00:07:40.160So that's where it's like people who criticize rain.
00:07:42.400I'm just like, okay, but like people have been reimagining these stories since they happened,
00:07:47.640since Alexander Dumas. Like this is not. If you think I get into, um, like all of this
00:07:54.100stuff, you should see me talk about, um, people accepting Victorian version of history. Yeah.
00:08:03.240I, I start foaming at the mouth. I'm so mad. It's everyone who's written history and it's
00:08:09.160interesting i've got some interviews i think they may have already aired by the time this comes out
00:08:14.000with some people who've written non-fiction books and we talk about that where it's just like when
00:08:17.400you're looking at sources it's like okay but who wrote this source and when like was this written
00:08:22.560at the time these things happened and if so who wrote it or was this written 500 years later and
00:08:27.320what was their point of view and who are they trying to support it's like that's why i found
00:08:31.840it so just silly when i got that review of my podcast calling me biased where it's like okay
00:08:36.840show me history that's not biased. You know, when people are like, that's inaccurate. It's like,
00:08:42.080okay, but like without a time machine, we're all just guessing.
00:08:48.040I'm sorry. I'm not in favor of the white dude. Yeah.
00:08:52.840There's a lot of other places you can go for that.
00:08:56.020Yeah. It's well, somebody on Tik TOK called me, um, a misandrist. And I was like,
00:09:01.260just because you don't like movies with men in them and i don't and there's lots of people who
00:09:07.440don't like movies with women in them anyway but yes this is the thing this is where like parsing
00:09:12.540out the actual story or like trying to parse out the story of catherine de medici like you have to0.96
00:09:17.640wade through a lot of bourbon propaganda that's being like she was evil and she was certainly
00:09:23.520a powerful woman and we see that over and over again where it's just like oh a powerful woman
00:09:27.880you know needs to be described as evil but especially if she was from florence and especially
00:09:32.680if she did successful things she was capable she was a very capable woman here's the thing she was
00:09:41.440and i love that you know her her life started out she was this orphan she's kind of like shunted
00:09:45.700around she became the wife of a man who didn't care about her and then when he died she was just
00:09:50.520like guess what i've been secretly amazing this whole time and watch me go and that's just what
00:09:54.880she did well and she didn't like she was married to this man that didn't care about her and she
00:10:00.520didn't go oh woe is me let's stop it she's like okay but we have to have kids and i'm going to1.00
00:10:06.200do whatever it takes to have children up to and including asking your mistress for help like
00:10:12.140whatever it takes i'm going to do my job and that's what she was she's like whatever it takes
00:10:16.860i'm going to do it and it's sort of like because she was from florence like she was her mother was
00:10:21.540French too, but similar ish to how Margaret Tudor and then Marie de Guise wound up in Scotland.
00:10:27.660And they're both just like, well, I hate this place and everyone in it, but my job is to like
00:10:32.680be the queen of it. So I guess let's go. Like, it's like, that's my job. Okay. I didn't choose
00:10:38.040it, but here we go. Catherine's like that with France really. Although she was a little bit0.91
00:10:42.140more intentional about saying, oh, there's other people that are capable. Well, no, sorry.
00:10:47.480Doing it anyway. Well, and by this point, so certainly by the Queen Margot,
00:10:51.540era like the flying squadron is just like firing on all cylinders she's got her like sexy lady0.99
00:10:56.440spies they are out there they are seducing men they're bringing back secrets like it's1.00
00:11:03.720they're setting up men exactly like they're she's got like a whole infrastructure of sneaky things0.97
00:11:10.360happening and she like no one no one would dare try to tell her catherine that she's not in charge1.00
00:11:18.560or that she can't do something like she is built from the ground, like an entire structure that0.98
00:11:23.620supports her being in charge, including her children being useless. Uninterested in try0.99
00:11:29.020and challenging their mother for any sort of power influence. So that being said, like this is not
00:11:36.020turning out the way she thought it would because none of her sons are having children. So this is
00:11:40.640like challenging her whole like family dynasty. Let's take over all the countries in Europe,1.00
00:11:44.860like not happening because you have one job here's the thing she had one job and she figured
00:11:49.900how to do it her children are just like i guess i'm just not having any children so0.76
00:11:54.960elizabeth had children oh elizabeth's a fell while dead she had two kids with philip yep
00:12:00.460they didn't inherit because obviously she was the third wife but so she she's the only those are her1.00
00:12:09.200only grandkids. So, and we haven't... Legitimate. So, she had one more son who was also named
00:12:15.380Francis. Francis also. Other Francis. So, anyway, so what happened with Other Francis? Who, oh,
00:12:23.280he's in the movie. Queen Marco, he's the little, like, weaselly guy who puts the poison on the0.96
00:12:28.740book. So, Other Francis ends up allying with the Huguenots against his family and the crown.
