Vulgar History - International, part 18： Hortense Mancini, Child Bride (pt 1⧸6)

00:00:00.000 Howdy, I'm Brittany Ross, and I play the fiddle.

00:00:01.980 And I'm Katherine Flincham, and I play the pipe.

00:00:03.780 And together we're fiddle and pipe.

00:00:05.040 Two classical musicians reading beyond the staff.

00:00:07.420 And beyond genres, from fiction and fantasy to memoirs and self-help.

00:00:11.360 Books that we've read so far have been Twilight, The Hobbit, Atomic Habits, 0.75

00:00:15.980 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Do Nothing,

00:00:18.540 and we're currently reading the opposite of Butterfly Hunting. 0.98

00:00:21.020 Maybe we've added a little Fifty Shades of Grey, too, just for your pleasure.

00:00:24.780 Oh, that's spicy.

00:00:25.920 So grab a book, take a seat, find us on your favorite streaming app,

00:00:29.140 in tune in okay thanks bye 0.99

00:00:30.900 hello bonjour and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast

00:00:50.540 my name is ann foster and this is our international season this is i think we're into something like

00:00:57.560 the fifth month of the international season which is for sure the longest season that I've done but

00:01:04.580 the stories are all so good I can't stop and also I've started doing these multi-part episodes like

00:01:11.180 we just finished there's Catalina de Arauso three parts Christine of Sweden four parts and this one

00:01:17.440 is this is part one of X I'm not sure how many we're gonna get into because this is a story that

00:01:23.140 just came up and grabbed me I had the whole season already planned out and then a couple weeks ago

00:01:27.540 I was, I follow a bunch of different Instagram accounts that do like pictures of women from

00:01:33.220 history. And this one just caught my eye. I saw a portrait of this woman. The portrait was

00:01:38.600 interesting because her hair, which was dark brown, regardless of that, looked a lot like

00:01:45.320 Sailor Moon. She kind of had big, like, what are they called? Like cosmic buns, like buns on top 0.63

00:01:50.740 of her head, and then pigtails coming out of the buns. And I was like, well, who is this

00:01:54.700 Renaissance era Sailor Moon type person. And I just kind of went to the Wikipedia because,

00:02:00.960 you know, the little thing underneath it said like, this is Hortense Mancini. And she was a

00:02:05.780 whatever. And I'm like, okay, but what's her deal? Her Wikipedia was amazing. And I was like,

00:02:09.520 there's a story here. And what a story it is. This is part one. And also, I pronounced her

00:02:17.300 name intentionally incorrectly just now. When you see it written out, it looks like Hortense

00:02:22.740 Mancini. But in fact, it is pronounced Hortense because that is a French name. And because she's

00:02:29.260 an Italian person, her last name is Mancini, not Mancini. And if you're like, well, why did she

00:02:34.020 have a French first name and an Italian second name? And the answer is international reasons.

00:02:39.960 So we're going to get into this episode. Hortense Mancini, part one, my sources. The main source

00:02:47.360 is a book that just came out in 2020. I think only in the UK. I had to order it online.

00:02:52.180 She's mentioned in a number of other books that I've also looked at, but this button

00:02:56.840 from 2020, I found the most kind of even keeled and the least judgmental about her.

00:03:03.960 So it's a book called Mistresses, Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II by Linda

00:03:08.640 Porter.

00:03:09.440 And I super recommend it.

00:03:10.840 I'll put the link in the show notes underneath.

00:03:12.940 So yes, we are going to be getting to the court of Charles II in England.

00:03:18.320 Not in this part, probably not in part two.

00:03:20.960 she lived an international life and that's where i think this fits in with our our theme this season

00:03:26.480 but also i was just like i have to tell you the story the tits out brigade needs to know about

00:03:30.800 this literal tits out woman who has numerous tits out type portraits so that book is my main

00:03:36.980 book related reference for this episode for future episodes i'll be looking at other things too 0.92

00:03:43.140 but this is this is beginnings this is hortense mancini the beginnings origin story i also got

00:03:50.240 some facts from Britannica.com and from Wikipedia.com. And I also really want to mention,

00:03:56.720 I don't always do content warnings for this podcast. I talked about this a bit in one of

00:04:02.540 the NJINGA episodes too, just because there's a certain amount of stuff that just is in every

00:04:08.280 episode. And eventually it's like, why? It's just content warning to listen to this podcast ever.

00:04:13.360 Like there's going to be, you know, non-consensual genitalia examinations. There's going to be

00:04:18.140 poisoning. There's going to be murder. There's going to be pandemics. There's going to be

00:04:21.680 plagues. There's going to be men who are terrible. There's going to be women who are terrible.

00:04:27.040 Those things just kind of happen all the time. But this episode, similar to the Countess of

00:04:32.120 Castlehaven one from the Lady Jane Grey season, we're going to be talking about an abusive

00:04:36.620 marriage with a really controlling man. So if you're not in the headspace to listen to that,

00:04:42.700 please know. I'm going to give you a heads up when we get into that part of the story.

00:04:46.520 the whole first part of this, not that like the whole first part of this episode, not that. But

00:04:51.520 once this guy comes on the scene, I will let you know. And like, you know, you can switch out of

00:04:56.520 this podcast at that point, you know, listen to, I don't know, some smooth jazz or whatever you like

00:05:02.600 to listen to. But no, even if you choose not to listen to the abusive marriage stuff, the next

00:05:07.940 part, part two is gonna, I mean, whatever, spoiler warning, like this episode ends with her leaving

00:05:13.900 the abusive man. So we're going to talk about this terrible marriage towards the end of the

00:05:18.420 episode. In part two, she will have already have left him. So I think you can jump back in at that

00:05:24.240 point. You don't just get part two necessarily, or whatever you want to do. You know, I don't

00:05:27.860 tell you what to do. So, Ortens, our heroine. So she was born with an Italian name, which was

00:05:35.900 Hortentia Mancini. She was born in Rome, June 6th, 1646. So where this places her on her

00:05:43.200 vulgar history timeline, an increasingly long spreadsheet that I have sorted by birth date.

00:05:49.060 So she was born 1646. So people who were alive at that time. La voisin was alive in France at

00:05:57.760 that same time. Guess who's going to have a guest appearance in a later Hortense episode? Not this

00:06:02.180 one, but later on, is La Voise. So there's going to be a crossover moment there as well. Hortense

00:06:07.760 was born in 1646. That's 20 years after Christina of Sweden. So around the same time Christina

00:06:14.340 of Sweden was abdicating is when Hortense was born. And guess what? They're also going to have

00:06:18.780 a crossover moment. Christina of Sweden is going to have a guest appearance again in a later part

00:06:23.400 of this as well. Anne I of England, or Britain, I guess, who did the episode about ages ago.

00:06:31.940 She's the one from the movie The Favorite.

00:06:33.500 She was born in 1665, so that's, like, 20 years later.

00:06:36.860 Guess what?

00:06:37.420 She's also going to have a guest appearance. 0.97

00:06:39.100 This is where I'm just, like, Hortense is, like, if you make a spider web of people who

00:06:44.960 have talked about this podcast, like, Hortense kind of connects everybody to everybody.

00:06:49.160 SD, she was born 20 years later as well. 1.00

00:06:52.880 So just so many vulgar history people were around existing.

00:06:57.020 Like, I'm just looking now at, like, the death dates of people. 1.00

00:06:59.580 So N'Ginka is still alive at this point. 1.00

00:07:02.500 Catalina de Arauzo, still alive in Rome. 0.97

00:07:05.220 Maybe she saw a little baby Hortense.

00:07:06.920 I don't know.

00:07:07.800 Lucy Hay, still alive. 1.00

00:07:10.980 Yeah, it's quite an era of just all these vulgaristic people coexisting,

00:07:17.040 many of them wearing pants in disguise across Europe.

00:07:20.620 So that's where we are.

00:07:21.980 She was born in Rome. 0.90

00:07:23.140 Her parents were Lorenzo Mangini and Ironema Mazzarini.

00:07:28.540 So her parents came from the lower ranks of Roman nobility, but were only distantly connected to the leading Italian aristocratic families.

00:07:35.160 So they're like not the most rich wealthy.

00:07:38.080 I think they were kind of like not especially rich or wealthy, but they had it's that thing where it kind of like you have kind of the power and the influence, but not the money where it's like you kind of rather have the money.

00:07:49.320 So her father, Lorenzo, what I wrote down here is he was a necromancer and astrologer.

00:07:54.540 And we've had some other, especially in Lavoisin, we talked about necromancy and astrology and stuff.

