00:05:53.660And so there's portraits of them in existence. I don't know if they were painted in their
00:05:57.820lifetime or afterwards? As far as I know, they were not painted in their lifetime or they were
00:06:03.560not painted from life. So most likely there were sketches made from them by artists who then passed
00:06:09.680those on to other artists who made bigger portraits that were commissioned by various,
00:06:14.380you know, royal figures at the time. So we don't know exactly what they look like. Like the
00:06:20.960portraits that I've seen, like they kind of look like Chewbacca. Kind of, yes. Yeah. And it's
00:06:27.660possible that that's accurate. I mean, cause there, there have been very, very few people
00:06:31.700with hypertrichosis over the course of history. I was going to ask you that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:35.720So, I mean, there, and there are different forms of, of it. This, the form that Pedro had
00:06:40.460is now known as Ambrose syndrome, basically named after him because that's where many of
00:06:44.440his portraits and the portraits of his children ended up at Ambrose castle. But he, there is a
00:06:51.800form, I believe, I'm not an expert on this by any, by any means, but there is a form that where the
00:06:56.800hair it does not grow as long on the face um and then the form that he had the hair just kind of
00:07:01.480keeps growing like like it does on our heads okay so i don't know i hope i'm not being offensive to
00:07:06.000people who have this condition but the portraits of them i was just like knowing they're not painted
00:07:10.220from life it's just i would imagine an artist would be like okay what would a person covered
00:07:14.160in hair look like maybe like this like it's it's entirely possible and i don't i don't know the
00:07:21.480one thing i found interesting about the portraits is most of them don't have hair on their hands
00:07:26.040in the portraits, but in the description of Pedro and of his children. So there was a description
00:07:31.440of Pedro from when he was a boy brought to the French court because he was brought to the French
00:07:37.460court in a cage. We don't know exactly how he was taken from his original home in the Canary
00:07:45.560Islands, but he was taken from there somehow. He was brought to the French court and as a gift to
00:07:50.800the newly crowned king, Henri II. And there was a diplomat from another country who wrote extensively
00:07:58.640about this strange little hairy boy who had been brought. And he described him as being hairy all
00:08:03.780over, including on his hands. And then Pedro's children were described by actually a physician
00:08:10.920who wrote about them for his own... He basically just had this whole book that he was writing
00:08:18.060about different conditions um different kinds of people and he he wrote about them as if they were
00:08:23.860hairy everywhere including their hands but none of the portraits show their hands being hairy
00:08:27.700which is just it seems like a choice that was made or just that it wasn't painted from life
00:08:33.500yeah and so yeah I don't know it's interesting yeah no it's really interesting and I'm really
00:08:38.520I'm so glad to be talking to you about this and I'm so glad I read the book because just the other
00:08:42.280day I forget if it's on Instagram or on Twitter or something somebody like I follow all these
00:08:46.920different history accounts or people who are fans of history and somebody posted like oh my god look
00:08:50.360at this picture and she'd found one of the portraits i think him and one of the children
00:08:53.980and they're just like what what is this story and i was like molly greeley actually wrote a
00:08:57.780it's so i think it's just so interesting that this isn't more widely known i mean there was
00:09:05.940there are a few books written about you know non-fiction books written about him
00:09:09.460but it's i i had never and you know everything that i'd found that one day when i you know went
00:09:15.780down the rabbit hole was just you know google search results it was people's blogs it was on
00:09:19.540some of it was very interesting some of it turned out not to be accurate from what we know of history
00:09:22.600but but it's not something that's for for some reason because it sparked my imagination so much
00:09:28.840i'm just kind of like why does no one else know about yeah yeah we didn't know about this yeah
00:09:33.080no and that's so interesting and i i don't think i'd ever come across like the once you come up
00:09:37.640anyone comes across these portraits you're like wait what is this like this is yes what's going
00:09:41.460that. And I'd heard about other people, like there's, I forget, it's like Pierre, the wild
00:09:46.300boy, or like, I know about some other people who were like brought to French court who like had
00:09:49.920unusual circumstances. So part of the thing about, so do you call him in the book? He's Pedro,
00:09:56.700but he's also known as Petrus. How do you, what do you think of him as?