00:12:35.300like Francis what are you doing so he did that and then he died very young of tuberculosis
00:12:42.100so because when in doubt tuberculosis yeah we've talked about tuberculosis so much on this show
00:12:50.560this season there's just been a lot of tuberculosis but it was a disease a lot of people
00:12:54.520got and a lot of people lived with it was the popular royal disease until Victoria made everybody0.88
00:12:59.940very sick what did victoria make everybody very sick with uh she had a genetic predisposition and
00:13:06.640now i've lost the word for the um the bleeding thing bleeding yeah sorry i lose words no i do
00:13:13.760too it's part of my thing where you bleed easily hemophilia hemophilia yeah well and the thing
00:13:19.840with victoria is she came in she had a gazillion children they all married into all the houses of
00:13:24.700europe so then every house of europe had this predisposition to hemophilia because they were
00:13:29.740cousins who all married each other victoria did exactly what katherine wanted to do except0.92
00:13:34.140victoria's children she procreated that's because victoria procreated yeah as much as humanly1.00
00:13:43.260possible well she did yeah and one day we are going to do so this asshole victoria but i was1.00
00:13:49.340just telling my friend recently who is um she studies history of medicine and i was talking1.00
00:13:53.400about she didn't know about this how victoria she had so many children because she just like1.00
00:13:57.900loved fucking her husband but she hated being pregnant she hated having children she hated1.00
00:14:02.020being a mother so when medication came out that you could be knocked out by like anesthesia she1.00
00:14:08.980was just like genius so then her doctor for her like final few children they just like um knocked
00:14:15.060her out so and then the baby was born and then she woke up and they're like here's your baby
00:14:18.120she's like great like you take care of that for me that's why i pay you yeah which is also
00:14:25.480interesting to think like, wow, even if you're like completely unconscious, like the human body
00:14:30.420will still deliver a baby. But that's Victoria. And that's a story for another day. So if we're0.99
00:14:36.260keeping track of Catherine's children, we have Elizabeth, who has now died in childbirth in
00:14:40.880Spain to the heartbreak of her much older husband, Philip. We have Francis has died. Henry is now the
00:14:48.180king. Other Francis just died of tuberculosis. Margot still thriving. She hates her husband,
00:14:54.560but um he's not fond of her they did not get along so the new heir to the throne like there's
00:15:01.820no valois left so the new heir to the throne is margot's husband henry of navarre and that's
00:15:06.360through the bourbon connection we're going up over and down to get to henry of bourbon
00:15:11.260or henry of navarre so this is like so catherine's just like this is not playing out like she had
00:15:18.560planned when she had nine children. Um, the fact that there's like, she has no grand, like there's
00:15:24.680no Velwa to become the heir to the throne. So she's like, fuck me. So she's now 59 years old1.00
00:15:29.920in terms of just like life events per year. Like she's, I don't know, sometimes I get to this point
00:15:35.820in a story and I'm like, she was now 21, but you know, 59 feels like, okay, a reasonable age
00:15:41.400considering how much has happened. So she's like, great. Okay. So the heir to the throne is a
00:15:47.500Huguenot. This is complicating things. This is not working at all how I wanted it to.
00:15:54.560Anyway, so then she had a face-to-face meeting with the Huguenot leaders and that kept things
00:16:01.220peaceful for a while. But then some of the Catholics got mad at her for being nice. I'm
00:16:06.580sure by some Catholics, I mean the Degezes. Degezes. Yeah. And so this is where we get the1.00
00:16:11.440Catholic League. Can you explain what that is? Do you know what that is?
00:16:17.500It's okay. So going back to the Marie de Guise episode is like the de Guises were, they were cardinals. They had a bunch of cardinals. They were also related to the Lorraines, the Duke of Lorraine, which was not part of France at the time.
00:16:35.080And so they had like the Catholic parts of Germany kind of on their side as well, which of course wasn't Germany at the time. It was the Holy Roman Empire. They were dealing with their own Gustavus Adolphus situation, which he shows up in one of our favorites.
00:17:00.160Yeah. Christina. So, so like there's all that fun stuff going on, but they aligned themselves with a bunch of the, the Catholic, the few Catholic places left and said, Hey, we're going to be a team now.
