title: Saffron Burrows

text: Saffron Domini Burrows (born 22 October 1972) is an English actress and model who has appeared in films such as "Circle of Friends," "Wing Commander," "Deep Blue Sea," "Gangster No. 1," "Enigma," "Troy," "Reign Over Me" and "The Bank Job". On the small screen, she has starred as Lorraine Weller on "Boston Legal," Dr. Norah Skinner on "My Own Worst Enemy," Detective Serena Stevens on "" and Victoria Hand on "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.". She appeared as Cynthia Taylor on the Amazon Video series "Mozart in the Jungle" and as Dottie Quinn in the Netflix series "You".


title: Saffron Burrows

text: A Londoner, Burrows was born in St Pancras and grew up in Stoke Newington, her mother a trade unionist and primary school teacher in Hackney and her father an architect and teacher. Her parents and stepfather were Socialist Workers Party members, and Burrows was politically active from a young age.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows attended William Tyndale Primary School in Islington and then Stoke Newington School. When asked for her preference of a school in Hackney or Hampstead, she said she wanted to be in a multicultural, inclusive environment. She enrolled in acting classes at the Anna Scher Theatre when she was 11.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows had a successful modelling career after she was discovered at age 15 in Covent Garden by fashion photographer Beth Boldt. For five years she divided her time between London and Paris, where she learned French. She found it troubling the pressure the modelling world put on young girls with its "obsession with the ideal of the body".


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows made her film debut in 1993 with a small role in Jim Sheridan's "In the Name of the Father". Her first significant acting roles came in 1995, as an ambitious young Irishwoman in "Circle of Friends," and in Ngozi Onwurah's "Welcome II The Terrordome". She starred in the BBC production of Dennis Potter's "Karaoke" (1996), and in "Hotel de Love", "Lovelife", "Nevada", "One Night Stand" and "The Matchmaker". In 1999 she appeared in Mike Figgis' experimental film "The Loss of Sexual Innocence", where she played twins: one raised in England, the other in Italy. She appeared in the thriller film "Deep Blue Sea," and had the title role in a film of "Miss Julie", which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: In 1999 she appeared with Stellan Skarsgård in "Timecode" (2000), a split-screen digital experimental film shot in a single take with no edits. She followed it with "Gangster No. 1" with Malcolm McDowell, Paul Bettany and David Thewlis. She co-starred with Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott in Michael Apted's 1940s drama "Enigma". She starred in "Tempted", an improvised thriller set in New Orleans, with Burt Reynolds and Peter Facinelli.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Mike Figgis' ensemble feature "Hotel" followed, re-uniting Burrows with some colleagues from "Timecode", including Salma Hayek and Danny Huston in Venice, where she played the Duchess of Malfi. In 2002, she had a cameo role in Hayek's produced biopic "Frida".


title: Saffron Burrows

text: She then dedicated herself to stage work. She was directed by Deborah Warner at the Royal National Theatre in Jeanette Winterson's "The Powerbook". The play toured, visiting the Theatre National Du Chaillot, Paris, and the Teatro Argentina, Rome. Burrows performed in Spanish in "The Galindez File", a film written by Spanish novelist Vazquez Montalban about a woman seeking the truth about the disappearance of a critic of the Dominican dictator Trujillo.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: In 2004, she played the part of Andromache in "Troy". In January 2005, she created the role of Janey in the world premiere of "Earthly Paradise" at the Almeida Theatre. The play of a love triangle between Janey Morris; her husband William Morris, the writer and proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement; and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite painter. Theatre critic Nicholas De Jongh said of her performance in "The Earthly Paradise" that "Burrows takes to the stage like a swan to water ... She deserves no end of watching."


title: Saffron Burrows

text: On 30 October 2005, she appeared on stage at the Old Vic theatre in London in a rehearsed reading of the 24-hour play "Night Sky", alongside Christopher Eccleston. In 2006, Burrows was the female lead in the New Zealand thriller "Perfect Creature". That same year, she worked with Chilean director Raoul Ruiz on "Klimt", his cinematic version of the life of Gustav Klimt. In this film, she played opposite John Malkovich as the artist's lover, a woman of many personalities and nationalities.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: She performed in Hal Hartley's "Fay Grim". Onstage in 2006, Burrows starred opposite David Schwimmer in Neil Labute's world premiere of "Some Girl(s)" at the Gielgud theatre, London. She then starred opposite Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler in Mike Binder's "Reign Over Me". Burrows played the female lead roles in the Indian film thriller "Broken Thread", and in "Dangerous Parking", a drama directed by Peter Howitt. On television, Burrows played attorney Lorraine Weller on ABC's "Boston Legal" (Season 4) from 2007–08. She starred on NBC's 2008 series, "My Own Worst Enemy".


title: Saffron Burrows

text: In 2008, Burrows starred in the independent film "The Guitar", Amy Redford's directorial debut, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2008, she had a starring role as Martine Love in Roger Donaldson's heist film "The Bank Job". She played opposite Kevin Spacey in Jonas Pate's "Shrink". She has contributed to the "Actors Come Clean for Congo" video for the Raise Hope for Congo campaign, a campaign of the Enough Project, in support of the conflict mineral issue.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: In 2010, she starred as Detective Serena Stevens on "", departing at the end of the ninth season. In September 2010, she took part in the documentary feature film "The People Speak", directed and produced by Colin Firth and Anthony Arnove, televised on the History Channel, linked with "The People Speak" (Film) – International. Burrows modeled for Marks & Spencer's autumn 2010 campaign for their Portfolio range. In 2012, Burrows performed opposite Rob Lowe in the political comedy "Knife Fight". She has participated in the "24 Hour Plays" in London, New York, and Los Angeles.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: In 2013 and 2014, Burrows joined the ranks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the ABC television show "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." where she played the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Victoria Hand in a recurring role.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: In 2019, Burrows starred in the recurring role of Dottie Quinn on the second season of the Netflix thriller "You". She reprised her role in the third season, which released in October 2021.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: She starred in the Amazon Video show "Mozart in the Jungle" as Cynthia Taylor, a cellist with the New York Symphony. The series ran for four seasons from 2014 to 2018.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows has written diaries, book reviews and newspaper and magazine articles for "The Guardian", "The Independent", and "The Times" and the "New Statesman".


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows is bisexual, and has said that she "prefers the company of women." She was engaged to actor Alan Cumming in the 1990s, and dated director Mike Figgis for five years until 2002. She was also previously in a relationship with actress Fiona Shaw.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows married writer Alison Balian, her girlfriend of six years, in August 2013. Burrows gave birth to their son in 2012, and their daughter in 2017. They separated in 2020.


title: Saffron Burrows

text: Burrows has expressed sympathy for European style social democracies and for French Socialist politician Ségolène Royal. She joined an anti-racism group when she was 11 years old and she went on to become the Vice President of the National Civil Rights Movement. Burrows is a campaigner for disabled rights and equality.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram (from the Greek words [, meaning "nine"] and [, meaning something "written" or "drawn"]), is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Although the origins and history of many of the ideas and theories associated with the Enneagram of Personality are a matter of dispute, contemporary Enneagram theories are principally derived from the teachings of the Bolivian psycho-spiritual teacher Oscar Ichazo from the 1950s and the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo from the 1970s. Naranjo's theories were also influenced by some earlier teachings about personality by George Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way tradition.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: As a typology, the Enneagram defines nine personality types (sometimes called "enneatypes"), which are represented by the points of a geometric figure called an "enneagram", which indicate connections between the types. There are some different schools of thought among Enneagram teachers and their understandings are not always in agreement.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The Enneagram of Personality has been widely promoted in both business management and spirituality contexts through seminars, conferences, books, magazines, and DVDs. In business contexts it is generally used as a typology to gain insights into workplace interpersonal dynamics; in spirituality it is more commonly presented as a path to higher states of being, essence, and enlightenment. Both contexts say it can aid in self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-development.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: There has been limited formal psychometric analysis of the Enneagram and the peer-reviewed research that has been done has not been widely accepted within the relevant academic communities. Though the Enneagram integrates concepts generally accepted in a theory of personality, it has been dismissed by some personality assessment experts as pseudoscience.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The origins and historical development of the Enneagram of Personality are matters of dispute. Wiltse and Palmer have suggested that similar ideas to the Enneagram of Personality are found in the work of Evagrius Ponticus, a Christian mystic who lived in 4th-century Alexandria in Egypt. Evagrius identified eight "logismoi" ("deadly thoughts") plus an overarching thought he called "love of self". Evagrius wrote, "The first thought of all is that of love of self ("philautia"); after this, [come] the eight." In addition to identifying eight deadly thoughts, Evagrius also identified eight "remedies" to these thoughts.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: G. I. Gurdjieff (died 1949) is credited with making the word "enneagram" and the enneagram figure commonly known (see Fourth Way enneagram). He did not, however, develop the nine personality types associated with the Enneagram of Personality. Instead, Gurdjieff used the enneagram figure for various other purposes, including sacred dances that are known as the Gurdjieff movements.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Oscar Ichazo (1931-2020) is generally recognized as the principal source of the contemporary Enneagram of Personality which is largely derived from some of Ichazo's teachings, such as those on ego-fixations, holy ideas, passions, and virtues. The Bolivian-born Ichazo began teaching programs of self-development in the 1950s. His teaching, which he calls "Protoanalysis", uses the enneagram figure among many other symbols and ideas. Ichazo founded the Arica Institute which was originally based in Chile before moving to the United States and coined the term "Enneagram of Personality".


