Vulgar History - August 31, 2022


International, part 24： Empress Sisi： Teen Horse Girl (pt 1⧸3)

Topics
Ludwig II of Bavaria
International, part 23： Hortense Mancini's Sisters (pt 6⧸6) International, part 25： Empress Sisi's Unhappy Marriage (pt 2⧸3)

Episode Stats


Harmful content

Misogyny

39

sentences flagged

Toxicity

23

sentences flagged

Hate speech

23

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 so welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann foster
00:00:18.380 i'm your host but this week i have sort of a it's not really a co-host situation i feel like you're
00:00:24.520 really going to be guiding a lot of what's going on i'm bringing on lana wood johnson who is my
00:00:29.180 very dear friend, also the muse of this podcast, because the whole idea for this came for vulgar
00:00:35.200 history in general was I was reading about Carolina Brunswick and I just kept texting you
00:00:40.000 screen captures of this biography of her. I was reading Lana. Guess what else she did? Like Lana,
00:00:43.880 she started just amassing babies, Lana. And then here we are many episodes later. Also,
00:00:53.060 I'm going to let Lana introduce herself with many details, but I will say that she's also here in
00:00:57.680 her role as a Habsburg expert. Because anyone who's listened to the Q&A episodes knows that I
00:01:04.800 have sort of an allergy to just reading anything about any Habsburgs. But Lana's always there with
00:01:11.200 the info. And we're going to be talking about the first Habsburg on the show, Habsburg by Marriage,
00:01:17.040 which is Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Lana's already making a face. I feel like, was she 0.64
00:01:22.180 Habsburg by Marriage? Maybe I got it wrong. Lana Wood Johnson, please introduce yourself to everybody.
00:01:27.680 So, hi, I'm Lana Wood Johnson.
00:01:30.720 I am a young adult contemporary author
00:01:33.780 and the two books that I have out
00:01:35.440 are Technically You Started It,
00:01:36.720 which is another reason Anne and I are friends
00:01:39.540 is because it was inspired by The Return of Martin Gare,
00:01:44.540 which it didn't end up being very Return of Martin Gare,
00:01:48.820 but I was inspired by it.
00:01:51.920 And my second book is Speak for Yourself,
00:01:54.520 which is a Cyrano de Bergerac retelling.
00:01:57.680 And that is my, that is my writing credits. But my history credits are I have a BA in history. I studied mostly population sciences, but demography, how people moved, disease, and I also studied the Industrial Revolution.
00:02:19.300 But because I took nine years of German, I have a soft spot for the Habsburgs and the very weird history that they have to live through, that they guided and weren't always very excited to be a part of. 0.66
00:02:33.200 And sometimes they were very, very interested in being in charge of history.
00:02:37.740 So I strong-armed Anne into doing a Cece episode, even though she's very much not the kind of woman that Anne typically does stories about.
00:02:49.720 But hopefully she loves her anyway, the way I do.
00:02:52.340 I want to talk about that aspect of things, because I will say I've known for a long time that Cece is Lana's person in the same way that like Francis Howard is my person.
00:03:03.200 like just a historical person who you're just a fangirl for and i've never read up on cc until
00:03:10.640 preparing for this episode and oh actually i want to mention too one of the reasons that
00:03:16.560 we're doing this episode also is because on my patreon i put a poll of saying like i'm having
00:03:21.480 so much funding the international season here's a list of people who have been suggested please
00:03:25.240 vote on who you think i should do cc ran away with that poll and i was like oh okay there's
00:03:32.020 And Lana, I think you said that I might've stacked the deck somehow. And I'm like, I didn't. I was just like, here's a bunch of people I don't know about. Anyway, so I know there's enthusiasm. So that's one of the benefits of being on the Patreon. You can help me choose topics. But also knowing that Lana was so passionate about her, I'm like, okay, I'll do Cece. And one of the reasons, I don't know. One of the reasons that I haven't really read up on her before or considered her for this podcast before was I, like perhaps many of the people out there, just had this overall impression that she was just like,
00:04:01.360 it's just a sad story of a woman with long hair. And I was just like, well, that's not what I do.
00:04:08.460 I talk about cool people. And then in researching it, I started learning all these cool things
00:04:13.000 about Cece. And yet all the articles I was finding were all like, the headlines were all like,
00:04:18.000 the anorexic depressed royal, or like Cece, her tragic diet. Even National Geographic and stuff
00:04:25.720 were just like, this sad woman. And I'm like, so we're here to do some reputation repair.
00:04:31.360 to be like like this was a very important part of her story the mental health stuff
00:04:40.220 the disordered eating stuff but to me like my shorthand for this is always just being
00:04:46.360 like Fred again she was a wife and mother it's like yes and 75 other things so Cece we're here
00:04:55.880 to um I've gone on this journey of realizing she's actually very interesting and now I'm
00:05:00.380 hoping to take you all on this journey as well. So the sources I was looking at. So just her
00:05:07.260 Wikipedia page, which has got quite a bit of information on it. There's a biography from 1966,
00:05:12.360 which I'm going to read excerpts from because it could not be more of a 1966 book in a very fun
00:05:18.040 way. The Lonely Empress, Sisi of Austria by Joan Haslip. I also read a 1988 book, The Reluctant
00:05:24.660 Empress, a biography of Empress Elizabeth of Austria by Brigitte Hammann, translated from the
00:05:29.160 german an article from history today um that's called the anorexic empress an article from
00:05:36.700 history.com the tragic austrian empress an article from history of yesterday.com
00:05:42.300 the tragedies and triumphs of cc's sisters and then something else from metropole five things
00:05:49.600 about elizabeth or cc but even just like the articles are all like the tragic anorexic like 0.89
00:05:54.760 fuck off lynn i see you've added some references what were what were yours well i just threw in 0.87
00:06:00.640 a couple that i literally have lying around the house um i have the cc tashin book because she 0.99
00:06:09.540 is a very photogenic empress that people like to not only take pictures of but draw pictures of
00:06:17.140 and she was actually we'll cover this later but she was the very first person that was photographed
00:06:23.780 by a paparazzi that's not in here but that's like photography is a very big thing for her
00:06:30.440 we'll talk about her images later yeah and then um I also have um the Habsburgs embodying empire
00:06:40.700 because it's just nice to have your very own Habsburg family tree back to the beginning of
00:06:46.140 time and maps of their various empires back to the beginning of their time just lying around
00:06:53.540 the house. Normal people do that, correct? I mean, I'm pretty sure I have a book like that and I don't
00:06:58.820 even care about the Habsburgs. So yeah, normal people. And that one's by Andrew Wheatcroft and 0.86
00:07:03.840 it's from Penguin. And then the Habsburg Monarchy, 1809 to 1918, the history of the Austrian Empire
00:07:12.200 and Austria-Hungary, which is different than the Holy Roman Empire Habsburgs. This is after
00:07:18.980 they traded it away to napoleon the holy rona mentor and and all their foreign holdings they
00:07:25.020 lost spain they lost the dutch which ann has already covered lightly in the past but now they
00:07:31.340 have um because i treaty of westphalia i mean that was that was christine of sweden right
00:07:41.460 yeah yeah yeah I'm almost no I'm not almost I am proud in a way that I've come this far on the
00:07:49.440 podcast and I've never had to talk about the Habsburg how have I done so much stuff predominantly
00:07:56.240 about European history and avoided them it took some effort but I've done it but here we are
00:08:01.440 fairly Protestant that that's the way to do it is staying very Protestant yeah I don't know but
00:08:07.620 now I'm at a point where I can see a portrait I'm just like that's a Habsburg isn't it I can
00:08:10.900 recognize them. But Cece, I am correct, right? She's a Habsburg by marriage. She's a Habsburg 0.92
00:08:17.240 by marriage. She's Bavarian nobility. Exactly. Okay. A weird little bit of the Holy Roman Empire
00:08:23.880 that was not like the others. God, this is not a video podcast. So you can't see me constantly
00:08:30.580 rolling my eyes and making faces at the fact that I'm just like that part of Europe. It's like,
00:08:37.000 I've I'm like okay about like Spain Portugal France like I don't even know at this point like
00:08:44.580 Turkey but I'm just like there's this giant hole in my knowledge of historical Europe and it's
00:08:50.640 basically just like that it's like where that's where I live where where Germany now is I'm just
00:08:57.600 like I can't get into that because it's like sometimes it's called this and sometimes it's
00:09:00.860 called this and the people speak German but it's not Germany yet I'm just like what if I just don't
00:09:05.240 ever learn about it could i get by in life no because then i wouldn't know about cc and this 0.94
00:09:11.420 is a great story i mean now i need to make you do a so this asshole on bismarck i i don't even 0.72
00:09:18.380 know who that is but sure oh that reminds me i'll announce it on the podcast because why not 0.94
00:09:24.380 at some point len is going to join me on patreon for so this asshole queen victoria 0.97
00:09:28.420 but that's like in the future because that's her historical nemesis she's her nemesis yeah 0.98
00:09:34.340 and it'll be our first lady asshole so Empress Cece before we get into the saga
00:09:40.800 and the story could you explain this is one of the first questions I asked you when I first 0.88
00:09:45.620 started reading the biographies like two weeks ago was like what because I really want to
00:09:49.960 understand where you're coming from Lana so like what about her like why is she your person
00:09:53.860 why does she stand out to you well I think because so much of her story has become her mental illness
00:10:00.760 and the various aspects of her mental illness
00:10:04.800 that make her something to gawk at.