00:08:00.900 So I'm going to guess he was just that same sort of, you know, doing stuff with herbs and like, you know, telescopes.

00:08:06.760 I don't know, like looking at like body parts and trying to do magic with them or whatever.

00:08:11.480 So that's what he was up to.

00:08:13.620 Her mother, Ironima, this is the connection to someone else who you already know about from the Christina episode, which is Cardinal Mazarin over in France.

00:08:22.440 So Cardinal Mazarin is the one who was kind of working with Christina for a minute when

00:08:26.820 they were going to take over Naples together, but then Christina kind of burned that bridge

00:08:30.900 and he ghosted her by claiming he had gout.

00:08:34.300 And then once she left France, he's like, guess what?

00:08:36.320 I don't have gout anymore.

00:08:37.660 So Cardinal Mazarin was, we're going to talk about him in this episode.

00:08:41.800 Like I'll explain his backstory a bit better, but this is the main power connection of the

00:08:47.620 Mancini family to any power really.

00:08:49.760 So her mother was the younger sister of Cardinal Mazarin.

00:08:53.520 So if that connection did not exist, if Mazarin was not as powerful as he was in France, then

00:08:57.700 Hortense and her siblings would probably have just like grown up in Rome, getting a convent

00:09:02.840 education and then going on to get some sort of like, okay, marriage and leading quiet 0.78

00:09:07.000 lives of respectability.

00:09:08.420 That is not what happened.

00:09:11.620 So we'll get to her uncle in a sec, but I need to talk about her sibling group.

00:09:17.160 And I've been trying to think of a comparison that's not the Kardashians, but the only other comparisons I can think of are, I don't know, like, you tell me, you tell me, what are some groups of famous sisters from history or from literature?

00:09:30.900 Like when I think of a group of famous sisters, like groups of sisters, like the Kardashians

00:09:36.640 are kind of it.

00:09:37.540 But in history, in English history, I guess there's like the Bronte sisters or in literature,

00:09:45.200 there's like the sisters in Little Women or you've got the like Pride and Prejudice sisters.

00:09:49.540 It's like Hortense was a member of a similar group of just like cool sisters.

00:09:55.040 So she was the second youngest of six siblings to survive childhood.

00:09:59.140 there were two others who passed away as children and they all had Italian names but then they went

00:10:04.780 to France and their names became French names so I'm gonna like I don't know I'm gonna go back and

00:10:11.480 forth with what they're called so the oldest sister was Laura who when she went to France

00:10:17.200 became Laure Victoire and then there's Olympia who when she went to France became Olymp there's Marie

00:10:24.240 who like that's a french name like why that was her name i don't know uh philippe or i guess

00:10:32.980 philippe who is the only boy he's the bramwell bronte slash rob kardashian in the situation

00:10:39.980 and not just because he's the only boy but also personality wise so hortense is the second

00:10:46.500 youngest and then the youngest is marianne so there's there's marie and there's also marianne

00:10:55.240 and then they were also close in age to two cousins who were called anne marie and laura also

00:11:01.880 other laura so a lot of name repeating thank god our main girl is called hortense no one else has

00:11:08.480 that name so all together the girls like the four sisters and their two cousins you know the five

00:11:15.260 girls and their two cousins became, once they hit France, they became known as the Mazarinettes

00:11:19.900 after their uncle Cardinal Mazarin. So they were a powerful and glamorous group of socialites on

00:11:25.680 the French social scene, the Mazarinettes. So why did they move from Rome to France?

00:11:33.360 Kind of all at once. It was because their uncle Cardinal Mazarin had summoned them all to Paris

00:11:38.040 in order to use his influence to gain them advantageous marriages, which is that happened.

00:11:43.760 they all, one after another, all were married to people that he chose. Which is not to say that

00:11:48.500 any of those marriages worked out especially well. I guess some of them did. Notably, two of them

00:11:55.100 didn't. And one of those is the marriage of Hortense. But again, I'll let you know when we

00:11:59.560 get to that point, because right now she's just a little kid. So we need to dig into the Cardinal

00:12:03.140 Mazarin of it all to really appreciate Hortense's story and how this, how it'll happen. So as you

00:12:11.480 may recall from his appearances in the Christina of Sweden episodes, Colonel Mazarin was an extremely

00:12:16.760 important and powerful person in France in this era. So at the time that the Mancinis left Rome 0.96

00:12:22.680 to live in France, their uncle was chief minister to the French king. And the French king at this 0.97

00:12:28.000 time was Louis XIV, who was at this point a little boy. So as we've seen so many times in so many

00:12:33.580 episodes, when the king is a little kid, the real power rests with whoever the regents are. And in

00:12:40.780 this situation, that was Colonel Maserat, along with Louis' mother, Anne of Austria.

00:12:46.460 So, Colonel Maserat was not just the leading politician in France, but one of the foremost

00:12:50.740 statesmen in Europe. Having no children of his own, he was determined that his legacy would live

00:12:55.640 on through the marriages of his nieces. Again, he kind of gave up on Philippe, who was...

00:13:01.680 I have sympathy for Philippe, but Maserat was not a fan of his one-nephew.

00:13:05.920 So he had been born, he was Italian, and he had been born Giulio Mazzarini. And he worked his way

00:13:12.880 up through jobs at the Vatican until he became a cardinal. He was handsome, witty, and prided

00:13:17.620 himself on having risen up through his own resources. He was a big, you know, like bootstraps

00:13:22.200 kind of person rather than through family connections. But it was true. His family did 1.00

00:13:26.220 not have those connections. He is the one who made those connections for his younger family members.

00:13:31.240 His mentor had been Cardinal Richelieu, who you may know as the villain from The Three Musketeers.

00:13:38.120 And it was under his influence that Giulio Mazzarini changed his name to Jules Mazarin,

00:13:44.360 and he took French citizenship. So Richelieu died at around the same time as Louis XIII.

00:13:50.940 So that's the dad of the boy king. And at that point, Mazarin stepped up to serve alongside

00:13:55.860 like the boy's mother as the basically the regent to the new boy king. So Louis XIV's mother is Anne

00:14:03.920 of Austria, who is actually Spanish. Don't worry about it. She's a Habsburg. So there were rumors 0.73

00:14:11.840 that these two were lovers, Mazarin and Anne of Austria. Maybe they were. I doubt it because she

00:14:17.840 was the queen and she wasn't going to like fuck up her bag, but also because the biggest love of 0.99

00:14:22.780 Mazarin's life was his art collection and power. They didn't get along with each other at first, 0.95

00:14:28.740 but then they got together through this thing called the Fronde, which was kind of like the

00:14:34.320 English Civil War where people kind of turned against the royal family and Mazarin, except the

00:14:39.320 monarchy won. And just going through that together, trauma bonded these two. So they became very close,

00:14:44.540 they supported each other, and she was supportive of him bringing all of his Italian nieces to royal

00:14:49.480 court and elevating them through marriages. And so Hortense arrived, aged six, to France. She

00:14:56.840 arrived with a big group of mazarinets. So she came along with her sister Marie, who is, I think,

00:15:02.560 like 14-ish at the time. Their mother, Ironima, came along and also their cousins, Anne-Marie and

00:15:08.920 other Laura. The youngest sister, Marianne, was just four and stayed behind in Rome for now. So

00:15:15.200 upon landing, they went to stay in the south of France with Hortense's oldest sister,

00:15:20.900 formerly Laura, but now Laure Victoire, who was 17 and had been married to a much older French

00:15:27.720 man for a while. She'd been in France for four years already. And so she kind of coached the

00:15:33.620 whole family how to behave at French court, maybe help them improve their spoken French.

00:15:38.920 I'm sure there's lots of weird etiquette they needed to know. And that took eight months.