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Claudio Naranjo (1932-2019) was a Chilean-born psychiatrist who first learned about the Enneagram of Personality from Ichazo at a course in Arica, Chile. He then began developing and teaching his own understanding of the Enneagram in the United States, principally at the Esalen Institute and to his students in Berkeley, California, including two Jesuit priests who adapted the Enneagram for use in Christian spirituality. Ichazo disowned Naranjo and the other Enneagram teachers due to what he considered misinterpretations and misuses of the Enneagram.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Largely due to Naranjo's teachings and those he first taught the Enneagram to, Enneagram teachings became increasingly popularized in the United States and elsewhere from the 1970s. Numerous other authors also began publishing widely read books on the Enneagram of Personality in the 1980s and 1990s, including Don Richard Riso (1987), (1988), Eli Jaxon-Bear (1989), Elizabeth Wagele (1994), and Richard Rohr (1995). In 1994, the First International Enneagram Conference, attended by over 1,000 participants, was held at Stanford University and co-sponsored by the university's psychiatry department where psychiatrist, Enneagram author and conference co-director was teaching.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Analysis of Google search results over 16 years shows an increase in searches for the word "enneagram" from 2017. Additionally, social media accounts and podcasts about the Enneagram have increased, indicating a growing popularity among millennials. It has been suggested that the rise in popularity of the Enneagram is similar to renewed interest in astrology.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The enneagram figure is usually composed of three parts; a circle, an inner triangle (connecting 3-6-9), and an irregular hexagonal "periodic figure" (connecting 1-4-2-8-5-7). According to esoteric spiritual traditions, the circle symbolizes unity, the inner triangle symbolizes the "law of three" and the hexagon represents the "law of seven" (because 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 is the repeating decimal created by dividing one by seven in base 10 arithmetic). These three elements constitute the usual enneagram figure.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The table below offers some of the principal characteristics of the nine types along with their basic relationships. This table expands upon Oscar Ichazo's ego fixations, holy ideas, passions, and virtues primarily using material from "Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types" (revised edition) by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson as well as Charles Tart's "Transpersonal Psychologies". Other theorists may disagree on some aspects. The types are normally referred to by their numbers, but sometimes their "characteristic roles" (which refers to distinctive archetypal characteristics) are used instead. Various labels for each type are commonly used by different authors and teachers. The "stress" and "security" points (sometimes referred to as the "disintegration" and "integration" points) are the types connected by the lines of the enneagram figure and are believed by some to influence a person in more adverse or relaxed circumstances. According to this theory, someone with a primary One type, for example, may begin to think, feel, and act more like someone with a Four type when stressed or a Seven type when relaxed.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The nine Enneagram personality type patterns can be grouped into various triads of three types in which each of the types have some common personality issues. The most well-known of these triad groupings is also associated with the three "centers of intelligence" as taught by G. I. Gurdjieff. These three centers are traditionally known as the intellectual, emotional, and instinctual centers. Although each person is understood to always have all three centers active in their personality structure, certain personality issues are more associated with one of the centers depending on a person's dominant type pattern. In Enneagram of Personality teachings each of these centers has a particular association with one of the triads of personality types as follows:


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Most, but not all, Enneagram of Personality theorists teach that a person's basic type is modified, at least to some extent, by the personality dynamics of the two adjacent types as indicated on the enneagram figure. These two types are often called "wings". A person with the Three personality type, for example, is understood to have points Two and Four as their wing types. The circle of the enneagram figure may indicate that the types or points exist on a spectrum rather than as distinct types or points unrelated to those adjacent to them. A person may be understood, therefore, to have a core type and one or two wing types which influence but do not change the core type. Empirical research into wing theory by Anthony Edwards did not support the theory. Related to, but not the same, as the wing theory is Ichazo's theory involving the active, attractive, and function forces. According to him, the type is made from a starting point, referred to as the active force. In turn, the type is also led with an attractive force. This ends with the "function", where the result is the formation of a type in between the two. Naranjo said about the wings that a person "can easily see" their primary type as being between its adjacent wings.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: For some Enneagram theorists the lines connecting the points add further meaning to the information provided by the descriptions of the types. Sometimes called the "security" and "stress" points, or points of "integration" and "disintegration", some theorists believe these connected points also contribute to a person's overall personality. From this viewpoint, therefore, at least four other points affect a person's overall personality; the two points connected by the lines to the core type and the two wing points. The earlier teachings about the connecting lines are now rejected or modified by many Enneagram teachers, including Claudio Naranjo who developed them.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Each of the personality types is usually understood as having three "instinctual subtypes". These subtypes are believed to be formed according to which one of three instinctual energies of a person is dominantly developed and expressed. The instinctual energies are usually called "self-preservation", "sexual" (also called "intimacy" or "one-to-one"), and "social". On the instinctual level, people may internally stress and externally express the need to protect themselves (self-preservation), to connect with important others or partners (sexual), or to get along or succeed in groups (social). From this perspective, there are twenty-seven distinct personality patterns, because people of each of the nine types also express themselves as one of the three subtypes. An alternative approach to the subtypes looks at them as three domains or clusters of instincts that result in increased probability of survival (the "preserving" domain), increased skill in navigating the social environment (the "navigating" domain), and increased likelihood of reproductive success (the "transmitting" domain). From this understanding the subtypes reflect individual differences in the presence of these three separate clusters of instincts.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: It is believed people function in all three forms of instinctual energies but one may dominate. According to some theorists, another instinct may also be well-developed and the third often less developed.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: Enneagram type indicator tests have been developed by some of the more prominent teachers. One of these, the Riso–Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI), was developed by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson in 1993. Their research focused on constructing it as a personality measurement instrument. The RHETI has been found to be of heuristic value but minimal scientific research has been conducted.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The Stanford Enneagram Discovery Inventory was developed by late psychiatry professor David Daniels at Stanford University, and was later renamed the Essential Enneagram test. This assessment was employed to conduct various research studies, including on the personalities of identical twins.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: A 2002 review of validation studies of various Enneagram tests found guarded support for their reliability and validity.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: While Enneagram teachings have attained some degree of popularity, they have also received criticism including accusations of being pseudoscience, subject to interpretation and difficult to test or validate scientifically, "an assessment method of no demonstrated reliability or validity". In 2011 the scientific skeptic Robert Todd Carroll included the Enneagram in a list of pseudoscientific theories that "can't be tested because they are so vague and malleable that anything relevant can be shoehorned to fit the theory".


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: A 2020 review of Enneagram empirical work found mixed results for the model's reliability and validity. The study noted that the ipsative version of the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (scores on one dimension decrease scores on another dimension) had troubles with validity, whereas the non-ipsative version of the test has been found to have better internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Furthermore, it was found that 87% of individuals were able to accurately predict their Enneagram type (before taking the test) by being read descriptions of each type.


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: In a Delphi poll of 101 doctoral-level members of psychological organizations such as the American Psychological Association, the Enneagram was among five psychological treatments and tests which were rated by at least 25% of them as being discredited for personality assessment. Experts familiar with the Enneagram rated it with a mean score of 4.14 (3.37 in the first round of the study) which is approximately an equivalent to the option "probably discredited" (3 = possibly discredited, 4 = probably discredited, 5 = certainly discredited).


title: Enneagram of Personality

text: The Enneagram has also received criticism from some religious perspectives. In 2000, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine produced a draft report on the origins of the Enneagram to aid bishops in their evaluation of its use in their dioceses. The report identified aspects of the intersection between the Enneagram and Roman Catholicism which, in their opinion, warranted scrutiny with potential areas of concern, stating, "While the enneagram system shares little with traditional Christian doctrine or spirituality, it also shares little with the methods and criteria of modern science... The burden of proof is on proponents of the enneagram to furnish scientific evidence for their claims". Partly in response to some Jesuits and members of other religious orders teaching a Christian understanding of the Enneagram of Personality, a 2003 Vatican document called "Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life. A Christian Reflection on the 'New Age'" said that the Enneagram "when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Penelope Ann Miller (born Penelope Andrea Miller; January 13, 1964), sometimes credited as Penelope Miller, is an American actress.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: She began her career on Broadway in the 1985 original production of "Biloxi Blues" and received a Tony Award nomination for the 1989 revival of "Our Town".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: She has starred in several major Hollywood films, particularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "Adventures in Babysitting" (1987), "Biloxi Blues" (1988), "Big Top Pee-wee" (1988), "The Freshman" (1990), "Awakenings" (1990), "Kindergarten Cop" (1990), "Other People's Money" (1991), "Year of the Comet" (1992), and "Carlito's Way" (1993), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: She returned to Broadway in the 1995 original stage production of "On the Waterfront". Her other films include a starring role in "The Relic" (1997) and supporting roles in "Chaplin" (1992), "Along Came a Spider" (2001), and "The Artist" (2011).


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Miller was born in Los Angeles, California, to Beatrice (née Ammidown), a costume designer, publicist, and journalist, and Mark Miller, a television actor and producer. Her mother was the goddaughter of businessman Aristotle Onassis and an editor of "Harper's Bazaar". She has two sisters: older, Marisa Miller, who is also a film actress, and younger, Savannah Miller, a social worker.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Miller graduated from high school in Los Angeles and attended Menlo College in Atherton, California for two years from 1981 to 1983, then moved to New York City to study theatre at HB Studio.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Her Broadway theatre break came in 1985 when she was cast in the lead (opposite Matthew Broderick) in the Neil Simon play "Biloxi Blues". (She also starred with Broderick in the 1988 film version of that play).


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: She played a role in one episode ("Death and the Lady") of the television series "Miami Vice" (which aired on October 16, 1987), and accepted several other small roles in film and television work. She then returned to Broadway in a revival of "Our Town"; her portrayal of Emily garnered her a Tony award nomination. She then appeared as Pee-wee Herman's (Paul Reubens) fiancée, Winnie Johnston, in the 1988 release of "Big Top Pee-wee". She played a supporting role in 1989's "Dead Bang", a cop thriller starring Don Johnson.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: In 1990, she played Paula in "Awakenings", starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. She also appeared in the 1990 movies "Downtown", with Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker, and "Kindergarten Cop", alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing a teacher, hiding with her son Dominic from her criminal drug-dealing husband Cullen Crisp (Richard Tyson).