00:10:07.480 I write those young adult contemporary novels 0.98
00:10:10.340 about girls that have problems,
00:10:13.540 generally anxiety disorder or migraines.
00:10:17.240 And then that is not the plot.
00:10:19.360 That is not who they are.
00:10:20.640 It's a thing that they live with. 1.00
00:10:22.500 So Cece is like that perfect example
00:10:25.080 of her mental illness and how she copes
00:10:28.820 is an interesting thing about her, but it's not even remotely who she is.
00:10:33.980 It's, it's a, it's something that she had to work around to be who she was going to be. But
00:10:39.520 very, very rarely do you get someone with the amount of money and power and influence of someone
00:10:47.260 like Cece. And she's like, I just really want to learn Greek. Like, I really want to do something
00:10:52.640 useful. This is not useful. Being, being empress is not useful. It's not important. And she would,
00:10:58.200 she would have loved being a modern queen where she actually got to go like if she could get a 1.00
00:11:04.380 degree in medicine like she would have done that she would have been a psychiatrist so fast
00:11:10.400 so fast oh my god yeah no we're gonna talk about that but she was like
00:11:14.500 very interested in um in reading about mental illness and mental illness treatment and stuff
00:11:20.020 but yeah i kept trying to be like to pin her down at first i was like oh and this is partially
00:11:24.840 because of just like the articles and the angles that people write about it where it's like oh is
00:11:28.600 this like a princess diana situation and lana was like no it was in the sense of it's like a person
00:11:35.160 who has a very modern sensibility who marries into this very ancient institution and then
00:11:42.720 is depressed and has disordered eating but like princess diana was a lot of other things
00:11:47.040 too but a crucial difference here is that cc's husband adored her like she wasn't there wasn't
00:11:52.900 That's huge.
00:11:53.980 Yeah, she was not married to a Prince Charles-like figure.
00:11:56.120 There was not a Camilla-type looming presence.
00:11:59.740 She was very noble in her.
00:12:01.000 Like, she was raised to be a leader. 0.94
00:12:03.680 Well, as raised to be a leader.
00:12:05.520 Any Vittabach was raised to be a leader. 0.56
00:12:07.500 Like, she was raised within the circles of nobility.
00:12:10.620 She was an outsider that was brought in because she was the most likely or easiest person to control.
00:12:16.620 She was brought in literally because of her family connections.
00:12:21.300 She was brought in because of her family connections.
00:12:22.900 and then he chose her on purpose he wasn't just like oh i guess you i mean of two options he chose
00:12:28.740 her on purpose yeah yeah exactly so there is a bit of um yeah i don't i don't know like the fact
00:12:36.280 that because i could see more connection between princess diana and like carolina brunswick where
00:12:40.580 it's like you marry a man who's in love with his mistress and he like actively works to undermine
00:12:45.140 you so that was not cc's thing but i don't know i just kept trying to be like who who can i i don't
00:12:51.300 I was just trying to match her to different things in my head. And where I landed on was
00:12:54.580 Betty Draper in Mad Men slash the thing of the 1950s housewives who were just women. So Betty 0.59
00:13:01.660 Draper, I'll use an example. She went to university, she got a degree, and then she 0.99
00:13:04.800 did everything she was supposed to do. She appeared beautiful. She was a model. And then
00:13:08.860 she got married. And it's like, okay, just stay home and not do anything for the rest of your
00:13:13.120 life. And she was so intellectually... She wanted to be doing things and she couldn't do things.
00:13:18.380 the whole like what is it it's like it's not called housewives depression or something but
00:13:21.920 like this generation of like women who just like were in the suburbs it's like okay now you can be
00:13:25.980 a wife and mother and they're like this should make me happy like quote unquote but it doesn't
00:13:31.320 like cece wanted so much and her life would not let her do those things my modern equivalent is
00:13:40.480 um steed's wife from our flag means death perfect yes and just trying to find a you know what is her
00:13:49.420 doing an art show and it is the story is often just again and like these articles i've been
00:13:55.160 looking at or books and podcasts it's just like her life is like a fairy tale and it's like
00:13:59.280 stop that but also there are fairy tale connections castle ones but we'll talk about those
00:14:04.100 But her like childhood is, it reminds me of like a Disney fairy tale.
00:14:12.020 So Elizabeth Emily Eugenie was born on Christmas, December 24th, 1837 in Munich, Bavaria.
00:14:20.740 She was the third child and second daughter of Duke Max, or he's always called Duke Max
00:14:27.240 and things Duke Maximilian Joseph and Princess Ludovica of Bavaria.