00:17:15.600And we're going to fight Protestants, by which I mean, we're going to fight Huguenots and, and Spain come help us. France, come help us. Random Germans, come help us.0.81
00:17:30.160it's like avengers assemble but for catholics they're just and in charge will be the degeezes1.00
00:17:37.940yes surprise because they're so good at killing huguenots well you know what they've been doing0.96
00:17:45.000a long time kind of their thing so the catholic league is kind of everybody except for king henry
00:17:53.320like it's like all the catholic people except for him somehow i mean it's technically it starts out
00:18:01.100with him as well like it it kind of starts out with him in it and then he like pulls away and
00:18:07.680then they go to war against him and then there's the war of the three henrys yeah i mean everyone
00:18:13.900knows how i feel and i think everyone feels the same way where it's just like people in history
00:18:18.040choose a new name choose a different name why do you all the same name stop it it makes everything
00:18:25.820so complicated so we have the three henrys so who are the three henrys we've got henry of navarre
00:18:30.240henry of navarre henry de guise oh henry de guise and then henry the henry the king so it's three
00:18:35.440people all call henry yeah so it's bourbon de guise like at this point they're just literally
00:18:42.220at war with each other and they're all called henry but the secret weapon that henry the king
00:18:47.380has is his mom, Catherine. So Henry, but not her poison. Tragically. So King Henry took charge of
00:18:56.840the negotiation to end the war, which was a terrible idea because he was a useless person.0.77
00:19:01.920This ends with him going and hiding and leaving Catherine to sort out everything like mom, fix it.
00:19:08.060So here's a sentence I wrote between France and England and Spain, Catholics and Protestants,
00:19:13.860basically all of Western Europe was in a mess. And the only thing keeping France from imploding0.74
00:19:17.760was Catherine's force of will. So, uh, things were going pretty badly for her as well. So there
00:19:25.720was right. Here's what I want to say. This is going to air a couple of weeks after we record
00:19:29.620it, but as we record this, there are currently riots on the streets in Paris. The people of
00:19:34.480Paris, like they're rioting skills are unmatched. I think they're just, they're professionals like
00:19:42.620generation after generation it's art it's it's like you know it's the french revolution it's
00:19:47.680lame is it's everything that's happening in this story it's just like the people of paris are just0.96
00:19:51.020like is it time for revolution like let's do it garbage on the street so much like today garbage0.92
00:19:57.860on the streets so it's rule number one garbage on the street i haven't seen a video of somebody0.92
00:20:01.900wheeling a guillotine down the street but i'm sure someone has like the people in paris are just
00:20:05.420they're pros at it they're you know all respect to the people rioting in paris i and the firefighters
00:20:11.640always side with the rioters as my favorite part yeah so it's like the fire is firefighters versus
00:20:17.460police i you know what i don't know it's the streets of paris riot and they're like it's
00:20:25.400i feel like they've always been rioting and i feel like it's i don't know my favorite thing
00:20:30.680on tiktok right now are are when they show the rioters like rioting in the streets and they're
00:20:36.180like oh let's go grab a bite and then they just go into a restaurant and inside the restaurant is
00:20:39.760just people dining and then they leave and they're back to rioting like it's like let's stop and eat
00:20:45.200and they're all civilized and and and cultured and fancy french people and then they leave again0.94
00:20:50.720and then they're then they're fight to the end for our rights french people and they're both the
00:20:55.600same person and i love them for it even though they're that's the that's the pro that's the
00:21:00.980professionalism of it it's like they're so good like they riot they know how to pace themselves
00:21:04.700they know when they need to eat take a break work-life balance yeah you know go in have a
00:21:09.160baguette go back and i love my absolute favorite thing though is like there's like eating outside
00:21:15.540cafe style and like in the cafe everybody's just quietly talking and then like just over the line
00:21:22.260of garbage it's just people screaming at each other and and and lighting things aflame and it's
00:21:27.880like yes exactly like don't give up don't give up your rights to anybody like i don't know why we0.98
00:21:34.700don't do that more except you know puritans and and germans just like even the germans are better
00:21:40.660rioters than we are and we're i mean in some ways it's remarkable that america had a revolution to0.88
00:21:46.820begin with what our ancestors like skipped the labor revolution and and so like we didn't we
00:21:54.160didn't really bring that down with us and that's sad like we had a labor revolution don't get me