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: She subsequently appeared in a number of other theatrical movies, notably as Edna Purviance in "Chaplin" and with Tim Daly as Margaret "Maggie" Harwood in Peter Yates' film "Year Of The Comet", both in 1992, and the following year she appeared as the love interest of Al Pacino's character in "Carlito's Way".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Miller co-starred as the daughter of the character played by Marlon Brando in 1990's "The Freshman", again opposite Matthew Broderick, and as the lawyer and stepdaughter of the character played by Gregory Peck in 1991's "Other People's Money". She appeared as Margo Lane in "The Shadow" with Alec Baldwin, as well as in the film "Miles from Home" directed by Gary Sinise.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: She had the lead role in the big-budget creature feature "The Relic" (1997) as Dr. Margo Green. In 1998, she portrayed Barbara Henry in "Ruby Bridges" a made-for-television movie that was made by the Disney company, about Ruby Bridges, the first black student to attend an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. In 2000, she played the scandalous teacher Mary Kay Letourneau in the TV version of a true story, "".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: In 2002, Miller starred in the film "Dead in a Heartbeat" and in a two-part episode of A&E's series "A Nero Wolfe Mystery". Her 2005 film "Funny Money" was voted the top film of the Sarasota Film Festival. She appeared in the Fox series "Vanished" for six episodes, playing the ex-wife of a U.S. senator whose wife has mysteriously disappeared. Her 2007 comedy "Blonde Ambition" co-starring Jessica Simpson and Luke Wilson, which is considered as a brilliant & cult film for its writing and for the many references it has. She guest-starred as Fran on "Desperate Housewives".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Miller appeared in the horror film "The Messengers", co-starring Dylan McDermott and Kristen Stewart. The film was produced by director Sam Raimi's production company, "Ghost House Pictures".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: In 2011, she portrayed Doris, the wife of protagonist George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), in the Academy Award-winning film "The Artist".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: After a recurring role on the ABC soap series "Mistresses", Miller was cast in 2015 as a regular in the first season of ABC's drama series "American Crime".


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: In October 2020, Miller was cast as First Lady Nancy Reagan in "Reagan", an upcoming 2023 biographical film based on the life of President Ronald Reagan.


title: Penelope Ann Miller

text: Miller married James Huggins, and they have two daughters: Eloisa May and Maria Adela. On March 14, 2012, Miller filed for legal separation from Huggins after 12 years of marriage. On June 15, 2012, Miller withdrew her request for separation.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Philippe or Filip ( ; ; born 15 April 1960) is King of the Belgians. He is the eldest child of King Albert II and Queen Paola. He succeeded his father upon the latter's abdication for health reasons on 21 July 2013. He married Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz in 1999, with whom he has four children. Their eldest child, Princess Elisabeth, is first in the line of succession.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Philippe was born on 15 April 1960 at the Belvédère Castle in Laeken north of Brussels. His father, Prince Albert, Prince of Liège (later King Albert II), was the second son of King Leopold III of Belgium and a younger brother of Baudouin. His mother, Paola, Princess of Liège (later Queen Paola), is a daughter of the Italian aristocrat Fulco VIII, Prince Ruffo di Calabria, 6th Duke of Guardia Lombarda. His mother descends from the French House of La Fayette, and the king is a descendant of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Philippe was baptised one month later at the church of Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg in Brussels on 17 May, and named Philippe after his great-great-grandfather Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders. His godparents were his paternal grandfather, King Leopold III, and his maternal grandmother, Donna Luisa, Princess Ruffo di Calabria.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Albert and Paola's marriage was unhappy, and they were usually absent from Philippe's life. The child neglect was so severe that child psychologist described it as justifying intervention by social workers.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: As a child the future king was required to transfer from a French-language school, where he was purportedly happy, to a secondary school in Flanders, where he found it difficult to make friends. “In my youth, I had many problems at school” Philippe told a group of teenage dropouts in 2019. “I felt badly treated. It was not easy for me”.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: From 1978 to 1981, Philippe was educated at the Belgian Royal Military Academy in the 118th "Promotion Toutes Armes" (Promotion All Weapons). On 26 September 1980, he was appointed second lieutenant and took the officer's oath.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Philippe continued his education at Trinity College, Oxford, and he attended graduate school at Stanford University, California, where he graduated in 1985 with an MA degree in political science.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: He obtained his fighter pilot's wings and his certificates as a parachutist and a commando. In 1989, he attended a series of special sessions at the Royal Higher Defence Institute. The same year, he was promoted to colonel.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: In 1993, King Baudouin died in Spain, Albert became the new king, and Philippe became the new heir apparent, titled Duke of Brabant.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: On 25 March 2001, Philippe was appointed to the rank of major-general in the Land Component and the Air Component and to the rank of rear-admiral in the Naval Component.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Philippe married Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz, daughter of a Walloon count of a Belgian noble family and female line descendant of Polish noble families such as the princes Sapieha and counts Komorowski, on 4 December 1999 in Brussels, in a civil ceremony at the Brussels Town Hall and a religious ceremony at the Cathedral of Saint Michel and Saint Gudule in Brussels. They have four children:


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: On 6 August 1993, the government named Philippe as honorary chairman of the Belgian Foreign Trade Board (BFTB). He succeeded his father, who had been honorary chairman of the BFTB since 1962. On 3 May 2003, he was appointed honorary chairman of the board of the Foreign Trade Agency, replacing the BFTB.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: In this capacity, Philippe has headed more than 60 economic missions. Upon his accession as seventh King of the Belgians, this role was taken over by his sister Princess Astrid.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: King Albert II announced on 3 July 2013 that he would abdicate in favour of Philippe on 21 July 2013. Approximately one hour after King Albert II's abdication, Prince Philippe was sworn in as King of the Belgians. His eldest child, Princess Elisabeth, became his heir apparent and is expected to become Belgium's first queen regnant.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: Philippe played a role in forming a coalition government after the 2014 Belgian federal election. Political meetings with the King were moved from the Palace of Laeken to the Royal Palace of Brussels. In May 2019, Philippe met with Vlaams Belang President Tom Van Grieken, the first time the party had received a royal audience.


title: Philippe of Belgium

text: In 2020, Philippe announced regret for the "acts of violence and cruelty" committed in Belgian Congo.


title: Dreamcast

text: The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox, and it was Sega's final console, ending the company's eighteen years in the console market.


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast was developed by an internal Sega team led by Hideki Sato. In contrast to the expensive hardware of the unsuccessful Saturn, the Dreamcast was designed to reduce costs with "off-the-shelf" components, including a Hitachi SH-4 CPU and an NEC PowerVR2 GPU. Sega used the GD-ROM media format to avoid the expenses of DVD-ROM technology and a custom version of the Windows CE operating system to make porting PC games easy. The Dreamcast was the first console to include a built-in modular modem for internet access and online play.


title: Dreamcast

text: Though released in Japan to a subdued reception, the Dreamcast had a successful US launch backed by a large marketing campaign. However, interest steadily declined as Sony built anticipation for the PlayStation 2. Dreamcast sales did not meet Sega's expectations after several price cuts, and the company suffered significant financial losses. After a change in leadership, Sega discontinued the Dreamcast on March 31, 2001, withdrew from the console business, and restructured itself as a third-party developer. 9.13 million Dreamcast units were sold worldwide.


title: Dreamcast

text: Despite its short lifespan and limited third-party support, reviewers have celebrated the Dreamcast as one of the greatest consoles. It is considered ahead of its time for pioneering concepts such as online play and downloadable content. Many of its games are regarded as innovative, including "Crazy Taxi", "Jet Set Radio", "Phantasy Star Online", "Shenmue", "Sonic Adventure", and high-quality ports from Sega's NAOMI arcade system board.


title: Dreamcast

text: In 1988, Sega released the Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in most countries outside North America), in the fourth generation of video game consoles. It is the most successful Sega console ever, at 30.75 million units sold. Its successor, the Saturn, was released in Japan in 1994. The Saturn is CD-ROM-based and has 2D and 3D graphics, but its complex dual-CPU architecture is more difficult to program than its chief competitor, the Sony PlayStation. Although the Saturn debuted before the PlayStation in Japan and the United States, its surprise US launch, four months earlier than scheduled, was marred by a lack of distribution, which remained a continuing problem. Losses on the Saturn hardware contributed to financial problems for Sega, with revenue declining between 1992 and 1995 within an industry-wide slowdown.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega announced that Shoichiro Irimajiri would replace Tom Kalinske as chairman and CEO of Sega of America, while Bernie Stolar, a former executive at Sony Computer Entertainment of America, became Sega of America's executive vice president in charge of product development and third-party relations. After the 1996 launch of the Nintendo 64, sales of the Saturn and its software fell sharply. As of August 1997, Sony controlled 47 percent of the console market, Nintendo controlled 40 percent, and Sega controlled only 12 percent; neither price cuts nor high-profile games helped the Saturn.


title: Dreamcast

text: As a result of Sega's deteriorating financial situation, Hayao Nakayama resigned as president of Sega in January 1998 in favor of Irimajiri, and Stolar acceded to become CEO and president of Sega of America. Following five years of generally declining profits, in the fiscal year ending March 31, 1998, Sega suffered its first parent and consolidated financial losses since its 1988 listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, reporting a consolidated net loss of (). Shortly before announcing its financial losses, Sega announced the discontinuation of the Saturn in North America to prepare for the launch of its successor. This effectively left the Western market without Sega games for more than a year. Rumors about the upcoming Dreamcast—spread mainly by Sega—leaked to the public before the last Saturn games were released.