00:14:30.760 um ludovica was the half sister of king ludwig of bavaria so max her dad was considered to be
00:14:39.080 rather peculiar if we're going through disney archetypes he's kind of like bell's father and
00:14:43.980 beauty and the beast sort of vibes except he was like the duke and was not supposed to just be like
00:14:49.900 doing intellectual experiments all the time and what else are dukes supposed to do though
00:14:55.840 come on so duke max i want to read this is a quote from the 1966 book
00:15:02.460 born in the enviable position of having adequate means without large possessions or encumbrances
00:15:08.860 he lived according to his moods a mediocre poet and a worse playwright he fancied himself as an
00:15:15.280 artist surrounding himself with writers and musicians mostly men of humble birth with whom
00:15:19.640 he frequented the various taverns of the town such talents as he possessed consisted in playing the
00:15:24.420 zither and then trick circus writing so that's the dad he's just kind of like
00:15:30.220 like this is what i like to do so i'm just going to do these things and you know i'm going to fight
00:15:36.620 anybody that says you have to be just because you write poetry and you're not like public like
00:15:41.660 writing is writing like you do it because you want to you don't have to be good at it
00:15:47.580 like you gotta get your stuff out he liked doing it yeah later on cc also writes poetry and like
00:15:53.520 a couple of different things were like in her poetry was bad and i'm like yeah well she wasn't
00:15:56.960 writing it to do anything other than just she liked writing it like it's not a gig economy
00:16:02.720 yeah so so duke max had a lot of hobbies he liked to do he and ludovica did not get along super well
00:16:12.100 because he was often off traveling there was one thing where he i forget where he went he went on
00:16:17.840 lots of trips he went on a trip and he came back with three um black children and he was like you
00:16:23.500 these are going to be your new playmates and the kids were like yeah yeah they have holding in
00:16:29.840 madeira why do i know that i just do yeah well no and cc goes there later yeah so he was just like
00:16:35.240 well first of all to mention that just to be like he's a random person but also just because like
00:16:39.160 there is racist stuff going on just you know don't forget that yeah so he that's duke max
00:16:46.120 he's he's eccentric but he and ludovica they had seven or eight children it was just like this
00:16:54.540 little gaggle of a picture like the von trapp children after maria comes when they're just
00:17:00.660 like running around salzburg singing it's just like this group of children they stay
00:17:04.120 like the mazarinettes like very close they grew up very close and then they stayed close as adults
00:17:09.940 so and they just kind of like ran wild in the woods cc is a kid she was really interested
00:17:15.260 in um horseback riding um mountain climbing like i just picture them like swinging from the trees
00:17:21.740 like the kids were just kind of raised they hung out with peasants like they weren't it wasn't just
00:17:27.780 like you're the princess and princesses like you know stay in your castle because duke max was just
00:17:32.640 like do whatever so it was this comes up a lot posenhaven castle is where they spent their
00:17:40.060 summers. They were at a different castle in Munich during winter. Christmas was always a beloved time
00:17:45.700 to Cece because it's her birthday, but also German traditions of Christmas, right? That's all the
00:17:52.380 stuff that Albert brought when he married Victoria. So what I wrote here is, yeah, so they were raised
00:18:00.280 far from the protocols of court. Cece and her siblings grew up in a very unrestrained and
00:18:04.660 unstructured environment. She often skipped her lessons to go riding about the countryside.
00:18:08.440 so she grew up playing in Bavarian forests from her father she inherited a belief in progressive
00:18:15.080 democratic ideals and pacifism uncommon for royalty at the time is that I don't know it
00:18:22.000 seems like not uncommon for her family but yeah I mean I hate when they say stuff like that it's
00:18:29.660 like her family was not very interested in being rulers they just happened to be like there was no
00:18:35.060 divine right monarchy going on in bavaria it's like i inherited the place like you don't there's
00:18:41.280 not a lot to defend it's all mountainous there's nobody's coming across yeah like the northern
00:18:46.220 parts of germany they're basically flat and really great places for the french to fight
00:18:51.120 everybody else so like it's not they don't have to be militaristic they don't have to be very
00:18:57.620 militant they don't have to go very far so they just hang out and have a good time and right so
00:19:03.960 with their various mental illnesses yeah so it's not being like we're being actively pacifist in
00:19:09.060 the midst of like various wars they're just being like well there's not a war here so let's just go 0.95
00:19:13.500 climb trees and learn circus horse riding skills and have various mental illnesses
00:19:19.160 um from her mother who she who was quite hands-on with them cc developed a love of privacy and a
00:19:27.300 fear of public duties i don't know if that's true that's just i just copy pasted that from somewhere
00:19:31.300 but she and her mother certainly have that in common yeah so her favorite sport was horseback
00:19:37.400 riding she acquired a reputation as a daredevil and one of the best equestrians of her age later 0.90
00:19:42.440 on in adulthood we'll talk about her horseback riding a bit as an adult but it was something
00:19:46.800 that brought her joy as a child so this next section i call house of widowsbach slash ludwig
00:19:52.660 of bavaria slash family history of madness so this is kind of like an example because did you
00:20:00.160 know that there's a board game called like the castles of mad king ludwig i have it it's my
00:20:05.300 husband's favorite game okay yeah no because i was telling my friend i'm like yeah there's this guy
00:20:09.480 who's mad mad king ludwig um my friend was like oh like the board game the castles of mac i'm like
00:20:15.040 oh so he's like that well known give me three fairy tale castles yes so it's very important
00:20:23.060 to say madness is the term of the time like this is this is something that this is a term that is
00:20:30.160 followed them throughout history it's not something we're applying to them great clarification yeah
00:20:37.780 because there is um i'm we're both going to like abstain from like retroactively diagnosing
00:20:44.900 peoples we're going to describe their behavior and we're going to say kind of how people took
00:20:51.280 that at the time but yeah so ludwig was like duke max he's an eccentric this is ludwig the
00:21:00.100 second so this is her second cousin not ludwig that is her grandfather yeah i mean it's important
00:21:10.720 to say like these are this is someone that's her age ludwig the second is her age not an ancestor
00:21:16.120 definitely yeah so i'm just going to tell you briefly very briefly the story of ludwig
00:21:21.160 the second her contemporary just to sort of understand the family history it's a good
00:21:28.780 example of the family history of quote-unquote madness but slash eccentric behavior and kind of
00:21:34.420 how that it followed them around the same way that like um juana la loca or whatever where it's just
00:21:41.420 like as soon as nowadays as soon as somebody says like oh so and so is crazy the more like everyone
00:21:47.940 just believes that like it's hard to shake that once you've got the reputation and if your family
00:21:51.860 has a reputation and can and you keep intermarrying and like various genetic things are passed along
00:21:57.600 and people keep being eccentric? They had a lot of traits that are consistent with
00:22:04.540 compulsion and possible neurodivergence. I like, again, I'm not going to diagnose anybody, but
00:22:12.180 they, they got very into very specific things. In a very Christina of Sweden-esque way.
00:22:19.240 and and they they were almost compulsive in their way of dealing with those things like they just
00:22:28.100 did it to a degree that was possibly unhealthy or unsafe or not always welcomed by the person
00:22:35.520 that they were obsessed about at the time but that's later in the story too
00:22:41.580 so ludwig so he was there was an eight-year age difference but they're similar ages and
00:22:49.460 especially as adults they became very close so ludwig became king of bavaria when he was 19 years
00:22:57.240 old although he was this is again like a lot of what i'm reading is just like copy paste from
00:23:02.980 various articles because they phrase things well but sometimes not how i would phrase them
00:23:06.440 anyway his youth and brooding good looks made him popular in Bavaria and elsewhere and if you google
00:23:12.480 him hard agree he was a bit of heartthrob in appearance he has he's a very smoldering look
00:23:20.740 in a kind of like Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice way it involves mutton chops
00:23:26.480 so Ludwig he he was very interested in art music and architecture he also was and when I say music
00:23:36.340 i mean wagner that's later you care wagner um also my nemesis by the way i i don't know if i've
00:23:47.460 ever mentioned that but i am so anti-wagner this is great to know because i don't know anything
00:23:52.140 about anybody german apparently um yeah so ludwig again he reminds me behaviorally of henry the
00:24:02.140 sixth who is Margaret of Anjou's husband just someone who's just fundamentally not the right
00:24:08.040 personality to be the monarch of anything like someone who just wants to like peace out and like
00:24:13.580 follow his passions and it's just if that's your personality like 0.64
00:24:18.060 it sucks when you become a king he would make a very good billionaire's kid
00:24:24.700 yeah very terrible head of state and unfortunately at the time the only like they were the same thing 0.94
00:24:31.640 So he was technically head of state just by having all of these old holdings, like probably lots of people own as much property as he does, but they're not in charge of the people that live there anymore.