00:15:43.000 And once they had learned this etiquette and how to speak French, Hortense and family moved on to

00:15:47.920 Paris, where they stayed with their uncle at his house, the Palace Mazarin, which was literally a

00:15:54.960 palace. This was a magnificent palace built just for him. And it contained his pride and joy,

00:16:00.360 his art collection, which was the finest of anyone in Europe at that point. And I believe he had

00:16:06.520 purchased it, not like Christina of Sweden, who just looted things from various places. So it was 0.54

00:16:12.700 like an incredible it was like the louvre but his house like it had statues and paintings i don't

00:16:19.100 have a list in front of me but you know like all the italian masters and french they like

00:16:24.060 it was an incredible collection so in the christine of sweden story i don't think i said this

00:16:29.400 but when she first went to meet him he had said you can come but you can't bring anyone with you

00:16:34.980 and that wasn't just because he like wanted to keep the conversation private it was because

00:16:39.200 his art collection was so important to him he didn't want just like anyone to see it like you

00:16:44.160 had to be a king or queen to like even see the art that he owned so that's where they moved and

00:16:50.020 he just kept going with like marriage arranging of all the nieces so he arranged a marriage for

00:16:55.060 Anne-Marie who was Hortense's cousin she was 16 years old that marriage was she was married to

00:17:00.560 a prince but in the middle of this like it wasn't just like boom boom boom like assembly line

00:17:05.260 marriage creation, things were not, uh, there's some stress. There's some fractures going on in

00:17:10.920 Hortense's immediate family, namely that her mother was at war with her 15 year old sister,

00:17:17.140 Marie. Marie also great in a sort of like Fredegund Brunhilde moment. Like I came across

00:17:24.740 Hortense first, but Marie is just as interesting. Marie is just as tits out. One of the books that 1.00

00:17:32.220 I've been reading is a co-biography of Hortense and Marie. I stan Marie. She's great, but Hortense

00:17:38.900 was my way into this story. So like Marie's going to be here. Don't worry about it. But Hortense is

00:17:43.360 the main character. So at this point, Hortense is six, Marie is 15, and Marie is rebellious

00:17:48.620 and just fighting with her mom all the time. And I think part of what they were fighting about,

00:17:53.360 or maybe because they're fighting all the time, sounds like Marie was dealing with some disordered 1.00

00:17:57.700 eating issues. And so Mazarin was like, you're too skinny to find a good husband. And the mother 0.97

00:18:03.260 is like, why don't you eat more food? And it's like, that's not helping. So they were just

00:18:07.840 fighting all the time. And so they sent Marie off to live in a convent for a while to try and like 1.00

00:18:12.060 fatten her up, I guess, to try and get a better marriage for her and to try to make her be less 0.97

00:18:17.340 rebellious. Hortense went along with her as a companion. And actually, this is the first of 1.00

00:18:22.540 several cool experiences at convents in this story that Hortense is going to encounter.

00:18:29.660 So it's kind of like, I've got so many Easter eggs for you of just like past episodes of this

00:18:35.500 podcast, but I feel like so many of you have like binged the whole thing in a row. You'll know what

00:18:39.460 I'm talking about. Do you remember in the Fredigan story, there's a whole thing about Brunhilde.

00:18:45.500 I think it was Brunhilde was sent to live in this convent, but then all the other nuns there were

00:18:49.560 cool and then they like work together and anyway it's kind of that it's like a cool vibe convent

00:18:55.240 this situation is it's not like a how do you solve a problem like Maria sound of music type

00:19:00.380 thing like these this was an okay situation they weren't the nuns were much kinder to Marie than

00:19:05.720 the mom was being so there's this convent Hortense and Marie both wound up getting a much better

00:19:11.780 education than they'd had access to back in Rome because again kind of in that child star way like

00:19:16.760 they hadn't been given an excellent education because they're being brought up just to be

00:19:21.460 married off. Kind of like how child stars, they get like tutored on set. So maybe they don't quite

00:19:26.700 get as good an education as people who go to school school. But here, ironically, when they're

00:19:32.480 supposed to be punished, they actually wound up getting a better education. So they stayed there

00:19:37.300 for 18 months. And as being there together, these two, you know, they're a group of numerous sisters,

00:19:42.400 but these two cemented an extremely strong sisterly bond that will carry on through the

00:19:47.720 rest of their lives. Again, Marie is going to recur in this and later portions of the story as

00:19:53.360 well. So the mother was ill, but that didn't make her and Marie get along any better. And why would

00:20:00.820 it unless the mother like in her illness decided to start being nicer. And so the mother, like 0.96

00:20:07.220 she died without ever reconciling with Marie. But meanwhile, the other Masarinettes, 0.96

00:20:13.660 the Cardinal was arranging them all marriages. So the next oldest sister, Olympe, got married 0.99

00:20:18.600 to a prince as well. This left just three Masarinettes to pair up. So Marie, Hortense, 1.00

00:20:24.840 and Marianne, the youngest, who's now in France, as well. Hortense was her uncle's favorite,

00:20:30.840 which not necessarily a good thing to be the favorite of this kind of controlling, awful 0.98

00:20:36.020 person. But I wrote here, Orton was her uncle's favorite, which wasn't necessarily a good thing

00:20:41.660 because he was kind of evil. So she was at this point like nine years old and already was considered

00:20:47.280 the most beautiful of all the measurinets. So just, I don't know, like I saw the portrait of

00:20:52.340 her and I was like, oh, who's this? I wasn't like, oh, she's pretty. I was like, oh, Sailor Moon hair.

00:20:56.240 But there's something captivating about her. She has a lot of portraits painted of her,

00:21:00.240 like a lot of people. If you know the story of Evelyn Nesbitt, which I thought once about doing

00:21:05.400 of this podcast, but I'm not going to because it's really depressing. But she was just like a normal

00:21:11.340 non-rich American girl in like the late 1800s, early 1900s. But then just when photography was 0.97

00:21:17.860 being invented, a photographer saw, oh, she's really beautiful. And then just she came across

00:21:21.920 so well in photos. She became kind of the first supermodel. So Ortals is just, I think her beauty

00:21:27.720 was kind of like with Evelyn Nesbitt or like Marilyn Monroe. It's like a bit of a curse.

00:21:32.340 i think like it brings her so much attention a lot of it unwanted anyway so she's the most

00:21:37.860 beautiful they're all beautiful it's like we're the mazarinettes look out she's nine she's nine

00:21:43.860 years old and already the most beautiful anyway and why the uncle liked her so much was because

00:21:48.020 she wasn't like silly and romantic like marie was so kind of like in a narnia thing with like

00:21:55.260 susan versus lucy or tans was more of a lucy and marie was more of a susan because she just was

00:22:01.400 very prone to romantic ideas. And Mazarin was like, no time for that. I got to marry you all

00:22:08.680 off to people for like, legacy reasons. But also Hortense, like Marie, neither of them was very

00:22:16.120 well. I don't know, like, it's described sometimes in books, it's like, they're not well behaved,

00:22:20.960 but it's like, they were just doing their own thing. They were not behaving the way that the

00:22:25.380 people who monitored them, wanted them to be behaving. So Colonel Mezarin hired a governess

00:22:32.380 who was really a spy, who would report to him everything they did, and he was trying to keep

00:22:37.500 them in line. But even with this supervision, Marie still fell in love with King Louis XIV,

00:22:46.640 who is at this point also a teenager. So tangent. Marie was not, or she did not at this point,

00:22:52.060 become Louis' mistress, but rather they are one another's first loves. Mazarin didn't like this

00:22:58.320 because he hadn't made it happen. He wanted to choose their husbands. They couldn't just like

00:23:03.400 fall in love themselves. But also Louis' mother Anne of Austria didn't like this either because

00:23:08.640 both Mazarin and Anne of Austria were like, well, these two can never get married. So we need to

00:23:12.980 like stop this. And the reason they couldn't get married was because although Mazarin was powerful,

00:23:18.760 he was still unpopular like if it looked like he's trying to make his niece the new queen

00:23:24.640 that would be used it would look like he was reaching too hard and his enemies would turn

00:23:28.160 against him and if austria herself said to him i warn you that all of france would revolt against

00:23:33.840 you and against him her son the king and that i will put myself at the head of the rebels to

00:23:38.680 restrain my son so it's just like louis was gonna marry royalty not like mazarin's niece but marie

00:23:46.720 and louis were just like besotted with each other marie held out hope that they could be married

00:23:53.100 she confided in hortense because they were like sisters and best friends and hortense later she

00:23:58.160 wrote her memoirs marie did too but hortense wrote like she didn't really understand her

00:24:03.240 like what was going on because she hortense was just a more pragmatic person she was not

00:24:06.980 prone to these romantic ideals so it's very much like marie is like a catherine gray type

00:24:14.020 and Hortense is like a Jane Grey type. Marie wound up banished from court because it was 0.97

00:24:20.520 affecting the chances of Louis making it like marrying someone else if she was standing around

00:24:25.640 all the time like making heart eyes at him and he's making heart eyes at her. So Marianne was

00:24:30.880 in town as well as I said. So the three sisters hung out together not at court like I guess Marie

00:24:36.200 was banished and the other two got to go along with her so they were hanging out at this I don't

00:24:39.400 know, country house somewhere. Marie was sending super secret, sexy letters back and forth with

00:24:44.120 the king. Hortense knew about this. She knew it wasn't going to end very well because she was 0.79

00:24:49.320 astute. Yeah, she was whatever, you know, 10 years old, but perceptive. Eventually, Louis came to

00:24:56.300 visit Marie and they both agreed they had to end the relationship. It's very heartbreaking. Hortense

00:25:00.700 witnessed this happen. And I think, I don't know, I don't want to be like so facile to be like,

00:25:06.440 and that imprinted on her. And that's why she just like wasn't a romantic person. But I think

00:25:09.920 this just like, it like confirmed to her that she's like this life, the life of being like 0.56

00:25:14.540 a Masarinet is not about falling in love and falling in love will only kind of get in the way.