00:22:00.840wrong and we did have riots and we did have but but it was much quieter and and it was so spread
00:22:09.480out that we don't have the same culture of riot and and strike throughout it's it's centralized0.52
00:22:17.740in certain areas and the French have a flair to it that I appreciate they do although I will say
00:22:23.800um like starting with our beloved Catherine of or Carolina Brunswick like the way that her funeral
00:22:30.320turned into a riot like london has some good riot dna as well so shout out to the rioters of london
00:22:36.380when they do it they do it right they do when they do it they do it there's like a you know0.99
00:22:40.100football match victory you know people in england scotland like they can they can fuck shit up oh0.99
00:22:46.500oh if you're talking football american can do that like american riot properly oh that's right0.99
00:22:51.280that's right but it's american football philadelphia how they grease the poles but
00:22:54.900then people still climb the poles okay so but there's there's a cultural tradition for that
00:23:01.880like pole greasing uh pole grease climbing is like is i think one of their italian neighborhoods
00:23:08.060has traditional pole greased pole climbing matches so greasing the poles just makes it more fun
00:23:13.900in philadelphia they're like i don't know why they do that they're just making it a better time yeah
00:23:20.340they need like elizabethan collars like listeners here's what we're saying i'm pro riot
00:23:25.960so one day if the tits out brigade you know what i love a flying squadron i love
00:23:32.300i love a riot i love having a baguette in a cafe then going back to the riot like i love chaos so
00:23:40.680um at this point there were riots in the streets of paris but i feel like that's every day in the
00:23:46.940last 30 years of paris history in this story we've so again today the riots on the streets of paris
00:23:51.940like in this story 1589 um was because uh everybody had turned much like today they've turned against
00:23:58.760macron everybody had turned against king henry because he was a shitty king and they all noticed
00:24:04.740finally and he had run into hiding but he's like oh no it's my mom he literally goes oh no no no
00:24:10.240it wasn't me it was my mom yeah well and to be fair it was but it also was him like if he'd done
00:24:15.820anything at all, maybe there'd be a chance, but he can't blame anything on his mother when he
00:24:20.700literally just gave it all to her. Oh, I want to mention something that it's not in my notes,
00:24:24.780but I was reading it in this book yesterday. I don't want to mention. So throughout this time
00:24:29.160period we've been talking about, like Catherine's sons being teenagers and then adults, she kept
00:24:33.420flinging them at Elizabeth the first and being like, do you want to marry this one? Do you want
00:24:37.420to marry Charles? Like, I know he's nine and you're 35. Do you want to marry him? And Elizabeth
00:24:42.060is like, no, but there's like so many letters back and forth. This is the dual biography of
00:24:46.060Catherine and Elizabeth. And I see why she did it because they had a lot of letters back and forth
00:24:49.940and then Charles died. And Catherine's like, do you want to marry Henry? He's even better. He's
00:24:53.420even more handsome. He's 19. You're 45. Like, do you want to do this? And Elizabeth's like, no,
00:24:59.140he's already married, but we can take care of that. The closest that Catherine got to marrying0.52
00:25:02.680Elizabeth to one of her sons was other Francis who Elizabeth called the frog. Like he went over,
00:25:08.500they actually got along really well i think he was kind of like he was a good time other francis
00:25:13.120even though he's like five years old and she's 80 yeah well and it's like what is the point of
00:25:19.460marrying them at this point when no one's gonna have any children but maybe the point was that
00:25:23.080he would then alliances exactly so if catherine could get sort of like a french english thing
00:25:28.280going on because she was against spain she was like elizabeth you're against spain also let's
00:25:32.560just like team up well she elizabeth's a protestant and so that kind of like that might
00:25:37.940neutralize some of the huguenot thing if they're married to into a protestant family as well like0.80
00:25:42.580there's there everything's political with katherine she can always find an angle but she tried for i0.98
00:25:48.360think 30 years to get elizabeth to marry one of her sons and it was increasingly unhinged the
00:25:55.640things that you like but elizabeth did get along with other francis um she called him the frog
00:26:00.820They were pals in the movie with Cate Blanchett.
00:26:04.260He's played by Vincent Cassell and they combine his character with Henry because they show
00:34:04.280I was reminded this week that like Nostradamus had, there was a big moment in the 90s where like Nostradamus came back and like all of his predictions because there was like a presumption of a prediction about the millennium.
