I've been a subscriber to the Ricardian blog "Murrey and Blue" for going on 9 years now: I joined when I was just getting into Medieval History, and I used to find it very interesting. Unfortunately, in the last few years, I began finding the blog kind of repetitive, and I wasn't learning as much from it as I had years ago. It felt like the posts had shifted from educational to ranting, and I had genuinely loved and appreciated the educational posts. I had chalked up the change to what was going on in the Richard III Society at the time: Matt Lewis was canned from his position after sharing some taboo beliefs concerning Richard's marriage to his cousin, Anne Neville. I assumed that the fires from that were still hot, and that with the rejection of someone like Lewis from the Society, that maybe new discoveries were not really welcome (it had always been a problem within the society, and originally the complaint had been toward Dr. John Ashdown-Hill's stubbornness towards members).
It wasn't until a week ago that I found out the truth: the original creator had died, and his co-admin was left to keep the blog going, which she did for a number of years. However, she is unable to renew the domain, and so the blog is going to cease making new posts. Viscountess did state that she hoped the blog would stay UP, however she was unsure if that would be the case. Personally, I hope it stays up, as it holds a treasure trove of information about The Wars Of The Roses.
Since coming onto the history scene years ago, a number of my historian friends have died. The internet is forever, yet sometimes that means that things like Facebook profiles, playlists, and even blogs can become abandoned memorials to people who no longer post. On top of that, with death now becoming something much more tangible in digital spaces, websites have enacted safeguards for in case admins die or posters cease. Of course, Murrey and Blue, being a Wordpress blog, did not have that luxury: Wordpress has yet to cross the bridge of what can be done when a blogger dies (currently they have their hands busy with a lawsuit). Blogger is even worse: I can barely log into my own blogs there, and I am still very much alive. At least with Tumblr, I can leave my login credentials with a loved one just in case.
Murrey and Blue has been a mainstay of my life, and I hope it continues to exist in some form. It is unfortunate that the hosting domain has yet to put in safeguards for death, and it shouldn't be the reason that such a helpful resource for those interested in the time period should cease because of it. I have to wonder if maybe the posts could be put on another blog or maybe the contents downloaded and reuploaded. I'm not sure, however: I used Blogger originally, and then Wordpress for a time, yet I merely copied and pasted my posts on their respective Tumblrs, since I didn't have many posts to worry about. Nevertheless, I wish the best to ViscountessW, and her endeavors here on out.
Update: as of January 25th, it seems ViscountessW and other Ricardians have managed to keep MurreyandBlue alive!
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