Vulgar History - Queen Charlotte Was Not As Cool As On Bridgerton, I'm Sorry

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:00:47.000 foster and this is a super special time sensitive episode i know we're in the middle of the season

00:00:52.420 about mary queen of scots there's something about mary queen of scots but when something

00:00:56.400 of this magnitude enters the pop cultural conversation, I need to pause and do a special

00:01:02.980 episode. And the thing that has entered the pop cultural conversation is the new Bridgerton

00:01:08.280 prequel spinoff series, Queen Charlotte, which just, at the time you're listening to this,

00:01:13.960 it's just dropped on Netflix this past weekend. So this past Friday, from when you're listening

00:01:19.560 to this, I recorded a special Vulgar History investigative report, where I was talking about

00:01:25.020 the whole thing, Queen Charlotte and race. Why of all the British royal people, do people

00:01:32.900 talk about her as maybe being a black person? We're not going to talk about that today.

00:01:38.520 There's an hour and a half episode. If you just scroll down wherever you're listening to this,

00:01:42.320 if you want to dive into that whole thing, I did a whole episode just about that because it's a

00:01:46.480 big, it's a nuanced conversation. It's controversial. I wanted to bring in experts.

00:01:50.520 It was my first investigative report, Lana. I'm excited for when you get to hear it.

00:01:55.020 Anyway, today we're talking about Queen Charlotte, who, facts and things that we can confirm,

00:02:01.760 we're not going to speculate about the skin color of her 15 times potential great-grandmother.

00:02:07.180 We're just talking about Queen Charlotte.

00:02:08.620 And when I say we, it's because Lana's here.

00:02:11.420 Lana Wood Johnson, everybody.

00:02:12.660 Welcome, Lana.

00:02:13.680 I'm here.

00:02:14.620 Okay.

00:02:15.040 Thank you for having me.

00:02:17.520 Lana Wood Johnson, who at this point, everyone knows as the co-host for the entire first half

00:02:22.360 of this season.

00:02:23.120 and i'm back again with things i actually know about back again surprise i had to bring lana

00:02:30.680 into this episode because there's as much as i read a biography of queen charlotte and i've read

00:02:36.820 stuff online i'll say my sources in a minute lana can you explain what you know about her

00:02:43.320 slash her husband slash the german-speaking people of this era i am i'm actually really

00:02:49.480 excited to get to know Charlotte better because, as I have mentioned before, I have a degree in

00:02:54.680 great man history, so I know quite a bit about George III. As often happens, I'm back with

00:03:01.420 someone with a mental illness, which is, again, George III. And very amusingly, my four times

00:03:09.740 great-grandparents were subjects of the Hanover's in Hanover.

00:03:17.640 Okay, can we take our first baby step into this whole situation? So Charlotte was a German-speaking

00:03:26.660 person. I forget how you told me to talk about this area that is now Germany, but before it was

00:03:31.480 not the Germanic-speaking areas. The Germanic-speaking. She is a subject of the Holy Roman

00:03:37.620 Empire. So by Habsburgs at this point. So while it's still the HRE, it's still Habsburgs. But 0.86

00:03:45.900 she is what you and I, when we're talking our way through history, like to refer to as one of the

00:03:52.620 Protestant princesses, where they had to go find good Protestant girls to marry. And those were

00:03:58.340 all Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire. And so she is from Mecklenburg. I've got that stuff.

00:04:05.480 but first, can you explain who the Hanover's are? Oh, the Hanover's slash where Hanover is.

00:04:10.840 It's a place also. It's a place. Um, the Hanover's are from Hanover and they are, um, Hanover is,

00:04:20.140 it's one of, it's actually a combination of a whole bunch of areas right now in modern Germany.

00:04:28.180 It's a portion of lower Saxony, which means nothing unless you know something about Germany.

00:04:34.120 so you know where roughly where netherlands is not at all no okay so germany kind of is the size

00:04:43.820 of wisconsin which again is going to be nothing to you because you're not american but it is

00:04:48.780 denmark's to the north netherlands is to the northwest keep getting i get i get i get turned

00:04:58.500 northwest and then belgium and then france and germany kind of like arcs around those and so

00:05:05.980 it's almost directly below it's it's to the very north below denmark there's there's one

00:05:12.520 area between that which is schleswig olstein which is my favorite one to say

00:05:17.480 and so it's kind of like in the middle landlocked near um do you remember the uh this is when you're

00:05:26.580 are going to remember. The Bremen Town Musicians. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Bremen is part of this area.

00:05:33.020 Okay. The Bremen Town Musicians, the area around that is where my ancestors come from.

00:05:38.760 So your ancestors were subjects of the Hanover rulers. Yes, of this very specific kingdom of

00:05:48.420 Hanover. And then before that, the electorate of Hanover, which is a whole bunch of combined

00:05:53.900 areas they didn't become a kingdom until after allison's favorite uh napoleon came through and

00:06:00.500 they shoved him off and then it was a kingdom i have a question about the holy roman empire

00:06:06.900 aka hre so was that um it confuses me because it's called the holy roman empire but it's not

00:06:14.800 italy is that or maybe it is but is the hre so germany right right so like the places like if i

00:06:21.940 think of modern-day germany effectively you know i'm sure the borders are slightly different but

00:06:25.540 the hre was kind of shaped like modern-day germany and it comprised all of these little duchies

00:06:32.040 and that's what the hre was no i mean they're not dutch they're not all dutchies some of them

00:06:38.940 are kingdoms and some of them are princedoms and some of them are bishoprics and some of them are

00:06:43.880 independent city states that are just the cities but it's like germany germany shaped a bunch of

00:06:51.060 little things a bunch of little places and that's the hre yeah it's kind of like the united states

00:06:57.200 today which is all of the states or even in canada with all the provinces but less so because i think

00:07:02.580 you guys aren't quite as independent as the united the united states are all like independent states

00:07:08.120 that work together to form a federal government that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't

00:07:12.140 um very much the same for the hre where they all come together and then they elect their um

00:07:20.640 their emperor that's why it's called the elector the elector yes i've seen that and they and they

00:07:27.080 somehow always managed to elect a hapsburg so sometimes the hre is just germany sometimes

00:07:33.440 it's germany and austria and hungary and sometimes it's germany austria hungary uh netherlands spain

00:07:39.620 mexico and all of these other places because hapsburg whatever but at the end of the day

00:07:47.580 the only people that really could elect the Holy Roman Emperor was those, that German speaking

00:07:53.280 area. And it's the, so we're going all the way back to Charlemagne. Charlemagne had three kids 0.80

00:08:01.140 split up Europe into three pieces. One of those pieces is the Holy Roman Empire. And so that's

00:08:07.760 like, that's the last vestige, one of the last really big vestiges of, of Charlemagne's reign

00:08:13.560 that did manage to continue on.

00:08:16.080 But it's like this weird combination of things

00:08:18.640 that are the same, but not the same.

00:08:20.800 And if you told them that they're all one country, 0.96

00:08:23.180 they would fight you. 0.99

00:08:24.160 Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.

00:08:26.740 And they ruled themselves very distinctly differently.

00:08:31.280 Many of the city-states had popular elections by landholders.

00:08:36.620 And landholders in those cases were merchants,

00:08:40.160 wealthy merchants.

00:08:40.920 They were merchant guild.

00:08:41.680 So it's a very strange, like you could have a city almost entirely surrounded by one of these elector holdings like Hanover. Bremen would be independent. Hamburg, where hamburgers came from, Hamburg would be independent.

00:09:00.380 And so they, but they could be completely surrounded by some ruling family, ruling families holdings, I would say.

00:09:09.740 I'm still just thinking about the hamburger thing. In my learning about Queen Charlotte, I also learned that Pomerania was a place, and that's where the dogs are from.

00:09:22.000 Yes, Poman. My French may be tragic, but my German is pretty reasonable. 1.00

00:09:28.200 I thought I knew so little about the history of this region, and yet the trickle-down effects affect my everyday life. Not that I have a Pomeranian.

00:09:38.520 Oh my gosh. Can I tell you, wait, I'm just going to tell you all my, the, the references I used

00:09:44.480 to prepare my notes for this. You've been preparing, I know your whole life. You don't

00:09:49.120 have to name everything. So the, the big, big, big resource that I used and thank God this book

00:09:54.480 exists. It was just published this year or last year. It's called the real queen Charlotte inside

00:09:58.820 the real Bridgerton court by Catherine Curzon. Thank God this book exists. It's a really good

00:10:05.040 book for me also slash for this podcast because we're talking we're going to be talking about

00:10:09.820 queen charlotte and a lot of stuff is happening in the world to her country at the same time but

00:10:16.900 she wasn't involved in it so we don't need to get into those things and this biography also doesn't

00:10:22.160 there's a part where she's just like there's discontent in the colonies but anyway her garden

00:10:26.600 and i'm like thank you for bypassing the american revolution entirely we will talk about it a bit

00:10:31.600 But this biography, like if you want to just read just about Charlotte, that is all this is. And it's really good for that reason, because Charlotte wasn't involved in the military and now there is this book. And then just getting some like fun facts, like just verifying a few things. One of the places I looked at was, oh, I don't know if I wrote it down, but it was like the Pomeranian. I know I looked at it's like the official Pomeranian Fanciers Association or whatever. I didn't get the fact I wanted it from there. But anyway, I got some stuff from a website called PetPom.com. They have an article about famous Pomeranians.

00:11:01.600 And then I got some interesting stuff from an article from Vogue.UK, from the historicroyalpalaces.org, like hrp.org, because there's various palaces we'll be talking about in this.

00:11:13.500 A website called cheatsheet.com.

00:11:15.640 That was an article called Queen Charlotte really did love dogs. 0.95

00:11:18.060 I was really getting into the Pomeranians of it all.

00:11:20.460 Can't wait till we get to that part of the story.

00:11:22.980 Screenrant.com had an article about Queen Charlotte and Mozart, which we'll get into.

00:11:27.260 And then there was an article from The Guardian about the royal menagerie.

00:11:32.260 Anyway, so the biography is really good.

00:11:35.320 It's a quick read as well, because we'll see how long this episode takes, because it's

00:11:39.720 me and Lana talking.

00:11:41.020 So, you know, buckle up.