title: Dreamcast

text: As early as 1995, reports surfaced that Sega would collaborate with Lockheed Martin, The 3DO Company, Matsushita, or Alliance Semiconductor to create a new graphics processing unit, which conflicting accounts said would be used for a 64-bit "Saturn 2" or an add-on peripheral. Dreamcast development was unrelated. Considering the Saturn's poor performance, Irimajiri looked beyond Sega's internal hardware development division to create a new console. In 1997, he enlisted IBM's Tatsuo Yamamoto to lead an 11-person team to work on a secret project in the United States with the codename Blackbelt. Accounts vary on how an internal team led by Hideki Sato also began development on Dreamcast hardware; one account specifies that Sega tasked both teams, and another suggests that Sato was bothered by Irimajiri's choice to begin development externally and had his team start work. Sato and his group chose the Hitachi SH-4 processor architecture and the VideoLogic PowerVR2 graphics processor, manufactured by NEC, in the production of the mainboard. Initially known as Whitebelt, the project was later codenamed Dural, after the metallic female fighter from Sega's "Virtua Fighter" series.


title: Dreamcast

text: Yamamoto's group opted to use 3dfx Voodoo 2 and Voodoo Banshee graphics processors alongside a Motorola PowerPC 603e central processing unit (CPU), but Sega management later asked them to also use the SH-4 chip. Both processors have been described as "off-the-shelf" components. According to Charles Bellfield, the former Sega of America vice president of communications and former NEC brand manager, presentations of games using the NEC solution showcased the performance and low cost delivered by the SH-4 and PowerVR architecture. He said that Sega's relationship with NEC, a Japanese company, likely also influenced the decision to use its hardware rather than the architecture developed in America. Stolar felt the US 3dfx version should have been used, but that "Japan wanted the Japanese version, and Japan won". As a result, 3dfx filed a lawsuit against Sega and NEC claiming breach of contract, which was settled out of court. The choice to use the PowerVR architecture concerned Electronic Arts (EA), a longtime developer for Sega consoles. EA had invested in 3dfx but was unfamiliar with the selected architecture, which was reportedly less powerful. According to Shiro Hagiwara (a general manager at Sega's hardware division) and Ian Oliver (the managing director of the Sega subsidiary Cross Products), the SH-4 was chosen while still in development, following lengthy deliberation, as the only processor that "could adapt to deliver the 3D geometry calculation performance necessary". By February 1998, Sega had renamed the project Katana, after the Japanese sword, although certain hardware specifications such as random access memory (RAM) were not finalized.


title: Dreamcast

text: Knowing the Saturn had been set back by its high production costs and complex hardware, Sega took a different approach with the Dreamcast. Like previous Sega consoles, the Dreamcast was designed around intelligent subsystems working in parallel, but the selections of hardware were closer to personal computers than video game consoles, reducing cost. It also enabled software development to begin before any development kits had been completed, as Sega informed developers that any game developed with a Pentium II 200 in mind would run on the console. According to Damien McFerran, "the motherboard was a masterpiece of clean, uncluttered design and compatibility". The Chinese economist and future Sega.com CEO Brad Huang convinced the Sega chairman, Isao Okawa, to include a modem with every Dreamcast under opposition from Okawa's staff over the additional cost per unit. To account for rapid changes in home data delivery, Sega designed the modem to be modular. Sega selected the GD-ROM media format; jointly developed by Sega and Yamaha, the GD-Rom could be mass-produced at a similar price to a normal CD-ROM, avoiding the greater expense of DVD-ROM technology, which was still fairly new at the time. Microsoft developed a custom Dreamcast version of Windows CE with DirectX API and dynamic-link libraries, making it easy to port PC games to the platform, although programmers would ultimately favor Sega's development tools over those from Microsoft. A member of the Project Katana team speaking anonymously predicted this would be the case, speculating developers would prefer the greater performance possibilities offered by the Sega OS to the more user-friendly interface of the Microsoft OS.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega held a public competition to name its new system and considered over 5,000 different entries before choosing "Dreamcast"—a portmanteau of "dream" and "broadcast". According to Katsutoshi Eguchi, the Japanese game developer Kenji Eno submitted the name and created the Dreamcast's spiral logo, but has not been officially credited by Sega. The Dreamcast's startup sound was composed by the Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. Because the Saturn had tarnished its reputation, Sega planned to remove its name from the console and establish a new gaming brand similar to Sony's PlayStation, but Irimajiri's management team decided to retain it. Sega spent on hardware development, on software development, and on worldwide promotion—a sum which Irimajiri, a former Honda executive, humorously likened to the investments required to design new automobiles.


title: Dreamcast

text: With massive losses on the Saturn, including a 75 percent drop in half-year profits just before the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast, Sega was confident about the Dreamcast with significant outside interest and many pre-orders. However, Sega could not achieve its shipping goals for the Japanese Dreamcast launch due to a shortage of PowerVR chipsets caused by a high failure rate in the manufacturing process. As more than half of its limited stock had been pre-ordered, Sega stopped pre-orders in Japan. On November 27, 1998, the Dreamcast launched in Japan at a price of , and the stock sold out by the end of the day. However, of the four games available at launch, only one—a port of "Virtua Fighter 3", the most successful arcade game Sega ever released in Japan—sold well. Sega estimated that an additional Dreamcast units could have been sold with sufficient supply.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega had announced that "Sonic Adventure", the next game starring its mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, would launch with the Dreamcast and promoted it with a large-scale public demonstration at the Tokyo Kokusai Forum Hall, but it and "Sega Rally Championship 2" were delayed. They arrived within the following weeks, but sales continued to be slower than expected. Irimajiri hoped to sell over 1 million Dreamcast units in Japan by February 1999, but sold fewer than 900,000, undermining Sega's attempts to build an installed base sufficient to protect the Dreamcast after the arrival of competition from other manufacturers. There were reports of disappointed Japanese consumers returning their Dreamcasts and using the refund to purchase additional PlayStation software. "Seaman", released in July 1999, became the Dreamcast's first major hit in Japan. Prior to the Western launch, Sega reduced the price of the Dreamcast to , effectively making it unprofitable but increasing sales. The reduction and the release of Namco's "Soulcalibur" helped Sega gain 17 percent on its shares.


title: Dreamcast

text: Before the Dreamcast's release, Sega was dealt a blow when EA, the largest third-party video game publisher, announced it would not develop games for it. EA's chief creative officer Bing Gordon said that Sega had "flip-flopped" on the hardware configuration, that EA developers did not want to work on it, and that Sega "was not acting like a competent hardware company". Gordon also said that Sega could not afford to give them the "kind of license that EA has had over the last five years". According to Stolar, the EA president, Larry Probst, wanted exclusive rights as the only sports brand on Dreamcast, which Stolar could not accept due to Sega's recent purchase of the sports game developer Visual Concepts. While EA's "Madden NFL" series had established brand power, Stolar regarded Visual Concepts' "NFL 2K" as superior and would provide "a breakthrough experience" to launch the Dreamcast. While the Dreamcast would have none of EA's popular sports games, "Sega Sports" games developed mainly by Visual Concepts helped to fill that void.


title: Dreamcast

text: Working closely with Midway Games (which developed four launch games for the system) and taking advantage of the ten months following the Dreamcast's release in Japan, Sega of America worked to ensure a more successful US launch with a minimum of 15 launch games. With lingering bitterness over the Saturn's early release, Stolar repaired relations with major US retailers, with whom Sega presold 300,000 Dreamcast units. In addition, a pre-launch promotion enabled consumers to rent Dreamcasts from Hollywood Video in the months preceding its September launch. Sega of America's senior vice president of marketing Peter Moore, a fan of the attitude previously associated with Sega's brand, worked with Foote, Cone & Belding and Access Communications to develop the "It's Thinking" campaign of 15-second television commercials, which emphasized the Dreamcast's hardware power. According to Moore, "We needed to create something that would really intrigue consumers, somewhat apologize for the past, but invoke all the things we loved about Sega, primarily from the Genesis days." On August 11, Sega of America confirmed that Stolar had been fired, leaving Moore to direct the launch.


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast launched in North America on September 9, 1999, at a price of , which Sega's marketing dubbed "9/9/99 for ". Eighteen launch games were available in the US Sega set a new sales record by selling more than 225,132 Dreamcast units in 24 hours, earning in what Moore called "the biggest 24 hours in entertainment retail history". Within two weeks, US Dreamcast sales exceeded 500,000. By Christmas, Sega held 31 percent of the North American video game market share. Significant launch games included "Sonic Adventure", the arcade fighting game "Soulcalibur", and Visual Concepts' football simulation "NFL 2K". On November 4, Sega announced it had sold over one million Dreamcast units. The launch was marred by a glitch at one of Sega's manufacturing plants, which produced defective GD-ROMs.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega released the Dreamcast in Europe on October 14, 1999, at a price of £200. By November 24, 400,000 consoles had been sold in Europe. By Christmas of 1999, Sega of Europe had sold 500,000 units, six months ahead of schedule. The price was dropped to £149.99 from September 8, 2000, with sales at around 800,000 in Europe at this point. Announcing the drop, Jean-François Cecillon, CEO of Sega Europe, commented that "There are 'X' amount of core gamers in Europe; the early adopters. We have reached 80 or 90 per cent of them now and the market is screaming for a price reduction. We have to acknowledge these things and go with the market". Sales did not continue at this pace, and by October 2000, Sega had sold only about 1 million units in Europe. As part of Sega's promotions of the Dreamcast in Europe, it sponsored four European football clubs: Arsenal F.C. (England), AS Saint-Étienne (France), U.C. Sampdoria (Italy), and Deportivo de La Coruña (Spain).