00:10:00.660I tend to think of him as Pedro, because as far as we know, that was his name
00:10:04.440before he went to the French court. And that's something that in the book,
00:10:08.560I wrestled with as a writer. And then also I kind of had him wrestle with it himself
00:10:13.840because he hadn't, he was known by many names. I mean, he was known as a wild man. He was known
00:10:18.420as, you know, basically Mr. Savage, Monsieur Savage, my French is terrible. But, and I chose1.00
00:10:27.920to have him end up thinking of himself mostly as Pedro, because that was, you know, the name that
00:10:33.780was given to him as a baby um but for all i know maybe he embraced petrus i'm not sure yeah well
00:10:42.300names are sort of more just from my research names were more fluid back then in a lot of ways like
00:10:46.580if you moved from france to italy suddenly you change your name like and that was an interesting
00:10:51.860thing that i found one of his sons um who was named henry after i'm assuming after probably
00:10:58.640two different french kings that were at the court during um pedro's time there uh he was called
00:11:04.380enrico when they moved to italy and i mean just apparently he railed against this like the his
00:11:10.360the pedro's biographer his italian biographer found you know these documents where he kept
00:11:16.720wanting to be called henry and not enrico and everyone was like you're in italy now
00:11:20.420this is your name yeah so you came across this fascinating story and then in deciding to turn
00:11:29.440it into a novel like what was that process like because I mean obviously you you're coming to it
00:11:34.980from the beauty and the beast sort of angle like you wanted to include him in his relationship with
00:11:38.240his wife and how much is known about the wife like my sense is like very little very very little we
00:11:45.740know her name we know that in I don't even know that this is positively true but from what I read
00:11:53.040it sounds like her her father really was a merchant um just like beauties in the fairy tale
00:11:57.200so he was probably a wealthy merchant because he was known to the queen of France
00:12:01.640and that's really all we know about her we know that she was significantly younger than he was
00:12:07.380which wasn't unusual at the time for marriages but but we don't even know her exact age when
00:12:11.500she was married. So yeah, just very little. And we know possibly what she looked like from her
00:12:16.720portrait, if that's accurate. So in that instance, like as a fiction writer, like you were able to
00:12:22.040sort of create a character, you know, without being really constrained by much other than
00:12:26.020knowing her father's a merchant. She's probably very pretty. Exactly. Yeah. And with her, I think
00:12:32.140it was freeing to write from her perspective because I felt a lot more tied to history with
00:12:37.020Pedro um and with you know again we don't know a lot about him either but from from what I had
00:12:42.980read about him I wanted to stay as true to that as I could um but with her it was I mean we don't
00:12:47.860know anything about her how she felt about being married to him we don't know I mean any of that
00:12:53.300and so I was I felt free to kind of assume you know that it would be hard in the beginning and
00:13:00.740then I knew that I wanted them to fall in love in my story but in history we don't know if they did
00:13:05.540so yeah yeah no and i want to make sure that everybody knows that for who haven't read the
00:13:11.400book yet um that it is like very much a love story is like it's i think it says in the book
00:13:18.040somewhere you know it's like the real story of beauty and the beast or something so like you go
00:13:20.800into it like knowing it's not just about this man and this peculiar circumstance but they're forced
00:13:26.160into this marriage well i mean i guess a lot of aristocrats like the king and queen were like
00:13:31.080you're gonna marry her like that's just kind of what happened to everybody so that's not unusual
00:13:34.900themselves yeah yeah yeah so like in terms of like love stories and the classic story of
00:13:42.440you know people being there's so many romance novels and stuff of people who are forced into