00:24:44.240 So like he would have done well being rich.
00:24:46.640 He would have done terrible.
00:24:48.080 He was terrible at leading people.
00:24:50.320 Yeah.
00:24:50.520 He would have just been a cool like philanthropist, like patron of the arts.
00:24:56.700 Regrettably, he was the king of Bavaria.
00:24:59.260 Yeah. So, yeah. And this made his like various whatever advisors, all the men around him were just kind of like, oh, why won't he like do these things we want him to?
00:25:08.080 And he's just like, because I'm busy, just like with my sketchbook or whatever.
00:25:13.400 There's this hot guy making music and I want to make him a castle.
00:25:16.420 OK, deal with it. Yeah.
00:25:20.040 So he disliked large public functions and avoided formal social events whenever possible, preferring a life of seclusion with his various creative projects.
00:25:28.620 which again is just like that's a great kind of person to be but he was regrettably the king of
00:25:34.020 bavaria and those were expectations even as a child his mother had foreseen difficulties because
00:25:39.660 even as a child and with cc is what we see this like he was very introverted very creative he
00:25:44.940 spent a lot of his time daydreaming he avoided munich and participating in government at all
00:25:51.220 costs which caused tension because he was the king but the people of bavaria liked him a lot
00:25:57.520 partially because of the smoldering good looks being a very hands-on leader isn't that unusual
00:26:04.560 either in a lot of germany like you want hands-on you go to prussia like bavaria a lot of a lot of
00:26:12.740 okay so the holy roman empire was like 150 or so different individual nations and nation states
00:26:20.340 and so on and so forth so they weren't like very led they were just kind of like like some of the
00:26:28.760 cities were self-governing some of the most of the duchies were like yeah well we give this guy
00:26:33.840 taxes and he just makes sure the roads work and that was like that was basically what it was it
00:26:39.320 wasn't it wasn't like a lot of people it's it's not louis couture stuff it's not it's not divine
00:26:48.040 right monarchy or anything like that. It's like, I'm the guy who's at the end of the day,
00:26:52.520 I'm in charge. Okay. Yeah. So he wasn't like that far off from everybody that came before him
00:26:58.100 either. Yeah. Your king is just kind of like a cool guy who you kind of know. So he enjoyed
00:27:02.600 traveling the countryside and chatting with farmers and laborers. He delighted in rewarding
00:27:07.600 those who are hospitable to him during his travels with lavish gifts. And he is allegedly, I don't
00:27:12.340 know, someone from Bavaria, let me know. He's still remembered in Bavaria as our cherished king.
00:27:18.040 He never married, nor had any known mistresses, because he was probably gay. 0.99
00:27:24.880 He was very gay. 0.93
00:27:27.080 As evidenced by his diary, private letters, and other documents. 0.87
00:27:31.860 But the Catholic Church was not down with that, and he was Catholic.
00:27:36.020 And also, in his era, homosexual acts between men were illegal in Bavaria.
00:27:41.060 He was also very German, so he followed rules.
00:27:44.580 Rules are important.
00:27:45.600 You have to follow them.
00:27:46.800 even though you don't want to exactly so he's like eccentric but he does have a line i guess
00:27:52.320 so after 1871 he largely withdrew from politics and devoted himself to his personal creative
00:27:59.100 projects most famously his castles for which he personally approved every detail of the
00:28:04.060 architecture decoration and furnishing you would probably recognize some of these castles lana can
00:28:08.740 you explain why so um my favorite one of all is neuschwanstein which almost everybody will
00:28:14.660 recognize it's kind of the definitive fairy tale castle. It's how he got the name Merschenkönig,
00:28:20.180 the fairy tale king. But Neuschwanstein stands on top of a mountain. And at the bottom of the
00:28:27.080 mountain is a castle called Hohenschwangau. And it is the castle of the Swan Knights, basically.
00:28:34.620 And that's where he grew up. So he grew up down in Hohenschwangau, looking up at this mountain
00:28:40.040 and envisioning it as this giant like fairy tale castle like what he was going to build there one
00:28:46.400 day so eventually he did now it's important to note unlike a lot of kings he didn't like
00:28:51.860 drive his nation into poverty to do this cool thing he just used his own money like he was
00:28:57.560 again a good king just not a good king so uh Neuschwanstein was never actually finished it was
00:29:06.740 way too big of a project for anyone to do in their lifetime and no one was going to pick it up
00:29:10.420 afterwards but it is essentially a giant fanfic to Wagner and each of the rooms is about a different
00:29:19.540 Wagner song and he used to bring Wagner to the lake to look at it and talk about it and
00:29:25.520 he's such a fanboy he's such a fanboy and so he made two other castles not nearly as as famous as
00:29:33.660 as hohen spanga or as as neuschwanstein it was the linderhoff palace and that heaven teams
00:29:40.740 her and team say which i don't know as well but those they're kind of more generic they're not
00:29:46.440 nearly as fancy as as neuschwanstein but one of them is the the disney world castle is based on
00:29:52.480 one of those right there's any little castles based on neuschwanstein yeah and then linderhoff
00:29:57.860 Palace and um the Haren Chimsee is um they're a little bit more the traditional kind of
00:30:06.420 like Frenchy looking palace chateau looking things whereas Neuschwanstein is the full-on
00:30:13.680 swooping castles and everything um I have downstairs a picture of Neuschwanstein taken
00:30:21.260 by my grandfather from this very precarious bridge nearby. So it's that stereotypical picture that
00:30:28.120 you do see of Neuschwanstein and a little, um, ceramic, like not quite humble, but you know,
00:30:35.580 one of those, one of those, uh, figurines that my grandma had. And that was the thing that my
00:30:40.760 grandma bequeathed me because that's how obsessed I was with Neuschwanstein my whole life. Yeah.
00:30:46.120 And I've still never been there despite selling very well in Germany.
00:30:51.580 It's also, it continues to be like a major like tourist destination.
00:30:55.420 So like his legacy, Ludwig, was like very good for like Bavaria economically.
00:31:00.780 Yeah, he's still bringing in money to that area, to the areas that he did things like
00:31:05.640 even hundreds, 150 years later almost.
00:31:10.060 Yeah.