title: Dreamcast

text: Through the regional distributor Ozisoft, the Dreamcast went on sale in Australia and New Zealand on November 30, 1999, at a price of . The launch was planned for September, but was delayed due to problems with Internet compatibility and launch game availability, then delayed again from the revised date of October 25 for various reasons. There were severe problems at launch; besides a severe shortage of the consoles, only six of the thirty planned launch games were available for purchase on day one with no first-party software included, and additional peripherals were not available in stores.


title: Dreamcast

text: The Ozisoft representative Steve O'Leary, in a statement released the day of launch, explained that the Australian Customs Service had impounded virtually all the supplied launch software, including demo discs, due to insufficient labeling of their country of origin; Ozisoft had received them only two days before launch, resulting in few games that were catalogued and prepared for shipment in time. O'Leary also said that the Dreamcast's high demand in other markets had reduced the number of peripherals allotted to the region. Further complicating matters was the lack of an internet disc due to localization problems, and delays in securing an ISP contract, which was done through Telstra the day before launch. The online component was not ready until March 2000, at which point Ozisoft sent the necessary software to users who had sent in a filled-out reply paid card included with the console. The poor launch, combined with a lack of advertising and a high price point, produced lackluster sales in Australia; two large retail chains reported a combined total of 13 console sales over the first few days after launch.


title: Dreamcast

text: Though the Dreamcast launch was successful, Sony held 60 percent of the overall video game market share in North America with the PlayStation at the end of 1999. On March 2, 1999, Sony revealed the first details of the PlayStation 2 (PS2), which Ken Kutaragi claimed would allow video games to convey unprecedented emotions. Sony estimated the PS2 could render 7.5 million to 16 million polygons per second, whereas independent estimates ranged from 3 million to 20 million, compared to Sega's estimates of more than 3 million to 6 million for the Dreamcast. The PS2 would also use the DVD-ROM format, which could hold substantially more data than the Dreamcast's GD-ROM, and would be backwards-compatible with hundreds of popular PlayStation games. Sony's specifications appeared to render the Dreamcast obsolete months before its US launch, although reports later emerged that the PS2 was not as powerful as expected and difficult to develop on. The same year, Nintendo announced that its next console, the GameCube, would meet or exceed anything on the market, and Microsoft began development of its own console, the Xbox.


title: Dreamcast

text: US Dreamcast sales—which exceeded 1.5 million by the end of 1999—began to decline as early as January 2000. Poor Japanese sales contributed to Sega's ¥42.88 billion ($404 million) consolidated net loss in the fiscal year ending March 2000, which followed a loss of ¥42.881 billion the previous year and marked Sega's third consecutive annual loss. Although Sega's overall sales for the term increased 27.4%, and Dreamcast sales in North America and Europe greatly exceeded expectations, this coincided with a decrease in profitability due to the investments required to launch the Dreamcast in Western markets and poor software sales in Japan. At the same time, increasingly poor market conditions reduced the profitability of Sega's Japanese arcade business, prompting Sega to close 246 locations.


title: Dreamcast

text: Moore became the president and chief operating officer of Sega of America on 8 May, 2000. He and Sega's developers focused on the US market to prepare for the upcoming launch of the PS2. To that end, Sega of America launched its own internet service provider, Sega.com, led by CEO Brad Huang. On September 7, 2000, Sega.com launched SegaNet, the Dreamcast's internet gaming service, at a subscription price of $21.95 per month. Although Sega had previously released only one Dreamcast game in the US that featured online multiplayer, "ChuChu Rocket!", the launch of SegaNet combined with the release of "NFL 2K1", with a robust online component, was intended to increase demand for the Dreamcast in the US market. The service later supported games including "Bomberman Online", "Quake III Arena", and "Unreal Tournament". The September 7 launch coincided with a new advertising campaign to promote SegaNet, including advertising on the MTV Video Music Awards that day, which Sega sponsored for the second consecutive year. Sega employed aggressive pricing strategies around online gaming; in Japan, every Dreamcast sold included a free year of internet access, which Okawa personally paid for. Prior to the launch of SegaNet, Sega had already offered a $200 rebate to any Dreamcast owner who purchased two years of internet access from Sega.com. To increase SegaNet's appeal in the US, Sega dropped the price of the Dreamcast to (compared to the PS2's US launch price of ) and offered a rebate for the full price of a Dreamcast, and a free Dreamcast keyboard, with every 18-month SegaNet subscription.


title: Dreamcast

text: Moore said that the Dreamcast would need to sell 5 million units in the US by the end of 2000 to remain a viable platform; Sega fell short of this goal, with some 3 million units sold. Moreover, Sega's attempts to spur increased Dreamcast sales through lower prices and cash rebates caused escalating financial losses. Instead of an expected profit, for the six months ending September 2000, Sega posted a () loss, with a projected year-end loss of . This estimate more than doubled to , and in March 2001, Sega posted a consolidated net loss of (). While the PS2's October 26 US launch was marred by shortages, this did not benefit the Dreamcast as much as expected; many consumers continued to wait for a PS2, while the PSone, a remodeled version of the original PlayStation, became the bestselling console in the US at the start of the 2000 holiday season. According to Moore, "The PlayStation 2 effect that we were relying upon did not work for us... People will hang on for as long as possible... What effectively happened is the PlayStation 2 lack of availability froze the marketplace." Eventually, Sony and Nintendo held 50 and 35 percent of the US video game market, while Sega held only 15 percent. According to Bellfield, Dreamcast software sold at an 8-to-1 ratio with the hardware, but the small install base meant this did not produce enough revenue to keep it viable.


title: Dreamcast

text: On May 22, 2000, Okawa replaced Irimajiri as president of Sega. Okawa had long advocated that Sega abandon the console business. His sentiments were not unique; Sega co-founder David Rosen had "always felt it was a bit of a folly for them to be limiting their potential to Sega hardware", and Stolar had suggested Sega should have sold their company to Microsoft. In September 2000, in a meeting with Sega's Japanese executives and the heads of the company's major Japanese game development studios, Moore and Bellfield recommended that Sega abandon its console business and focus on software, prompting the studio heads to walk out.


title: Dreamcast

text: Nevertheless, on January 31, 2001, Sega announced the discontinuation of the Dreamcast after March 31 and the restructuring of the company as a "platform-agnostic" third-party developer. Sega also announced a price reduction to to eliminate its unsold inventory, which was estimated at 930,000 units as of April 2001. After a further reduction to $79, the Dreamcast was cleared out of stores at . The final Dreamcast unit manufactured was autographed by the heads of all nine of Sega's internal game development studios, plus the heads of Visual Concepts and Sega's sound studio Wave Master, and given away with 55 first-party Dreamcast games through a competition organized by "GamePro". Okawa, who had previously loaned Sega in 1999, died on March 16, 2001; shortly before his death, he forgave Sega's debts to him and returned his worth of Sega and CSK stock, helping Sega survive the transition to third-party development. As part of this restructuring, nearly one third of Sega's Tokyo workforce was laid off in 2001.


title: Dreamcast

text: 9.13 million Dreamcast units were sold worldwide. After its discontinuation, commercial games were still developed and released for Dreamcast, particularly in Japan. In the United States, game releases continued until the end of the first half of 2002. Sega continued to repair Dreamcast units until 2007. As of 2014, it was still receiving new independently developed games formatted for MIL-CD, a multimedia-enhanced format developed by Sega and supported by Dreamcast. After five consecutive years of financial losses, Sega finally posted a profit for the fiscal year ending March 2003.


title: Dreamcast

text: The announcement of Sega's exit from hardware was met with enthusiasm. According to "IGN"s Travis Fahs, "Sega was a creatively fertile company with a rapidly expanding stable of properties to draw from. It seemed like they were in a perfect position to start a new life as a developer/publisher." Former Working Designs president Victor Ireland wrote, "It's actually a good thing ... because now Sega will survive, doing what they do best: software." The staff of "Newsweek" wrote that "from "Sonic" to "Shenmue", Sega's programmers have produced some of the most engaging experiences in the history of interactive media ... Unshackled by a struggling console platform, this platoon of world-class software developers can do what they do best for any machine on the market." "Game Informer", commenting on Sega's tendency to produce under-appreciated cult classics, wrote: "Let us rejoice in the fact that Sega is making games equally among the current console crop, so that history will not repeat itself."


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast measures and weighs . Its main CPU is a two-way 360 MIPS superscalar Hitachi SH-4 32-bit RISC, clocked at 200MHz with an 8 kB instruction cache and 16 kB data cache and a 128-bit graphics-oriented floating-point unit delivering 1.4 GFLOPS. Its 100 MHz NEC PowerVR2 rendering engine, integrated with the ASIC, can draw more than 3 million polygons per second and use deferred shading. Sega estimated the Dreamcast's theoretical rendering capability at 7 million raw polygons per second, or 6 million with textures and lighting, but noted that "game logic and physics reduce peak graphic performance".


title: Dreamcast

text: Graphical hardware effects include trilinear filtering, gouraud shading, z-buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, per-pixel translucency sorting and bump mapping. The Dreamcast can output approximately 16.77 million colors simultaneously and displays interlaced or progressive scan video at 640 × 480 video resolution. Its 67 MHz Yamaha AICA sound processor, with a 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU core, can generate 64 voices with PCM or ADPCM, providing ten times the performance of the Saturn's sound system. The Dreamcast has 16 MB main RAM, along with an additional 8 MB of RAM for graphic textures and 2 MB of RAM for sound. It reads media using a 12× speed Yamaha GD-ROM drive. In addition to Windows CE, the Dreamcast supports several Sega and middleware application programming interfaces.