00:11:42.720 We'll do our best.

00:11:43.860 But here's the thing.

00:11:45.120 Queen Charlotte is not a person I would ever have covered on this podcast, because her

00:11:51.440 life is kind of like she married well. 0.70

00:11:53.420 So weird stuff happened, obviously, but it's like...

00:11:57.260 It's a, it's not the sort of story I tend to tell. So it's interesting to get into it.

00:12:01.520 But it does make for a much shorter biography than one might find of Catherine Domenici,

00:12:05.840 Mary Queen of Scots, even Lola Montez, like Queen Charlotte's, like she did everything

00:12:11.440 correctly. And that's not usually a vulgar history type story.

00:12:16.140 She was a very good girl.

00:12:17.960 That's the thing. Can I read you this? Okay. So we're talking about this because there's

00:12:21.760 the Netflix show, which by this point, if you're going to watch it, I'm assuming you've already

00:12:24.960 watched it because it all came out this past weekend.

00:12:27.700 Lana and I have not watched it because

00:12:29.060 it has not been released yet, so

00:12:30.680 I don't know which characters are on.

00:12:33.660 So,

00:12:34.940 Bridgerton exists, the TV show.

00:12:37.720 It's based on the books by Julia

00:12:39.100 Quinn. The books by Julia Quinn, Queen

00:12:41.040 Charlotte, is not in those books.

00:12:42.980 But then because they're doing this prequel,

00:12:44.980 so just like this week,

00:12:46.940 I think like yesterday, as of the time you're listening

00:12:49.060 to this, a new book was published, written by

00:12:51.120 Julia Quinn with Shonda Rhimes

00:12:52.860 that's called Queen Charlotte.

00:12:54.960 So I assume it tells the same story as what the TV show tells.

00:12:58.080 So it's a new book, but it's kind of like his Bridgerton, comma, the TV show has black people in it and other people of color.

00:13:06.680 Bridgerton, comma, the books by Julia Quinn don't.

00:13:10.500 So that's interesting.

00:13:11.840 But here I want to read you.

00:13:12.760 This is from the description of the book Queen Charlotte by Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhimes, which I presume is also the same thing that happens in the show, which I'll just read this, Lana, and then you can react.

00:13:23.200 born a german princess charlotte of mecklenburg strelitz was beautiful headstrong and fiercely

00:13:29.100 intelligent not precisely the attributes the british court had been seeking in the spells

00:13:33.580 for the young king george iii but her fire and independence were exactly what she needed

00:13:38.420 because george had secrets secrets with the potential to shake the very foundations of the

00:13:43.280 monarchy i mean it sounds like her daughter-in-law not her but

00:13:48.020 yeah it's yeah i read this description it's like she didn't have the attributes the british court

00:13:57.580 had been seeking in a spouse for the young king george the third whereas i'm going to describe

00:14:00.860 to you lana she had exactly the attributes they wanted which was like a basic submissive person 0.89

00:14:06.700 with no personality is what they wanted and that is what she was like irl they want our girl they 0.90

00:14:12.340 don't want they don't want charlotte they actually want a story about our girl they that's the thing

00:14:17.440 you know what shonda rhymes do a caroline of brunswick series can you imagine like

00:14:26.360 tragedy the tragedy of not having caroline of brunswick in bridgerton like could you imagine

00:14:34.900 the chaos she would cause if she just because it's the right time period yeah if she just like

00:14:41.300 if you're just having some sort of like bridgerton-esque you know swoon worthy love story 0.97

00:14:44.720 and then Caroline Brunswick just comes in like, 1.00

00:14:46.400 hey, bitches, I just came back from my Mediterranean cruise 1.00

00:14:48.960 with my married lover riding on camels. 0.99

00:14:52.100 Like the people of London are literally rioting

00:14:54.280 and murdering each other.

00:14:55.300 They love me so much. 0.79

00:14:56.620 Like that's a show, Shonda Rhimes.

00:14:59.040 That's a show.

00:15:00.220 That's also Vulgar History, season one, episode one.

00:15:03.020 If you want to remember.

00:15:05.180 The origin of this podcast.

00:15:06.980 The origin of this podcast was me being like Lana.

00:15:09.200 I'm reading this biography of Caroline Brunswick.

00:15:11.080 She's amazing.

00:15:11.580 Just sending Lana screencaps of facts about Caroline Brunswick.

00:15:14.380 Like, and she's very like, Caroline is very much the muse of this podcast.

00:15:18.100 So it's kind of weird to be talking about Charlotte, who was her mother-in-law slash

00:15:21.660 enemy.

00:15:22.960 Her, but like not enemy, because her enemy was her husband.

00:15:26.880 Like fair.

00:15:27.600 Yeah.

00:15:27.800 Her mother-in-law was kind of like, like, yeah, no, I don't know if that's a good idea.

00:15:32.700 Like she wasn't even a terrible mother-in-law.

00:15:35.540 Like, yeah, she was, she was like a mildly disapproving mother-in-law.

00:15:40.640 she was very much like oh we're gonna you know what let's just get into it there's so many things

00:15:45.720 also there's so many things there's so many things we're going to talk about in this episode and in

00:15:49.360 this story that are so resonant in today's world having just experienced and again Lana and I are

00:15:55.380 recording this a week ago the coronation of King Charles III I saw an article about how historically

00:16:02.600 like the royal family has maybe never like they're extremely unpopular right now the British royal

00:16:06.800 family and i and so i'm reading in this about like the coronation of very like these events are

00:16:13.020 happening and the people of london i'm just like this the people of london spiritually are similar

00:16:16.780 to the people of the commonwealth now where they're just kind of like get these guys out of

00:16:21.080 there like i don't know the vibes are like oddly prescient yeah the the hanovers were not super

00:16:27.860 popular ever they were not they were not popular okay but first we're gonna but this is a story of

00:16:36.340 initially charlotte who is born sophia charlotte so she was born may 19th 1744 she was the eighth

00:16:44.660 child and fifth daughter of duke charl oh my gosh what's what's charles in german is it charles

00:16:52.160 why do you do this to me i don't know well it's just i wrote down these names and they're all

00:16:56.100 like a lot of these are like because i was like lana everyone's called george and you're like i

00:17:00.920 think you mean Georg. Georg. And Friedrich. Right. Anyway, so these are English versions

00:17:07.160 of German names. So he's Duke Charles Louis Friedrich of Mecklenburg is her dad. He's the

00:17:13.040 prince of, oh my gosh, Miro. And his wife is Princess Elizabeth Albertine of Saxe Hildberghausen.

00:17:22.260 I'm going to be pronouncing German words in Lana. Please correct me every time

00:17:25.840 on behalf of your people. I mean, sometimes it's just fun to hear you say it.

00:17:30.920 I never studied German in school. I only know French vaguely. I've recently developed a

00:17:37.480 pretty bad Australian accent, and that's the limit of what my accent work. Okay,

00:17:44.160 so she's born Sophia Charlotte. Her official title was Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,

00:17:49.720 and Mecklenburg-Strelitz, or Mecklenburg, I guess, is a small North German duchy

00:17:55.200 in the Holy Roman Empire. HRE. So it is to the west of Hanover, very close to Prussia,

00:18:03.040 which is gonna come up. I know. I just know it. I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. So the thing 0.69

00:18:09.060 about, okay, like we're going to talk about this, but Mecklenburg was kind of like, no one cared

00:18:15.400 and that was good for them. So her parents were okay parents. This is again, it's like, this is

00:18:21.060 not the sort of story I tell in this podcast. Her parents personally oversaw her and her

00:18:25.000 siblings' education. And the focus of this education was two things, faith, e.g. Lutheranism,

00:18:32.540 Christianity, and family. So it was a very, that was the focus that was, and Charlotte will see

00:18:38.760 this throughout her whole life. Those two things are very important to her. Which is also Lutheranism.

00:18:42.840 So yeah, she was also, but it's like faith and family, but it's not like she was taught,

00:18:48.600 you know academic subjects she was oh that's part of lutheranism you you have to learn how to speak

00:18:54.900 read and speak german like read german well in order to read the bible to have the proper faith

00:19:00.620 so education is a very key part of that and so being good lutheran she would have to be properly

00:19:06.280 educated that's the thing so in um not in the katherine curzon biography like she really

00:19:11.500 explained what her education was like but when you just kind of like look do an internet search

00:19:15.120 about charlotte there's a phrase that comes up a lot that's like that makes it sound like she was

00:19:19.660 not well educated it says like she was educated well enough it's always phrased and it's kind of

00:19:24.460 like i think that's just the english people trying to find a wife who but she had like a good

00:19:29.820 education again of the women we've talked about on this podcast she wasn't ignored no no she was 0.77

00:19:36.900 she wasn't ignored no she was given education so she's especially wasn't gonna become a doctor

00:19:42.640 she was going she and like she she knew enough to do things and be conversant as a human being

00:19:49.900 but she wasn't you also have to keep in mind at the time we're talking about Jane Austen era kind 0.99

00:19:55.440 of what's properly educated well does she does she do embroidery does she do art and she wouldn't be

00:20:02.100 educated in those things those aren't useful things she'd be educated and yeah so her big

00:20:07.600 interest was science which i find interesting you know i'm all for a girl interested in stem

00:20:13.460 subjects she was really interested in science and she's throughout her life she was especially

00:20:18.040 interested in botany which is going to come up she was also really interested in mineralogy

00:20:22.240 which were two of the things that the tutor that she had especially knew a lot about so that worked

00:20:27.140 out well you mentioned jane austen times and that reminded me i just want to see like just to put her

00:20:31.240 in a place in time i'm looking at my master spreadsheet of when all the people from this

00:20:35.020 podcasts were all born. So she was born in 1744. So that is, she's right smack in the middle of

00:20:42.960 like, um, Le Chevalier d'Anne was born in 1728. Charles Ignatius Sancho, 1729. John de Lamont,

00:20:51.840 1756. So it's really, she's a bit younger than, there's about a 10 year age gap between her and

00:21:00.280 Marie Antoinette, but like, that's the era of, let me see, Mary Shelley, 1797.

00:21:05.180 That was later on.

00:21:06.220 So this is proto-Jane Austen.

