Aries: It’s a classic Aries move to die in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Aries are independent, sometimes moody, generous, and incapable of surviving the onslaught of Sultan Mehmed II’s army once they cross the north side of the Golden Horn. Whether you’re a soldier in Mehmed’s service or a terrified member of the Byzantine royal family cowering in the city’s crumbling defenses, there’s no way you’re making it out of the siege alive.
Taurus: Childbirth.
Gemini: Washed overboard the caravel Berrio, commanded by Nicolau Coelho, as you rounded the Cape of Good Hope. It’s the rare Gemini who hasn’t been washed off of the Berrio under the command of Nicolau Coelho, to be honest.
Cancer: Cancer, or the sign of the Crab, is Karkinos, the crab that attacked Greek hero Hercules while he fought the Hydra during his ten labors. Cancers tend to follow their intuition and die in house fires in the lands of the Sultanate of the Geledi around 1648.
Leo: Generally, executed during the reign of Mary of Burgundy for possession of a forbidden grimoire, although their impenetrable hides can offer some protection, especially for Leos born on a Virgo cusp.
Virgo: Nothing. You are still alive today.
Libra: Big fucking rock. Big fucking rock.
Scorpio: Childbirth.
Sagittarius: Childbirth.
Capricorn: Capricorns tend to be Jan Hus, so the majority of them would have been executed in 1415 under the auspices of Louis III, Count Palatine of the Rhine, shortly after refusing to recant his beliefs and affirming that he had erred in the theses which he had hitherto maintained; that he renounced them for the future; that he recanted them; and that he declared the opposite of these sentences.
Aquarius: Childbirth.
Pisces: Pisces are open to change, dreamy, artistic, and tend to perish along the Spice Route just after arriving in Malacca.
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Tags: advice, astrology, early modern period, what will kill you
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Big fucking rock might still get me. I’m watching you, rock.
You know, I’m a Libra geologist. This is shockingly still accurate.
Please tell me Libra geology” is a specific an official subfield of geology.
I am still alive today! Wow, this is really accurate!!
SAME! I’ve never been prouder to be a virgo. It’s nice to be immortal.
Hooray!
does this mean there’s a secret immortal Virgo cabal i will eventually age into? i like that plan.
Staying away from men is the secret to immortality.
somehow, i knew!
Ooooh, I’m a Cancer and was just listening to the police scanner and almost went to a house fire to take pictures…but I sent the intern instead. OH GOD WHAT IF SHE’S ALSO A CANCER WHAT HAVE I DONE
Question: are you the host of a community radio show? If so, I feel like an intern would understand the risks when she signed up.
well no wonder the Gemini got washed overboard, that ship sounds dangerously overloaded with Geminis.
At least we managed to Take to the Sea!
Kind of defeats the purpose, though, right? “Finally, the sea awaits me! Oh, hi, Jen, are you on this ship too? And there’s Dave…and Claire…I’m, uh, really happy to see you guys?…and, wait, it says here I have to share my bunk?” By the time we reached the Cape we’d be ready to jump.
No. The ship will not be wooden, nor will it be sail-driven. If I die on a ship, damn it will offer nightly entertainment and decent meals. There are no plans in my life to go down with hardtack.
Oh no. I’m a Gemini, and I’m going on a cruise in a few months. I was trying to press down ship related anxiety but now this can help kick it up a notch.
I wonder what that many Geminis in one place would be like. Very noisy, I imagine. Like being in an aviary.
A really snarky, opinionated aviary.
I met a very very drunk woman on a boat recently. She held my hand and asked me my birthday, and when I told her, she gave a huge eyeroll and said “UGH, GEMINIS.” She then told me that I had a kind heart, my fiancé should not wear pink, and that as an Aries, he is an irredeemable flake. But he did not die in battle, and I made it safely off the boat, so I guess all’s well that ends well?
it wasn’t on a boat, but I’ve had the exact same reaction. What have we done??? Maybe we deserve Death By Cape Good Hope??