00:25:21.360 Marie was so heartbroken about having to break up with him, having to accept like she could never

00:25:25.520 marry her true love, Louis. So she went to Masarinet and was like, can you please just marry

00:25:30.160 me off quickly so I can like distract me or whatever and like help heal my broken heart.

00:25:34.320 and if Austria wanted Marie banished from the country so as not to tempt Louis anymore and so 0.97

00:25:40.300 Mazarin figured out a win-win situation in this situation I guess where Marie was married off to

00:25:47.120 an Italian prince and she moved to Rome or she was going to move to Rome she didn't want to leave her

00:25:52.660 sisters because she would miss Hortense so much so she delayed as long as she could but eventually

00:25:58.080 she left to go to Rome and we'll catch up with Marie in part two yeah so Hortense was seeing

00:26:05.400 all this happening and I feel like she was just she just got it more than her sisters did like

00:26:10.700 not just her being like oh I'll never fall in love like this isn't a story about like a person who's

00:26:14.500 like never wants to fall in love and then does against the will like that's not where this is

00:26:18.160 going this is like Hortense saw this happen and she was like okay like she understood how their

00:26:23.660 uncle was manipulating things she kind of figured out what this life was all about and she didn't

00:26:30.120 she just understood it better than the others did so yeah so she's like really smart and really

00:26:35.500 astute but she wasn't like a mary bennett type you know just being all like or like a jane gray

00:26:40.060 type just being all like book smart and sort of bristly she was also a girly girl she loved being

00:26:47.240 at royal court. She loved all the attention she received being a mazarinette. She was also cool 0.92

00:26:53.740 and charismatic and fun and beautiful person. So not just beautiful, you know, facially,

00:26:58.420 like she just had a real charisma where she became the star of court. Like everyone just

00:27:03.880 thought she was like the best of all of her sisters, the most interesting, the most fun.

00:27:08.140 Maybe that's why she was Mazarin's favorite because she was just the best one. And so he

00:27:13.080 really wanted to find her the best husband of all the husbands. So he was at this point slowly dying.

00:27:18.980 He had to figure out who his heir was going to be. So he didn't have any children of his own.

00:27:23.680 He had all these nieces, the Masarinettes, plus Philippe, but like he, Philippe doesn't count.

00:27:28.960 Philippe is just like, again, it's a real Bramwell Bronte type. So he wanted to find a husband for

00:27:35.260 Hortense who would then become his heir, like find a man who would change his last name to Masarin.

00:27:41.120 so there were lots of people who wanted to marry Hortense obviously because she was the coolest

00:27:45.960 person there even though she was like 14 and she's not just the coolest prettiest person there but 0.91

00:27:51.480 she also had like if she if whoever married her was going to become the heir of Mesaran they're

00:27:55.520 going to have the palace all the art like so much money so she was an heiress very appealing and in

00:28:01.940 fact one of her suitors was a certain Charles Stewart who is the man who is going to later

00:28:09.340 become England's King Charles II. But at this point, he was just a king on the run.

00:28:16.460 Side note on Charles Stewart. I mentioned him a bit in the Christina episode,

00:28:21.840 but he gets more important in the story. Like if you remember, one of my sources is a book about

00:28:27.640 the mistresses of Charles II. So Charles Stewart was the son of Charles I of England. He was the

00:28:35.240 grandson of James I and of Denmark's gay husband. So James I was the first Stuart King of England,

00:28:43.700 and then Charles I was the second Stuart King of England. Charles Stuart, so he would have been at

00:28:50.440 this point, at the point that he was pursuing a marriage to Hortense, he would have been the King

00:28:54.940 of England, but he was not because Oliver Cromwell had taken over England 10 years ago, and Charles

00:29:00.920 have been on the run ever since. And I find this such a fun story. And we're doing a multi-part

00:29:06.360 episode. So there's time. Here's some fun facts about Charles's time on the run. In 1646, when

00:29:12.640 his father was first captured by Oliver Cromwell, Charles went into exile to Sicily, then to France,

00:29:17.540 where his mother was already living under the protection of her cousin, Louis XIV, who was at

00:29:22.600 this point. This is like a flashback. He was eight years old at that point, you know, 10 years before

00:29:28.280 he fell in love with Marie Mancini. So the reason he's on the run is because Oliver Cromwell took

00:29:33.780 over England and Charles, Charles Stewart is like the heir to the throne. So as long as he's alive,

00:29:40.660 Oliver Cromwell can't fully rest comfortably because Charles could come back and make himself

00:29:46.160 be king at any point or try to. So Charles then went to the Hague. He's like 18 years old, by the

00:29:51.860 way, Charles, when he's doing all this stuff. So he went to the Hague where he worked on a diplomatic

00:29:55.140 solution to try and get his father freed, but this did not work. His father was executed and

00:30:00.480 Charles became the new king, like in name only, aged 18. He went to Scotland, where after some

00:30:08.820 back and forth, he was provided with a Scottish court and he was crowned king of Scotland.

00:30:13.660 Then there was a big battle he lost and he fled to Normandy and he had to go incognito,

00:30:18.120 which was very hard because, so you know what he looks like. He looks like,

00:30:23.160 he looks like Captain Hook is what he looks like. He has like long black hair. He's like really

00:30:29.280 tall. He's like six foot two or something in an era in which the average height of a man was

00:30:35.220 something like five foot five. He stood out in a crowd, Charles Stewart. He was very identifiable

00:30:41.580 looking. There's also at this point, a thousand pound reward for his head, like anyone who killed 0.94

00:30:48.180 him and anyone who helped him would be punished by death. So he's just this like big bird of a

00:30:54.340 person just like running around. And it's like, we need to disguise this person. Here's how he

00:30:59.880 escaped. It's a great story. So he had trusted allies this whole time. And so they headed off

00:31:04.360 under Darkest Night. And because he needed to disguise himself, so they helped him disguise

00:31:10.820 himself as a farm laborer in leather doublet, a pair of green breeches and a jump coat of the

00:31:16.980 same green an old gray greasy hat without a lining and a noggin shirt of the coarsest linen

00:31:23.180 and one of his helpers cut his hair and i guess what the like farm laborer hairstyle was which

00:31:29.160 was short on top but long at the sides aka a mullet so in the pouring rain he was moved

00:31:38.100 so he'd been staying in a priory and then he which is like a nun place i think and he went

00:31:44.720 to hide on the grounds, like amidst the trees. So a company of local militia stopped by asking,

00:31:50.280 had the king been seen? And the helpers were like, yeah, he was here, but he moved on. And

00:31:55.780 the soldiers were like, okay. And his helpers taught him how to speak with a local accent.

00:32:00.660 Because if you picture, I don't know, you know, like the modern day royals, like Prince William

00:32:05.540 having to go undercover in, you know, rural England somewhere, it's like your accent makes

00:32:10.760 you stand out, sir. So he learned how to speak with a local accent and how to walk like a laborer.

00:32:16.600 Even his walk had to be changed. There's no safe way to get him to London, like where he would,

00:32:21.940 you know, challenge Carmel or whatever. But they knew of a man whose house had several hiding

00:32:27.500 places. But when they got there, the house was no longer safe, like the soldiers thought about it.

00:32:31.140 So he hid in a barn. Baby Jesus vibes. Then they walked along a stream. Like,

00:32:36.960 i'm gonna keep going with this story but here's where like i'm impressed by charles's resiliency

00:32:43.940 there's other men we've talked about on this podcast other other people of various genders

00:32:49.880 who would not have been as good as him at just like keeping going in these circumstances

00:32:54.760 so you know like wanted looking wildly distinctive so he was walking along a stream

00:33:01.300 feet were sore and bleeding because he was so tall his feet were so big like nobody's shoes

00:33:06.800 fit him because no one had feet that size because of like the farm laborers were undernourished or

00:33:11.620 whatever. Yeah. So he's sore, blister filled feet, but he kept going. So then he spent a day hiding

00:33:18.960 in an oak tree. And if you go to, God, I forget where they are somewhere in England. If you go,

00:33:24.100 well, if you go to the like Wikipedia page about like Charles on the run,

00:33:28.180 there's a lot of details that I'm not telling you right now, but basically every place he stopped

00:33:31.920 is now like a historical site, including this tree. So he spent a day hiding in a tree while

00:33:38.240 the troops were searching the surrounding woodland. They did not find him. He slept for part of the

00:33:42.680 time, but one of his pals was up the tree with him who would keep him from like falling out of

00:33:47.120 the tree, I guess, while he was asleep in a tree. After some more close calls, he disguised himself

00:33:52.080 as a servant and he was dressed as a tenant farmer's son and adopted the alias William Jackson.