00:21:08.380 This is like, yeah, it's, it's before, but like the, the requirements of English knowledge,

00:21:14.480 like that didn't, that wasn't like a brand new thing under her son's regency.

00:21:21.720 No, no.

00:21:22.920 So she, yeah, so she was related in science.

00:21:25.800 She was not taught English because why would she, what, no one, why, why, why, why, why,

00:21:30.280 Who could ever imagine she would need to know that language? And her tutor didn't speak English

00:21:34.520 because why would he? They were fine. They were in the HRE. I've been speaking German.

00:21:40.020 We're good. Yeah. Her education is sometimes described as subpar, but she's taught European

00:21:44.540 literature, history, geography, as well as arts and scientists. Her tutor had one of the best

00:21:49.260 fossil collections in Europe, which is a fun fact. So of course she was interested in

00:21:55.460 mineralogy and things. Tudor just sounds like an interesting person. When she grew up,

00:22:01.420 Charlotte would become the patron of a Swiss geologist. So she has some science interests,

00:22:06.000 which is interesting. Anyway, her childhood, she was also, of course, taught household management

00:22:10.860 because that's what girls were taught. So botany, needlework, and music, she played the harpsichord

00:22:16.860 and sang. She took regular trips to visit the poor of the duchy. So the philanthropy, can you

00:22:22.800 Tell me about Lutheranism and giving to the poor, because this is like a big thing in her life.

00:22:27.760 I mean, it's so it's part Lutheranism and part German ruling theory is that like you just if you give away to the poor people and show that you're doing social work, social services, the people will like you more and they're less likely to try to overthrow you or try to join the other group. 0.75

00:22:49.420 This ended up not working so great in laborers' favor when the Prussians finally take over everybody. 0.61

00:22:58.720 It's also during the middle of the Second Industrial Revolution and labor uprisings. 0.83

00:23:03.380 And so they ended up working in these weird labor packages that is really nicely baked into the concept of the German nation.

00:23:14.660 but it was that same give them just enough so that they look like we're giving them enough

00:23:21.560 and so that's it is that it's a it's a ruling philosophy in germany

00:23:26.740 in in those german duchies at the time no but that's interesting to know then that that's kind

00:23:31.980 of where it's coming from because in her case it seems like it was a genuine she liked helping

00:23:37.460 people yeah like she she seemed like a pretty genuine person marie antoinette was ruled in the

00:23:44.740 the high hapsburg houses she was never taught to care about anybody else because all of the taking

00:23:50.580 care of the common people was done at the charlotte's dad's level yeah the hanover level

00:23:57.340 so that like keeping keeping riots down didn't happen at the very high level so marie antoinette

00:24:04.780 I never had that modeled for her, but Charlotte absolutely did.

00:24:08.440 Yeah. And throughout her life, we see that she like was, she really liked it.

00:24:12.780 It's sort of like, um, who's the one in little women, Beth, the one who's just like, I'm going to take these like cakes over to the like poor starving people and then like die.

00:24:23.560 Like Charlotte and her sister and her family, it seems like they were just always kind of like giving to the poor in this kind of like genuine way.

00:24:30.780 anyway so this is how she grew up it's sort of like a very humble considering what's going on

00:24:37.220 like considering that she's like the daughter of the duke and stuff but it was like an unambitious

00:24:43.160 domestic childhood and she valued that and then she brought that to her later life because she

00:24:51.300 felt that it was a good childhood for her did it go well no like when she tried to bring this to 0.96

00:24:55.800 her shitty children but she was she was not a natural leader like that's the thing that 0.97

00:25:01.680 bridgerton kind of messes with is like it makes her look like she's the one who's really in 1.00

00:25:06.600 charge during the regency but she like charlotte is not the natural step in and take power kind 0.99

00:25:13.180 of person no she's like just the nice wife the nice mom yeah when she's very happy with that

00:25:20.480 role she was very happy with that role yeah there's a part where she like sort of more

00:25:24.360 power was thrust upon her and she was like very uncomfortable with that which again unlike most

00:25:29.720 people we talk about on this podcast so her father died when she was eight years old and then her

00:25:34.660 uncle who was the reigning duke died without sons so her brother became the new duke and how do you

00:25:40.500 pronounce this name adolphus frederick the fourth adolphus okay adolphus so anyway so her brother

00:25:47.500 adolphus becomes the new duke i know that one of her brothers is a character in the new queen

00:25:53.760 Charlotte show, which again, has not aired at the time of recording this. I think it's her other

00:25:57.740 brother. I'm pretty sure they're not putting a black man on this show and calling him Adolphus.

00:26:02.720 Maybe they are. I think it's her brother Charles is on the show.

00:26:06.320 Which would be Carl. I did look that up.

00:26:08.240 Carl. Okay. Carl. Yes. Thank you. Of course. So nice. So her brother became the new Duke,

00:26:13.000 age 14. Their mother was his regent. And so the family moved from Miro to Neustrelitz,

00:26:18.600 the capital of mecklenburg streelitz and she honestly her life didn't change very much

00:26:25.000 she continued living like this quite sheltered life um interestingly her mother like this is

00:26:31.640 like the the passiveness of so many people in the story is just very unfamiliar to me and the people

00:26:38.840 i usually read about so unlike any mother i've ever talked about on the show her mother didn't

00:26:43.420 have ambition for her daughters to marry well. She's like, they're just going to become nuns, 1.00

00:26:48.860 I guess. So they're all just like vibing. They're going to marry somebody next door.

00:26:53.580 They're going to be a duchess. It'll be fine. Yeah. No, she was like literally going to become

00:26:58.540 a nun, Charlotte, until she was chosen by George. Anyway, so like they're all just vibing. The

00:27:03.760 mother wasn't like ambitious for them. Like there's just a lack of scheming and drama in 1.00

00:27:08.560 this court just kind of like a nice time it's like the most similar thing i can think of is

00:27:13.880 um empress cc's childhood riding horses in bavaria just kind of like a nice very similar

00:27:19.980 time frame too like well not really but like it's it's decade it's it's a century off but

00:27:26.280 it's basically the same thing like that's what it was like being lower german noble

00:27:30.940 nobility no exactly like same part of the world ish and yeah you just you're just kind of like

00:27:37.300 having a nice time and then uh the seven years war happened we're not going to get into that

00:27:42.880 when that came up in the book i was like oh no not the seven years war i need lana to explain

00:27:47.160 it to me again but i was like no i don't because actually it didn't impact her very much so moving

00:27:51.840 on like there were wars and it happened around them but it wasn't with them so they didn't really

00:27:58.460 care that that's the part of the story where they're just kind of like they're just kind of

00:28:02.920 there, but just having a nice time looking at fossil collections. Okay. But here's the thing

00:28:08.940 that happened. I'm going to say this is not true, but here's what the legend is. So this letter does

00:28:14.560 exist, written by somebody that says like, asking Friedrich the Great to please withdraw his

00:28:21.040 soldiers from Mecklenburg-Streelitz. It's written by a young woman and legend later on would claim

00:28:28.220 that it was Charlotte who wrote this letter. And so allegedly, the letter was written by her

00:28:33.660 to Friedrich the Great. And then allegedly, Friedrich the Great showed it to his mother,

00:28:37.940 Augusta, the Dowager Princess of Wales, who's the mother of George III. And allegedly,

00:28:42.380 she then showed it to her husband, George II. Then he allegedly showed it to his grandson,

00:28:47.780 George III. And then George III read the letter and was like, wow, what a nice person wrote this

00:28:53.120 letter. I need to find her. And in the manner of Cinderella, he tried to find who is the nice

00:28:57.740 young lady who wrote this letter advocating for peace but in fact charlotte did not write this 0.81

00:29:02.920 letter but frederick is my my favorite messy gay as opposed to james which is my least favorite 0.56

00:29:10.420 messy gay frederick the great well i need to learn about him later anyway but this brings us to them

00:29:16.560 his family so george the third so just to recap so in other episodes we've talked about there was 0.72

00:29:25.620 Mary, Queen of Scots. She had a son called James and he was the first Stuart monarch of

00:29:31.700 England. Later it would become of Great Britain. Anyway, so James had a son, Charles, and then

00:29:38.660 there was the next James and then the next Charles. No, there's two Jameses, two Charleses.

00:29:45.160 It goes James, Charles, Charles, James. James, Charles, Charles, James.

00:29:49.980 Yeah. And they're bookended. Yeah. And the second Charles is the one who I

00:29:53.680 lust after. And then after them, then William and Mary took over from James because the second

00:30:02.180 James was becoming too Catholic. And then William and Mary did not have children. Mary died, 0.57

00:30:06.880 then William died. So then Anne took over. And that's Queen Anne I from The Favourite,

00:30:10.800 who I've talked about on the podcast before. She had all of the children and they all died.

00:30:15.900 And then they're like, fuck, who's going to be the new ruler of what was now called Great Britain? 0.99

00:30:20.660 And so they're looking on the family tree and they're just like, we need to find someone who is descended from somebody. 0.99

00:30:26.760 We need to find a relation that is Protestant.

00:30:30.620 The key word here is Protestant.

00:30:33.380 And so where that wound up was they looked at, so James, the sixth slash first.

00:30:37.660 So Mary Queen of Scott's son, James, had a daughter called Elizabeth.

00:30:40.640 And Elizabeth had several children.

00:30:42.940 And that leads us to effectively George I.

00:30:47.040 That's where George I came from.

00:30:48.460 he was a german person who spoke german and he almost never went to england he was just he was a

00:30:54.060 german guy in living in a german-speaking place and he almost never went to england and this is

00:31:01.760 where like the the concept of a constitutional monarchy really takes hold where you can they

00:31:10.320 were able to run the entire country without a monarch and they start in parliament really like

00:31:16.340 that because george just didn't want to go there interestingly george the first was i believe the 0.95

00:31:21.160 king who was the king during the mary toft um rabbit parts being pulled out of the vagina story 0.96

00:31:27.680 because it was his doctor his like dirtbag doctor who made that all worse anyway so that's george 0.85

00:31:34.460 the first that's where he came from so then after him the next king was his son george the second

00:31:39.260 who was also born in a german-speaking place and kind of didn't like no he did want to be king

00:31:45.860 He really wanted to be king.

00:31:49.420 Gautier II really liked being king, but they wouldn't let him anymore.