Am a Capricorn, can confirm stubbornness, love of caveats, loopholes and baffling people with (il)logic. Definitely execution-worthy.
Sidenote: frequently suspect am already dead.
To date this delusion has been largely curable through the miraculous properties of caffeine.
Sidenote: frequently suspect am already dead.
I share this theory. The one time I floated it to a friend in hopes he would dispel it for me, he said he had the SAME THEORY and we both sank into existential dread and I momentarily forgot to drive the car
As a cis man Scorpio, I’m actually kind of excited to find out how childbirth does me in.
Ricochet.
You ever noticed have “umbilical” kinda sounds like “tentacle”? Yeah…
So, I’m dying of childbirth, and my SO is dying of childbirth, which means I’m 99% sure I’m taking him with me.
But does it really count as ‘dying in childbirth’ if you’re just stabbing him on your way out?
Likewise. As someone who had planned not to have children, I’m intrigued as to what’s going to happen to us!
You can have my childbirth death, I’m not breeding even in medieval times.
I initially read that to mean you weren’t breeding in the Middle Ages-themed restaurant, and I thought, “Yes, that would be a terrible place to have sex.”
Haha, at least when I went in middle school times, the King or Lord or Chancellor or some dude always read a list of “royal proclamations” for people having birthdays and whatnot. Now I’m imagining THAT announcement.
You do know that babies die during their births sometimes, right?
Debating whether to go by my zodiac sign as per the early modern period, or my shiny new updated zodiac sign. It’s the difference between dying in childbirth (nawwww) or in a dreamy Spice Route misadventure so, conflicted!!
Maybe you get both. Childbirth on the Spice Route is no picnic.
ooooh, that’s a nasty way to go, but more dramatic than either option on its own. Sounds good!
Yes! I’m still a Cancer, but now I lead the pack rather than cusping it like a dirty Leo.
Half my favorite people are Leos!
Wait.
*checks*
Now my most favorite one is a Cancer on the Leo cusp. So them’s still fighting words! Put up your dukes! (but like, don’t worry too much. I’m still a water sign soooo.)
Aw nuts, I would much rather have a forbidden grimoire than DIAF.
When you put it that way…
Well, I’ve just decided, we were rescuing puppies when we DIAF, an act for which we were posthumously awarded some sort of sainthood.
Ooh, I’m actually a Capricorn. I will chose dying in childbirth over being burned to death.
Good news for bad deaths!
I’d pick childbirth over burning, too. Both terrible, but nooooope.
Virgo protectively camouflaged as a Scorpio? I can dig it. Though the Vengeful Virgin sounds like either a Silver Age comic book villain or one of Perry Mason’s cases.
Yesss. Still virgo, still aliiiive. Suck it, I win at being born under stars.
This is like the first time something written about Leos applies to me. I would 100% be executed for possessing a forbidden magic book.
If my birthday is right on the border between Libra and Scorpio, does that mean I get crushed by a rock while giving birth because that just sounds doubly unpleasant.
I was just wondering the same thing…
I am on the Virgo-Libra cusp, which I guess means that I am still alive today, but am a big fucking rock. Pretty spot on really.
I’m on the cusp of childbirth and execution…
fucking Virgos
Right? Fucking Virgos. They WOULD still be alive.
we smug stick-in-the-mud’s will live FOREVER. ahahaha!
Suck it, every other sign of the Zodiac.
YEAH, BUT EVERYONE ELSE WILL HAVE MORE FUN
or something, idk, the older I get the more I adooooooore me some Virgos. My last and best roommate was a Virgo and she was the actual most perfect human to live with.
The survivors will envy the dead.
What, no smallpox? (Not that I’m complaining. Getting washed overboard at the Cape of Good Hope sounds like a better way to go than smallpox.)
As a be-uterused Aquarius who never plans on having kids, I’m feeling a tad smug rn.
I feel like Tauruses would die of gout, or over-eating in some way, lord of the manor-style.
omg jinx
Haha totally! Henry VIII was definitely in the back of my mind too!
I knew I should have ditched that grimoire.