00:13:46.580an arranged marriage and then they come to love each other so it's like it's a yeah I don't know
00:13:52.280it's a familiar sort of situation to be reading about in a book but you have the added level of
00:13:57.940what's going on in France at the time and then of course his condition and yeah and that definitely
00:14:04.660put some constraints on their situation. And that's something that as far as the, you know,
00:14:10.700arranged marriage trope, that's something that I, I mean, I'll read books like that. I enjoy books
00:14:16.620like that, but in writing about real people, I felt like I wanted to show that, you know, that
00:14:23.620it isn't necessarily, you know, an immediate love that comes out, you know, comes from these
00:14:28.980situations. And, um, I suppose it can be, but in, in this case, I wanted them to, I wanted to show
00:14:35.420that it was, it was not easy for either of them. And I think, you know, that goes back to the
00:14:38.920fairy tale as well, that, but, you know, beauty was kind of, you know, she was supposed to be a
00:14:46.120good girl and do what her father said. And so she, and, or, you know, and to help her father,
00:14:49.960like that was her, that was her duty as a daughter. And so she went into this castle
00:14:53.160with this, this beast and, um, was trapped there. And then, but he was also in the fairy tale
00:15:01.140trapped by his own circumstances. And I think that was very true of Pedro and Catherine,
00:15:05.080at least in my novel, that circumstances trapped them, but they learned how to make the best of it.
00:15:11.620No. And I'm thinking too, I mean, I've never read the classic, like the beauty and the beast
00:15:16.780fairy tale from what, when is it from the 1600s? It was from the 1600s. I'm going to
00:15:21.960not remember, of course, the exact date right now. I want to say it was the 1640s, but I might be
00:15:27.180wrong about that. But it was approximately, you know, just a little bit over a hundred years after
00:15:31.340Pedro's death. So there would have been, just from what I've read about this, just preparing
00:15:36.280for this interview, certainly some of the illustrations were perhaps inspired by the
00:15:41.560legend of Pedro and what he looked like. Yes. And if you've seen the Disney, not the animated
00:15:48.880version, but the newer live action version, I thought it was weirdly striking how much they
00:15:54.760made the beast look like Pedro. I don't know if that was, I have no idea if that was remotely
00:15:59.040intentional on their part, or if they even had anything, knew anything about Pedro, but
00:16:03.580there's the two faces next to each other are strikingly similar.
00:16:07.760That's interesting. I wonder if, cause they were coming at it from a live action,
00:16:10.640you know, realistic point of view, if they were like, well, realistically,
00:16:13.100what could this person look like? Maybe they came across a portrait.
00:16:16.080is a person but yeah but okay so i'm mostly familiar with the disney version of it which
00:16:22.840ends with the beast turns into you know he doesn't look like a beast at the end you know he's
00:16:28.020transformed again pedro obviously that's not the outcome that's not possible for him yeah
00:16:33.040does the original fairy tale end with the beast transforming it does okay yes um and it's
00:16:39.820interesting because in the original fairy tale I mean she's beauty is not totally happy with her
00:16:46.520circumstances and she actually dream she literally dreams about this handsome prince or handsome
00:16:52.480young man I can't remember if she knew it was a prince but this handsome young man night after
00:16:57.440night she keeps dreaming about him and she wants him she doesn't want this beast who keeps asking
00:17:04.160her to marry him but in the end it turns out that the handsome young man is the beast just you know
00:17:09.160in a different form. And so with Catherine, as you know, she was supposed to be a teenage girl
00:17:15.000when she got married. And I had, you know, I imagined that she might have dreamt of something
00:17:18.560different for herself as many teenage girls do, but she didn't have, you know, she had her husband
00:17:25.660and he wasn't about to transform physically. She just had to learn who he was inside.