00:33:59.680 But at their next stop, his horse lost a shoe.

00:34:03.240 So playing the role of servant, he took the horse to a blacksmith.

00:34:07.220 Later, he recounted this story.

00:34:09.620 And he said, as I was holding my horse's foot, I asked the smith, what news?

00:34:13.620 He told me there was no news that he knew of since the good news of the beating of the rogues of the Scots.

00:34:18.220 I asked him whether there was none of the English taken that joined with the Scots.

00:34:21.500 He answered he did not hear if that rogue, Charles Stewart, was taken.

00:34:25.100 But some of the others he said were taken. 0.97

00:34:26.720 I told him if that rogue were taken, he deserved to be hanged more than all the rest for bringing 1.00

00:34:30.900 in the Scots. 1.00

00:34:32.080 Upon which he said, I spoke like an honest man, and so we parted.

00:34:35.660 So this is like another Catalina de Arraso level person on the run in disguise, and just

00:34:43.180 no one ever realizes that they're the person they're looking for.

00:34:47.920 This is an ongoing thing this season that I find very enjoyable.

00:34:52.300 Further along the route, so he's still in disguise as a servant, and so

00:34:56.460 they stopped at a house and so you know when like fancy people and their servants stop at a house

00:35:01.020 like in Downton Abbey like the servants go hang out with other servants so he was put to work in

00:35:05.280 the kitchen um and he was clumsy at the tasks and the cook angrily asked him what countrymen are you

00:35:10.900 that you know not how to wind up a jack which is like a thing to roast meat in the fireplace

00:35:15.240 but Charles was like oh I'm the son of poor people so I rarely ate meat and I don't know

00:35:20.660 how to use a roasting jack and everyone's like okay tall guy more adventures happened then they

00:35:28.580 arrived in a town full of troops who were like looking for him and he boldly walked through the

00:35:33.300 soldiers to the inn and arranged for rooms the soldiers were just like well the guy we're looking

00:35:37.560 for his long hair that guy has a mullet here we and look at how he walks he walks like a farm

00:35:41.460 laborer the person at the inn confronted him though saying i know your face and charles was

00:35:47.800 like me i'm william jackson and he convinced him that he had been a servant at the same time as the

00:35:54.540 servant at somebody else's house like he's good at this this is like christina of sweden wishes she

00:36:00.140 was this good at this they didn't go to london eventually they fled and they went to france

00:36:05.920 which is where he still was all this had happened to him and now it's 1658 hortense is 12 and charles

00:36:13.280 was like asked Mazarin like could I marry this beautiful young child and Mazarin was like no

00:36:21.180 you're like it's like no one thought Charles was gonna overtake Cromwell like it seemed incredibly

00:36:26.640 unlikely and Mazarin was like I'm gonna find someone better than you like king without a

00:36:30.440 kingdom but surprise two years later he was king of England again and at that point Mazarin was 0.96

00:36:36.280 like hey so do you still want to marry Hortense and Charles was like screw you no um partially

00:36:42.040 because of how Louis and friends hadn't really helped him in like winning back England. So 0.70

00:36:48.620 anyway, that's the last we'll see of Charles in this story for now. But spoiler, he is going to

00:36:53.640 come back again in a big way. And I'm going to guess Hortense part three. So every eligible man

00:37:01.900 in Europe wanted to marry Hortense, who was 14, by the way, basically. But then the stakes kind

00:37:08.200 have increased so mazarin was ill he was like his illness was progressing and he really wanted to

00:37:12.820 sort this out before he died like he wanted his will to say like so and so is my heir so he had

00:37:17.160 to find a husband louis the 14th got married and that also added an extra challenge to this because

00:37:25.440 mazarin had been sometimes sort of like thinking about maybe they could whoever louis married like

00:37:32.560 maybe that person had a brother and that brother could marry auton's sort of thing so the pressure

00:37:36.520 was on for Mazarin to pick a husband for Hortense. And here's, I'm going to give you a content

00:37:40.700 warning because the person he chose was incredibly abusive. So if you want to piece out of the

00:37:45.760 episode, like pants on, tits out, please come back for, I think part two you'll find enjoyable 0.90

00:37:52.740 because she will have left this husband, but now we're getting into the part of her 0.98

00:37:56.600 with the husband. So yeah, I'll just take a moment if you want to like pause out of this

00:38:03.300 podcast and then i'm gonna jump back in for the people who are sticking with the story okay so

00:38:08.800 there's this podcast i listen to called behind the blinds which it's so troy and kelly the hosts

00:38:15.020 they talk about contemporary celebrities by looking at blind items about them so you know

00:38:22.380 stuff where it's like this a-list 90s sitcom star was seen without her wedding ring like is she

00:38:27.700 getting divorced or whatever so they really it's um it's almost like an academic discussion of

00:38:33.160 celebrities and like what potentially they're real, what they're really up to. Anyway, so they

00:38:39.060 end every episode by deciding between themselves, is this person rotted or not? And rotted just

00:38:45.140 means someone who is just like so awful, someone who just like, it's a rotten person, like somebody

00:38:52.240 who is just like their exposure to this celebrity lifestyle, or even just, I don't know, the amount

00:38:56.480 of power they got, like, you know, like, I don't know, like a Harvey Weinstein, Simon Cowell,

00:39:01.460 like these people are just like rotted individuals and they recently on this podcast behind the

00:39:07.880 blinds they did an episode talking about Ezra Miller the current celebrity with many controversies

00:39:15.840 happening around them and I thought that they explained it really well this sort of like

00:39:21.020 people who do shitty things often that's because shitty things had happened to them or these

00:39:28.760 people you can understand the emotional trauma response that might have resulted in the way that

00:39:35.420 people are behaving now but they really drew a line for themselves in this podcast talking about

00:39:40.100 like but at the point where it's hurting other people like you can explain why someone's acting

00:39:45.420 some way and that's because of their the way they grew up or whatever like these traumas that

00:39:49.640 happened to them but that's not an excuse for being a horrible person and so this brings me to

00:39:56.660 Hortense's husband, Armand Charles de la Porte de la Maillaret, who we're going to call A.C.

00:40:04.220 Many apologies to A.C. Slater from Saver the Bell. So he is a person with serious psychological

00:40:12.460 things going on in his brain. And he is a powerful man, a powerful, um, aristocrat

00:40:22.860 in this era. And so he had a lot of power and not a lot of checks and balances on his power.

00:40:31.420 So the, this sort of like problematic personality turned into a real horror show for Hortense and

00:40:38.460 everyone around him. So I don't want to diagnose him, whatever. I'm just going to like focus on

00:40:45.300 the shitty things he did because he was a shitty person. So Armand Charles, AC, was a young man, 0.99

00:40:55.100 young, comparatively. He's 29, Hortense is 14. So he's like young compared to older people,

00:41:02.000 old compared to her. So he was from a family with undistinguished origins, similar to Maserat, 0.91

00:41:08.460 So Mazarin, that might've appealed to him as a Soutour. And the thing with AC is that he had 0.99

00:41:13.760 been obsessed. Like I'm not using that in an exaggerated way. He had been literally like

00:41:20.020 forensically obsessed with Hortense since he first saw her when she was nine and he was 24.

00:41:25.780 And now he's 29 and she's 14. And he had been trying and trying and trying and trying to be,

00:41:30.200 to get her hand in marriage. Not because he wanted her inheritance, not because he wanted

00:41:34.340 the glamour between the family. Not because he wanted to be the heir of Mazarin, but because he

00:41:39.600 was literally her stalker. So yeah, AC was one of the richest men in Europe. And he was a nephew

00:41:46.120 of Cardinal Richelieu. So maybe there's also that connection because that had been Mazarin's mentor.

00:41:53.200 AC, very intense, not very pleasant to be around, not popular on the scene, which doesn't necessarily

00:41:58.500 mean that's a bad person, but in this case, it does. He was an outsider among the young,

00:42:05.160 pretty party crowd where Hortense liked to spend her time and where people all adored her.

