveness of the town's merchants and artisans, to the point of their being able to stand up to the feudal aristocracy and defend their autonomy. While Kingsbridge is a fictional town, such developments are well attested in the history of various actual towns, and form a major theme of late medieval history.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: The sinking of the "White Ship" leaves King Henry I of England without a clear heir. After he dies the Anarchy begins: his daughter, Maud, and his nephew, Stephen of Blois, fight for the throne. Ambitious nobles and churchmen take sides, hoping to gain advantages. The novel, which is divided into a prologue and six sections, explores themes of intrigue and conspiracy, against a background of historical events. It explores the development of medieval architecture, the civil war, secular/religious conflicts, and shifting political loyalties.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: A red-headed man is hanged for theft after being condemned by a priest, a knight, and a monk. His pregnant lover curses the men who condemned him, declaring that their children will be hanged, their enemies will prosper, and that they will live the rest of their lives with regret and sorrow.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Circumstances leave mason Tom Builder and his family destitute and starving. After his pregnant wife Agnes dies in childbirth, Tom abandons his newborn by his wife's grave in the snowy woods, having no way to feed the infant. He later has a change of heart and returns, but finds the baby missing. After meeting up with an outlaw named Ellen and her son Jack, whom they had first met earlier, the group discovers that Tom's infant has been taken to a monastery cell belonging to the Kingsbridge Priory. Knowing that he will be charged with abandonment if he says the baby is his, and confident that the monks will be able to look after him, Tom decides to leave the infant to the monastery. After several unsuccessful attempts to find work, Tom convinces Bartholomew, Earl of Shiring, to hire him to repair the walls of the Earl's castle.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Philip, the leader of the cell, is visited by his brother Francis, a priest, who warns him of a plot by Earl Bartholomew and the Earl of Gloucestershire against King Stephen. Philip tells Waleran Bigod, the ambitious archdeacon to the Bishop of Kingsbridge, of the plot, and travels to Kingsbridge Priory where the previous manager, Prior James, has died only a few days before. Waleran promises to make Philip the bishop's nomination for prior, practically guaranteeing Philip's election, in return for Philip's support to later make Waleran bishop though Waleran conceals that the bishop is also already dead. Philip agrees as the priory has become financially and spiritually destitute under Prior James, and he believes he can correct that. He wins, making enemies of the rivals for the post, in particular the sub-prior Remigius. Tom's infant, now named Jonathan, is sent to live with Philip at the priory.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Unsure of the validity of Philip's words, Waleran goes to the Hamleighs, a noble family who have been enemies of the Earl of Shiring ever since the earl's daughter, Aliena, rejected a marriage with William, the only son of the Hamleighs. Seeing this as an excuse for them to take their revenge, the Hamleighs take Bartholomew's castle and arrest the earl, forcing Tom and Ellen, now lovers, and their children into homelessness once again. They eventually settle in Kingsbridge, Tom hoping to get a job rebuilding the cathedral there. The family sees Jonathan during this time, although only Tom and Ellen know that he is Tom's son. To ensure that Tom will have work, Jack burns down the old Romanesque cathedral, telling no one else of his actions. After some convincing, Philip hires Tom to build the new cathedral.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Tom's strong son Alfred physically bullies smaller and weaker Jack through repeated acts of battery which creates friction with Ellen as Tom sees no fault in his son and never disciplines him. Brother Remigius, who is opposed to Philip as prior, charges Ellen and Tom with fornication. Waleran, who was cursed by the woman at the hanging, orders Ellen to live apart from Tom. Outraged by Tom's willingness to accept this, Ellen returns to the forest with Jack.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Philip and Waleran go to King Stephen in the hope of convincing him to give Bartholomew's estates, including a huge limestone quarry, to the church, so that they can be used to pay for the new cathedral's construction. Initially believing that Waleran will be loyal to him as a fellow cleric, Philip learns from the Hamleighs that Waleran intends to use the earldom solely to boost his own position. Realising that the Hamleighs are trying to divide him and Waleran so that they can take the earldom for themselves, Philip secretly conspires with the Hamleighs. They agree that Kingsbridge Priory will be given the quarry and some other lands with the rest of Shiring going to the Hamleighs, but the Hamleighs betray this deal and are given ownership of the quarry with Philip getting rights to, not ownership of, the stone. Furious at being foiled, Waleran vows to never let Philip build his cathedral.