00:31:54.520 So he went back to be king in Hanover because Hanover would let him be very ruler-y.

00:32:01.060 And parliament is like, you're not even English.

00:32:03.840 Like, what do you think you can do?

00:32:05.820 We're better than you.

00:32:07.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:32:07.520 Go back to Germany. 0.99

00:32:09.000 And he did.

00:32:09.820 So his oldest son was Friedrich.

00:32:11.800 There's a lot of Georges and a lot of Friedrichs in the story.

00:32:15.080 Friedrich died.

00:32:16.420 There was never a king of England called Friedrich.

00:32:19.220 He would have taken a king's name, but yeah. 0.99

00:32:21.560 Oh, true.

00:32:21.960 Yeah.

00:32:22.600 Friedrich died.

00:32:23.060 So then Friedrich was the father of George III, who is Charlotte's husband-to-be.

00:32:30.760 So George became heir to the throne when he was 12 years old.

00:32:34.400 That's when his father died.

00:32:35.440 So he was heir to the throne, but not the king yet.

00:32:37.620 And George III was the first of the Hanover king Georges to be born in England.

00:32:42.600 And he, like English, I think was like one of his first languages.

00:32:45.840 Like he was the first like English Hanover king.

00:32:48.760 He was really English too.

00:32:50.140 Like he was raised English.

00:32:52.100 He went to Hanover a few times, but he was, he was a true Englishman.

00:32:57.220 Yeah.

00:32:57.660 And so his mother, it was called, is Augusta, the Dowager Princess of Wales, because she'd

00:33:03.980 been married to Friedrich.

00:33:05.300 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:05.680 So Augusta was never Dowager Queen because Friedrich was never king.

00:33:08.300 So his mother, Augusta, is a character in this story that I'm telling, and also a character

00:33:12.520 on the Netflix show played by Michelle Fairley,

00:33:14.960 who is Catelyn Stark on Game of Thrones.

00:33:17.000 And I assume that the show is going to have her 0.99

00:33:19.180 be like a antagonist to Charlotte.

00:33:22.340 So George, so he wasn't the king yet,

00:33:25.340 but basically they're like,

00:33:27.140 I put that she chose as his regent,

00:33:28.700 but basically she just has a lackey.

00:33:31.020 I guess this is a lackey who is called Jon Stewart,

00:33:33.520 the third Earl of Butte.

00:33:35.720 And there are so many, oh my gosh, Lana.

00:33:38.840 So just reading the Mary Queen of Scots stuff,

00:33:40.580 I was just looking at some Scotland,

00:33:41.700 Like everyone is called Stuart.

00:33:44.080 Like everyone's last name is Stuart.

00:33:46.260 You can't.

00:33:47.240 Stuart was a very powerful clan and they were the king clan.

00:33:50.720 So all of the stories talk mostly about the stewards,

00:33:53.820 but there are a whole bunch of clans and they have lots of different names.

00:33:59.220 They just don't get talked about.

00:34:01.660 Oh my gosh.

00:34:02.480 There's a part in not this episode at all,

00:34:04.940 but anyway,

00:34:05.420 one of the Mary Queen of Scots where I was just like,

00:34:06.980 thank God.

00:34:07.940 Like the,

00:34:08.360 the Stuart start,

00:34:09.280 there's a guy called Esme.

00:34:10.780 He calls his son Ludovic.

00:34:12.180 I was just like, thank you.

00:34:13.480 Thank you.

00:34:14.200 Names that are not.

00:34:15.180 Use the name.

00:34:16.020 James, thank you.

00:34:17.180 In this story, they're all called George.

00:34:19.180 But Augusta is an important person.

00:34:21.580 She is George's mom.

00:34:23.200 And her right-hand man is John Stewart, the third Earl of Bute, who is later the prime minister.

00:34:28.480 And they're both going to recur.

00:34:29.980 They're always kind of a team, those two together.

00:34:32.000 So that's where power comes back to the nobility, the kings, in a way, is their influence,

00:34:39.240 their ability to influence the prime ministers yes exactly exactly so the situation was like

00:34:45.400 okay george needs to marry somebody and unlike in queen charlotte the book

00:34:49.800 what anyway he wanted someone who's very faith based he wanted somebody who was protestant

00:34:58.600 someone who like took the bible very seriously he wanted someone who is very quiet who didn't

00:35:04.420 have any political convictions. Anyway, George was, he was 22 when he became king because his

00:35:11.060 grandfather died. And Augusta was like, Oh, I found you a nice wife. And he's like, No,

00:35:15.520 I'm going to choose my own bride. So like, that's correct. And the Queen Charlotte story that he 1.00

00:35:19.280 chooses his own bride. Anyway, he wanted to choose his own bride. Augusta was mad about it. But he

00:35:25.480 was like, but he wasn't like, I need to choose my own bride for love reasons. He's like, I need to

00:35:29.040 She was my own bride because she has to be like the most boring, blank slate imaginable, which is a bit like, see, this is where I'm like, oh, this kind of reminds me of when Charles married Diana in the first place.

00:35:42.600 Diana seemed like, you know, pretty person who was young and maybe could be easily influenced and not.

00:35:50.980 Anyway, obviously they were wrong about Diana.

00:35:53.500 They weren't wrong about Charlotte.

00:35:54.640 They were not wrong about Charlotte.

00:35:55.780 Charlotte was that.

00:35:57.000 She did not have any hidden levels. She was that. But first George's first choice was he wanted to marry someone called Sarah Lennox. But she was a non-royal. And even though he wanted to choose his own bride, everyone's like, you can't marry a non-royal. And also they're like, you need to marry a German princess.

00:36:12.760 So Augusta and Butte sent a guy around Germany to try and find like a Protestant young woman who was a Protestant young woman who was German and didn't care about politics and was fertile.

00:36:25.760 And that was their checklist, which is different from what the book said.

00:36:33.660 Anyway, so Charlotte.

00:36:35.320 so charlotte was in fact she and her family were so low-key and so unambitious that her mother

00:36:41.500 didn't even she didn't put her in the running she didn't think she was in the running like

00:36:47.020 charlotte like plans were underway to admit charlotte into a convent to be a nun the issue

00:36:55.060 there was that charlotte was like no but that nunnery enjoys music that's i it's a sin that

00:37:03.140 not those nuns are having too much fun she's such a good lutheran i wanted to be a lutheran nun when

00:37:09.240 i was younger too because i didn't understand what my orientation was at that point so

00:37:15.620 but i bet they didn't exist anymore they got rid of the concept of lutheran nuns yeah so she was

00:37:23.100 just like i don't know i feel like she was like i don't want to go to that party convent i feel

00:37:27.300 like it was not a party convent but she was so lutheran she was just like the one of those

00:37:31.900 people smiled that's too they're whatever i feel like i i know immediately how she grew up at this

00:37:37.960 point like i i feel it viscerally inside of my soul yeah because i was that kid i was that 17

00:37:44.820 year old i don't want to go to that party convent i'm gonna go to a convent where i can really love

00:37:51.020 god yeah yeah so like this is the vibe we're talking about and like spoilers for everything

00:37:57.460 This vibe does not change. 1.00

00:37:59.540 So her mother didn't even think like, 1.00

00:38:03.440 oh, let's like throw her hat in the ring. 1.00

00:38:04.900 No, her mother's like, no, that's whatever. 0.99

00:38:07.320 In fact, she was so not being considered

00:38:09.420 that Augusta's like agent in Germany

00:38:12.180 hadn't even sent over a portrait of her

00:38:13.820 as a potential candidate 0.82

00:38:14.700 because she was so low under the radar.

00:38:17.720 But her name was like the last name on a list.

00:38:20.000 And it's like, wait, who's this one?

00:38:21.220 It's like when you're watching any reality show,

00:38:24.060 Survivor or anything, which I'm currently watching.

00:38:26.860 There's a point in the season where somebody shows up and I'm like, wait, is that a new character?

00:38:31.160 It's inevitably a young woman.

00:38:33.260 I'm like, has that young woman done the show these last 12 episodes?

00:38:36.280 Why have I never seen her before?

00:38:38.440 Like, that's Charlotte.

00:38:39.540 She's just kind of like, oh, wait, is that person?

00:38:42.060 Who's that?

00:38:42.860 He was looking for someone so low-key that everyone else thought she was low-key. 0.82

00:38:47.860 Yeah.

00:38:48.780 So a portrait was commissioned of her and was sent to him.

00:38:52.560 And he wasn't like, oh my God, she's so beautiful.

00:38:54.180 because in fact, she was famously not considered beautiful.

00:38:57.900 So he was like, wow, she's like really religious,

00:39:00.540 not pretty, loves God. 0.82

00:39:05.280 She's going to let me get away with everything.

00:39:08.400 Yeah, he was just like, great.

00:39:09.880 It's like if a portrait came and she was beautiful,

00:39:11.920 he would have been like, ooh, no.