00:17:30.740And so part of the thing that I found really interesting about your book, and I think this
00:17:33.780is based on what you're saying, you really stayed close to history in terms of writing Pedro's
00:17:38.160character was how educated he was. Can you talk about that? Like the real life him, but also in
00:17:43.520the book, he wasn't kept in a cage as like a zoo creature. Like he was treated as like any other
00:17:49.780young man effectively. Exactly. And I mean, he was, yeah, he was brought to court in a cage. He
00:17:54.040was brought, I believe he was naked when he was, that's how it is in the book. And I believe there
00:17:58.740was one account of it that did sound like he was not wearing clothes when he was brought to court
00:18:03.160And he was presented to the king and the king started talking to him and realized that he could speak because they kind of assumed that this was some sort of animal human hybrid and didn't they some kind of wild creature.
00:18:17.780And the original thought was to put him in the menagerie with the animals.
00:18:21.380And then the king was just absolutely delighted when he found out that Pedro was a person who could speak and decided that he would be educated like with his children using the same kind of tutors.
00:18:31.500And so he got a gentleman's education. He learned how to how to fight. He learned how to speak Latin. I mean, he learned mathematics. It was just it was just that he wasn't expected to do as much with that education necessarily as a nobleman might have.
00:18:49.100no and that's so so interesting to me just because i think i had been conflating a story with and
00:18:54.320again i don't remember the name but it's like pierre the wild boy or something the wild boy
00:18:57.780of some anyway he was someone who maybe had some sort of like autism level like he was someone who
00:19:02.980wasn't capable of being educated and he acted sort of more like a and but then i was reading this
00:19:08.020book and i'm just like wait pedro is just that's not his issue like he just has this hair situation
00:19:13.700but otherwise he's capable of anything.
00:19:16.580Yeah. Otherwise he's just a person. Yeah. Just without any, um, there,
00:19:20.380one interesting thing is that I did come across,
00:19:23.000this was after I'd written the book. And so one fun,
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00:29:26.840from our sponsors and we're back well i mean it's it's such a tricky thing because
00:29:35.960they did end up living in a village at the end of their lives they they all the entire family
00:29:41.480lived in an italian village um that was still part of the duke of parma's vast lands but but
00:29:48.240they were away from court for a lot of the time toward the end of their lives and you know one of
00:29:54.080the sons ended up becoming a pretty successful businessman in that village. But it also sounds
00:30:00.220like they were looked at quite a bit with suspicion. But again, because there's so little
00:30:04.900record, it's possible that people accepted them. Well, actually, some people did because at least
00:30:11.880Catherine was godmother to multiple children in that village. And Pedro was godfather to not as
00:30:18.760many as Catherine, I don't believe. But he was actually named godfather to some of the children
00:30:22.440in the village which makes you think maybe he had some respect there yeah the whole the whole thing
00:30:30.300I I would give a lot to be able to you know travel back in time and actually see what
00:30:35.300how they were treated yeah no and it's interesting and I do want to emphasize for people again who
00:30:39.540haven't read the book the book isn't like a oh poor me like I'm covered in hair my life is so
00:30:43.420sad narrative it's just like no that's what he looks like there's that extra level of it there
00:30:47.160is this love story and it's really just about who he is as a person and who Catherine is and
00:30:52.280their relationship and can you also talk about so like there's this fascinating thing happening
00:30:58.180between them as a couple and what is that like and kind of the beauty and the beast situation
00:31:02.580but in the backdrop of it is this like extremely chaotic historical moment can you talk about that
00:31:10.160yes long long historical moment the french tours of religion that were very bloody and um
00:31:17.480that was that was one of those things that I I struggled with because I didn't want the history
00:31:27.760to completely overshadow the personal story of these of this couple but obviously it would have
00:31:32.300affected them yeah and yeah so it was this time for people who don't know when the Catholics and
00:31:37.960the Protestants in France were just at each other's throats the Catholics were in power
00:31:41.720You know, the kings at that time were Catholic, but they had been persecuting Protestants and, you know, there were these sham trials where Protestants, you know, were tried for heresy and then ended up being put to death.0.67
00:31:58.640And Protestants finally started pushing back. And this was decades, I mean, decades of this, of this back and forth. And there were different factions that kept trying to get back and to get into power as the, you know, the Catholic kings in this one particular line kept dying.