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast can supply video through several accessories. It came with A/V cables, at the time the standard for video and audio connectivity. Sega and various third parties also manufactured RF modulator connectors and S-Video cables. A VGA adapter allows Dreamcast to connect on computer displays or enhanced-definition television sets in 480p.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega constructed numerous Dreamcast models, most of which were exclusive to Japan. The R7, a refurbished Dreamcast, was originally used as a network console in Japanese pachinko parlors. Another model, the Divers 2000 CX-1, is shaped similarly to Sonic's head and includes a television and software for teleconferencing. A "Hello Kitty" version, limited to 2000 units, was targeted at female gamers in Japan. Special editions were created for "Seaman" and "". Color variations were sold through the Dreamcast Direct service in Japan. Toyota also offered special Dreamcast units at 160 of its dealers in Japan. In North America, a limited edition black Dreamcast was released with a Sega Sports logo on the lid, which included matching Sega Sports-branded black controllers and two games.


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast has four ports for controller inputs, and was sold with one controller. The controller is based on the Saturn 3D controller and includes an analog stick, a D-pad, four action buttons, start button and two analog triggers. It received mostly negative reviews from critics; "Edge" described it as "an ugly evolution of Saturn's 3D controller", and was called "[not] that great" by "1Up.com"s Sam Kennedy and "lame" by "Game Informer"s Andy McNamara. "IGN" wrote that "unlike most controllers, Sega's pad forces the user's hands into an uncomfortable parallel position". Both the analog joystick and triggers uniquely used Hall effect sensors, which requires less calibration and leads to fewer issues with joystick drift.


title: Dreamcast

text: Various third-party controllers, from companies such as Mad Catz, include additional buttons and other features; third parties also manufactured arcade-style joysticks for fighting games, such as Agetech's Arcade Stick and Interact's Alloy Arcade Stick. Mad Catz and Agetec created racing wheels for racing games. Sega did not release its official light guns in the US, but some third party light guns were available. The Dreamcast supports a Sega fishing "reel and rod" motion controller and a keyboard for text entry. Although it was designed for fishing games such as "Sega Bass Fishing", "Soulcalibur" is playable with the fishing controller, which translates vertical and horizontal movements into on-screen swordplay; "IGN" cited it as a predecessor to the Wii Remote. The Japanese Dreamcast port of Sega's "Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram" supported a "Twin Sticks" peripheral, but its American publisher, Activision, opted not to release it in the US. The Dreamcast can connect to SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color, predating Nintendo's GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable.


title: Dreamcast

text: In most regions, the Dreamcast includes a removable modem for online connectivity, which is modular for future upgrades. In Brazil, due to the high price of the console, the modem was sold separately. The original Japanese model and all PAL models have a transfer rate of 33.6 kbit/s, and consoles sold in the US and in Japan after September 9, 1999, feature a 56 kbit/s dial-up modem. Broadband service was enabled through the later release of a broadband accessory in 2000 in Japan, and early 2001 in the US.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega also produced the Dreameye, a digital camera that could be connected to the Dreamcast and used to exchange pictures and participate in video chat over the internet. Sega hoped developers would use the Dreameye for future software, as some later did with Sony's similar EyeToy peripheral. In addition, Sega investigated systems that would have allowed users to make telephone calls with the Dreamcast, and discussed with Motorola the development of an internet-enabled cell phone that would use technology from the console to enable quick downloads of games and other data.


title: Dreamcast

text: In contrast to the Sega CD and Sega Saturn, which included internal backup memory, the Dreamcast uses a 128 kbyte memory card, the VMU, for data storage. The VMU features a small LCD screen, audio output from a one-channel PWM sound source, non-volatile memory, a D-pad and four buttons. The VMU can present game information, be used as a minimal handheld gaming device, and connect to certain Sega arcade machines. For example, players use the VMU to call plays in "NFL 2K" or raise virtual pets in "Sonic Adventure".


title: Dreamcast

text: Sega officials noted that the VMU could be used "as a private viewing area, the absence of which has prevented effective implementation of many types of games in the past". After a VMU slot was incorporated into the controller's design, Sega's engineers found many additional uses for it, so a second slot was added. It is generally for vibration packs providing force feedback, such as Sega's "Jump Pack" and Performance's "Tremor Pack"; it can be used for peripherals including a microphone, enabling voice control and player communication. Various third-party cards provide storage, and some contain the LCD screen addition. Iomega announced a Dreamcast-compatible zip drive storing up to on removable discs, but it was never released.


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast library consists of over 600 games across all regions, in GD-ROM format. It uses regional lockout, only playing games released within its predetermined region; however, this is circumventable via modchip installation, boot discs, or cheat discs such as Datel's Action Replay. In Japan, the Dreamcast was launched with "Virtua Fighter 3tb", "Pen Pen TriIcelon", "Godzilla Generations", and "July". In North America, it launched with 19 games, including the highly anticipated "Sonic Adventure", "Soulcalibur", and "NFL 2K". In Europe, it was planned to launch with 10 games; this increased to 15 after the launch was delayed. Officially licensed Dreamcast games were produced until the middle of 2002, but homebrew games by indie developers were released later, an example being 2007's "Last Hope", developed by German studio NG:Dev.Team.


title: Dreamcast

text: In what has been called "a brief moment of remarkable creativity", in 2000, Sega restructured its arcade and console development teams into nine semi-autonomous studios headed by their top designers. Studios included United Game Artists (UGA), Hitmaker, Smilebit, Overworks, WOW Entertainment, Amusement Vision, Sega Rosso, Wave Master, and Sonic Team, while Sega AM2 had been taken over earlier in the year by CSK Research Institute and became independent in 2001 as SEGA-AM2 Co., Ltd. Sega's design studios were encouraged to experiment and benefited from a relatively lax approval process. This resulted in games such as UGA's "Rez", an attempt to simulate synaesthesia in the form of a rail shooter; Wow's "The Typing of the Dead", a version of "The House of the Dead 2" remade into a touch typing trainer; and Hitmaker's "Segagaga", a Japan-exclusive role-playing game in which players are tasked with preventing Sega from going out of business.


title: Dreamcast

text: Sonic Team's "Sonic Adventure", the first fully 3D platform game starring Sega's mascot Sonic the Hedgehog, was considered the "centerpiece" of the Dreamcast launch. At 2.5 million copies, it is the best-selling Dreamcast game. Sonic Team also developed the Dreamcast's first online game—"ChuChu Rocket!"—which was praised for its addictive puzzle gameplay and "frantic" multiplayer matches, and the critically successful music game "Samba de Amigo", which was noted for its expensive maracas peripheral and colorful aesthetic. Sonic Team's "Phantasy Star Online", the first online console RPG, is considered a landmark game for refining and simplifing "Diablo"s style of gameplay to appeal to console audiences.


title: Dreamcast

text: UGA created the music game "Space Channel 5" for a female casual audience; players help a female outer-space news reporter, Ulala, fight aliens with "groove energy" by dancing. Hitmaker's arcade ports include "Crazy Taxi", an open-world arcade racing game known for its addictive gameplay with more than one million copies sold; and "Virtua Tennis", which revitalized the tennis game genre. Smilebit's "Jet Set Radio", in which players control a Tokyo gang of rebellious inline skaters, is cited as a major example of Sega's commitment to original concepts during the Dreamcast's lifespan. "Jet Set Radio" also popularized cel shaded graphics, though it failed to meet Sega's sales expectations. The role-playing game "Skies of Arcadia", developed by Overworks and produced by Rieko Kodama, was acclaimed for its surreal Jules Verne-inspired fantasy world of floating islands and sky pirates, charming protagonists, exciting airship battles and memorable plot.


title: Dreamcast

text: AM2 developed what Sega hoped would be the Dreamcast's killer app, "Shenmue", a "revenge epic in the tradition of Chinese cinema", with a level of detail considered unprecedented for a video game. Incorporating a simulated day-and-night cycle with variable weather, non-player characters with regular schedules, the ability to pick up and examine detailed objects, and introducing the quick-time event in its modern form, "Shenmue" went over budget and was rumored to have cost Sega over $50 million. According to Moore, "Shenmue" sold "extremely well", but had no chance of making a profit due to the Dreamcast's limited installed base.


title: Dreamcast

text: Visual Concepts' "NFL 2K" football series and its "NBA 2K" basketball series were critically acclaimed. "NFL 2K" was considered an outstanding launch game for its high-quality visuals and "insightful, context-friendly, and, yes, even funny commentary", while "NFL 2K1" featured groundbreaking online multiplayer earlier than its chief competitor, EA's "Madden NFL" series. "Madden" and "2K" continued to compete on other platforms through 2004, with the "2K" series introducing innovations such as a first person perspective new to the genre, and eventually launching "ESPN NFL 2K5" at the aggressively low price point of $19.95 until EA signed an exclusive agreement with the National Football League, effectively putting every other pro-football game out of business. After Sega sold Visual Concepts for $24 million in 2005, the "NBA 2K" series continued with publisher Take-Two Interactive. During the Dreamcast's lifespan, Visual Concepts also collaborated with the "Sonic the Hedgehog" level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara on the action-adventure game "Floigan Bros." and developed the action game "Ooga Booga".


title: Dreamcast

text: Before the launch of the Dreamcast in Japan, Sega announced its NAOMI arcade board, a cheaper alternative to the Sega Model 3. NAOMI shares the same technology as the Dreamcast, with twice as much system, video, and audio memory and a 160 MB flash ROM board in place of a GD-ROM drive, allowing nearly identical home conversions of arcade games. Games were ported from NAOMI to the Dreamcast by several leading Japanese arcade companies, including Capcom and Namco. The Dreamcast also used parts similar to those found in personal computers with Pentium II and III processors, allowing a handful of ports of PC games.