00:39:13.200 But she had this kind of like nose that everybody was, 0.99

00:39:16.000 she had a German nose. 1.00

00:39:17.500 I talk about that in the other Queen Charlotte special. 1.00

00:39:20.940 But basically she had a pointy nose 1.00

00:39:22.640 that like you could see the nostrils from the side you mean you mean like you mean like this 0.98

00:39:27.500 i'm showing ann my very german nose yeah yeah exactly exactly so there's the thing about queen

00:39:34.340 charlotte where like a couple people wrote like she had like wrote about her nostrils and that's

00:39:38.120 where some people have interpreted that is describing like an african heritage person

00:39:42.460 nose but it's like no they're being racist but they're being racist against germans they're

00:39:47.860 criticizing her german nose anyway if you look at the portraits she has a long pointy nose with

00:39:54.340 visible nostrils from the side like lana's nose and some of us are just gifted like that okay

00:40:00.780 when you look at caricatures of her it's always exaggerating this nose so she was like all the

00:40:06.100 descriptions of her which people look at now as being like oh are they describing her being like 0.63

00:40:11.240 secretly black it's like no they're describing her as just not being the ideal of british beauty

00:40:16.420 like her lips were a bit thicker which again is people being like she's secretly black but 0.93

00:40:20.900 basically she was just like not conventionally attractive but that's what all the better for 1.00

00:40:26.080 george he wanted a person who would just blend into the wallpaper literally which was her so

00:40:31.560 they were like they commissioned the portrait they sent it to him and he was like great i choose her

00:40:35.100 but no one had even told her like she was still just being like still maybe gonna join the non

00:40:40.340 party convent as one final secret test so the the guy in germany so there's a place called

00:40:47.480 piermont do you know where that is no but i can look it up she was taking the waters at

00:40:53.380 piermont not australia that's the first place that comes up oh a spa town in northern germany

00:40:58.600 bad piermont it's called bad means bad means what bath anyway so the spy the spy who's in germany

00:41:08.800 went to like secretly watch her to be like is she really as boring as we think and he's like well

00:41:15.740 she seems like yes she seems like like she was there with her mother and her sister and they're

00:41:21.600 just like taking the waters and just whatever and he's like it seems like she's boring but when

00:41:26.860 there was like a card game was afoot it seemed like she got really competitive about it and she

00:41:31.340 got upset when she lost but lest you listeners think that she was an interesting person she was

00:41:37.180 not um because again it's sort of like a beth martin little woman vibe so he followed her

00:41:42.740 afterwards to see her go for a walk and the day after she won a lot of money at cards she would

00:41:47.900 go and donate it to the poor and so she got really competitive and upset because she liked winning

00:41:53.540 money because that meant she could give more to the poor that she was too good for this world

00:42:00.980 like I it's hard not to like in the context of the show criticize her like we're so used to 0.96

00:42:07.800 people be she was just a good person and she did not deserve any of this no exactly exactly she was

00:42:14.500 like like a really I keep being like oh she's boring it's like no she's like so kind and nice 0.97

00:42:20.760 and sweet and not making waves like it's not you know she wasn't pretty she wasn't scheming she 0.51

00:42:27.240 didn't want to be a queen she just wanted to be nice to poor people and maybe have some kids or

00:42:33.640 go to a nunnery like one of the two whichever works out this is like there's been people in

00:42:37.900 the podcast before who have been people try to fit them in a box like this and they chafe against it

00:42:42.560 and it doesn't work like carolina brunswick but charlotte was legitimately this person this is 0.54

00:42:47.600 who she was like she was in fact perfect for this role because she was just what they wanted and 0.69

00:42:53.480 There's so very few people in this world that fit in this box so nicely.

00:42:57.800 Yeah.

00:42:59.120 Anyway, which again...

00:43:00.640 We found her.

00:43:02.940 Honestly, yeah.

00:43:03.820 So it's like finding the right actor for a movie where it's just like,

00:43:07.340 oh, we're never going to find someone who's this and this.

00:43:08.900 Oh my gosh, she's perfect.

00:43:10.340 So yeah.

00:43:11.880 It's too bad George III was as he was when his son was trying to find a wife

00:43:16.520 because evidently he's really good at picking them.

00:43:20.340 When they found Callender Brunswick, Charlotte was like,

00:43:22.600 no like what is uh no don't do this to the poor girl but they didn't listen to her and she's like

00:43:30.920 okay i won't rock the boat that's where she failed us so she's an interesting person in a really

00:43:37.040 different way from this podcast and also from like the heroines of a shonda rhimes produced

00:43:41.840 netflix series yes so i see why they would completely change her personality because 0.93

00:43:46.020 yeah she's not a soap opera character no well she's kind of the ingenue but the ingenue always

00:43:52.500 grows up and she never grew out of this she's kind of like a beth mart she's like a melanie 1.00

00:43:57.440 from gone with the wind vibe she's just like nice and kind that's she's supposed to die early to 0.59

00:44:03.620 cause more drama she's not supposed to live up into like what her 70s late 70s yeah no she doesn't 0.97

00:44:10.700 have main character energy she has really strong supporting character dies early on to motivate

00:44:17.820 the main character energy but to be fridged properly fridged but she was not so here's what

00:44:23.320 happens when someone like that doesn't so she was arrangements were made to send her over to

00:44:29.340 england in the middle of making these arrangements her mother died um so she was in mourning when she

00:44:34.240 set out on the royal yacht to england and i was like royal yacht did someone say fubs but it is

00:44:40.280 not the royal yacht fubs it was a different royal yacht called the royal charlotte previously the

00:44:46.480 royal caroline i mean boats only last so long i know but like if she had boarded the fubs that

00:44:53.080 would be the most interesting thing she did in her life but of course she didn't because that

00:44:56.920 would be interesting anyway so the journey was rocky so this is the same as like if you remember

00:45:01.900 when anne of denmark was trying to come over to marry james there was also rock she ended up

00:45:06.300 having like getting shipwrecked in norway or whatever anyway the journey was rocky charlotte

00:45:11.240 got really ill she lost weight because she couldn't eat because she's throwing up all the time

00:45:14.920 And yet she would still entertain the people in the ship by playing the

00:45:18.360 harpsichord for them.

00:45:20.100 And then the ship landed somewhere different where it was supposed to

00:45:22.280 because of the storms,

00:45:24.620 but whatever she got there.

00:45:26.900 It was Anne of Norway was stranded or Anne of Denmark was stranded in

00:45:30.700 Norway.

00:45:31.180 James went over there. 0.97

00:45:32.240 He burned a bunch of witches.

00:45:34.680 None of that happens here.

00:45:35.780 She just like landed somewhere different and on we go because it's almost

00:45:39.480 like a superpower,

00:45:40.460 the way that she makes everything just be like not chaotic.

00:45:43.380 not not a thing it's like she's had a nice life except for when she didn't we'll get to that so

00:45:50.540 anyway so she met george and so this is i believe in the show because they've talked about this

00:45:55.040 and this is i think in the description of the book like they met in the garden one morning and

00:45:59.160 they were married that night that is true so they met and she offered so she liked so snuff

00:46:04.860 i didn't look this up and you didn't i didn't tell you to look this up tobacco tobacco that

00:46:10.520 you like put in your nose yeah you like you like sniff it like cocaine almost and i think you like

00:46:16.340 you do a little pinch yeah anyway so she was a big fan of that and so she offered it was pretty 0.61

00:46:25.140 popular at the time wait i have this later but carolina brunswick called her like old snuffy or

00:46:30.960 something i'm glad she has a flaw this is this well okay so she offered him her snuff box as a

00:46:39.920 friendly gesture and he was like i never use that because he is also spoiler a big nerd and she was

00:46:45.980 like oh okay well then i'll never use it again but then later he he presented her with two extravagant

00:46:51.560 snuff boxes encrusted with diamonds one with a miniature of his portrait on the other hers so

00:46:56.500 he was like you can have snuff but she was like prepared to go cold turkey off of it because she

00:47:03.500 was not rocking any boats i mean it's not dissimilar to vaping in a way like they were

00:47:08.940 making funky flavors and shoot like and you just sniff it so it doesn't get all over everything

00:47:14.360 there's no secondhand snuff but it wasn't really good because it's still going into your lungs it

00:47:21.340 was still doing all that stuff and it was still a lot of nicotine but she was an avid snuff user

00:47:26.920 the rest of her life which again is also on Bridgerton I believe so yeah you're right she

00:47:31.220 has one vice but I'm sure if someone told her it was a vice I'm so glad she has something I know

00:47:35.760 But I feel like she would stop it if someone told her it was a vice.

00:47:38.440 I think she just didn't see a big one.

00:47:40.840 Anyway, so then they got married.

00:47:42.500 And the issue is that, so it was, what is it?

00:47:44.820 It's the summer.

00:47:46.100 It was really hot that night.

00:47:48.160 And between the gown, which is really heavy, all the jewels are put on her.

00:47:52.240 And the fact that she had like lost some weight from being sick on the ship,

00:47:55.260 the top half of her dress came off.

00:48:01.320 That's a winning move for this show. 1.00

00:48:03.000 is would this be a tits out moment perhaps perhaps so it was described as because the top half of her 1.00

00:48:11.960 it was so heavy her her mantle fastened on her shoulder by a bunch of large pearls dragged 1.00

00:48:17.260 itself and almost the rest of her clothes halfway down her waist in front of her crowd i mean she 0.89

00:48:21.260 was wearing i'm sure 17 inner shifts because she was very modest in lutheran but it would still be 0.83

00:48:27.980 mortifying for her i wonder if that happens you know what listeners now that you've watched queen 0.73

00:48:34.180 charlotte does that happen on the show because that would be quite a moment poor baby like i

00:48:38.860 have so much sympathy for her because she's like she's not trying this this is not no she's not 1.00

00:48:44.280 lola monta's ripping her dress open she anyway she's like little right she's little baby 17 year 0.99

00:48:49.260 old lana exactly like i'm getting these visceral failings she wants to be a lutheran nun and now 1.00

00:48:56.400 she's like quasi topless in front of a crowd. Anyway, of note, this is where my Pomeranian

00:49:03.900 research comes in. So Mecklenburg-Streelitz was next door to, is it called Pomerania or

00:49:09.320 you called it something else? Yes, Pomerania. Pomerania. Home of Pomeranian dogs. Charlotte

00:49:17.220 loved animals. This is going to be a recurring thing throughout her life, but especially she

00:49:22.480 had Pomeranian dogs. They were called Phoebe and Mercury. And she brought them with her to England.

00:49:28.780 And I believe there are little dogs on Bridgerton and also on the Queen Charlotte show as well.

00:49:33.360 She adored this dog breed so much that she would breed them and give them as gifts to other royals.

00:49:37.940 If you look at the portraits of like her son and like other people, like there's like a little

00:49:41.600 dog in like every portrait. Queen Charlotte's granddaughter, Queen Victoria, also had a deep

00:49:46.660 love of Pomeranians as well. And this is kind of like how the late Queen Elizabeth II had her

00:49:51.420 corgis it's like british queens and little dogs it's it's what they're allowed to have and they

00:49:58.100 just go all in on it this is what they could do anyway so she brought i just love that she brought

00:50:01.820 phoebe and mercury with her honestly when i was just like oh she brought dogs pomeranian and then

00:50:06.860 when i saw like from pomerania and i was like wait that's a place a place where the dogs are from

00:50:12.640 pretty much everything is a place i now know that um anyway so these two nerds got along really well

00:50:19.500 Her and George were just like two people who were just like, we both like doing things

00:50:26.000 correctly and by the rules and not being scandalous.