00:42:11.160 He was also Catholic. Everyone in the story is Catholic because it's aristocrats in France in

00:42:16.060 the 1600s. But he was getting more extreme with it, which people found annoying because I think

00:42:21.960 he would just sort of like to mansplain about it all the time. But it might have been his non-corrupted

00:42:28.480 that Mazarin also liked. Like he was just seemed like so hardcore religious. Ortanz didn't care

00:42:35.760 much about religion and she was all about having fun and whatever. And so maybe he thought a

00:42:40.920 husband like AC would keep her in line or something. It's weird. Like three different

00:42:46.240 books I read all said like Mazarin was like, he had like dementia and he was like dying. And so

00:42:51.320 they're like, that must be why he chose this guy to be her husband. Cause otherwise he wouldn't

00:42:54.680 have. People are really turning themselves around to try and find a reason why Mazarin chose this

00:43:00.640 guy to be the husband, even though he was a bad choice. And it's like, maybe Mazarin just sucked 0.97

00:43:04.400 and that's it. Even AC's father was like, my son is kind of the worst. I don't recommend him as a 0.99

00:43:13.560 husband or an heir. Please don't marry this teenage girl to him. But Mazarin was like, 1.00

00:43:19.380 no, let's do it. And so this happened. So I think Hortense had just turned 15 by the time they got

00:43:25.940 married. AC was 29. And so they got married. Eight days later, Mazarin died. And then Hortense

00:43:33.520 and AC, they now were his heirs. Like AC changed his last name. Like they are now the Duke and

00:43:39.420 Duchess of Mazarin. And Hortense, she later wrote her memoir. That's part of how we know a lot of

00:43:45.860 what was going on inside of her head and what she's thinking about stuff. So she wrote that

00:43:48.860 when this happened, like the marriage and then becoming the heiress. She wrote that this made

00:43:52.540 her the richest heiress and the unhappiest woman. Also, when Mazarin died, she wrote about how

00:43:58.700 neither she nor her sisters or her brother, none of them grieved him in any real way because he'd

00:44:03.820 always treated them pretty cruelly, just acted like he didn't treat them like people. She wrote

00:44:10.400 in her memoir, if you knew with what severity he treated us at all times, you would be less

00:44:14.560 surprised by this lack of grief. Never has a man had such gentle manners in public and such harsh

00:44:19.540 ones at home, and all our temperaments and inclinations were contrary to his. Add to that

00:44:24.500 incredible subjection under which he held us, our extreme youth, and the insensitivity and

00:44:28.880 carelessness about everything which excessive wealth and privilege ordinarily cause in people

00:44:32.780 of that age, however good nature they may have. So as much as Hortense is like a fun-loving girl,

00:44:39.820 She grew up in this being raised by Mazarin, having this governess who was also a spy. 0.58

00:44:45.360 She found fun things. 0.95

00:44:47.320 She liked being at court, going to parties, whatever.

00:44:50.200 But it's a pretty intense situation.

00:44:51.840 And now she's married to AC.

00:44:53.900 So they moved into the Mazarin Palace, surrounded by her dead uncle's incredible art collection, etc.

00:45:01.480 And Hortense, at least at first, she was still allowed to go to royal court where she was still a star.

00:45:07.400 She sang, she played guitar.

00:45:09.820 And she, her spoken French was, which is a slight Italian accent that people found charming and she excelled at public life. She excelled at going to parties and being winning and fabulous. And so now that they had this palace, she invited over her like friends, party people to hang out in the palace with her.

00:45:26.420 um philippe moved into like another wing of the palace and ac just like he watched and he was

00:45:31.920 just like it's like in moulin rouge that is it the duke who's like she is mine it's like i just

00:45:39.280 picture him like the duke from moulin rouge just like watching hating anyone else paying attention

00:45:42.840 to her so yeah now that he like quote had her this like girl he had been obsessed with since

00:45:49.500 she was nine years old he didn't like seeing anyone else get to enjoy her company he wanted

00:45:53.420 her to be his own private little toy person. So very shortly after they got married, he began

00:46:00.260 restricting where she could go and when, like with the help of her governess spy, he forbade her from

00:46:06.620 having plays or concerts at their home and banned all of her favorite friends. Within a few months

00:46:11.800 of their marriage, he forced her to accompany him on a trip out of town. So as part of being the

00:46:16.740 heir to Mazarin, I think, or maybe he already had this, like they had, he was like the landlord of

00:46:21.980 a bunch of like little villages. And so he was just like, she's too much fun in Paris. I'm going

00:46:25.380 to just like take her away from there. And effectively, every time Hortense found something 0.98

00:46:29.960 or someone to enjoy, AC would notice and then take it away from her and not let her do that

00:46:34.860 or see that person anymore. So Mazarin had hired the governess slash spy, but AC didn't think she

00:46:42.140 was doing a good enough job. So he fired her and hired his own governess slash spy who would report

00:46:46.620 directly to him and would help him control what she was doing. She became pregnant and had the 0.91

00:46:51.660 first child, Marie Charlotte in 1662. AC's religious fervor kept getting more extreme

00:46:59.140 to the point this is like, you know, in the Catalina story where it's like even the other

00:47:03.160 conquistadors were like, ooh, you're like being a bit too cruel to like the indigenous people of

00:47:08.340 South America. This is where even like the king of France was like, ooh, you're like getting a bit

00:47:13.380 too extreme in your religious views. So this is again where AC was like, you know, he was a rich

00:47:19.460 person even if he's a bit of an outcast from society husbands were expected to like control

00:47:24.080 their wives but he was like doing it a bit more than other people were so the fact that even

00:47:29.200 people in this culture were like oh this is a bit much speaks to how heinous he was ac claimed that

00:47:35.320 the angel gabriel spoke to him in his dreams and when he was visiting the like properties where

00:47:41.240 they lived where he made ortonsk with him all the time he obsessively interfered with the smallest

00:47:45.540 details in the lives of the peasants who lived on his properties wanting to help them

00:47:49.300 walk the road to salvation. So this was like, he objected to having female servants and priests

00:47:54.560 households. He warned poor farm families not to let brothers and sisters share the same bed.

00:48:00.540 He thought that the act of milking cows seemed too sexual. And so he warned milkmaids not to

00:48:07.700 spend too long milking cows or churning butter to assume more modest postures when doing these acts.

00:48:13.900 so he's a person who's like obsessed with sex and sees it everywhere and in a manner not unlike the

00:48:22.140 current american supreme court just really wants to get in everyone's business and control what 0.99

00:48:28.220 everyone's doing and just like fuck this guy so he also enforced rules in his house everyone had 0.99

00:48:34.480 to go to bed early he discouraged conversation and laughter and he would fire any servant who 0.99

00:48:41.400 hortense like smiled at effectively so she wrote this she described the situation as

00:48:46.900 just imagine an implacable hatred for everyone who loved me and whom i loved an avid effort to set

00:48:52.540 before me all the people i could not abide and to bribe those whom i trusted the most in order to

00:48:57.380 discover my secrets if i had any a tireless diligence in disparaging me to everyone and

00:49:01.960 putting a shameful cast on all my actions in short everything that the malice of a sanctimonious

00:49:07.160 cabal can dream up and implement in a household where it holds tyrannical sway and she had more 0.97

00:49:12.880 children and kind of every time so he kept her away from paris as much as possible only brought 0.98

00:49:18.340 her back in for the like delivery because i guess that's where the better doctors or midwives were

00:49:22.080 so which was also dangerous to be like in labor going on like country roads or whatever so she

00:49:29.300 had a second daughter marie anne one year after marie charlotte and then two years later she had

00:49:34.000 another daughter, Marie Olymp. Shortly after the birth of the third daughter, he took her out of

00:49:39.820 town and kept her basically prisoner until she became pregnant again. And this time it was a son,

00:49:44.900 Paul Jules. So she was now like 20 years old. She had survived four pregnancies in five years

00:49:52.200 and having the air, she's kind of like, okay, like I've done that. Like that's like quote my job.