title: Dreamcast

text: To appeal to the European market, Sega formed a French affiliate, No Cliché, which developed games such as "Toy Commander". Sega Europe also approached Bizarre Creations to develop the racing game "Metropolis Street Racer". Although Acclaim, SNK, Ubisoft, Midway, Activision, Infogrames, and Capcom supported the Dreamcast during its first year, third-party support proved difficult to obtain due to the failure of the Sega Saturn and the profitability of publishing for the PlayStation. Namco's "Soulcalibur", for example, was released for the Dreamcast because of the relative unpopularity of the "Soul" series at the time; Namco's more successful "Tekken" franchise was associated with the PlayStation console and PlayStation-based arcade boards. Capcom produced a number of fighting games for the Dreamcast, including the "Power Stone" series, and a temporarily exclusive entry in the popular "Resident Evil" series, "". The Dreamcast is known for several shoot 'em ups, most notably Treasure's "Bangai-O" and "Ikaruga". Sega also revived franchises from the Genesis era, such as Appaloosa Interactive's "".


title: Dreamcast

text: Dricas was an Internet service for Dreamcast consoles in Japan. The service launched the week of October 28, 1998, with its feature set expanded in the weeks preceding the Dreamcast's launch in Japan on November 27, 1998. Much of its infrastructure was developed by ISAO Corporation, which was spun-off from Sega on November 26, 1999. Its accompanying web browser, Dream Passport, provided the ability to connect via dial-up, browse the internet, receive and send e-mail, and chat with other users. Dricas persisted until March 7, 2000, when the service was consolidated into ISAO's multi-platform online service, isao.net. Isao.net maintained online services and game servers for the Dreamcast until Sega ceased operation of the online servers for "Phantasy Star Online", along with its GameCube port, on March 31, 2007.


title: Dreamcast

text: SegaNet was an Internet service for dial-up-based online gaming on the Dreamcast in the United States. The service was created by Sega in collaboration with GTE through its GTE Internetworking division, later renamed Genuity. Sega announced a partnership with AT&T on August 4, 1999, making the AT&T WorldNet service the preferred ISP for Dreamcast in the United States, and an agreement making Excite@Home as the exclusive portal partner for SegaNet. Microsoft participated somewhat in the development of the service, but they terminated their relationship with Sega just a few months before its launch over differences in its direction. SegaNet launched on launched on September 7, 2000, and originally offered a rebate for a free Dreamcast and keyboard with a two-year contract. Because of the Dreamcast's discontinuation, Sega announced they would discontinue the service on July 20, 2001, just less than 11 months after launch. Online support for Dreamcast games via SegaNet continued until 2003.


title: Dreamcast

text: Dreamarena was a free dial-up-based online gaming service provided for Dreamcast consoles in Europe, launching with the debut of the Dreamcast in Europe on October 14, 1999. The service was created and operated for Sega Europe by a partnership between ICL, BT and various ISPs. The service was accessed via the DreamKey browser, which was also built into some games such as "Sonic Adventure 2". After the discontinuation of the Dreamcast, Sega closed Dreamarena on February 28, 2002.


title: Dreamcast

text: In December 1999, "Next Generation" rated the Dreamcast four out of five, writing: "If you want the most powerful system available now, showcasing the best graphics at a reasonable price, this system is for you." However, "Next Generation" gave its future prognosis three out of five, noting that Sony and Nintendo were both due to release more powerful consoles. At the beginning of 2000, five "Electronic Gaming Monthly" reviewers scored the Dreamcast 8.5, 8.5, 8.5, 8.0, and 9.0 out of 10. In 2001, the "Electronic Gaming Monthly" reviewers scored it 9.0, 9.0, 9.0, 9.0, and 9.5 out of 10. "BusinessWeek" named the Dreamcast one of the best products of 1999.


title: Dreamcast

text: Reasons cited for the failure of the Dreamcast include consumer excitement for the PS2; a lack of support from EA and Squaresoft, the most popular third parties in the US and Japan respectively; disagreement among executives over Sega's future, and Okawa's lack of commitment to the product; Sega's lack of advertising money, with Bellfield doubting that Sega spent even "half" the $100 million it had pledged to promote the Dreamcast in the US; that the market was not ready for online gaming; Sega's focus on "hardcore" gamers over mainstream consumers; poor timing; and damage to Sega's reputation caused by its several poorly supported previous platforms. In "GamePro", Blake Snow wrote of "the much beloved [Dreamcast] launched years ahead of the competition but ultimately struggled to shed the negative reputation [Sega] had gained during the Saturn, Sega 32X, and Sega CD days. As a result, casual gamers and jaded third-party developers doubted Sega's ability to deliver."


title: Dreamcast

text: "Eurogamer"s Dan Whitehead noted that consumers' "wait-and-see" approach, and the lack of support from EA, were symptoms rather the cause of Sega's decline. He concluded that "Sega's misadventures during the 1990s had left both gamers and publishers wary of any new platform bearing its name". According to "1Up.com"'s Jeremy Parish, it would be intellectually dishonest to blame Sony for "killing the Dreamcast by overselling the PS2", as Sega's lack of support for previous consoles had made customers hesitant to purchase Dreamcasts.


title: Dreamcast

text: In 2009, "IGN" named the Dreamcast the eighth-greatest video game console, praising its software and innovations, including its online play. In 2010, "PC Magazine"s Jeffrey L. Wilson named the Dreamcast the greatest console and said that it was "gone too soon". In 2013, "Edge" named the Dreamcast the tenth-best console of the last 20 years, highlighting innovations including in-game voice chat, downloadable content, and second-screen technology through the use of VMUs. "Edge" wrote that "Sega's console was undoubtedly ahead of its time, and it suffered at retail for that reason... [b]ut its influence can still be felt today." Dan Whitehead of "Eurogamer" likened the Dreamcast to "a small, square, white plastic JFK. A progressive force in some ways, perhaps misguided in others, but nevertheless a promising life cut tragically short by dark shadowy forces, spawning complex conspiracy theories that endure to this day." He wrote that its short lifespan "may have sealed its reputation as one of the greatest consoles ever", as "nothing builds a cult like a tragic demise". According to "IGN"s Travis Fahs, "Many hardware manufacturers have come and gone, but it's unlikely any will go out with half as much class as Sega."


title: Dreamcast

text: The Dreamcast's game library was celebrated. In January 2000, three months after the Dreamcast's North American launch, "Electronic Gaming Monthly" wrote that "with triple-A stuff like "Soul Calibur", "NBA 2K", and soon "Crazy Taxi" to kick around, we figure you're happy you took the 128-bit plunge". In a retrospective, "PC Magazine"s Jeffrey L. Wilson referred to Dreamcast's "killer library" and said that Sega's creative influence and visual innovation had been at its peak. The staff of "Edge" agreed with this assessment of Dreamcast games, including Sega's arcade conversions, stating that the system "delivered the first games that could meaningfully be described as arcade perfect". Damien McFerran of "Retro Gamer" praised Dreamcast's NAOMI arcade ports, and wrote: "The thrill of playing "Crazy Taxi" in the arcade knowing full well that a pixel-perfect conversion (and not some cut-down port) was set to arrive on the Dreamcast is an experience gamers are unlikely to witness again."


title: Dreamcast

text: Nick Montfort and Mia Consalvo, writing in "Loading... The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association", argued that "the Dreamcast hosted a remarkable amount of video game development that went beyond the odd and unusual and is interesting when considered as avant-garde ... It is hard to imagine a commercial console game expressing strong resistance to the commodity perspective and to the view that game production is commerce. But even when it comes to resisting commercialization, it is arguable that Dreamcast games came closer to expressing this attitude than any other console games have." "1Up.com"s Jeremy Parish favorably compared Sega's Dreamcast output, which included some of "the most varied, creative, and fun [games] the company had ever produced", with its "enervated" status as a third-party. Fahs noted, "The Dreamcast's life was fleeting, but it was saturated with memorable titles, most of which were completely new properties." According to author Steven L. Kent, "From "Sonic Adventure" and "Shenmue" to "Space Channel 5" and "Seaman", Dreamcast delivered and delivered and delivered."


title: Dreamcast

text: Some journalists have compared the demise of the Dreamcast with changing trends in the video game industry. In "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die", Duncan Harris wrote: "One of the reasons that older gamers mourned the loss of the Dreamcast was that it signaled the demise of arcade gaming culture ... Sega's console gave hope that things were not about to change for the worse and that the tenets of fast fun and bright, attractive graphics were not about to sink into a brown and green bog of realistic war games." Jeremy Parish, writing for "USgamer", contrasted the Dreamcast's diverse library with the "suffocating sense of conservatism" that pervaded the gaming industry in the following decade. According to Sega's head of product implementation, Tadashi Takezaki, the Dreamcast would have been Sega's last video game console no matter how it sold because of the changes in the market and the rise of PCs. He praised the Dreamcast for its features, saying in 2013, "The seeds we sowed with the Dreamcast are finally bearing fruit at this point in time. In some ways we were going by the seat of our pants, but it was part of the Sega credo at the time — if it's fun, then go for it."


title: Gothic fiction

text: Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The first work to call itself Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel "The Castle of Otranto", later subtitled "A Gothic Story". Subsequent 18th century contributors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford, and Matthew Lewis. The Gothic influence continued into the early 19th century, works by the Romantic poets, and novelists such as Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin, Walter Scott and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon gothic motifs in their works.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The early Victorian period continued the use of gothic, in novels by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, as well as works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Later prominent works were "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Richard Marsh's "The Beetle" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". Twentieth-century contributors include Daphne du Maurier, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice and Toni Morrison.