00:32:16.740and then, and then a new one would take, you know, a new brother would take, you know, the place of
00:32:21.380the one who died. Each time it seemed like, you know, the different factions saw it as a new
00:32:27.500opportunity to try to, you know, to gain total control. And then in the book, there is what was
00:32:36.040the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which happened when the Catholic daughter or Catholic sister of
00:32:45.300the current king of the king at the time was betrothed to the protestant prince of navarre
00:32:51.740which was a province very near france and so at their wedding you know all of these
00:32:58.480protestant noble people were invited into into paris for this wedding and then ended up being
00:33:06.000slaughtered and who was responsible for that and it's very complicated no one is 100 sure
00:33:12.580who gave the actual order for this to happen,
00:33:15.080but it set off this chain of absolute slaughter0.93
00:33:39.940that was honestly probably verbatim what my thought process was yeah because it's like around
00:33:45.800the same time as they're starting to have children like this massacre happens and you can't not talk
00:33:50.380about it because they're at the royal court but i've just so what was that like to sort of balance
00:33:55.980including and i think you do a really good job of it like the book is very much their
00:33:59.760characters stories and you just kind of give a taste of like here's what's going on and that
00:34:04.020affects their lives obviously but it doesn't overwhelm it how did you kind of balance that
00:34:09.680I guess the way I thought of it is that they would have been slightly insulated, not from the massacre itself, because that happened at court or part of it began at court, but they would have been insulated from a lot of what was happening because because they lived at court and because at that time, a lot of these skirmishes between the Catholics and Protestants were happening elsewhere.
00:34:27.600and so they would know about them it would affect them to some extent but kind of
00:34:33.640I mean I feel like unless you are in the middle of a conflict like actually in the thick of it
00:34:40.780it's easy to go about your life even if you know terrible things are happening um even now you know
00:34:46.480we hear about terrible conflicts happening around the world and are affected by them but it's also
00:34:51.900possible to continue living if you're not directly involved. And so I guess that was how I thought of
00:35:00.420it for them was that they would have been probably very concerned about this, but also would have
00:35:07.280been living their lives and would have been concerned with the immediate problems of court
00:35:11.740life and how best to raise their children in this environment. Right. It's really just focusing. And
00:35:16.700I guess that's what the book does too. It's like, this is their story. And when these events become
00:35:21.000unavoidable, then they talk about it. But every day, there's other historical fiction books that
00:35:26.120I have read, where they just, the authors find a reason for the characters to talk about it's like,
00:35:31.340oh, did you hear what's happening in the American colonies? And it's like, why are they talking
00:35:34.620about this? But it's just a way to be like, just so you know, this is the same time as this is
00:35:39.660happening. So I think your book really is very much their story with a flavor of this. But that
00:35:43.800was what I was really wondering, like when there was so much stuff happening throughout their
00:35:47.500entire lives. But if there's so much happening like there is with us, it's like, well, that
00:35:51.820doesn't stop you from having a relationship and like living your life. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean,
00:35:56.500for, you know, we've, no, it hasn't been on the same soil. It hasn't been on US soil,
00:36:00.760but the United States has been a, you know, war for most, most of my life, it feels like, you know,
00:36:07.020on and off. And it's something that I certainly think about. And, you know, depending on what
00:36:13.180the circumstances are worried about, I've known people who've, you know, been actually involved
00:36:17.100in these wars. But day to day, it's not because I'm not presented with this constant barrage of
00:36:24.980it. I feel insulated from it many times. And so, I mean, I felt like, and I feel like court life
00:36:32.320in many ways was designed to insulate the noble people from the hard realities of life. I mean,
00:36:41.900because life was hard back then, but in court, they had these constant amusements. They had
00:36:46.880bread in circuses, but for the noble people, it was just kind of this way of
00:36:53.620keeping spirits up, I guess, is how it felt when I was reading about it, that they would plan all
00:36:59.660of these amusements that were more and more expensive and more and more outlandish. And
00:37:03.260meanwhile, their people are fighting for something that the people probably weren't that worried
00:37:08.280about, but that the king wanted them to, conscripted them into.