00:34:18.920and the y2k bug and all that stuff so like it was i just remember nostradamus had a really big
00:34:24.840moment in the 90s where everybody was trying to attribute things to nostradamus i do remember
00:34:31.000that where they're just they're just being like he was worried about everything like in these vague
00:34:34.680statements about various stuff and then y2k happened and everybody stopped talking about
00:34:40.220it was similar to the same thing what was it the mayan calendar allegedly said like the world's
00:34:45.720going to end in 2012 or something yeah and that's just because europeans can't do math
00:34:50.040yeah exactly but yeah i do remember that nostradamus trend um catherine was also interested
00:34:55.640in astronomy which was one of her great interests and she was also very well educated as like growing0.97
00:35:00.620up as a person so she was and that's maybe where part of her cleverness her like brilliance like
00:35:07.520she would have read about other leaders and what to do and like she pivoted and like in a series of
00:35:13.580like really strokes of bad luck and she kept surviving so you know she was resilient certainly
00:35:22.140and that's that's Catherine de' Medici do you have any other like we're gonna get into this
00:35:27.360scoring but do you have any other like fun facts that you want to bring up uh the Tullier's palace
00:35:32.700I and I know I'm saying that wrong and I apologize Tullier there's no the S at the end obviously is
00:35:38.560silence. So Trulia, that palace in Paris right on the Seine, that's one of her building projects.
00:35:47.220It reminds me, the building of things to really consolidate your power. It reminds me of,
00:35:55.320she probably learned this from her family, but also it's like, the ancient Romans would do that
00:36:00.220to be like, okay, we're taking over the city. We're going to build all these beautiful things.
00:36:03.180And it just makes us look more powerful. There's such a long history of people making
00:36:08.080buildings that are nice buildings to just it's it's it's akin to coin minting to just be like
00:36:13.660look it's official i am in charge here look at the great things that i can do for you just let
00:36:18.040me stay in charge something i want to mention about her that i also read in the um estelle
00:36:22.700prank biography yesterday was after henry died the custom was that she would wear black for the0.98
00:36:27.820rest of her life and she did which is why in the movie queen margot creepy gremlin and queen margot
00:36:37.660she is played by verna lisi who is an italian actress and she her face color if you listen to
00:36:44.100the lady jane live stream her foundation color is like lana and myself as teenagers using literal
00:36:49.960clown makeup to as foundation which is a thing both lana and i did which is another reason we0.69
00:36:55.340were destined to be friends but in the movie queen margo verna lisi her she like she looks like um1.00
00:37:01.500nosferatu like she she's so pallid like they make her look like a skeleton face person she's wearing1.00
00:37:07.640these black huge colors she's just like lurking in balconies in the back shadowy corners of rooms0.96
00:37:13.180it's a fantastic performance but i just thought that's interesting that she wore black for the0.98
00:37:17.740rest of her life which is also a queen victoria vibe yeah but it's interesting too because of the
00:37:23.080huguenot thing you know they would wear plain black but i'm sure catherine de medici was wearing
00:37:26.940black with like black on black on black like lace gloves like embellishment like fancy black she's
00:37:33.260like i'm not like them i'm wearing black but fashion she embraced her french after a while
00:37:39.200she did she did and it's it's just interesting to me too that she i think at the time and also
00:37:44.920like right after and to today like she still thought of as like oh that italian woman you
00:37:49.520know even though she was like basically queen of france for a really long time but it's like
00:37:53.520but she's actually from italy half french lived in france from 15 to onward was the queen of france
00:38:03.100was the effective ruler of france for half of her life the italian woman none none of her relatives0.99
00:38:10.920cared about her like after she became queen of france she didn't have like mary had the0.88
00:38:16.720diguises there like knocking on her door nobody like the medicis had their own problems now the
00:38:24.800irony is henry henry of navarre married in medici oh that's right didn't he marie right
00:38:32.020a cousin and he did he not when he became king of france henry of navarre he switched to catholic
00:38:39.060right because like the bourbon kings like they were all catholic yeah he went which i'm sure was
00:38:43.420quite shocking to a lot of people and probably caused some riots i presume that's right yeah
00:38:49.300and honestly until you brought up the the medicis again i was like that's right because she was from
00:38:53.800this really powerful family like they arranged like uncle pope her other uncle pope like they0.92
00:38:58.320arranged her marriage to prince henry and then they just kind of like fucked off just like okay0.99
00:39:03.720she's there now and we're busy doing pope shit she's not our kid so why why don't we wash our0.99
00:39:12.780hands of her she's fine but yeah it's the like the way that she's still talked about is like0.98
00:39:17.220that italian woman like it's um the way that like race was not a construct in the same way then as