00:49:58.240 so she was eager to spend as little time with her husband as possible obviously like many other 1.00

00:50:05.140 women of her station who after they gave birth to a son were able to move to separate households 0.93

00:50:09.520 after giving birth but ac would not allow that he became more possessive than ever convinced she was

00:50:16.360 going to leave him oh i forgot to mention this before but part of his like thing of not wanting

00:50:21.000 anyone to feel sexual desire at all ever so he had all their female servants have their front teeth 0.98

00:50:26.400 knocked out so they wouldn't look as physically attractive. He also, I think, wanted to do the 0.95

00:50:32.020 same with his and Hortense's daughters. Like, he is a horrible person. Yeah, he removed anything 0.99

00:50:40.840 he thought would help her leave him. Like, he was obsessed with the thought that she was going to

00:50:46.000 leave him. Like, of course, she wanted to leave him. Like, the way to make her not leave him is

00:50:51.120 to like not be awful. He didn't think of that. So the terms of Mazarin's will were pretty shitty.

00:50:57.380 It was not a well done will. So all of their inheritance was sort of joint. It's like 0.60

00:51:03.000 everything was inherited by the pair of them. I don't know if that was Mazarin just on purpose

00:51:08.360 wanting to make it so that Hortense could never leave him because he wanted to like tame her or

00:51:14.580 whatever. So if she did leave him, it'd be really complicated to divide the property between them

00:51:20.760 because the will said they both jointly owned everything and as a woman, she wouldn't get as

00:51:24.820 much. The only thing that she actually owned, like the only kind of money to her name was her

00:51:29.720 collection of jewels, which she owned outright. And so he knew that was her one source of potential

00:51:35.660 money she could use to escape. And this is so much like stuff people talk about now about

00:51:39.740 intimate partner violence and stuff where it's like, where a partner just tries to make it so

00:51:44.440 the other person can't escape by controlling their money and stuff. Like it's just, it's the

00:51:47.820 same shit, then as happens to people now. So one night when she was out somewhere that he allowed 1.00

00:51:55.560 her to be, on the pretense that he was afraid she was so philanthropic that she might accidentally

00:52:00.960 give away all of her money to too many people, he confiscated her jewels. Ortals was like,

00:52:07.080 fuck this. And she went to go see her brother, Philippe, who was living in another wing of the 0.99

00:52:11.500 mansion. And they sent for their sister, Marianne, who had also been married off to a guy, not a

00:52:17.360 nightmare person and both of them counseled her to just file for legal separation honestly good

00:52:22.100 for them good advice philippe was like if she didn't file for separation soon ac and oh yeah

00:52:27.720 and he was spending all their money on just like wasteful weird things so like her inheritance was

00:52:34.100 disappearing just because ac was spending it all and so philippe was like the sooner the better

00:52:38.280 because like in order to inherit as much money as possible like you need to get rid of him now

00:52:43.860 and he also warned her if she didn't leave him this would be her life forever like boring trips

00:52:48.640 out of town no fun ever constantly being pregnant like her life being controlled and so he urged

00:52:54.300 her to petition the king for legal division of property to safeguard at least her portion of 0.97

00:52:58.300 the Mazarin fortune but in order to do that because the will was so badly done so she would

00:53:04.000 have had to have an exceptionally strong legal case Hortense was like I'm gonna do it I will do

00:53:11.160 that. She's channeling the spirit of, I'm going to say, Fredegand. You remember when Fredegand

00:53:17.300 had the court case and she brought in the 300 witnesses or whatever? She was also in

00:53:21.760 basically France. Hortense was just like, like Fredegand, I'm going to do this. She filed the

00:53:27.380 paperwork and hid out at her sister Olympe's house. She stayed there for two months and Louis

00:53:34.320 the 14th was kind of like going through the paperwork. And then eventually he had the chief

00:53:38.160 minister, ordered her to return to AC. This poor guy was the mediator in this situation where no

00:53:45.060 mediation is possible with a man like AC. So they said, you need to return to AC, but he should let

00:53:50.140 you choose your own household servants. AC was not okay with this. So Hortons left again. Somewhere

00:53:56.540 in here, the King Louis, he made some sort of promise that he would not interfere in their

00:54:01.720 marriage arguments or something like that, which becomes important later. He's just like,

00:54:06.900 if you're having marital problems, like, okay, not my problem, which was good in the sense that

00:54:12.340 he wasn't going to force her to be with him, but it was bad in the sense of he wasn't going to like

00:54:16.240 save her. So Hortens left him again. Um, she went to stay with Olympe and refused to leave when AC

00:54:23.480 came to like kidnap her back. And he was like, okay, you have two options then. Like either you

00:54:29.000 can go to this one convent 10 miles outside of Paris where one of his relatives was in charge,

00:54:33.780 or you can go stay with your older cousin, Anne-Marie. And this is like two bad options.

00:54:39.940 So like, first of all, it's like going to the convent led by his relative. It's like,

00:54:43.540 that doesn't sound appealing. But then also Anne-Marie's husband was extremely religious

00:54:48.780 in the same manner as AC. So she would also be monitored there too. So Hortense chose the

00:54:53.880 convent. So she was off of the convent for a while. And then AC wanted her to go with him

00:54:58.100 on another trip out of town. And so she petitioned the king to intercede. And what he did, the king

00:55:07.700 was that he sent Hortense to a different convent where she could be more closely monitored. And

00:55:12.100 this convent was kind of like a convent slash prison for wayward noblewomen. Hortense at this 0.97

00:55:18.360 point, she's like, again, whatever, like 21 or something like mother of four. The children never

00:55:24.060 really come up in this story and in her defense that was what society was like at that point

00:55:32.000 mothers were not expected to especially be close to or care about their children do you remember

00:55:36.820 like in circa the same era and of denmark i think let me just check and of denmark was

00:55:42.420 75 years earlier but you know everyone thought it was so weird when anna of denmark wanted to

00:55:47.280 like be with her children breastfeed her children everyone's just like what is wrong with you this

00:55:50.760 is gross and weird like the fact that she's not being like not without my children doesn't speak

00:55:55.720 poorly of her in the context of this era because um children mothers weren't expected to especially 0.99

00:56:03.680 care about their children except for who their marriages were too so she's just fleeing the

00:56:08.520 children are back there with i guess a governess slash spy you know i hope they're doing okay

00:56:12.500 anyway so she's just keeping trying to file paperwork she decided to leave ac and she's just

00:56:18.340 like doing it. And she's not stopping trying. And while at the convent for wayward noble women,

00:56:24.760 she met a new friend, Marie Sidonie de Corsel, who is 17 years old, also married, but her husband

00:56:33.040 had brought a suit against her for adultery. So it's kind of like girl interrupted vibes of just

00:56:39.180 like all the women at this convent were kind of like had been sent there because their husbands

00:56:43.640 were mad at them, but that meant that all the women there were kind of like cool people.

00:56:47.380 and so these two became fast friends and potentially lovers i mean maybe we do know

00:56:55.520 later like just so in the midst of this like grim dark special abuse plot line like hortense 0.88

00:57:01.280 she's gonna eventually go on to have like numerous lovers of various genders so it's not outside the

00:57:08.640 realm of possibility that she and marie sidonie became lovers but they certainly became very good

00:57:13.740 friends. Historically, very good friends. Listen to that podcast. So Marie Sidonie knew about the

00:57:21.160 legal system because she had been involved in her own trial and she also had some good connections 0.97

00:57:25.320 to royal court like better ones than Hortense had. And so she was able to advise her to prepare her

00:57:30.140 case. And I think this would be a cute little movie of their friendship slash potentially

00:57:35.840 sapphic love story. Like that'd be a cute movie. So sort of like Portrait of a Lady on Fire vibes.

00:57:41.840 these two had fun together like hortense finally i think it's like she had so much fun with her 0.98

00:57:46.580 sisters now she's having fun with her friend slash maybe lover so they allegedly were pulling pranks

00:57:52.940 and just like having lots of fun stories of their resistance to the imprisonment and their fun

00:57:57.440 loving ways made it to the paris salons on royal court where people are sympathetic to these two

00:58:02.000 women with their terrible husbands although some of the rumors in her memoir marie was like the 0.95

00:58:07.360 rumors about us like putting you know ink in the like baptism font or like all these whatever like

00:58:14.000 we were not that extreme but maybe they were i don't know and so they placed a joint request

00:58:19.320 to be transferred together to a different convent and the nuns were only too happy to sign off on

00:58:23.680 this because these two were a handful and the convent where they wound up was the convent that

00:58:29.080 ac had earlier wanted her to go to which was run by his aunt but again we've got like a good

00:58:35.780 convent story. So this abbey is called Shell. Maybe I'm saying that wrong. It had a long history of

00:58:43.960 powerful women who had governed both the abbey and the community surrounding it. So it's kind of like

00:58:47.820 a little feminist paradise. In its nearly thousand year history, many generations of royal women had 1.00

00:58:53.960 chosen to retire there. So it was actually like a cool place to be. AC demanded that his aunt