00:37:16.880And it just felt like court life was going to be very insulating until it came to their doorstep.
00:37:25.300Well, and just from other historical authors who I've spoken to, and just let me know if this was your experience as well.
00:37:30.220Like you did so much research and you learned so many facts and so much interesting stuff.
00:37:33.500You're like, oh no, put it all in my book.
00:37:35.060But then it's like, no, it needs to be like a novel.
00:37:38.020Were there any interesting things you wanted to put in that you had to, well, I guess you mentioned there was other children that were there.
00:37:43.100there's other points of view, but like, what was some interesting things that you wanted to put in,
00:37:47.180but they just didn't fit? Oh, goodness. Um, I wanted to put in more about Catherine de' Medici,
00:37:53.840um, because she is just such an interesting, fascinating person, um, in history. And yet,
00:38:01.480and I had more originally in there, but it felt forced in the book because,
00:38:05.900you know, realistically, they probably were not intimates of hers. They were not people who would
00:38:11.900have hung out with her on a regular basis they you know they would have been in you know receiving
00:38:17.140rooms where she where she was but they wouldn't have been the ones spending a great deal of
00:38:21.580personal one-on-one time with her and so but she because she was this woman who was
00:38:27.640you know throughout history has been hated and yet she was also a mother who very much cared0.98
00:38:35.800about her children um she was she tried at least for a while to stop these wars between the
00:38:43.940protestants and the catholics she wanted peace even though she was catholic and very religious
00:38:47.760herself and so i wanted i wanted to put i put a little bit of that in there but i desperately
00:38:53.480wanted to put more because she just fascinates me well and that's the thing too it's i don't know
00:38:57.340it's similar to like oh and the saint bartholomew's day massacre was happening at the same time as
00:39:01.340the story it's like oh they're in the court of like catherine de medici like one of history's
00:39:05.160most fascinating people but you're like but exactly i guess like with the historical yeah
00:39:10.900it's like you can't can't get distracted with how cool she was yeah and and they you know and she
00:39:18.820doesn't show up in the story i mean she's she's there as her you know the last few decades of her
00:39:25.140life um there was even more of her history that i wanted to include because i mean just her
00:39:29.980her childhood her young adulthood it's all very interesting but yeah but it had nothing
00:39:35.700sorry I'm just gonna say I do I am gonna be doing um an episode about Catherine Domenici later
00:39:41.060on my podcast and I already know it's gonna probably be like three hours long like
00:39:45.600I will be listening yeah no there's there's a lot to say about her and I'm excited to get the
00:39:51.300chance to relate because she's been on the periphery of some other stuff I've talked about
00:39:54.600and the exact same thing I'm just like okay I don't have time for this right now but like
00:39:57.820one day I will focus on her entirely. I wanted to ask you as well. So you've written,
00:40:03.800is this your third book? I think. Yeah. And so your first two are sort of inspired by Pride and
00:40:10.260Prejudice, right? Like taking a character and expanding what their world was like. So what was,
00:40:18.140like, can you compare the difference of like researching that world with researching the
00:40:24.040world of Marvel is? So for the Pride and Prejudice-inspired books, I guess that was
00:40:32.080a time period that I was more familiar with to begin with. And there is a lot of interest in
00:40:38.400the Regency period in England. So there's like a wealth of information about what day-to-day life
00:40:44.600would have been like. And so that was kind of just a pleasure to research because it was all
00:40:49.860there at my fingertips. And then this, I mean, there's certainly a lot of information out there,
00:40:53.940but, um, when it comes to day-to-day life, I had a harder time finding things. It was, it was more
00:41:01.840about, you know, the wars and about, you know, what, what the Kings and Queens were up to, which
00:41:06.380was relevant, but it wasn't all that I was looking for. So I felt like I had to, I had, it was
00:41:12.120researching just took a lot longer for this. And then also because, you know, the other books were
00:41:16.840inspired by fictional characters, I had the novels as source material. And that was, you know,
00:41:24.720canon, I guess, for lack of a better word. Whereas with this, you know, I had the,
00:41:30.240I think I've mentioned his biographer before. His only biography, Page's only biography isn't
00:41:34.520Italian and I don't read Italian. So I, you know, I bought the book and ended up having to use
00:41:40.580a translate app in order to, to read it. And it was just very long process.