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Finding her still living in Shiring Castle, William attacks Aliena and her brother Richard. He mutilates the boy to coerce Aliena into not resisting as he rapes her brutally. This leaves Aliena traumatized. Homeless and destitute, Aliena and Richard travel to Winchester in the hope of receiving compensation from the king, and visit Bartholomew, now dying in prison. The former earl demands they swear an oath to work to regain the earldom. Aliena supports Richard financially by becoming a wealthy wool merchant (by, as described in the book, the hitherto unheard-of act of buying wool from the farmers on their farms and selling it at market rather than the farmers having to travel to market themselves, saving them time and effort) with the help of Philip, who agrees to buy her wool at a fair price when other merchants refuse to do so, and the two siblings settle in Kingsbridge.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: The Hamleighs attempt to barricade the quarry against the priory, but Philip foils them by having his quarrymen travel there under the protection of the monks. The Hamleighs' men at arms retreat, fearing damnation if they do violence to the churchmen, leaving the quarry available for Philip's use. In retaliation, the Hamleighs work with Waleran to try to have the cathedral moved to Shiring, thus depriving Philip of the properties tied to it, by claiming that Kingsbridge lacks the resources and manpower to build a cathedral. At the advice of his allies, Philip calls across the county for volunteers to work on the cathedral as penance for their sins. On the day of an inspection by Bishop Henry of Blois that Waleran had arranged, they arrive en masse, and Henry is convinced to not move the cathedral.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: William's father, Percy Hamleigh, dies, and William learns that the earldom will either go to him or Richard, now a knight, since they are both sons of an Earl of Shiring. Prior to the quarry, William destroys a mill and murders a miller in a village in front of Arthur and the townsfolk to provide fear and control of the serfs and villagers. In order to restore his fortunes so that he can raise an army with which to impress King Stephen, William leads an attack on the quarry, which the Hamleighs had unsuccessfully attempted to barricade against Philip, killing and expelling the priory's quarrymen. Philip travels to Lincoln to attempt to persuade King Stephen to redress this outrage, but is interrupted by the Battle of Lincoln, where the king is captured by Robert of Gloucester. Philip is also captured by Robert's forces but is released by his brother Francis, who is chaplain to Robert. Francis gets Philip an audience with the Empress Maud, who grants him a license for a market at Kingsbridge, while William Hamleigh, who has switched sides from Stephen to Maud, is granted sole right to the disputed quarry. Philip, despite the quarry being thus denied him, still manages to pay for stone for his cathedral using the revenues from the market.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Tom befriends Prior Philip and, when Ellen returns, he persuades Philip to allow them to marry. After some time, Alfred proposes to Aliena, but she turns him down. She also strikes up a friendship with Jack, with whom she falls in love, now working as an apprentice mason at Tom's suggestion, but she shuns him after Alfred catches the two of them kissing, being reminded of William's attack on her. The two stepbrothers continue to be at odds, and Alfred later claims that Jack's father was hanged for thieving, starting a fight that leads to damage and a loss of construction materials. Jack is expelled from the cathedral construction, but Philip contrives a new construction overseer position for Jack that he can have, on the condition that he becomes a monk. Jack reluctantly agrees to this, in order to stay in Kingsbridge. Later on, Ellen claims that Jack's father was innocent.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: William proves a hapless and merciless lord who mishandles the earldom financially and routinely rapes any peasant woman he wishes. Attempting to restore his fortunes, William leads an attack that burns down Kingsbridge and kills many people including Tom Builder. In the chaos, Aliena's entire stock of wool, in which she had invested all her money, is destroyed in the fire.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: After losing her fortune again, Aliena agrees to marry Alfred if he supports Richard. Jack, who has been confined for continued infringements (largely fraternizing with Aliena) breaks his confinement in an attempt to talk to her, but is ultimately locked in the obedience room of the monastery. The next morning, Ellen breaks into the room, revealing that Jack's father had once been imprisoned there after he was framed for theft by three men. Freed by his mother, Jack and Aliena make love on the morning of her wedding, and he tries to convince her to leave Kingsbridge with him, but she refuses to do anything that would require her to break her vow to support Richard. Jack attempts to persuade Alfred to call off the marriage, but discovers that Alfred plans to marry her solely to keep her from Jack, and intends to mistreat her to further spite him. Ellen curses the wedding, seemingly leaving Alfred impotent, and he and Aliena never consummate their marriage. Jack leaves Kingsbridge to find out about his father.