00:50:29.340 Great.

00:50:30.560 Yep.

00:50:31.520 Yep.

00:50:33.840 So they got along. 0.68

00:50:35.080 Like she was the correct bride choice for this man.

00:50:38.020 So he taught her because he had grown up in the royal court and he was just like everyone

00:50:41.980 here is scheming and causing drama.

00:50:43.860 So like be suspicious of everyone, be paranoid all the time, which was good advice, which

00:50:49.480 she took he also was like i want you to never be involved in politics and she was like i don't want

00:50:54.840 to be and also i will do whatever you say she's like great can i just like have my fossil collection

00:51:00.320 and my dogs i'm good can i still be nice to poor people yeah he's like yes do that and he was also

00:51:09.960 like never be alone with my mother and she was like okay and this was also correct good advice

00:51:16.680 because his mother imagine imagine augusta is just they're trying to do schemes you've got this 0.64

00:51:23.640 blank slate charlotte who's just like no thanks now i want augusta and um caroline like that 1.00

00:51:33.020 matchup would have been epic yeah i don't know like charlotte's energy is just like throwing

00:51:39.280 a bucket of water on anyone not that she would but you know it's just like oh something exciting 0.94

00:51:44.740 is gonna happen no it's not like it's no like she's just like not there's a lot of power in

00:51:48.980 that though no and especially in politics like taking the bluster out of somebody huge amount 0.99

00:51:54.880 of power just not fueling them at all not giving into leaning to the gossip or anything exactly

00:52:00.900 exactly it is in fact the best the best technique should you be dealing with somebody who's

00:52:05.880 narcissistic is to gray rock them give them nothing yeah like don't react don't oh that's

00:52:12.620 nice like just move on with life and that's what she like she was that surrounded by narcissists

00:52:18.760 which does take a strength of character i think um but also it's it's so interesting she's like 1.00

00:52:24.080 the exact opposite of a vulgar history person but there is power and interest in that because she's 1.00

00:52:30.900 so extreme in this direction yeah anyway so london was excited for the coronation of a sexy young

00:52:37.700 king who was not a german person who hated them so they had the coronation the streets were lined

00:52:43.720 with people excited to watch the coronation which is interesting given how strongly everyone would

00:52:48.820 come to hate these people but at this point they're just like yay sexy young king and his

00:52:54.740 wife who is not pretty hooray her chief attendant was george's sister augusta this is the second 0.99

00:53:01.620 augusta in the story but this augusta is the mother of carolina brunswick these two women did 1.00

00:53:06.220 not get along because augusta too was also a messy bitch who lived for drama and charlotte 1.00

00:53:12.280 was not into that so that just drove this drove both of the augustas crazy that charlotte would 1.00

00:53:18.280 just like not give them anything fight with me argue with me try to steal my power do something 1.00

00:53:24.640 help me whatever and charlotte's like i'm just gonna go show my fossils to my dogs

00:53:29.580 and then read the Bible

00:53:31.540 and then give to the poor.

00:53:34.880 If I do schemes,

00:53:36.860 do I get more money for poor people?

00:53:39.600 No?

00:53:40.360 Okay, then I know schemes.

00:53:41.960 Yeah.

00:53:43.240 Anyway, so she also loved going to the theater.

00:53:46.240 There was an actress who was mentioned

00:53:47.380 that she really...

00:53:48.300 Here's the other thing.

00:53:48.960 I was reading this book about Charlotte

00:53:50.080 and I'm like,

00:53:50.440 this is like a delightful book to read

00:53:52.220 because it's just like,

00:53:53.280 here's a person who's just

00:53:54.360 really easy to read about,

00:53:57.040 especially in the early part.

00:53:58.140 But I kept finding names of people and I'm like,

00:54:01.140 ooh, I got like five more names of potential subjects

00:54:03.240 revolved over history, just from like name drops.

00:54:06.800 I was like, she couldn't stay on this person.

00:54:08.820 I'm like, who's that person?

00:54:10.040 Great, noting that thing now.

00:54:11.780 On the list.

00:54:12.740 Yeah.

00:54:13.060 You're starting to appreciate my eras a lot more now.

00:54:15.960 You see, we also have schemers in them. 1.00

00:54:18.080 Yeah, I just need to find the like messy bitches. 1.00

00:54:20.280 So anyway, Charlotte, I love going to the theater, 1.00

00:54:21.800 especially watching this Welsh actress called Sarah Siddons,

00:54:24.720 who is on my list. 0.59

00:54:25.720 Oh, yes, she should be on your list.

00:54:28.140 yeah yeah charlotte also in fact charlotte later in life sarah siddons like retired and charlotte 0.98

00:54:34.560 was like could you do one more performance and sarah siddons anyway sarah siddons performed when 0.97

00:54:39.160 she was pregnant she performed when she was like old like charlotte was just like i like your 0.93

00:54:43.000 performances keep performing for me like okay she also like going for long walks you know 0.99

00:54:47.820 empress cc vibes minus the orthorexia extremes she just like going for long walks because that's

00:54:55.740 a pleasant thing to do she also liked donating large amounts of money to charities and to those 0.91

00:54:59.920 in need she was the proverbial nice white lady like she was she was saving everybody through 0.99

00:55:05.880 donations but not actually making any significant change even though she could have here's the thing 1.00

00:55:12.080 so we talk about this in the um the other queen charlotte episode which you won't have heard yet

00:55:16.780 but in terms of like was she secretly a black person which like again like an hour and a half

00:55:23.640 I talk to experts. They explain it better than I ever could. But notably, this was the time period

00:55:28.500 like Charles Ignatius Sancho was on the scene, right? While she was here at the guy from the

00:55:32.440 book. I did the interview with Patterson Joseph about him. Like abolition was a thing that people

00:55:38.700 were pushing for. And some people went to Charlotte being like, can you please talk to

00:55:43.760 your husband about this? And she was like, no, but I will give money to the downtrodden.

00:55:49.880 yes yes so that's that's that the martin luther king quote that like the worst

00:55:58.200 the the hardest people to help the cause are the liberals who think they're helping the cause by

00:56:04.980 not doing it and doing anything like they're they're just going to be they're not going to

00:56:10.220 be actively obstructionist but they're just going to be in the way and not use take advantage of

00:56:15.680 their power. And she was very much, she gives off all of those very nice white lady vibes that 1.00

00:56:22.320 looks like she's going to be helping people, but really is just going to be doing the bare minimum. 1.00

00:56:27.180 Right. Like she loves helping people, but she likes helping people who she wants to help, 0.95

00:56:32.720 if you know what I mean. In the way she wants to help them, not in the way they actually need,

00:56:37.380 not in a way that would solve their problems. No, but I think she's doing it from a genuine

00:56:42.260 well-intentioned like she and marie antoinette were pen pals they were similar age they were 0.97

00:56:48.380 both german princesses who married into another country were not known for their beauty and just

00:56:54.500 kind of like to vibe and like hang out in gardens we're going to talk about marie antoinette later

00:56:58.560 but like this does remind me a bit of the marie antoinette vibe where she's just like she's so

00:57:03.140 much in her own bubble it's like we can't i can't put an expectation on her to like get the importance

00:57:09.940 of the abolition movement when like she's vibing out doing her own thing completely separate from 0.99

00:57:17.360 an understanding of what that is yeah she was intentionally marie antoinette was intentionally 0.82

00:57:23.480 kept her entire life from the masses charlotte wasn't charlotte could have educated herself

00:57:32.720 and grown above it but she chose she chose to do she chose to not cause problems anywhere at all

00:57:40.660 ever here's and this is again two things i want to say firstly um if people go to my the instagram

00:57:47.340 page vulgar history pod the post before the post about this episode i posted about the queen

00:57:52.760 charlotte and race discussion and there's a bunch of pictures there on a slideshow and one of them

00:57:57.600 is a picture of charlotte with an enslaved dark-skinned black boy like he's there like

00:58:05.380 a prop you know making her look paler by comparison let me like anyway she like this is

00:58:11.600 this is happening like there is slavery in england at this time and she's just kind of like 0.86

00:58:17.360 i'm gonna invent the christmas tree now like that's that's what she's doing well bring the

00:58:22.380 christmas tree from germany yes because that's my next note she put up the first known english

00:58:28.780 christmas tree i thought it was albert from victoria and albert but it was in fact charlotte

00:58:36.300 she did that later she did the first tree like later like 40 years after this but before that

00:58:41.820 she brought in like yew branches like and at christmas she would dispense gifts to the poor 0.82

00:58:47.000 she donated to so-called fallen women. So this is again, I'm not being like she was a bad person.

00:58:53.740 It's just like, here's what she was doing. And it's the bare minimum, which is more than a lot

00:58:57.520 of other people were doing. So yeah, she was funding housing and educational initiatives for 0.98

00:59:03.520 women, like quote, fallen women, as well as for young orphan girls at risk of being exploited.

00:59:08.280 Like she really focused on like girls and women. And that's great. That's good. Good for her.

00:59:13.600 My day job is at a youth shelter and like, I can visualize the kind of, Oh, we're going to give you

00:59:20.360 money, but these are the strings. This is like, we're not going to actually like figure out what

00:59:26.900 they actually need. We're going to give like all these weird rules about it. Like that kind of,

00:59:32.120 like that kind of vibe around. I want it to go to this thing. It's like, but they need this over

00:59:36.400 here. It's like, well, I don't agree with that LGBTQ plus stuff. So I don't really want that 1.00

00:59:41.480 there yeah like i'll give you the money but can you please spend it on buying books about jesus

00:59:48.440 it's like well actually what the library needs is like computers and staff it's like but could you

00:59:55.640 use this money to buy bibles and a fossil collection so i don't know but again like

01:00:01.240 she's not she's not doing she's not not doing anything exactly she's not doing bad things it's

01:00:08.980 just she's not doing as much as she could be doing which is like that that that terrible

01:00:14.820 middle ground in the in this this show to like make her have no points because she could be 0.98

01:00:20.960 doing things she could be doing things for good or doing things for bad she's doing neither 0.99

01:00:25.320 she's and this is the thing she's just like beige everything about her is just like beige

01:00:29.900 um okay so george her nerd husband also liked science and nature because they're both nerds

01:00:37.560 They were nerds in love.