00:58:59.960 return Hortense to him and the aunt refused. So thank you, aunt, none. Hortense and Marie

00:59:08.780 Sidonie kept having their good times there. And again, the story spread through important circles

00:59:13.340 of influential people because what they were up to, all these court cases, it's not just like,

00:59:17.840 oh, look at these two young women having fun in a convent. It's like, no, they're pursuing these

00:59:22.380 legal things. So at this time, not unlike our time, the legal rights of husbands over wives

00:59:28.740 were being discussed. In the eyes of the law and marriage contracts, women were regarded as their

00:59:33.820 husband's property, but challenges to the status were being argued in court. And so these, this is

00:59:39.260 very of the moment what they were up to. Hortense and Marie Sidonie continued working on their cases

00:59:44.500 for legal separation. And it's not just like write a good legal brief or whatever. It's also like

00:59:49.700 bribe the right people and like hope that the judge who's doing your case, like is your uncle

00:59:54.360 who likes you sort of situation which again is not that different from now so hortense got a good

01:00:01.200 verdict in one of her suits the judges said she could return to the palace mazarin and ac had to 0.97

01:00:07.500 leave so like she could live there and he could leave he was of course furious and hortense was 0.94

01:00:12.620 like i'm back baby so she returned to public life and court festivities and she got permission for 0.66

01:00:18.880 marie sidonie to move into mazarin palace with her so she's got her bestie slash maybe lover

01:00:23.580 there with her she started hosting plays again like she's just like getting her life back i'm

01:00:30.280 trying to guess her age she's like 22 or so so she's just like this is her element this is like 0.68

01:00:35.920 self-care for her hosting parties being with people she's an extrovert she loves it ac couldn't

01:00:41.120 handle it though non-surprisingly and so one day when people are not in the theater he demolished

01:00:47.880 the theater like with his bare hands i'm gonna say yes because later he's gonna do something

01:00:53.700 similar with his bare hands so this guy like it's like in a horror movie it's like the killer just

01:01:01.460 doesn't stop and keeps coming after you it's like he will not stop but that marie sidonie reconciled

01:01:07.760 with her husband twist and the king granted ac permission to return to his home and all hope

01:01:13.660 seemed lost. Public sentiment turned against the two women because like happens now, you know,

01:01:20.100 people are sympathetic to a cause, but after a while you're just like, change their mind. Like

01:01:25.260 we're bored of being sympathetic to you. Let's be sympathetic to the other person. Now it reminds

01:01:29.080 me of this whole narrative, this whole part of this narrative of a lot of what the story of

01:01:33.080 Britney Spears has been like, where she was like doing her own thing. And then she was put in this

01:01:37.460 horrible conservatorship by her father and by these companies who were exploiting her and stuff

01:01:42.840 and people sympathize with her, but then people turned on her. And now people, I don't know. And

01:01:47.800 then she was freed and everyone's like so excited, but then she's like living her own life. And

01:01:51.100 people are like, how dare she have bikini pictures on Instagram? And it's like, just let people live. 1.00

01:01:56.160 Like just let people live. Anyway. So things were looking pretty shitty for Hortense. Like,

01:02:01.100 and she lost the public sentiment, which also affected thing because just like now, like judges 0.98

01:02:05.660 would, they don't live in a bubble. Their decisions can be swayed by what the public wants them to do. 0.50

01:02:12.620 So she had to make a big move to escape this horrible situation, and that is what she did.

01:02:20.140 She had endured seven years of marriage to AC. She's now 22 years old. Her vast fortune

01:02:25.360 was dissipated because he had wasted it all. She was being held prisoner by a man whose one goal

01:02:31.400 was to control her, and she knew he would never let her leave. Her main hope was that the king

01:02:37.300 would keep his promise to not interfere in their marriage arguments, such that if she escaped to

01:02:42.900 another country, he would not try to bring her back, she was hoping. And so she set out to make

01:02:48.480 a plan to flee to Rome to be with her sister Marie. Her plan was to escape to Italy outside 0.50

01:02:54.880 the jurisdiction of her husband, court, and king. Like people do now as well. You know, it's like 0.99

01:02:59.740 if you're wanted for a crime in one country, just like go to another country. And if they don't

01:03:04.020 extradite you, then you can just like live there. Her accomplices in this plan were her brother

01:03:08.600 Philippe, her sister Marie, like long distance helper in Rome, their loyal friend the Chevalier

01:03:15.420 de Rohan, and Hortense's servant Nanon. So not the governess spy, like an okay servant, Nanon.

01:03:22.840 Hortense didn't tell her other sisters, like she didn't think Olympe would support this or Marianne,

01:03:28.560 and she also planned to leave her children behind again judge her or not but like she had to get out 0.97

01:03:35.580 of there and this was a culture like no one in all of her court trials were like oh but the mother 0.99

01:03:40.780 needs to be the children like that was not a thing that people thought about there so her plan was 0.98

01:03:45.960 that if she was negotiating from outside of the french legal system that ac might give her more 0.96

01:03:50.780 favorable financial settlement and frankly she just had to get the fuck away from this nightmare 0.99

01:03:57.020 husband. In the month leading up to the escape, she was so nervous she became sick and unable to 0.99

01:04:02.680 eat. Her sister who didn't know about this was like, everything okay with you? And she's just

01:04:06.780 like, eh, I'm fine. But then on the night of June 13th, 1668, Hortense ran away. And what happened

01:04:14.900 next? We're going to talk about in part two. I mean, it's a natural cliffhanger. I can't not

01:04:21.600 and things at this point so thank you all for listening to this vulgar history podcast i think

01:04:28.180 we've got some real options here for when we get to the i i truly don't know how many episodes this

01:04:33.420 is going to be about hortense her story a lot happens in it so but a lot of good options for

01:04:37.580 the lady jane seymour memorial award for outstanding supporting performance like i think 0.66

01:04:41.120 the nominees at this point we've got marie sidonie although she did kind of she went back to her

01:04:45.320 husband like we don't hate that necessarily but we'll see marie always there for her philippe i

01:04:50.740 think. Very supportive. Nanon, the servant, like some good options there. AC is a rotted individual

01:04:58.920 and he will pop up a couple more times, just like not him interacting with her, but just like him

01:05:04.560 doing some stuff. But thank God this part of her, this era of her life has passed. I do think that

01:05:10.820 Cardinal Mazarin is a good option for this asshole episode on Patreon, but we'll see if I have the 0.91

01:05:16.160 stomach for that anyway yeah so thank you for listening to vulgar history you can send me 0.76

01:05:24.140 feedback at vulgar history.com there's a little button you can push there to send me feedback as

01:05:28.960 well you can also you know send me messages on instagram i'm on instagram at vulgar history pod

01:05:34.780 where i'm gonna be posting or i will by the time this comes out the picture that got my attention

01:05:39.940 of hortense and her sailor moon hair iconic if any of you is an artist and you could like draw

01:05:45.320 Horton's Sailor Moon. I mean, you know, let your inspiration run wild. I'm also on Twitter. I'm on

01:05:52.380 Twitter less just because that is, uh, I've been finding it sort of noxious place, but I do go

01:05:58.920 there. I checked, I don't know. I'm just like, I'm on Instagram all the time. Twitter, I check

01:06:03.700 like once a day. Anyway, Twitter at Vulgar History. And you can support this podcast,

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01:06:35.460 this asshole episodes about shitty men from history that's on patreon and you can also shop 0.95

01:06:42.440 vulgar history merch at vulgar history dot store you can use code tits out for free us shipping or 0.97

01:06:48.340 tits out 10 for 10 off whenever i see a sale on that store it makes me so happy especially

01:06:52.600 when i see someone's use those codes because i know like the store like anyone can see that

01:06:56.700 store and buy any of the stuff but i know it's a tits out brigade member when you're using one

01:07:00.240 of those coats. So love it. Yeah. So I'll be here again next week with Hortense. Part two,

01:07:07.160 the story continues on. I'll just give you this one tantalizing detail to look forward to, which

01:07:13.920 is that as she escapes across Europe, she wears pants. It's another lady pants situation, like 1.00

01:07:21.660 picturing Christina, Leonora, Catalina, Hortense all just like running around continental Europe 0.92

01:07:29.980 at the same time, all in pants. It's just like, what a time to be alive. Anyway, thank you so

01:07:35.640 much for listening. Keep your pants on and your tits out. And I'll talk to you all next time. 0.99

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Vulgar History - July 20, 2022

International, part 18： Hortense Mancini, Child Bride (pt 1⧸6)

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Transcript