I am Cancer, and I half expected to die from cancer.
I was hoping a little bit that crab might lead to kraken or other Here There Be Dragons type beasties. Especially because I’m even skittish about lighting matches, let alone DyingIAF.
Hasn’t anyone ever heard of the Forer effect? Horosocopes only feel real because the’re vague enough to apply to any body. So what if the Council of Constance just tore up my letter of safe conduct and remanded me to the Elector Palatine for sentencing and exectution? It’s nothing but a flattering coincedence.
BUT I DON’T HAVE A GRIMOIRE!
Well, you need to get on that.
But I might get executed if I do! This isn’t going well, is it?
Look, you’re going to be executed for possessing it one way or the other. You might as well actually have one.
Unreadaethel beat me to it. You are going to be executed for it either way, you might as well literally and figuratively own dat grimoire and get into all kinds of grim magic.
That’s just what someone with a Grimoire would say!
That[s just what someone secretly in possession of a Grimoire would say.
BUT I REALLY DON’T HAVE ONE!
AHA and THAT is exactly what someone with a Grimoire would say in response to someone saying that that’s just what someone with a Grimoire would say!
Oooh, the Spice Route and Malacca? I love traveling to new places!
Semi-serious astrological question ya’ll. I was born a month early so would this effect my sign? I’ve always gone with the one for my actual birth rather than my due date, but I’ve always been kind of curious if that would be wrong according to people that actually believe and or know about this kind of thing.
Nope. You were born early for a reason. You were called forth from the womb by the pull of astral tides.
No. When you were born is when you were born, regardless of due date.
/has studied astrology for a really long time
Is the time when you were born, along with the date, super significant, too? I was born on Christmas Eve, early AM and was told that I’m a Capricorn but with a Sagittarius uprising.
Astrology is weird AND fun!
Time is super important, not just for your Ascendant (rising sign), but also for other planetary positions that can strongly affect how your sign is expressed. (This is just one reason why most “horoscopes” that just generalize by Sun sign are so eye-rollingly ridiculous, because it’s crazy to think that everyone born in the same month behaves the same/has the same personality traits/can expect the same life events.)
… but it’s not crazy to think that the time you were born can predict your personality and life events?
Well, I was heading for Malacca, but somebody laid a trap for me before I reached Bombay.
I prefer to believe that a Taurus, devoted to the finer things, would either go the way of Henry VIII and basically food and gout themselves to death if rich enough to do so, or be executed for trying to steal a cake.
Fortunately it is well known that we Geminis get two lives. Unfortunately half the time drowning at sea is the first death followed shortly there after by drowning at sea again.
Fireproof hide for the win, bitches. I’ll take all those grimoires.
This is the first time I’ve ever wished I were a Libra!
Goddamnit, Nicolau Coelho.
As a tokophobic Taurus, I feel intensely justified and smug about my life decisions. Not today, early modern death!
As a tokophobic Taurus, I feel intensely justified and smug about my life decisions. Not today, early modern death!
“Capricorns tend to be Jan Hus,”
GUILTY AS CHARGED. What gave me away, the predilection for vernacular scripture? Having Strong Opinions about how to handle communion? Not letting it go, ever? The likelihood that I’d critique the technique of people who were trying to set me on fire?
It IS a little unnerving at times, frankly. Your own little alien parasite.
Taurus: Childbirth.
Didn’t see that coming.
Taurus: Childbirth.
Didn't see that coming.
im always so incredibly gosh danged pleased by all your historical references
August 23! I’m alive!
This is creepily accurate in that I have always wanted to travel through Malacca along the Spice Route during the Early Modern period.
This is creepily accurate in that I have always wanted to travel through Malacca along the Spice Route during the Early Modern period.
I can’t believe I missed this the first go-round on the internet, but:
despite being alive today, I definitely would have died of infection.
I’m having a “high anxiety” day, so everything feels like it’s threatening me with its capacity to go tits up in seconds and kill us all. My children are both Virgos, so it was a relief to see that they did not die in the early modern period. It’s really taken a load off my mind.