Muffin doesn’t strike me as too modern. It goes back at least as far as 1703. Not medieval, but at least it’s old. If you like the sonority, you can use bufflehead instead. Buffle (as in buffalo) goes back to the early 16th century in English, and even farther in some of the Romance languages. Bufflehead… I’m going to save that one for Sigefrith to use.

Mmmm… buffalo…

I always want to use muffinhead but muffins hadn’t been invented back then either. Even though technically there was no back then since my world is a fantasy world but still… I don’t think muffins really fit into the picture. Mmmmm muffins.

But according to the OED, as an insult, chowderhead may be an extension of jolter-head, which is an extension of the slightly-older jolt-head (early 16th cen.), which is not bad itself, and archaic enough that I might use it. I can’t literally limit myself to words dating from the 11th century after all.

The OED even has a quote from 1767, with the phrase “Ninny-hammers, goose-caps, jolt-heads”. Goose-caps! Even if I never use jolt-head, I must use goose-cap. It sounds like something Eadie or Wynflaed would say and think themselves quite impertinent.

Hehe… I would love to use chowderhead too… that is an awesome insult .

Quite a few deaths would have to happen for that outcome Tiana . To be honest I haven’t planned out everything and stuff is definitely liable to change based on what my sims do. But I do have a bit of an idea about what is going to happen here.

Valeriya’s presence makes perfect sense, when you put it that way. I have had precisely the same thoughts already… in fact every time a lady has a baby, I always ask myself who attended the delivery. So, uh… maybe you think about it too much, but I do it too. And I call it paying attention to details!

Spangled drongo is such an excellent insult it’s a shame you can’t use it. I think I will keep the spangled and attach it to something else… even spangled ninny isn’t bad. Spangled something-ninny would be better if I could think of a good something.

I am always trying to avoid too much American slang (not that I use a lot anyway, not having a TV or anything), but also avoiding too much Shakespeare, which is far more pervasive in the English language than you would think. The only thing I can quote freely is the Bible and, oh, maybe Beowulf. That makes swearing difficult. “By God’s wounds!” just doesn’t pack the same punch to modern ears as certain other things I won’t write here, and nevertheless at that time period it was a shocking oath.

As for looby, I didn’t make it up. I got that, as well as ninnyhammer and beetlehead, from the good old (as in 1911) Roget’s thesaurus, under “Fool”. In my story it’s one of Sir Sigefrith’s favorite expressions, and I try to limit its use to people who hang out with him.

I would love to use chowderhead, which my dad uses, but I am not certain people ate chowder back then. I freely use another of his, muttonhead, since people ate plenty of mutton. In fact it’s Sigefrith’s name for Murchad. He named him that to match Aengus, whom he calls Meatwit, which I think I did make up.

But there is one that keeps coming recurring in my mind and which I don’t allow myself to write… so many times I have had to stop Alred from quoting the immortal Bugs Bunny and saying, “What a maroon!”

I think Valeriya is actually a lot stronger than it sometimes seems. She has been through an awful lot with Radomir but she never breaks down about it (except with Harndall, he is the only one she has shown her emotions to). I don’t know… I guess it depends on what you define as strong… some people would say it takes a lot of strength to hide your feelings and not burden people with them, others say it takes a lot of strength to let someone in. I think she and Lochan also have a certain respect for each other in their shared suffering and understands too what it is like to be on the outer rim of all the happy couples. I thought someone might wonder why she brought in the baby. There is actually a reason behind it and that is this; there is a bit of a shortage of ladies around at the moment, especially of noble class. Cindra is about to pop and basically confined to her room. Isaura was too ill to attend her. Morven is also about to pop and is ill so she wasn’t there. Varda and Lisbet were present too but since Valeriya was the highest ranking woman there they thought it would be appropriate that she present the King with his heir. So there you go I have obviously been thinking about this too much.

Ning nongs is a very fine Australian phrase meaning basically as you said ninnys or idiots .I was tempted to call them drongos (which is similar) as well but I thought that was going a bit extreme. It is however one of my favourite Australian insults along with “you bunch of flaming galahs” made famous by a character in the terribly bad but ubiquitous home and away. Actually I found out the other day that a drongo is a type of bird and much to my gratification there is a variant called a spangled drongo. How awesome is that. And of course you are welcome to use them there not really mine to start with . Actually when I was trying to think up a funny word for idiot and I kept thinking over and over loobys, loobys, loobys I hadn’t heard that one before? Is that an invention of yours?