00:31:10.440 So my notes here say that these projects, the castles,
00:31:13.020 provided employment for many hundreds of local laborers and artisans and brought a considerable
00:31:17.060 flow of money to the relatively poor regions where his castles were built. So he was, as we have just
00:31:23.620 described, very completely, not fundamentally the personality type to make his advisors or
00:31:32.100 politicians happy as king. He was eventually deposed due to his behavior. Well, at this point,
00:31:39.820 he just kind of was just like peace out i'm just gonna hang out here and oversee castle construction
00:31:44.300 and they're like but you're the king and he's like i'm just gonna not meet with anyone ever
00:31:48.500 and just make castles well the christina of sweden but in a less interesting way yeah
00:31:53.540 much less dramatic way so anyway so he's eventually deposed and then well after he was
00:32:01.280 and this was kind of in this era like his like setting castles era is when he and cc were like
00:32:06.280 very close. Um, I'm not sure, I'm sure they saw each other, but they also wrote letters and they
00:32:10.720 were just like very kindred spirits. This is part of why I'm talking about him so much. Cause a lot
00:32:15.700 of what he, like his personality traits are similar to CC's and this is kind of like the family,
00:32:19.660 um, personality traits. And he was actually one of the very first people treated by a, um,
00:32:26.860 he was a neuroscientist at the time, but one of the very early psychiatrists, he, he actually did
00:32:32.340 have a professor that, that treated his mental illness as a mental illness. It's before Freud
00:32:42.020 developed psychoanalysis, but it's that same school of neuroscience that, that Freud was a
00:32:47.340 part of that turned him into a psychologist. And this is like, yeah. So CC's closeness with him,
00:32:54.380 I guess, but like the treatments he was pursuing for himself and stuff and just like other family
00:32:58.000 members like cc had a lifelong interest in mental health and treatment and symptoms and part of why
00:33:06.920 i think was because of being really close with him so just to wrap up the story of ludwig
00:33:12.500 i summarized this very briefly um so one day he went for a walk with a pal and then they were
00:33:18.920 both found dead in a body of water face up with no water in their lungs and signs of having been
00:33:23.660 may be strangled and everyone's like guess they drowned there's no water in their lungs but don't
00:33:29.040 worry about it so what i wrote down here is like he had not expressed suicidal feelings during this
00:33:36.480 era but there was a belief that maybe he died by suicide but maybe it might have been murder it
00:33:41.900 was just kind of a mysterious death in water and we're going to return later on to where that
00:33:48.900 happened in cece's life and how that affected her and now we're just going to take a break for a word
00:33:54.700 from our sponsors welcome to the realms of peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas
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00:35:08.060 like to play rpgs in the 80s and man it is so good to be back join the glass canon podcast as
00:35:13.700 we plunge into the shadow dark every thursday night at 8 p.m eastern on youtube.com slash
00:35:18.780 the glass canon with the podcast version dropping the next day see what everybody's talking about
00:35:24.160 and join us in the dark do you love disney do you love top 10 lists then you're going to love
00:35:34.100 our podcast, Disney Countdown. Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy,
00:35:39.460 aka Jarendel, and we are the hosts of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown. On every episode
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00:35:49.460 The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show,
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00:36:08.900 hi i'm whitney and i'm katie and we're the hosts of true crime campfire we set out to make a true
00:36:16.260 crime podcast we'd want to listen to we get right to the story we don't do a lot of extra talking 0.87
00:36:21.660 and when we do it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser murderer or scammer 0.85
00:36:26.220 you'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.99
00:36:29.140 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?
00:36:33.200 BTK and his awful poetry.
00:36:35.380 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.
00:36:39.120 We look for the stranger-than-fiction stories,
00:36:41.500 like the case of Patty James,
00:36:43.000 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.
00:36:45.880 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry
00:36:48.820 who convinced his town he'd won the lottery,
00:36:51.320 fleeced local businesses out of thousands,
00:36:53.500 and then became a romance scammer.
00:36:55.220 we've covered tons of cases you've never heard of cults scammers killers so come find your next
00:37:01.340 great binge listen to true crime campfire on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts
00:37:07.180 new episodes every friday and we're back there's a lot of trigger warnings here for um suicide
00:37:17.260 self-harm and other mental illnesses especially like eating disorders and such so definitely
00:37:23.940 definitely yeah and so when we get to those like sections um i will mark those in the show notes
00:37:29.600 so people can know like where those are going to come up and so you can skip past them if that is 0.54
00:37:33.660 what you want to do but yeah so cc maintained a lifelong interest in the mental ill and her
00:37:39.300 treatment later on in life um she was asked by her husband like we're going to talk very quickly
00:37:44.640 about who her husband is asked what she'd like to have as a gift for her saints day um she said
00:37:50.040 a fully equipped lunatic asylum would please me most. Another quote of hers is, have you not
00:37:55.740 noticed that in Shakespeare, the madmen are the only sensible ones? So Cece, that's a little
00:38:04.040 backstory just about her family. Cece herself. So 1853. So her aunt, Princess Sophia of Bavaria,
00:38:13.500 was the mother of Emperor Franz Joseph, who was 23 years old. And so it's time for Franz Joseph
00:38:19.320 to find a wife and Sophia Bavaria
00:38:21.300 was like I really want to marry my 0.97
00:38:23.340 son to a German 1.00
00:38:24.820 princess basically
00:38:27.160 for like matters of 0.98
00:38:29.220 state reasons and after going
00:38:31.420 through some other options that didn't work out
00:38:33.320 she was like well what about
00:38:35.540 so she's Ludovica's sister
00:38:37.240 Sophie and so
00:38:39.520 Cece's oldest sister
00:38:41.240 Helen who goes by Nene
00:38:43.200 I love the nicknames they have
00:38:45.280 by the way like not just because
00:38:47.020 Helena
00:38:48.020 Elena is her sister we're gonna call her Nene because apparently that's what she went by 0.91
00:38:55.380 I love the nicknames they're very cute um anyway so these two sisters the mom and the aunt Sophie
00:39:02.860 and Ludovica are like okay so let's like marry our children to each other because we're royals
00:39:07.200 and cousins marry cousins and that's what's up so um Nene was also thought of as the most beautiful
00:39:13.060 of the children. Ludovic and Nene were invited to come to Upper Austria to receive a formal
00:39:20.260 proposal of marriage from Franz Josef. And Cece, 15 years old at this time, came along too
00:39:27.200 because she had recently had fallen in love with somebody inappropriate and her parents were like,
00:39:34.800 no, you can't be with him. And she just fell into a depression, shut herself in her room.