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: After years of putting off the decision following the death of Earl Percy Hamleigh, Stephen finally gives the earldom to William. Alfred persuades Philip to replace the wooden roof of the cathedral with a stone vault, but fails to reinforce the structure at the higher levels. This causes the cathedral to collapse during a service, killing many people. Aliena gives birth to a red-headed son, and Alfred abandons her, having realised that the child is Jack's. On Ellen's advice, Aliena leaves with her son to find Jack, and follows evidence of Jack's sculpture through France and Spain, finding him in Paris, where they reconcile. Jack helps to calm a riot at a nearby cathedral using the "Weeping Madonna", a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary he was given by a spice merchant he befriended that appears to weep when taken from a hot place to a cold place. The statue is viewed as a miracle, which Jack leverages for financial support to rebuild the cathedral in Kingsbridge.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: As he travels home, Jack makes his way to Cherbourg where he is mistaken for the ghost of his father, Jacques Cherbourg, before meeting his grandmother and other relatives, who reveal that Jacques had supposedly died in the sinking of the "White Ship", of which he was a passenger. Returning to Kingsbridge, Jack convinces Philip and the clergy to make him the cathedral's new master-builder, drawing up a new design for the cathedral based on his observations in France and Spain. His relationship with Aliena is discovered by the monks during the negotiations, and Philip orders them apart until Aliena's marriage to Alfred is annulled.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Wanting more information on his father, Jack questions Ellen, who has continuously kept the truth from him out of fear that he would devote himself to a life of revenge against those responsible for his father's death. She implies that the "White Ship" was sunk deliberately, reveals that the three men who framed Jacques Cherbourg were Percy Hamleigh, Waleran Bigod, and Prior James. After Jack visits Waleran to seek confirmation of Ellen's words, William, jealous of Jack's relationship with Aliena, convinces Waleran to let him attack Kingsbridge again, in order to kill Jack in a way that would avoid drawing attention to his accusations. Richard overhears fighters discussing the attack in another town, and his warning allows the villagers to build a set of town walls and earthen ramparts in about two days, thanks to the expertise of Jack. Fighting from the walls, the townspeople kill many of the attackers and repel William's attack, while making it impossible for him to raid Kingsbridge again. As revenge, William asks Waleran to block Alfred and Aliena's annulment. Though disheartened, Jack and Aliena agree to stay together, living separately (and occasionally making love in the forest) until the day they can marry.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Many years of famine pass, which are further exacerbated by William's poor leadership. Alfred has left Kingsbridge for Shiring, but following a downturn in business, he returns to Kingsbridge and begs for a job from Jack. William's mother dies, and after he forgets to summon the priest to give her last rites, the guilt-stricken William is persuaded by Waleran to build a cathedral in Shiring for the sake of his mother's soul. They are later aided by Alfred, who brings all of the Kingsbridge workmen to Shiring in return for being in charge of the cathedral's construction after Philip is unable to keep paying them.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Inspired by Aliena, Richard organises the starving peasants who have turned to outlawry into a militia, and goes to war with William, robbing him on multiple occasions. William learns of the location of Richard's forces from Remigius, in return for making the monk the head of Shiring's future chapter, and plans an overwhelming attack to kill all the rebels. When he arrives, he learns from Ellen that Richard's men have left to join the forces of Maud's son, the future Henry II of England, who has invaded the country on the advice of Francis.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Eventually, Stephen agrees to have Henry succeed him. Philip learns that as part of their deal, all properties will revert to the owners who held them prior to Stephen's reign, thus making Richard the official earl, but Stephen will not have to force the handovers, meaning that Richard might not gain the earldom until Stephen's death. With the help of William's young wife, who loathes him, Aliena is able to allow Richard to capture the earldom's castle before Henry and Stephen's treaty can be made official and the King's Peace restored. William returns to the village of Hamleigh, and Waleran proposes to sell him the position of sheriff of Shiring so that he can oppose Richard and keep funding the cathedral. Remigius is abandoned by the two of them during this time, but Philip forgives him for his treachery and allows him to return to the priory.