This lavish painting here is called The Roses of Heliogabalus and it depicts what is pretty likely to be an orgy hosted by the only trans woman to rule the roman empire - the empress Elagabalus
It was painted by Lawrence Alma-Tadema and commissioned by John Aird, 1st Baronet of Paddington, in 1888 for £4000 (£533,310 in 2021 money) and its such an obvious flex of newly acquired wealth and status. Thank fuck eh or we wouldn’t have such a beautiful work depicting a historic and famous trans woman. How do we know its an orgy? Well its a typical little trick of the victorians to hide tawdry dirty debauched scenes under smth much more innocent like ppl being smothered to death by pink rose petals
The story goes that Elagabalus would hold lavish parties and orgies and on this occasion she hid pink rose petals in a false ceiling that she then released on guests as they frolicked and fucked thereby smothering them. Now idk if this is real or not cuz there are also stories of her feeding guests up to bursting point at banquets and releasing tigers on them, which while this could have happened it all feels a bit more like its leaning into the general character assassination of Elagabalus cuz she was a trans woman and the culture of rome was very toxically masculine. Can’t pretend i don’t love the opulence of the whole thing tho, who wouldn’t stan a supposed mad queen who murders her orgy guests in floods of rose petals? George RR Martin take note that is how u murder ur party guests
Elagabalus herself features in the painting pretty central to the image in gold robes, as empress she would have to be the most extravagantly dressed and nothing says mad queen xtravaganza like languishing in a gold robe with a tiara while ur guests drown in pink petals. She's backed by a flute player wrapped in leopard skin and watching over the whole scene is a statue of bacchus, which gives us further hint this is an orgy or even a bacchanalia which at that time i’m sure there was very little difference.
In the foreground one attendee breaks the fourth wall as they look knowingly at us while holding a pomegranate - a fruit that hades offered persephone as a way of enticing her into the underworld - another clue as to what is happening in the paining as any cosmo girl would have known. The guest to the right of this one is staring at Elagabalus in anger and horror like wtf hen when i said i wanted the D i did not mean death this goes against our safer spaces policy
Elagabalus and her guests look on at the carnage from a higher platform. Some of her guests seem entranced but she just looks on nonchalantly as if this is just another day for her, another way of showing that she was clearly insane. Well what transsexual girlboss empress doesn’t have a few mental health issues here and there when the world where her own praetorian guard had it out for her and eventually murdered her