00:39:38.480 and they're just crying all the time and they're like well you know she can just come be the
00:39:43.220 companion like maybe this trip will cheer her up and so they're all wearing black because someone
00:39:48.000 had recently died in their family so they left wearing black but then the plan was they're going
00:39:51.640 to arrive at the palace and change into their like not black clothes because that's the courtly
00:39:56.580 etiquette but the trip got complicated because ludovica had a migraine and so that interrupted
00:40:03.200 the journey something happened where their coach with their fancy dresses never arrived so when
00:40:08.140 they finally showed up, they were all still in black. And this was like a faux pas. Sophie we're
00:40:14.040 going to talk about, but she was like all about the etiquette of every little thing about court 0.99
00:40:20.920 life. But anyway, notably, this is part of the legend is that wearing all black made Nene with 1.00
00:40:26.340 her coloring. Like she looked fine. She was cute, but Cece with her like lighter hair and lighter 0.73
00:40:31.580 skin, like the black just like looked stunning on her. So suddenly Cece looked more beautiful
00:40:36.180 than her older sister partially because of black and then i because nene was the one who they were 1.00
00:40:44.760 going there to like arrange the marriage of she had like you know ladies may she had her hair all 1.00
00:40:48.660 done super fancy and everything cc i just read it like her hair was in long braids so i don't know
00:40:54.220 if it's literally like two long braids but she was um just mostly described as like looking very
00:40:59.500 childlike at this point because she was just like a young she was 15 she was still 15 like she would
00:41:05.860 she wouldn't have quite have been out yeah she wouldn't have been dressed or presented in a way
00:41:12.320 that was like more stiff like nene would have yeah but she had and this is what she really
00:41:17.520 cultivated later in her life a natural beauty so there's something with the father really trained 1.00
00:41:23.140 the kids especially the daughters to walk in this exceptionally graceful manner so just her
00:41:28.260 carriage like the way she stood the way she moved was so and she wasn't there trying to steal franz
00:41:34.220 joseph from her sister she was just there because she was sad about like being broken up with her
00:41:38.740 boyfriend but her natural gracefulness and beauty without it's like you don't know you're beautiful
00:41:44.680 but like she literally didn't and her the effect she had was quite startling she was also a lot 0.98
00:41:51.180 more charming like she had a lot more personality than her sister did yeah and she was a horsewoman
00:41:56.520 like equestrians have like balance and grace time not always but that's okay you don't have to be 1.00
00:42:05.340 but but equestrians like like cece had to have like she had to she had to have a lot of balance
00:42:11.880 or she wouldn't have stayed on the horse to have the stuff she did that's a really good point
00:42:15.460 because like her the way that she walks and moves is described like so many people mentioned that 0.98
00:42:21.240 and i think it has to do with what part of what made her such a good equestrian it's just she had
00:42:25.340 such, her body movement. So anyway, so she was more spirited. She was more interesting. 0.55
00:42:31.200 Nene was pious and quiet. She and Franz Joseph were not, they didn't hit it off, but he fell
00:42:37.480 for Cece immediately. So he defied his mother and informed her if he could not have Cece,
00:42:42.960 he would not marry at all. And five days later, their betrothal was officially announced. So this
00:42:49.140 is quite a plot twist for everyone involved cc being the younger sister like as much as she was 0.90
00:42:56.860 like a princess and she was educated and stuff nene was the one who's probably being more groomed
00:43:01.000 and taught things so like cc i don't think i have this in my notes but she like very quickly was
00:43:06.560 just being like okay we need to teach you like several different languages you don't know we
00:43:10.560 need to like teach you about austria as a country and its history and politics like there's just cc
00:43:15.000 was not um raised for this role at all so they got married eight months later so those eight
00:43:21.720 months for her like princess diaries makeover era where they're just like let's quickly teach
00:43:25.700 you everything that maybe you should the future empress needs to know so they got married when
00:43:32.480 she was 16 and he was 23 during the wedding festivities thousands lined vienna streets eager
00:43:37.680 to catch a glimpse of the new teenage empress and they were excited there hadn't been like a young
00:43:41.660 hot couple royal marriage for quite a while in this time and era a long time they were very
00:43:48.120 excited to have this in her glass coach on the way to her new home she was crying she cried
00:43:54.920 an awful lot she was overwhelmed and afraid because well this is anxiety
00:44:01.900 social anxiety combined with the fact that she i think she literally described herself as i forget
00:44:08.480 if I put this code in here, but she said like, she's moved from like the nursery to being the
00:44:12.740 empress. Like she was a young 15, like, because she had been raised like climbing trees and
00:44:19.500 riding horses and whatever, like she hadn't been brought up. Like other women we've talked about
00:44:23.840 on this podcast would have been who had, who were like really taught these, there's so much to learn. 0.99
00:44:29.640 There was a lot of rules to learn. She was shy and introverted. She didn't like change. 0.69
00:44:34.740 She was so close to her siblings. So suddenly it's like, okay, you're going to move to this
00:44:37.680 other place. You won't be, you won't be allowed to have a confidant anymore, let alone your
00:44:41.720 siblings. Like this is a stressful situation for anyone. And Cece is a person with, who's a very
00:44:48.860 sensitive person, like her social anxiety, like all this stuff like this was. And she also like
00:44:56.040 16 is about when you start doing all of that finishing training. Like she would have probably
00:45:02.080 been trained in all this if he'd been even a slight bit patient um the age difference makes
00:45:10.500 me uncomfortable but here we are and then there's his mother who who would have probably gotten along 1.00
00:45:18.120 gangbusters with quiet little nene but she couldn't control cece yeah yeah and it's like
00:45:26.120 we're gonna watch cece's like maturing and her development like as an adult which will be later
00:45:32.600 um because she's still 16 but like she starts off and it's like she's very emotional in a very
00:45:40.280 relatable way like other like um france joseph for instance who is older he's 23 and he had been
00:45:46.260 raised to be like stiff upper lip at all times like that was military yeah it's also very military
00:45:53.760 Yeah.
00:45:54.100 So he was raised to be that sort of person.
00:45:55.800 And this is like, this is a moment where I feel very much the Princess Diana comparison
00:45:59.820 where like she was, she was emotional.
00:46:02.540 And everyone was just like, that's gross.
00:46:03.960 That's bad.
00:46:04.620 That's weird.
00:46:05.280 Like, what's wrong with you?
00:46:06.480 You're like reacting to things with emotions.
00:46:08.300 And it's like, well, I'm sorry, but like I was raised to like have feelings and this
00:46:13.760 is not a place where you should have feelings.
00:46:16.400 And Cece was clearly very overwhelmed, not just from being away from her family and being
00:46:20.740 so young but also the rigid protocols and strict etiquette the people in Vienna were very mean to
00:46:25.940 her because they're just like who's this because I'm sure everyone wanted their daughter to marry
00:46:29.300 him instead of her but like she didn't it's like oh use that fork for that or whatever it's just
00:46:33.980 like people were mean to her there's so much better to learn and like unlike Bavaria Vienna is
00:46:39.920 very very rigid and rules it's for a very long time they pride their selves on they've prided
00:46:48.640 themselves on being the center of the universe basically in a way that only they thought nobody
00:46:53.760 else did but they thought that and and it's a it's it's a very it's almost as structured as
00:47:01.460 as victorian society in a way like there there are specific forks and specific spoons and like
00:47:08.120 how you eat things in the order you eat them and all of that stuff so like to be part of the
00:47:14.540 society that she would have been thrust into she had to perform in a specific way and to be
00:47:21.400 like not just to be entering the society is like the wife of some guy but to be like
00:47:25.200 the wife of friends joseph it's like there's so much ahead of that society yeah yeah and it's not
00:47:31.880 even just like this is this fork this is that fork it's just also like this is how you like
00:47:35.360 should like move your eyes like if you raise one eyebrow it means this like it's so much to learn
00:47:40.780 She was obviously very overwhelmed and she very immediately developed or began displaying some symptoms of extreme anxiety.
00:47:52.680 Like she became anxious and frightened whenever she had to descend a narrow staircase.
00:47:57.260 She had these coughing fits and that just go.
00:48:00.600 Anyway, she just started getting these like cough.
00:48:02.800 She had panic attacks.
00:48:05.360 I'm full on able to say this because this is how my panic attacks present.