01:00:38.520 And so I believe the Queen Charlotte show.

01:00:40.500 I mean, we'll see.

01:00:41.720 I'm going to guess.

01:00:42.640 It doesn't show them as nerds.

01:00:44.320 But they were in love.

01:00:45.560 They really enjoyed each other.

01:00:47.080 For instance, he gifted her a zebra as a wedding gift.

01:00:50.880 Because she liked animals and also science and nature.

01:00:54.160 I'm going to get into later.

01:00:55.320 She developed a whole menagerie, which is kind of a zoo.

01:00:58.680 Anyway, so there's a bunch of palace stuff here.

01:01:02.060 Like I got information from the Historic Royal Palaces website.

01:01:05.320 because there's a lot they had a lot to do with this it was them george acquired buckingham house

01:01:11.540 which is buckingham palace now he's the one who acquired that for her so she made the so buckingham

01:01:20.680 house which i guess is like one of the houses in the grounds became known as queen's house it was

01:01:25.580 her sanctuary it was a lot smaller than what we know it is today i'm sure yeah yeah but like that

01:01:31.220 like Buckingham, like that property started being developed because of them. So they divided their

01:01:36.320 time between there as well as they had homes in Richmond, Kew, and Windsor. And at all their

01:01:42.620 homes, Charlotte threw herself into landscaping the gardens and remodeling them because she liked

01:01:47.920 botany, right? Like she was really interested in it. Not just like, oh, I like flowers. It's like

01:01:52.260 she was really like from a science-based way. She was not an aesthetic person. Like I think

01:01:58.140 she liked gardening as a scientist, not just like, oh, flowers would look pretty. But she's

01:02:03.620 like, no, how can you grow them best? And so she had her private menagerie. So at their home in

01:02:08.340 Kew, this housed her exotic beasts, including the zebra, as well as the first kangaroos to come to

01:02:14.800 England, as well as elephants and other animals. And I have two tidbits to share. Firstly, he bought

01:02:20.360 her a zebra and there's, it was kind of thought like, wow, let's use zebras instead of horses

01:02:24.000 in england like fancy people use guess did not work zebras yes it's like saying hey let's use

01:02:31.980 donkeys instead of horses it's like saying let's use grizzly bears instead of horses it's like

01:02:36.580 zebras were not about that life zebras are not going to do what you told them not domestically

01:02:41.460 let's use cats as horses it's like the zebras were just so the zebra just kind of like just

01:02:46.980 hung out in the menagerie doing its thing kangaroos came and they started multiplying

01:02:51.900 And then so they started, Charlotte started giving kangaroos as presents to people, but

01:02:55.340 only one because there was getting like to be too many kangaroos in England.

01:03:00.340 So they had to separate them all. 0.51

01:03:02.140 But, you know, as a scientist, she's like, good to know. 0.97

01:03:04.700 Good to know that kangaroos can have this many children. 1.00

01:03:08.540 Anyway, so she's just, these are her hobbies.

01:03:11.660 So she and George, they had these residences and they like seclusion.

01:03:15.020 They like being on their own.

01:03:16.360 Like he like tilling the land.

01:03:18.680 She liked planting things.

01:03:20.300 they're just like these two little gardeners and they like being away from everybody and

01:03:24.780 everything all the time for british people when she says q she means q gardens is that famous

01:03:31.000 like yeah it's it's well known the the pagoda was built under george the third

01:03:35.940 it's it's it's still the royal gardens today okay it was kind of augusta started it

01:03:43.460 but they really kind of did their thing there what this reminds me of what i don't know this

01:03:50.000 is at Kew Gardens, but I'm going to get into this because if anyone's listened to my, the previous

01:03:55.180 Queen Charlotte episode where myself and both of the experts, but they very much steer the

01:04:01.240 conversations direction. We're talking somewhat critically about the current British royal family.

01:04:06.680 So I'm going to say Charlotte is a bit of a Kate Middleton type where she just kind of like Kate

01:04:13.080 Middleton had a whole thing where she like designed a garden one time and everyone is, and she's like,

01:04:17.280 it's a play garden for children and everyone's like clap clap clap how nice like just in terms

01:04:24.360 of sort of like useless things that we're supposed to pretend are amazing anyway so they like being

01:04:32.120 by themselves they liked um not being around the general public they liked she liked being away

01:04:37.280 from politics like they were just having a nice time but you know this could be part of why the

01:04:43.420 general public hatred of them grew to the extent it did because they just never had anything to

01:04:50.140 do with them so their first child was born like a about a within a year of their marriage and that

01:04:55.780 was george aka the future husband of caroline of brunswick his nickname was pretty regent of the

01:05:02.980 regency the region uh anyway so his nickname was pretty and i'm gonna call him that because there

01:05:10.620 are an awful lot of Georges in this story anyway at the same time he was born um George III fell

01:05:17.380 very ill with influenza but he rallied but this is like even before they were married even before

01:05:23.500 this like George III was kind of thought of as like he is a sickly person and this is part of

01:05:28.980 where they're like you need to marry and have an heir ASAP because how long are you going to last

01:05:34.700 sort of feeling.

01:05:37.120 Foreshadowing.

01:05:38.060 Anyway, he had influenza

01:05:38.940 and then he got better

01:05:39.660 over the next three years.

01:05:40.880 She gave birth to Friedrich,

01:05:43.080 the Duke of York,

01:05:43.860 and then William,

01:05:44.520 the Duke of Clarence,

01:05:45.380 both of whom grew up to be 0.99

01:05:46.500 pretty shitty, 0.99

01:05:48.080 scandalous people. 1.00

01:05:49.920 All of her sons were

01:05:51.380 kind of like,

01:05:52.380 if we're going to compare them

01:05:53.240 to the modern day royal family,

01:05:54.480 Prince Andrew types.

01:05:56.160 Over the next 20 years,

01:05:57.860 she gave birth to a total

01:05:58.780 of 15 children,

01:05:59.920 13 of whom survived infancy.

01:06:02.580 So in terms of like...

01:06:04.700 what was she like? What was her life like? Whatever. It's like, well, she got married

01:06:08.340 and then spent 20 years being nonstop pregnant. Her life was like that. That is what her life was 0.98

01:06:15.080 like. She was relatively okay with it. She was very bored. I will say one of the experts I talked

01:06:21.060 to in the other Charlotte episode has read a lot of her diaries and journals and letters.

01:06:25.060 And Charlotte just wrote a lot being like, I'm so bored all the time. This is unpleasant.

01:06:30.800 they don't let you give things to the poor people and visit them when you're pregnant with

01:06:35.080 yeah one of the royal heirs they just they just don't like that she's probably just like i wish

01:06:39.800 i could go off and tend to a garden and a lutheran nunnery but here i am instead and i am not happy

01:06:45.660 she was not this is the other thing like there's people who like i don't and boleyn or whoever who

01:06:50.040 like schemes and claws their way and like no i'm the queen this is great but charlotte was just

01:06:54.560 like i don't want to be the queen but okay like she was never this wasn't what she wanted for

01:07:01.860 herself so of course this wouldn't make her happy but her whole life was not about making herself

01:07:06.340 happy she's like i'm unhappy and that's good because that means i'm more godly that's my

01:07:11.880 understanding of lutheranism she was she was being tested and she was she was rising to the occasion

01:07:16.840 but here's here's something significant so this is during the same time i did this special episode

01:07:21.880 ages ago, early on in COVID times about varioelation, which was the precursor to vaccination.

01:07:29.840 So Lady Montague had gone to the Ottoman Empire and she found out how the people in the harem

01:07:35.320 were in fact, like inoculating themselves against smallpox by, and then the whole thing

01:07:40.960 with cowpox. Anyway, Charlotte, this was happening. And she was like, you know what I'm going to do?

01:07:44.240 Have all my children varioelated against smallpox. She was into it. The royal family did it. And that

01:07:49.880 made it more acceptable for other people to do it also. So that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So as much

01:07:55.600 as she was, you know, like a nice white lady, she was not an anti-vaxxer. She was in a time where 0.96

01:08:00.740 everyone thought this was really weird and experimental. She had like 15 children and

01:08:05.220 she had them all variolated. And dangerous because like you could genuinely still get

01:08:10.780 sick from variolation if it wasn't done. To be fair, two of her children did die from it.

01:08:16.900 But that's better than all 15 dying or being maimed by it, like having lifelong...

01:08:22.680 Or by getting smallpox, yeah.

01:08:25.040 Yeah, having lifelong illnesses as a result of her not even trying.

01:08:30.280 So this is, I think, one of the first interesting things that I've read about her, that she stood up for something she believed in.

01:08:38.560 Yeah.

01:08:39.180 So in 1765, four years after their marriage and when she was pregnant for the third time, George fell ill again.

01:08:45.720 So Augusta, the mother-in-law, and her henchperson Butte arrived like,

01:08:50.920 ha-ha, do you need a regency? We could take over. 1.00

01:08:53.740 But Charlotte was like, no, I am devoted to him.

01:08:56.520 I'm not going to leave his side.

01:08:58.300 And so they were just trying to scheme and use this against her.

01:09:01.900 But Charlotte was so devoted to him that they couldn't.

01:09:06.020 And George was also too nerdy, so they weren't able to.

01:09:09.040 And their schemes just fell apart because Charlotte and George did not engage with it.

01:09:12.740 Charlotte was also extremely rigidly devoted to her duty and to protocol and everyone around her

01:09:18.740 had to be too so this meant like we're in like the late 1700s so we're getting towards the era

01:09:24.540 where it's like you know the empire waistline like you know Jane Austen era dresses but Charlotte

01:09:29.620 was like here's what we're gonna do big skirts huge wigs fashion's not changing and so everyone 0.67

01:09:35.840 around her had to dress like that so she made everybody dress keep dressing old-fashioned 0.84

01:09:40.300 which I think also is in Bridgerton.

01:09:42.140 Yeah, that's what I was just going to say.

01:09:43.400 That is something that they carried over for Bridgerton.

01:09:45.360 Everybody's like complaining about 1.00

01:09:46.780 how Charlotte's not wearing the right clothes. 0.84

01:09:49.560 It's like, yes, Charlotte's not wearing the right clothes 0.96

01:09:51.200 because she's not going to keep up with fashions.