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Richard refuses to grant the priory access to the quarry, on the basis that it was once part of the earldom. After Aliena calls him out for his ingratitude towards Philip, she is attacked and nearly raped by Alfred, who is out of work again after Shiring Cathedral is abandoned. Richard arrives and kills Alfred in the ensuing fight. Seeing a chance to regain the earldom, William obtains a warrant to arrest Richard for murder on the king's behalf. Realising that Richard has no chance of a fair trial due to the attitudes towards marital rape of the time period and the hostility of both William and Stephen towards him, Philip proposes that Richard, who is more suited to be a soldier than an earl, fight in the Crusades as penance for killing Alfred; William would be unable to arrest him, and Aliena would be allowed to look after her brother's lands, therefore giving the earldom both a competent ruler and one willing to cooperate with the priory. Aliena and Jack marry within the new cathedral.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: After many years, Kingsbridge cathedral is completed. Waleran still seeks to ruin Philip, and accuses him of fornication by claiming that Jonathan, now a well liked and committed monk, is Philip's son. With Philip's conviction certain due to a lack of evidence proving his innocence, Jack and Jonathan attempt to figure out the identity of the latter's father, both being unaware that he is Tom's son. They discover the truth when Jonathan recalls that he had been found near the monastery cell that Philip once ran, a fact that had previously been unknown to Jack, who then remembers seeing the baby Jonathan lying on his mother's grave. The two of them manage to convince Ellen, who has remained bitter towards Philip for his role in splitting up her and Tom, to testify on his behalf.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: At Philip's trial, Ellen's testimony saves him from being convicted. Regardless, Waleran accuses Ellen of perjury, and she exposes his own perjury in the framing of Jacques Cherbourg, revealing that Waleran and the others had been bribed to dispose of him. Remigius confirms her testimony, having heard Prior James confess to his perjury shortly before the latter's death. He explains that James's misrule of the Priory had been the result of the guilt he felt for his part in the conspiracy, and admits that he had sought to become Prior to repair the damage, before admitting that Philip was better suited for the task. Waleran ultimately loses his position as bishop of Kingsbridge as a result of the revelations.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: Later on, William and Waleran become involved with the plot to assassinate Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to protect their now crumbling positions of power. William leads the attack, and despite the efforts of Philip, who had traveled to Canterbury to meet with Becket, the archbishop is brutally murdered. Upon seeing the distraught congregation, Philip is inspired to treat Becket's death as a martyrdom, and urges the assembled people to spread word of the murder across Christendom. With King Henry refusing to defend Becket's killers, William is subsequently convicted of sacrilege by the efforts of both Philip and Tommy, the son of Jack and Aliena, and hanged.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: At Kingsbridge, Jack meets with a ruined and repentant Waleran, now living as a monk in the priory, to learn why his father was framed. The former bishop explains that a group of barons had arranged the sinking of the "White Ship" in order to kill the king's son and heir, with the belief that they would be able to influence the succession and gain more independence from the crown as a result. After they learned that Jacques Cherbourg had survived the sinking, the barons had him imprisoned in England to prevent him from exposing their conspiracy. While initially content to leave him there, they eventually chose to have him killed after he learned English and started attracting unwanted attention, hiring Waleran, Percy, and James for this end. Finally understanding the truth behind his father's death, Jack is able to put it behind him. Elsewhere, the Pope forces King Henry's public repentance and symbolic subjugation of the crown to the church, in which Philip, now Bishop of Kingsbridge, participates. In this final scene, Philip muses that the affair has proven the limitations of Royal power; the King could order Becket killed, but faced with the massive popular reaction he had to bow down and let himself be humiliated.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: While the book has been praised for its description of Medieval life, it also features some historical inaccuracies. Some of these might be to make the characters and the plot more suited for modern readers while some are clear anachronisms:


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: A German-Canadian co-production was developed by the Munich-based Tandem Communications and Montreal-based Muse Entertainment, in association with Ridley Scott's Scott Free Films, to adapt the novel for a television movie. It premiered on 23 July 2010 in Canada on The Movie Network/Movie Central and in the United States on Starz. Its UK premiere was in October 2010 on Channel 4. The Australian premiere was 9 December 2012 on ABC1.


title: The Pillars of the Earth

text: In 2016, a musical version of "The Pillars of the Earth" was performed at Østre Gasværk in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the name "Jordens Søjler".