00:48:09.140 um if you can't breathe you start coughing like if your lungs contract you start coughing yeah um
00:48:14.860 you start when I'm when my anxiety goes very high like I get afraid of things that I would
00:48:20.140 never normally be afraid of so like this again I'm not diagnosing her but this is the very
00:48:26.840 very typical definition of of panic attacks when when your anxiety gets too high and and your body
00:48:36.320 starts reacting to it. Yeah. So she absolutely starts manifesting this. And then we're going
00:48:40.960 to see this time and time again in the story. As soon as every time she leaves Vienna, all the 0.95
00:48:44.940 symptoms leave like, and they're like, oh, it's like, yeah, it's like she only has tuberculosis
00:48:51.800 when she's in Vienna. But when she leaves, she's like not coughing, quote unquote, anymore.
00:48:56.680 The trigger. Yeah. Your cortisol starts going down and your body starts responding better.
00:49:03.480 yeah so she was just like in terms of like this is not just like a personality that's not
00:49:10.700 doesn't go with this role but also it's just like her her health was like right away started
00:49:17.480 being affected by being thrust into this situation so her husband france joseph was desperately in
00:49:24.320 love with her but she was not like they they also they had some stuff in common like horses but like
00:49:31.500 he was such a military straightforward person and she was like a creative,
00:49:34.960 like free thinker. Like that was not the partner for her.
00:49:40.360 So this is, she had this person writes too great and urge for freedom.
00:49:45.400 So, I mean, like if you had grown up climbing trees and whatever she's,
00:49:49.000 and now it's just like,
00:49:49.700 all you can do is be in this castle and like,
00:49:54.160 be careful that you don't like raise your eyebrow wrong all the time.
00:49:58.820 Earl Sophie is going to like get mad. 0.53
00:50:01.500 like Sophie was not not a very good Bavarian she was a terrible Bavarian she was an excellent
00:50:08.880 Austrian she I forgot she even was Bavarian yeah so Sophie had acclimated herself very well to the 0.94
00:50:17.080 society and so I guess she was just like why can't you um and it's like it's not like Sophie like
00:50:21.560 this is this is a totally one of those one-sided nemesis situations where Cece resented Sophie for
00:50:27.200 trying to make her be like her and Sophie's like yeah she's an all right daughter-in-law like I
00:50:33.100 would have preferred her sister like it wasn't it wasn't both sides it was Sophie was following
00:50:39.140 the rules and very good at it and Cece hated the rules so Sophie was the rules yeah embodied all
00:50:45.360 of it so Cece was she had so aspirations and desires totally different from those of her
00:50:53.120 practical minded husband so she liked um languages she spoke english and french uh later we're going
00:51:00.420 to talk about this she learns hungarian and also greek she had a special interest in history
00:51:05.000 philosophy and literature um she wrote poetry um which sort of served as a secret diary and this
00:51:10.700 is where it's so annoying that people like oh her poems aren't good it's like they're not supposed
00:51:14.400 to be she's just like letting out her feelings she wrote poetry for her yeah exactly um her poetry
00:51:21.160 relates to her journeys she goes lots of trips we'll talk about um classical greek and romantic
00:51:25.880 themes and ironic commentary on the habsburg dynasty good for her making fun of them so it's
00:51:32.020 kind of like when um a a liberal studies major marries an engineer like he was he was a leader
00:51:39.560 of a country he he was very politically minded he he did his job and did his duty and
00:51:45.220 And Aladdin military is very well.
00:51:47.600 Like he was really good at that.
00:51:50.400 They had nothing in common, but he thought she was hot.
00:51:54.200 Yeah, that's the thing.
00:51:55.180 It's like he adored her.
00:51:56.240 He loved her.
00:51:56.900 And it's like, no, because he did it.
00:51:59.180 Like he thought she was very pretty
00:52:00.680 and he loved what he thought she was like,
00:52:03.640 but that's not what she was like.
00:52:05.660 A phrase just popped into my head
00:52:07.080 that I'm just going to say like,
00:52:08.280 he was a punk.
00:52:09.380 She did ballet.
00:52:10.440 What more can I say?
00:52:12.240 You know, like they're just not.
00:52:15.220 um but so cece and this is again where i'm seeing like in this element some princess diana stuff
00:52:21.600 um cece was popular popular with their subjects um the people really liked her they found her
00:52:27.940 relatable and kind of like fun do you remember like when jennifer lawrence like tripped and fell
00:52:32.360 at the oscars everyone's like relatable like people just liked cece the common people the
00:52:40.200 common people. Yeah, sorry, it's the common people. Mr. Koss did not, the nobles did not.
00:52:46.060 And then, and there's also the other thing is like the Austro, the Austrian empire,
00:52:50.520 which eventually will become the Austro-Hungarian empire, that's spoilers, but it's a very large
00:52:55.780 country. We're talking Czechoslovakia, parts of Poland, or the Adriatic Sea, most of Yugoslavia,
00:53:01.900 like this is, this is a huge place that, that has been very, very focused on this small group of
00:53:08.440 upper crust german speaking people for several hundred years and and that's how like she came
00:53:18.860 along and she's like hey i'm just gonna actually come to the hospital and help people are you
00:53:24.820 gonna give me something give me more resources yeah help people exactly exactly so like she um
00:53:31.440 she came in unexpectedly to visit ill people in hospitals and this made like that which again
00:53:39.140 it's like the princess diana like going to visit the aids patients thing where it's just like oh
00:53:42.640 my god it's not just like she's not just being like oh i care about the subject she's like no
00:53:46.680 like i want to come here i want to understand the health care system i want to come to like
00:53:51.060 the like quote lunatic asylums like she wanted she went to there's one thing she went to like
00:53:55.540 a cholera hospital which was like should you be should um today they're terrible places like we
00:54:03.580 acknowledge that they're horrible places but this was even today mental health care resources are 0.94
00:54:08.980 not something people invest in like this this was it's something like it was something they did it
00:54:16.440 at all to have dedicated care facilities so and this is the thing where like you go to the hospitals
00:54:23.000 And that's where you and I, and I think a lot of people listening are like, good, that's
00:54:27.100 like, good.
00:54:27.940 Like, you know, see what's going on. 0.93
00:54:29.540 But at the time they're like, she's crazy. 0.91
00:54:33.180 Why is she going to hospitals?
00:54:35.480 Like no one understood. 1.00
00:54:36.980 She didn't do it like the modern royals do it, which is like, like photo op, go to the 1.00
00:54:43.440 hospital, give them, give them check for a million dollars.
00:54:45.800 She's like, go to the hospital and say, Hey, what can I help?
00:54:48.180 How can I help?
00:54:49.300 Yeah.
00:54:49.660 What can, what can I do?
00:54:50.640 What do you need?
00:54:51.220 Like, let's go talk to some patients and say, hey, before you died, you met the Kaiser. 0.86
00:54:56.620 Yeah, no, like she was like, for real, like she exactly like it wasn't a PR stunt for her.
00:55:03.220 Like she actually was interested in the stuff at which people found insane.
00:55:06.700 Like that was that's I've seen some writings like of people at the time were just like, she's so eccentric.
00:55:11.380 She goes to hospitals where it's like it was a sign of her mental illness when that was just her being herself.