00:39:24.380it is now. So it was very much a national thing. It's like, where are you from? Not what color is1.00
00:39:32.220your skin? And she was from Florence. And well, I guess French people are still, I mean, all love
00:39:39.820to people in French, especially the rioters, people in France, but they're kind of known for
00:39:45.160being xenophobic still, I think, right? French people are very much like, we are French, you're
00:39:49.400not that's kind of one of the stereotypes about them well and it's really really telling that
00:39:54.420they call her the italian woman when italy wasn't really a thing until the late 1800s yeah like
00:40:02.980tuscany was still owned by the habsburgs during the cc era so like we're talking like basically
00:40:08.5001900s where there's such a thing as as a nation of italy so they're lumping together a whole bunch
00:40:14.980of very disparate not connected places into one pile and calling her that is that's the xenophobia
00:40:23.300that's like the the other ring of her because they're not giving her the she's she's from
00:40:29.880florence she's the the florentine woman she's the italian woman and so they're like even in
00:40:36.740alexander dumas time there italy isn't a thing like it is today and so it's it's very very
00:40:43.500interesting that they that that's the phrase that gets picked for her but also i think it's like if
00:40:48.360she hadn't been from there they would have been like she's the whatever woman you know it's like
00:40:52.100elizabeth the first it's like you look at a powerful woman in history and it's like well
00:40:56.360what what can we call her out for it's like elizabeth the first it's like well she's actually
00:41:00.440illegitimate you know it's like you just find it's like or and if she wasn't then to be like
00:41:05.500yeah but she's got red hair like you would just find something where you're just like0.56
00:41:09.960yeah but she's short like there's there's always something to have that like ad hominem attack yeah1.00
00:41:15.860there's always something to be able to dismiss them she oh she's big nose like there's and with
00:41:21.980Catherine it was just easy because she was from another country technically so we talked to the0.57
00:41:28.720people listening two episodes ago probably about I don't have a math brain and that's what I say
00:41:34.400like when I am putting entering the scores for people I don't know how they add up until they
00:41:42.720add up at the end so I'm not giving people scores planning or hoping for any specific
00:41:48.160thing at the end um Lana I think your brain might work differently
00:41:53.680so we're just gonna score her and see where she lands so it's the actually first I think I know
00:42:01.480the answer, but I'll ask you. Was there anyone in the story who was a supportive and good friend
00:42:05.720to her who would get the Lady Jane Seamer Memorial Award for Outstanding Supporting
00:42:10.300Performance? Was there anyone? Anyone? There was not. She has no, even her daughters hated her.
00:42:21.560Yeah. The Flying Squadron weren't friends. They were just her like
00:42:25.340employees. And I think they were quite disposable to her. Maybe Nostradamus,
00:42:29.040but we didn't get into that but nostradamus was an employee like he he was not a buddy there was
00:42:35.040no there's no friends in evil politics there's truly not um if i had a scale maybe i'll start
00:42:44.520one day of like most villainous villains like i think the diggies is on mass it could go on that
00:42:51.000list like worst nemesis of a person worst nemesis i i don't like i don't know that they were like
00:42:58.640they were they were way eager to be massacring i don't know if they were like full-on villains
00:43:05.020they were just not good people and they had a very severe agenda antagonist it's more like um
00:43:12.180antagonist they were definitely like if we're looking at her as a protagonist they were
00:43:16.260every step of the way just messing up her plans whether it's like what they were doing when mary
00:43:21.960queen of scots was the queen of france or every time they started doing a religious massacre it's
00:43:26.180just like she's trying to do stuff and you keep massacring huguenots but calling her a protagonist
00:43:32.800is also generous because she was not like in favor of the people of france she was in favor
00:43:38.600of ways to keep power yeah and for herself and for yeah like she was not a good person when i0.99
00:43:45.760here we're not being like yeah catherine nomenici girl boss hero and i mean she was a girl boss but
00:43:52.320she was like girl boss in the way girl boss girl was girl no exactly she's like very much like
00:43:57.280gatekeep gaslight girl boss yes like there's things that i admire in her certainly but i'm
00:44:02.680not being like wow what a hero like and i hope no one no one thinks i've ever said that about anyone
00:44:07.800on this podcast because that's not what i'm here for but what an interesting story what a weird
00:44:13.540person what an impressive series of things she did so on a scale of zero to ten lana
00:44:21.120so the first category is scandalousness which is not just how scandalous do we think she was but
00:44:29.240like at the time how scandalous did people like in the context of who she was around how scandalous
00:44:37.800was what she did do you think i mean i there's so many factors in this because it was like
00:44:43.780she did things that full-on got people to think she was a witch and she just kept doing them like