00:41:45.060oh wow yeah yeah but yeah so it was it I I found a lot of very interesting information
00:41:55.720um and was fascinated by everything I found researching this book but it was not as easy
00:42:02.120as the other two and I find that really interesting too that you I think you said that you were
00:42:08.700researching your next book which I imagine was not going to be this and then you just got kind
00:42:13.040of swept away and then down this rabbit hole. And then, so just knowing that you're interested
00:42:17.620in it was, was great enough that you were willing to get this Italian book and like.
00:42:23.720Yeah. I, the, the whole thing, everything about it just kind of grabbed me. And it was just this
00:42:29.220idea of this little boy brought to a court as a gift to, to a King. And then, and who ends up,
00:42:38.920you know, being educated and living in this country, that's not his, you know, birthplace
00:42:43.800and having to learn all, you know, everything he needs to know to fit into this court life and then
00:42:48.200being married and having children who look like him, who are going to be treated the way he was
00:42:53.000possibly. Everything about that just pulled at me. Just, you know, I needed to explore who this
00:42:58.680person might've been. Well, and I think it's really interesting in the book. I hope this
00:43:01.400isn't like spoilery, but like you said, they have children. And so I found it really interesting
00:43:05.920sort of the emotions of both Pedro and Catherine when the children are born, where it's just like,
00:43:09.800do you want them to look like him? Because that's kind of what, why they were married. Like that's
00:43:14.860kind of what the queen wants them to be like, or do you want them to look like her? Because then
00:43:18.680they would have a different life experience. And so I thought that was really interesting. Each
00:43:22.040time a child was born, the kind of suspense of just like, what? Yes. Yeah. And I, for Catherine
00:43:30.560in particular, I mean, back then there were so many superstitions. I mean, we still have some
00:43:34.900of these today, but back then it was incredible how many superstitions there were for what would
00:43:40.020happen to the baby you were carrying if you were a pregnant woman and you looked at the wrong thing
00:43:44.960or you thought about the wrong thing. And so, you know, people did think that if you had a hairy
00:43:49.660child, it was because you had, you know, slept under a bearskin rug or something like that. I
00:43:56.140mean, so she, you know, tries very hard and in the book, you know, not to let her first child
00:44:03.260be hairy because she, cause it would be her fault is what she feels like. Um, if she, you know,
00:44:07.640kind of, she would be forced, you know, forcing this life on her, onto her child, because
00:44:12.340if she looks at hairy things too much, um, I just, I feel like, you know, pregnancy is stressful
00:44:18.500enough. That would be a whole other level of responsibility and stress. Oh, and that reminds
00:44:23.480me too, just about Catherine and her character, which we've talked about a bit, but I thought it
00:44:27.300was a really interesting choice that in the book, at least it starts off and she's illiterate
00:44:31.160when like, again, currently the most famous version of Beauty and the Beast is the Disney
00:44:35.680one where she just like loves books and reading. So was that, was that like, obviously that was a
00:44:41.100choice you made. Was that based just on what she probably would have been like a young woman at
00:44:45.800this time? Mostly based on that. And also it was a choice because he was so, he, from everything
00:44:53.600I'd read, he seemed so very proud of his education. And it seemed like just one other thing for them
00:44:58.900to have to engage with each other on, you know,
00:45:03.060if they weren't quite on the same level with it.
