Erika

Took me embarrassingly long to figure out PROFS when that's my own job ::facepalm:: Maybe my subconscious just didn't want to remember the grading pile waiting for me...

Really lovely to see the digitized Beowulf manuscript get a shout-out in the column—how to make a medievalist happy! (And also so important to show support for the British Library's fantastic online collections as they're slowly recovering from the devastating cyberattack in 2023.)

As a medievalist, I am professionally obliged to give this puzzle my approval ;) (Seriously, calling it the period "known as" the Middle Ages is exactly the kind of nuance we appreciate, for reasons I won't inflict on you all here!)

Mary I wasn't Henry VIII's heir as she inherited from her brother, Edward VI. (One could argue that she was his heir apparent until she was declared illegitimate following Henry's divorce, but at that time she wouldn't have been Mary I, so...!)

Had a moment of frustration at 20D where I could remember the title of the book but not the author! Then it clicked—morning brain, what can I say... Delighted to see TESH's Some Desperate Glory get all the attention it deserves, even in an unexpected venue!

Yes, Broken Earth trilogy! And loved the whimsy of the theme answers.

Was thrown by "litchi" as I've never heard it referred to as a nut. Went to ngrams for some context, and the only period where referring to it as a "lychee/litchi nut" as more common than calling it a fruit was about 1907–1932. Also, the first appearances in English *all* treat it as a fruit: cross-checking with the OED, from the 16th–19th centuries people consistently identified it as a fruit, and it's only from the late 19th century (in either OED or ngrams) that references to it as a nut show up. Probably because it's self-evidently a fruit! (Would love to know what happened in the early 20th century, then...)

Very first definition in the OED: "An armed company or multitude of men; an army. Now archaic and poetic." (But, I would argue, not at all obscure!)

Very cute puzzle—cottoned on to the trick a few lines into 'orange', and enjoyed seeing how it unfolded the rest of the way through. (My tablet screen is normally B/W, so I popped onto the browser version to double-check I'd correctly guessed which color was which based on the order and the number of letters in the word).

Being a medieval history professor meant spending way too long at 17A thinking "Well *that* doesn't fit... Surely they don't mean Lateran IV? But that's a council, not really an agreement"... before realizing that there just had to be a catch of some kind!