title: Gothic fiction

text: Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. Gothic fiction is distinguished from other forms of scary or supernatural stories, such as fairy tales, by the specific theme of the present being haunted by the past. The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past, especially through ruined buildings which stand as proof of a previously thriving world which is decaying in the present. Especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, characteristic settings include castles, religious buildings like monasteries and convents, and crypts. The atmosphere is typically claustrophobic, and common plot elements include vengeful persecution, imprisonment, and murder. The depiction of horrible events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts. The form of a Gothic story is usually discontinuous and convoluted, often incorporating tales within tales, changing narrators, and framing devices such as discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories. Other characteristics, regardless of relevance to the main plot, can include sleeplike and deathlike states, live burials, doubles, unnatural echoes or silences, the discovery of obscured family ties, unintelligible writings, and nocturnal landscapes and dreams. Gothic fiction often moves between "high culture" and "low" or "popular culture".


title: Gothic fiction

text: Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, marked by harsh laws enforced by torture and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. Similar to the Gothic Revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. Gothic ruins invoke multiple linked emotions by representing inevitable decay and the collapse of human creations – hence the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks.


title: Gothic fiction

text: Placing a story in a Gothic building serves several purposes. It inspires feelings of awe, implies that the story is set in the past, gives an impression of isolation or dissociation from the rest of the world, and coveys religious associations. Setting the novel in a Gothic castle was meant to imply a story not only set in the past, but shrouded in darkness. The architecture often served as a mirror for the characters and events of the story. The buildings in "The Castle of Otranto", for example, are riddled with tunnels that characters use to move back and forth in secret. This movement mirrors the secrets surrounding Manfred's possession of the castle and how it came into his family.


title: Gothic fiction

text: From the castles, dungeons, forests and hidden passages of the Gothic novel genre emerged female Gothic. Guided by the works of authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë, the female Gothic allowed women's societal and sexual desires to be introduced. In many respects, the novel's intended reader of the time was the woman who, even as she enjoyed such novels, felt she had to "[lay] down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame," according to Jane Austen, author of "Northanger Abbey". The Gothic novel shaped its form for woman readers to "turn to Gothic romances to find support for their own mixed feelings."


title: Gothic fiction

text: Female Gothic narratives focus on such topics as a persecuted heroine in flight from a villainous father and in search of an absent mother, while male writers tend towards masculine transgression of social taboos. The emergence of the ghost story gave women writers something to write about besides the common marriage plot, allowing them to present a more radical critique of male power, violence and predatory sexuality.


title: Gothic fiction

text: When the female Gothic coincides with the explained supernatural, the natural cause of terror is not the supernatural, but female disability and societal horrors: rape, incest, and the threatening control of a male antagonist. Female Gothic novels also address women's discontent with patriarchal society, their problematic and unsatisfying maternal position, and their role within that society. Women's fears of entrapment in the domestic, their own body, marriage, childbirth, or domestic abuse commonly appear in the genre.


title: Gothic fiction

text: After the characteristic Gothic "Bildungsroman"-like plot sequence, female Gothic allowed readers to grow from "adolescence to maturity" in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As protagonists like Adeline in "The Romance of the Forest" learn that their superstitious fantasies and terrors are replaced by natural cause and reasonable doubt, the reader may grasp the heroine's true position: "The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition, the disability of being female."


title: Gothic fiction

text: The components that would eventually combine into Gothic literature had a rich history by the time Walpole presented a fictitious medieval manuscript in "The Castle of Otranto" in 1764.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The plays of William Shakespeare in particular, were a crucial reference point for early Gothic writers, in both an effort to bring credibility to their own works, as well as legitimize the emerging genre as serious literature to the public. Tragedies such as "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "King Lear", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Richard III", with plots revolving around the supernatural, revenge, murder, ghosts, witchcraft, omens, written in dramatic pathos, and set in medieval castles, was a huge influence upon early Gothic authors, who frequently quote, and make allusions to Shakespeare's works.


title: Gothic fiction

text: John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667) was also very influential amongst Gothic writers, who were especially drawn to the tragic anti-hero character Satan, who became a model for many charismatic Gothic villains and Byronic heroes. Milton's "version of the myth of the fall and redemption, creation and decreation, is, as "Frankenstein" again reveals, an important model for Gothic plots."


title: Gothic fiction

text: Alexander Pope, who had a considerable influence upon Walpole, was the first significant poet of the 18th century to write a poem in an authentic Gothic manner. "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717), which tells of star-crossed lovers, one doomed to a life of seclusion in a convent, and the other in a monastery, abounds in gloomy imagery, religious terror, and suppressed passion. The influence of Pope's poem is found throughout 18th-century Gothic literature, including the novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis.


title: Gothic fiction

text: Gothic literature is often described with words such as "wonder" and "terror." This sense of wonder and terror that provides the suspension of disbelief so important to the Gothic—which, except for when it is parodied, even for all its occasional melodrama, is typically played straight, in a self-serious manner—requires the imagination of the reader to be willing to accept the idea that there might be something "beyond that which is immediately in front of us." The mysterious imagination necessary for Gothic literature to have gained any traction had been growing for some time before the advent of the Gothic. The need for this came as the known world was becoming more explored, reducing the geographical mysteries of the world. The edges of the map were filling in, and no dragons were to be found. The human mind required a replacement. Clive Bloom theorizes that this void in the collective imagination was critical in the development of the cultural possibility for the rise of the Gothic tradition.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The setting of most early Gothic works was medieval, but this was a common theme long before Walpole. In Britain especially, there was a desire to reclaim a shared past. This obsession frequently led to extravagant architectural displays, such as Fonthill Abbey, and sometimes mock tournaments were held. It was not merely in literature that a medieval revival made itself felt, and this too contributed to a culture ready to accept a perceived medieval work in 1764.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The Gothic often uses scenery of decay, death, and morbidity to achieve its effects (especially in the Italian Horror school of Gothic). However, Gothic literature was not the origin of this tradition; indeed, it was far older. The corpses, skeletons, and churchyards so commonly associated with early Gothic works were popularized by the Graveyard poets, and were also present in novels such as Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year", which contains comical scenes of plague carts and piles of corpses. Even earlier, poets like Edmund Spenser evoked a dreary and sorrowful mood in such poems as Epithalamion.


title: Gothic fiction

text: All of the aspects of pre-Gothic literature occur to some degree in the Gothic, but even taken together, they still fall short of true Gothic. What was lacking was an aesthetic to tie the elements together. Bloom notes that this aesthetic must take the form of a theoretical or philosophical core, which is necessary to "sav[e] the best tales from becoming mere anecdote or incoherent sensationalism." In this case, the aesthetic needed to be an emotional one, and was finally provided by Edmund Burke's 1757 work, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", which "finally codif[ied] the gothic emotional experience." Specifically, Burke's thoughts on the Sublime, Terror, and Obscurity were most applicable. These sections can be summarized thus: the Sublime is that which is or produces the "strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling"; the Sublime is most often evoked by Terror; and to cause Terror we need some amount of Obscurity – we can't know everything about that which is inducing Terror – or else "a great deal of the apprehension vanishes"; Obscurity is necessary to experience the Terror of the unknown. Bloom asserts that Burke's descriptive vocabulary was essential to the Romantic works that eventually informed the Gothic.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The birth of Gothic literature was thought to have been influenced by political upheaval. Researchers linked its birth with the English Civil War, culminating in a Jacobite rebellion (1745) more recent to the first Gothic novel (1764). A collective political memory and any deep cultural fears associated with it likely contributed to early Gothic villains as literary representatives of defeated Tory barons or Royalists "rising" from their political graves in the pages of early Gothic novels to terrorize the bourgeois reader of late eighteenth century England.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The first work to call itself "Gothic" was Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" (1764). The first edition presented the story as a translation of a sixteenth century manuscript, and was widely popular. Walpole revealed himself as the true author in the second edition, which added the subtitle "A Gothic Story." The revelation prompted a backlash from readers, who considered it inappropriate for a modern author to write a supernatural story in a rational age. Walpole did not initially prompt many imitators. Beginning with Clara Reeve's "The Old English Baron" (1778), the 1780s saw more writers attempting his combination of supernatural plots with emotionally realistic characters. Examples include Sophia Lee's "The Recess" (1783-5) and William Beckford's "Vathek" (1786).


title: Gothic fiction

text: At the height of the Gothic novel's popularity in the 1790s, the genre was almost synonymous with Ann Radcliffe, whose works were highly anticipated and widely imitated. Particularly popular were "The Romance of the Forest" (1791) and "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794). Walter Scott in an essay on Radcliffe, writes of the popularity of "Udolpho" at the time, "The very name was fascinating, and the public, who rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, rose from it with unsated appetite. When a family was numerous, the volumes flew, and were sometimes torn from hand to hand." Radcliffe's novels were often seen as the feminine and rational opposite of a more violently horrifying male Gothic associated with Matthew Lewis. Radcliffe's final novel, "The Italian" (1797), was a response to Lewis's "The Monk" (1796).


title: Gothic fiction

text: Other notable Gothic novels of the 1790s include William Godwin's "Caleb Williams" (1794), Regina Maria Roche's "Clermont" (1798), and Charles Brockden Brown's "Wieland" (1798), as well as large numbers of anonymous works published by the Minerva Press. In continental Europe, Romantic literary movements led to related Gothic genres such as the German "Schauerroman" and the French "roman noir". Eighteenth century Gothic novels were typically set in a distant past and (for English novels) a distant European country, but without specific dates or historical figures that characterized the later development of historical fiction.


title: Gothic fiction

text: The saturation of Gothic-inspired literature during the 1790s was referred to in a letter by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing on 16 March 1797, "indeed I am almost weary of the Terrible, having been a hireling in the Critical Review for the last six or eight months – I have been reviewing "the Monk", "the Italian", "Hubert de Sevrac" &c &c &c – in all of which dungeons, and old castles, & solitary Houses by the Sea Side & Caverns & Woods & extraordinary characters & all the tribe of Horror & Mystery, have crowded on me – even to surfeiting."