00:44:49.580her entire life too she could have stopped doing that but she didn't she just stopped playing with0.98
00:44:54.980poison she could have stopped hanging out with nostradamus she could have stopped stopped talking
00:44:58.700to a cultist and she's like no this is this is a thing and this is what i'm doing and you're just
00:45:03.080going to accept it because i'm me and you're you yeah and she had the um the flying squadron like
00:45:07.980she had a league of sexy lady spies and and she never stopped vying for control from gaslighting0.63
00:45:15.880her own children through starting a freaking war with other parts of france yeah and then also just
00:45:23.220the way that she um when when frances died and she was just like here's what is happening i am now the
00:45:31.220government of friends i mean she's not like a lot of times when you think of scandalous you think
00:45:38.980sexy scandalous she was not sexy scandalous she was every other kind like every other like the tv
00:45:45.840show scandal scandal yes yes yes she was tv she was like what do you mean i've been committing0.51
00:45:53.080war crimes and you figured it out finally yeah like i wouldn't put it past her to have poisoned
00:45:58.640at least a few of those people. I just think that if she was a full on poisoner, that was her go-to0.84
00:46:04.020that the Degeese's would have been hit first. Yeah. There were some people who like, exactly,
00:46:10.180exactly. Like it was her son who was just like, you know, I'm off the leash. I'm just going to
00:46:14.600do my own thing. And his first order of business was to kill a Degeese. Yeah. She's like, she may1.00
00:46:20.820have been holding them back for all we know. It's like, no, we can't just kill people because we
00:46:26.100don't agree with them it's it just makes things more complicated well and then in terms of like
00:46:30.740how people saw her at the time and that's what we've been trying to parse out is you know how
00:46:35.380much was like i don't i'm not going to give her any points for being from florence even though
00:46:40.420people found that scandalous you know or in retrospect you know when the bourbons were0.96
00:46:44.400putting the propaganda they were being like oh she was like a crazy witch it's like no but like
00:46:48.380her herself in her era like was i think i don't know i don't know i'm gonna honestly i'm gonna
00:46:55.260what do you think what do you think for her scandalousness i like i i want to give it a1.00
00:46:59.740high number just because like gaining power from powerful men who had legitimate claims
00:47:06.240in the regency and then maintaining that through the adulthood of her children and then i'm and
00:47:14.280the scandalousness is like that some of that can be scheminess points as well for scandalous it's0.99
00:47:18.560like and how did people feel about that and i think people are just like what the fuck is0.93
00:47:23.020happening i believe the massacres speak for themselves yeah how did the people feel with0.92
00:47:28.120that well let's ask the riding masses of murdered huguenots i do think it's a high score how high
00:47:35.700i'm not sure it's like the layers the layers of people like at the noble level she was terrible0.92
00:47:41.820she was horribly scandalous well and i think they found her scandalous because she was like
00:47:45.540from florence the fact that she i don't know well and then i'm thinking about the fact that like we
00:47:49.660know like it was so interesting to people that she like got the mistress to help her get pregnant
00:47:55.120like so it's a bit of sort of a sex scandal that that is sex scandal there is like you're supposed
00:48:01.380to be mad at the mistress and no you're you're helping like you're working together so i like
00:48:06.360i'm gonna go i i'm gonna say i'm gonna say like an eight and you can pull me up or down i'm gonna
00:48:12.460say 7.5 good let's do it and i'm only taking off the 0.5 because of she for sure was scandalous
00:48:24.560but so much of it is colored by people who hated her making her out to be even more scandalous so0.99
00:48:31.900i'm just taking off the 0.5 because she wasn't if she did everything people said that it would
00:48:36.120be a higher number but are arguably the fact that they're saying so much that that's what
00:48:42.000leans into the scandalous more than the sneakiness. I'm cool with whatever you want to do, but I just
00:48:47.480want to point out that even to this very day, people are making shit up about her because she0.98
00:48:52.980was so much. It's true. It's true. Which implies a level of scandalousness that deserves not to0.99
00:49:03.020be low. No, it's true. It's true. You know what? I'm going to go with an eight. I think you're
00:49:07.160right i'm gonna go three i was for a minute i was like 7.75 but no you're right because1.00
00:49:12.300scandalous this is how did people think about her at the time and people she was doing shit0.99
00:49:16.220that was scandalous and people thought that it was so that's what scandalousness is scheminess0.84
00:49:22.680i mean i think a 10 that's i mean have you been like if you're still here with us whatever three
00:49:30.840hours in she ruined the whole world with her scheminess i've told you i've explained this to0.95
00:49:38.060you you have to listen to me yeah no it's the scheminess but also sort of a scheminess but1.00
00:49:43.280part of it's in a petty way because she's just like fuck you degeezus like i don't care if this1.00