00:55:19.040 Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:20.280 and authentic right and this is again i'm gonna bring up princess diana because it's like this
00:55:25.780 is the strength and the modernity that she could have offered to this ruling family and they were
00:55:30.640 just like you're insane go practice which forks to use where it's like this is what she's bringing 0.62
00:55:36.700 to the plate like this is what she can bring to you and you're just being like that's insanity
00:55:42.060 like come and just be this like cookie cutter person let's see so i again i summarized this
00:55:49.260 it was in one of the biographies I read. So at one point, so a representative from a Protestant
00:55:53.380 faction came to her to ask permission to put a steeple on their church. This is a Catholic
00:55:58.040 country, of course. And she was like, wait, you can't put a steeple on your church. Like where
00:56:01.520 I grew up in Bavaria, that was cool. So no big deal. Do it. And this made people be like, oh,
00:56:06.800 she's like religiously tolerant, which she was. But this was, I don't know if she knew the
00:56:11.920 significance of this when she was like, yeah, sure. Put a steeple up. Like in Bavaria, that's
00:56:16.080 no big deal so she was just in Bavaria Protestant wasn't wasn't a threat like there was there was
00:56:22.100 no threat to Protestantism they'd been Catholic that long in what was essentially a Protestant
00:56:26.760 country that like a Protestant region that they're like yeah be Protestant just don't try to take
00:56:34.280 over yeah so she well this is the thing she does as she grows up she learns more about like the
00:56:43.000 political situation and stuff but at this point she's just like sure that makes sense to me
00:56:46.440 where it's like I don't know you know a new person coming into a workplace where they're
00:56:51.520 just like well why don't you just like do this and this and everyone's like wait could we just
00:56:55.360 do this and this like she was a fresh set of eyes her berries are very chill people like
00:57:01.600 in in the German I'm I'm northern German I'm farmer German I'm not Bavarian German so I come
00:57:10.260 from the very strict, very uptight parts of Germany on all sides of my family. But my husband
00:57:16.580 comes from the Bavarian parts of Germany and that they're like, they're like chill about things.
00:57:22.140 Yeah. So she's just like, sure. Makes sense to me. And it's like, anyway, so it's just,
00:57:30.200 it's wild to me. Although like, I, I get the context that she's in that all these things
00:57:34.520 she did to people are like, well, I guess she must be mentally unstable or it's like,
00:57:38.380 or she's just chill or she's just like she is but this is not it yeah or she has empathy like or
00:57:46.400 she like sees lower class people as humans she is mentally ill but these aren't examples of it 0.94
00:57:53.080 well and that's the thing like she didn't see being empress as a job again pulling from that 0.56
00:58:01.180 Bavarian background it wasn't a job it wasn't a thing she had to do it wasn't interesting to her
00:58:07.480 there was no value in it going to the hospitals and helping people out and doing good things with
00:58:13.120 her money and helping the people and like giving them permission to do things that just made sense
00:58:18.160 that that was way more interesting for her than being the empress yeah and they were like no your
00:58:25.560 job is to just like be very still and not have a personality please um and that just like
00:58:32.320 fundamentally did not. That's not how she operated. That's not how she could operate. 1.00
00:58:37.260 And trying to make that balance is a lot of what exacerbated a lot of her mental health things. 0.99
00:58:45.700 So the people liked her, but she wasn't trying to court their attention or their love. You're
00:58:51.500 right. She just wanted to do good things. So her lady-in-waiting later wrote that Cece said about
00:58:56.900 the attention that she got when she went out. They're curious. Whenever there's something to 0.67
00:59:00.200 see they come running for the monkey dancing at the hurdy-gurdy just as much for me so she was
00:59:05.380 she was sincere in the thing she did she wasn't like oh i'm gonna try to get their attention and
00:59:09.920 love so i can like get more power she was just like that was not that didn't occur to her she's
00:59:15.160 just like being her well she didn't need to like she didn't need to get attention she
00:59:19.700 more christina sweet christina sweden things it's like me being me is gonna get attention
00:59:26.100 yeah well but it's also the whole like you don't know your beautiful situation where it's just like
00:59:32.420 eventually she does understand the effect that her beauty has on people but at this point she's
00:59:39.120 just like i don't know people just look at me i don't know like she truly was just like being
00:59:44.280 herself and i think that was part of her charisma but she was just like this is just me i don't know
00:59:48.840 what can i tell you so she gave birth to their first child 10 months after the wedding it was
00:59:54.340 a daughter who Sophie named Sophia after herself without consulting Cece. Sophie took complete
01:00:01.720 charge of the baby, refusing to let Cece to breastfeed or otherwise care for her own child. 1.00
01:00:06.660 And this happens with all of her children, except maybe not the last one, which led to 1.00
01:00:10.940 health issues. Like when you're, you just gave birth, when you are a person who just gave birth
01:00:16.040 and you're not permitted to breastfeed, the milk like piles up in you. Like you can get
01:00:20.280 infections, like things are swollen. Like this is just like health-wise, not great. Also, she is,
01:00:25.160 you know, 16 and just had a baby. And this affected her very profoundly because she had
01:00:30.800 been close to her mother and close to her own siblings. She then had another child a year later,
01:00:35.920 a second daughter. Is it Gisela? Is that how you'd say that? Gisela. Gisela. There's a woman
01:00:43.460 at my university who is called Gisela. Otherwise I would have said like Gisela. Gisela. Okay.
01:00:50.280 So anyway, she was born a year later.
01:00:52.120 Sophie also took this baby away.
01:00:53.500 And at this point, there's the whole thing where she's like, oh, of course.
01:00:56.580 Everyone's like, she's not having a son.
01:00:58.960 Oh, no.
01:00:59.640 Crisis.
01:01:00.680 This made Sophie mad because the whole God.
01:01:05.900 I mean, we're going to get to all this stuff.
01:01:07.100 We're like, you need a son.
01:01:08.960 Yeah, your own job.
01:01:10.080 Like, because who's going to be the heir where it's like, we'll just wait to see what happens with that.
01:01:13.800 anyway one day she found cc found a pamphlet on her desk which was like a passage and there's
01:01:19.920 lines underlined about the natural destiny of a queen is to be given an heir to the throne it's
01:01:24.020 generally understood sophie left that there where it's like great thanks she knows some aggressive 0.73
01:01:28.900 notes from your mother-in-law that's what everybody needs like as though she's choosing 1.00
01:01:34.540 to have daughters on purpose like yeah i like she knows she is an expectation she should have a son 1.00
01:01:41.840 okay so i'm gonna stop there for this week of vulgar history podcast rest assured the
01:01:48.560 conversation keeps going and next week we're going to get into cc part two if you have thoughts or
01:01:54.500 feedback or suggestions of people you want to hear discussed on this podcast you can message me
01:01:58.760 at well if you go to the website vulgarhistory.com there's a form there where you can send me an
01:02:03.220 email or you can also message me on instagram at vulgar history pod we're also on twitter at
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01:02:15.500 history dot store it's vulgar history dot s-t-o-r-e and use code tits out for free u.s shipping
01:02:20.720 or tits out 10 for 10 off i don't know i don't know if what we'll be doing for cc merch maybe
01:02:27.340 that's what you can send me a message with suggestions about but at the moment we have got 0.68
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01:03:06.940 that i use for research are like out of print so those ones aren't there but newer stuff for sure
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01:04:06.080 Anyway, that's patreon.com slash Anne Foster writer.
01:04:08.940 And I'll talk to you all next week. 1.00
01:04:10.100 So until then, keep your pants on and your tits out. 0.99
01:04:15.000 Folk Your History is hosted, written and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Chris. 0.99
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