00:45:27.240But many of the women, or many, like, you know, especially when he came to court, Henri II was king, and he had a mistress who was very, very well educated.
00:45:37.640And, you know, the king's daughters were educated, and it just seemed to me that if this girl comes to be his wife, it would be just something, one more thing that they would need to discuss and understand.
00:45:52.320you know come to an understanding about um that you know she she needs to understand that he
00:45:56.940is a person under his hair and he would need to understand that she is intelligent despite not
00:46:01.820being educated that education does not equal intelligence you know yeah it was i think i was
00:46:08.340midway through reading it when i was suddenly just like wait this is like it's just i don't know to
00:46:12.360me again and i'm gonna imagine other readers are as well coming with it the baggage of the disney
00:46:16.400film i'm like oh this is like the reverse of the disney film where she has to teach him how books
00:46:21.120are great right yes although in the disney film that always confused me is how this prince was
00:46:27.160didn't know how to read but the girl even though he had this huge library and he'd been trapped
00:46:31.060for years it's like you never read any of those books before yeah i know great point yeah no so
00:46:38.420it's such an interesting and such a i don't know i i'm trying to describe it it's like moving your
00:46:44.020book but it's also like fun and interesting like i want people to not come away from this thinking
00:46:49.000it's just like oh this poor man and his poor life it's like that's not it at all it's that's
00:46:53.980i didn't want him to be to be you know just a victim basically i wanted him to be a full person
00:47:01.020and because i feel like we you know i mean this his his circumstances were extreme but everyone
00:47:05.460is born with in a certain set of circumstances that they have to you know learn to thrive within
00:47:12.200if possible. And I wanted, I wanted him to, you know, I wanted him to be a whole, a full human
00:47:20.600being, not, not a victim. Yeah. Well, and I think too, like a narrative like yours, it shows
00:47:25.260anyone who's born with any sort of difference. It's not like you don't wake up every day. I
00:47:29.020don't wake up every day and think like, well, another day for me and I wear glasses and I have
00:47:32.460red hair. It's like, that's just your life and you don't think about it, but it's just when you
00:47:35.580meet someone new, they're like, oh, you have red hair or whatever. Like for him, he doesn't wake
00:47:40.160up every day like well you know this is who it's no that's just who he is and like so it was almost
00:47:45.740a benefit that he's around the court where everyone's used to him so like he doesn't get a
00:47:50.360double i mean i guess he does move later on in his life but he yeah he does um but but the people
00:47:58.680who were at court with him especially you know day in day out would have been used to him and
00:48:03.840to other people who um were physically different because they were right yeah you have there's
00:48:08.820dwarves in this book too. Yeah. Well, Catherine Dementi, she, she had an entire like retinue
00:48:14.040of, um, I mean, I don't know if dwarf is the correct word now, but that's what the word they
00:48:19.000used then was. And, um, and she, she believed they were magical. She like, she, I mean, that's
00:48:26.540partly why she surrounded herself with them. They were supposed to be good luck. And so they clearly,
00:48:31.240I mean, she also took care of them. Like after, after her death, she left money for them for their
00:48:36.340continued care. And so that makes me wonder, you know, did she see them as full human beings or
00:48:43.440did she just see them as these little magical people like figures that, you know, she, I don't
00:48:49.780know. I, the whole, the whole thing was fascinating because there was clearly a lot of care given to
00:48:56.400the people at court who, who had physical differences and mental differences as well.
00:49:00.660But like, but I just, I wish there was a fuller record of the actual like interpersonal reaction or, you know, not reactions. I can't think of really conversations and the way people, you know, dealt with each other on a day to day basis, because it does seem like they were cared for.
00:49:24.580And yet they were kept at court because of their difference.