00:49:49.880marriage would make my son for her there would be no napoleon there'd be no fbi but the fact that1.00
00:49:53.980she was like you know she wanted power for herself so much that she just like fucked things up for1.00
00:49:59.620Mary Queen of Scots but also the fact that she wanted power for herself so much that she just
00:50:03.560like raised these children to be her like little pawns and I mean every everything she did like
00:50:09.200the way that she took power when her husband died she kicked a dn when her son died she like became0.67
00:50:14.040the government like when her adult son became king she was like I'm still in charge though like
00:50:17.880she had everything lined up for any contingency she gives me very extreme like Logan Roy and
00:50:24.180Catherine de' Medici are are I don't see any differences in this picture in succession Logan
00:50:30.240Royce from succession he's the father that they're trying to succeed and he's literally never going
00:50:35.240to give up an ounce of power and he's going to use all of their scheming against them like that is
00:50:40.360that is the same energy this is there are no differences in this picture no it's like this
00:50:45.260no everything like if you want to know why we just gave her a 10 for scheminess it's like
00:50:50.420re-listened to this entire series of episodes i believe i have made my points okay this is a
00:50:57.800challenging one so significance because we talked about without her actions all of world history
00:51:03.860would be different i think she well i mean again carolina brunswick is one of my favorites
00:51:14.540and cc is one of my favorites but their significance is very low like i can make
00:51:19.180arguments for different points of things that they did but there this is like I can't even
00:51:26.560begin to explain how important she was in the course of history even without my sliding glass
00:51:32.700doors conspiracy theories moment like the Huguenot the war with the Huguenots the end of the
00:51:39.820Valois line the like the Huguenots a large number of the Huguenots came to America around this period
00:51:46.100and started settling in, in this, in, in America. And that, that contributed to some of the aesthetic
00:51:53.120of the South. If you think about the artistic stuff too, it's like she brought ballet to France,
00:51:58.580like that alone is pretty significant. Like the number of buildings she built,
00:52:02.740the architecture. I mean, it's not just like we know her name now, but, but her, her legacy,
00:52:09.760like she did wildly significant stuff she introduced the concept of patronage into france
00:52:17.000and imagine like even even how much the bourbons hated her the salon culture of france the art of
00:52:24.700versailles and and built wanting to build palaces that are bigger and more impressive and more huge0.89
00:52:30.400like that is the culture she brought into france with her italian with her not her italianess but
00:52:35.580her medicinous and her like her her cousin also had an influence on that but not nearly to the
00:52:41.920same degree so i want to go like i'm not going lower like i would not go lower than a nine
00:52:47.700but i will i will take what you like you can convince me otherwise i mean just everything
00:52:53.780you're saying and just thinking it through in my head like this category like i cannot think
00:52:59.840of a way that a person could have been more significant i just can't like we've we've talked
00:53:09.440on the show before about people where it's like oh well because of her like her son did this so
00:53:13.960like we'll give her points or it's like she you know if it was somebody and if all she did was
00:53:19.360bring ballet to france i'd be like oh that's a five you know like she was so consequential
00:53:25.940like she she she level of of significance like at very least yeah that's true lana but i don't
00:53:32.000know what i gave her because as you know i don't track these things of course you don't um
00:53:35.280that would be too easy for me but that's but like that's who we're on par with like these are people
00:53:42.840that like change the course of their society yeah like how high would you go i mean i i i would say
00:53:50.060i'm i'm seeing at least a nine i think but if you want to go different you tell me the only way
00:53:56.700i could see her i don't know i'm like like if she had personally invaded portugal or something
00:54:07.540it's like if she was like but she personally but that wasn't her vibe that wasn't what she
00:54:13.960was able to do she just like from behind the scenes manipulated and got people to do things
00:54:18.520set i think i'll i'll agree with you on a nine because a lot of things she did were significant
00:54:25.160in retrospect at the time she couldn't have known the long-term effects of what she's doing she's
00:54:32.080just trying to keep herself in power it's just those things happened to then she was not aiming
00:54:36.680for significance no she's not napoleon you know she's not being like people will remember my name
00:54:41.680she's like no like i am gonna have power no matter and it just happened to the things that0.97
00:55:15.800So how much more power could she have had, had there not been the patriarchy?1.00
00:55:21.320If she'd been king and she hadn't had to deal with any of this and her kids could just, you know, go around having more kids all the time.0.89
00:55:29.420Like if if if it was her instead of Henry, if if her then she could have had another wife, she could have had more kids.