01:09:53.760 That will never happen.

01:09:56.280 No, so exactly.

01:09:57.520 So this, that's, there you go.

01:09:59.400 If someone's like, how accurate is Bridgerton?

01:10:01.020 I'll be like, well, they do have her in old-fashioned clothes.

01:10:04.660 She's also very into music.

01:10:07.360 So 1764, four years into her reign,

01:10:09.920 Eight-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came to visit Buckingham House.

01:10:14.740 This is part of his family.

01:10:16.040 You remember Mozart was in like a family band?

01:10:18.260 Like they went, him and his sister, and they like would travel around.

01:10:21.540 I remember that from Amadeus.

01:10:24.460 That's also where I know it from.

01:10:26.340 Anyway, so this is the Great European Tour.

01:10:28.040 So they went to perform there just a few days after they arrived in London.

01:10:31.680 Charlotte, who I mentioned before, she sang and she played the harpsichord.

01:10:34.700 So she sang during one of his performances one month later.

01:10:38.460 They never met again, but he later dedicated six sonatas to her because she was his royal benefactor.

01:10:45.840 He liked giving people things that gave him money.

01:10:49.880 Augustus, the two Augustus.

01:10:51.380 And I like that they're called Augustus because isn't that like the name or the title of the wives of the Roman emperors?

01:10:57.380 Or no, Augustus is who I'm thinking of.

01:10:59.460 There was anyway, but their vibe is very Agrippina.

01:11:02.840 The two Augustus are just like, we're here to scheme.

01:11:05.220 And Charlotte's like, no, thanks.

01:11:06.260 All right. So the two Augustas, which is her sister-in-law and her mother-in-law, 0.88

01:11:11.240 rear their heads again. So Augusta 2, which is Carolina Brunswick's mom, 0.98

01:11:15.360 George's sister, came back because Augusta 1 was dying. So Charlotte and Augusta 2 still did not

01:11:21.620 like each other. Augusta 1 died in 1772. And the next day, Augusta 2 packed her bags to go back 0.88

01:11:28.220 to Germany in protest of how cruelly she felt Charlotte had treated her. For which I mean,

01:11:33.740 Charlotte did not gossip with her or engage with her narcissism. 0.99

01:11:37.640 Anyway, that's Carolyn Brunswick's mom.

01:11:39.340 So if you're just wondering, where did Carolyn Brunswick get that personality from?

01:11:42.320 Like, well, this is reaction to be growing up in that household.

01:11:47.480 Yeah.

01:11:48.480 Okay.

01:11:49.080 So the people of London, I've mentioned several times, they hated the monarchy.

01:11:54.240 They were excited for the coronation, but they're over that now.

01:11:56.900 So the funeral of Augusta I was marked by public unrest.

01:12:00.240 her coffin was spat upon and the mob huzzahed for joy that she had died. You know, the people

01:12:08.920 of England, like we're not in, we're entering a period of time in which numerous revolutions

01:12:13.800 are happening in numerous places. There was, there was an economic downturn happening at the

01:12:19.620 time. So the royalty living like royalty and them barely being able to afford bread or tea or any of

01:12:29.100 their their staples um was becoming a problem here's i no that just reminds me i thought i

01:12:35.560 had this in my notes but maybe i didn't is that george and charlotte were also like very frugal

01:12:39.960 in their way and maybe that's part of her like not wanting to get new dresses or whatever but

01:12:44.060 like for a king and queen of england they were like quite and that's why they still had their

01:12:48.660 heads like they may not have liked them but they're still they live through this unlike some

01:12:54.000 people yeah so i'm just saying like even though the king queen of england they own

01:12:58.120 five homes elephants and zebras and kangaroos who they give out as presents like they live

01:13:04.380 very frugally and george like that about her there's one that he said there's like a phrase

01:13:08.140 where he just said she raises 12 daughters for the cost of two or something because she's like

01:13:12.520 so cheap there's a political cartoon of the family that shows them saying like you know

01:13:18.800 because of there's some sort of sugar shortage and they were like okay well we're not going to

01:13:23.180 put sugar in our tea anymore but like the joke of the comic was just kind of saying like they

01:13:27.780 didn't want to anyway because they're so cheap and now they're just like pretending they're doing it

01:13:31.120 for the common good anyway so time is passing you know what i just said she's pregnant for 20 years

01:13:35.700 not much more to say so by now her oldest son prinny was like he was a nightmare like he was

01:13:41.740 becoming an adult and he was a nightmare charlotte dealt with this sleeping around sleeping with it

01:13:46.960 being the worst yeah um and she dealt with this by distracting herself with gardening um she had

01:13:54.460 a thatch heaven forbid she tried a parrot well he she's just like well this isn't what i was like

01:14:00.460 this isn't what my brothers were like so she had a thatched cottage added to the ground of q palace

01:14:06.720 and she hosted afternoon tea in her thatch cottage which is similar vibes to marie antoinette's like

01:14:11.040 fake shepherdess village or whatever yeah like yeah there's a thing about like it's not good to

01:14:18.080 like always be in confrontations but when you avoid all of them that's toxic in the other way

01:14:26.880 yeah right like the modern monarchy has managed to contain itself by doing public works very

01:14:36.080 visually like being working royals and so like a lot of the things that they're making are

01:14:43.160 benefiting them still they're not benefiting the greater good like she'd give things to people but

01:14:47.920 she'd only give things to certain people sometimes. And so she wasn't doing, she didn't understand the

01:14:53.680 politics of doing good. No. And just the visual, she's making this beautiful garden. She has a

01:14:58.800 menagerie, but it's not like, and on Sundays it's open to the public. She's just like, look at this

01:15:02.980 nice thing I made to show my friends. A menagerie is a zoo that no one can visit. Yeah. Well, and

01:15:09.060 then meanwhile, George is like running around being like horrible. The people, the subjects do

01:15:15.020 not really especially like the royal family george makes them like the royal family less

01:15:18.760 because he's just like he would like they the parents like charlotte and george were frugal 0.98

01:15:23.560 but george was um amassing lots of debt he was just acting like an asshole and this is i mentioned 0.92

01:15:28.980 the political cartoons but this is like it's not quite is it it's sort of the tabloid press like 0.93

01:15:33.320 the what the royals were doing started being covered very i don't know similar ish to modern

01:15:42.100 day tabloids. It's like a palisaurus says blah, blah, blah. Like, and that really comes into play

01:15:47.120 in the Carolina Brunswick story, of course, I should really use that against them. But

01:15:50.700 this is just planting the seeds of overall discontent. Here's what my next note says.

01:15:57.380 Then 1776, American Revolution, etc. George dealt with this by throwing himself into

01:16:03.180 renovating more property in Windsor. Yeah, there's Hamilton has lied to you.

01:16:07.940 george was not smugly sitting in his castle singing about how how you'll be back and then

01:16:15.320 you'll see he was sitting in his castle going hmm i need new drapes

01:16:20.060 like if he had cared more maybe something would have gone differently actually

01:16:26.340 no but as as we've described george and charlotte they're both just kind of like

01:16:31.420 various crises are happening but they're like are those crises happening in my garden no well

01:16:37.300 that's the only place that I care about. Do I look like the prime minister to you? Because I

01:16:42.320 am not. Yeah. So then, okay. So 1780, they'd had 14 children by now. So the final two sons,

01:16:50.900 Octavius and Alfred were born in 1779 and 1780. And here's the thing also, like they kept having

01:16:58.440 more children and they just really liked the younger ones better than the older ones. Could

01:17:03.260 that be because children are easier to control and contain than like an asshole adult child who's 0.99

01:17:09.660 to say i mean they're all going to grow up into him eventually so they're not doing anything new 0.99

01:17:14.400 or different if you just keep having a baby then you can just like have fun with that baby until

01:17:18.200 they get old then you have another baby and then yeah you make once you start making noise they

01:17:22.960 ignore you and then you can do whatever you want to destroy whatever civilization you you come 1.00

01:17:27.300 across so they prefer the company of their youngest children to prinny their asshole oldest 0.99

01:17:32.920 done also there's ongoing riots in london from the everyday people against the monarchy but 0.99

01:17:38.920 they're like doot doot doot look at my kangaroos um the 1776 the revolutions caused a very large

01:17:47.480 financial downturn like a very large financial downturn in because they weren't getting the

01:17:54.140 because all the like crops and whatever from the colonies were no longer going to england is that

01:18:00.680 Yeah.

01:18:01.480 They were funding a very large war.

01:18:03.320 It costs money to send soldiers overseas.

01:18:06.720 They weren't getting the incomes from that war, and they didn't have access to the raw goods from the cotton in the South or any of the crops that were being produced across the whole of the colonies.

01:18:20.280 And so a lot of their wealth had come from the colonies, and the United States was the oldest and most established by that point.

01:18:28.480 so this would just be making people be more upset but it's also kind of like this is the era there's

01:18:33.980 various revolutions happening in various places we're going to get to the french one in a bit

01:18:37.920 but um it just felt like revolution was possible and useful i don't know it's just like revolution

01:18:46.740 and you heard more news about what was happening more places because of like the newspapers and

01:18:51.400 stuff so anyway the about the only thing that saved them was the fact that they'd become

01:18:56.300 essentially a constitutional monarchy by that point. Yeah, yeah. The prime minister had more

01:19:00.500 powers. That's not the king yet. So I mentioned the two of her children did die related to

01:19:05.840 variolations. The two youngest sons, Alfred and Octavius, both fell ill and basically died of

01:19:12.340 smallpox as a result of the variolation. Three months after the second of them died, her final

01:19:17.100 baby was born, Princess Amelia, who is sometimes called Emily for short, who was the darling and

01:19:22.580 the baby of the family. And at around this same time, Charlotte started hosting the first

01:19:26.740 debutante balls called Queen Charlotte's Balls. And so these raised money, which helped her to

01:19:33.900 fund Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital. This became an annual event. Even after her death,

01:19:40.000 like they still kept having these balls. And these are the balls like in Bridgerton, like 0.98

01:19:42.960 you're going to make your debut. Like that's, that's these balls. That being said, she hated 0.75

01:19:47.440 it and all social events and parties because she just wanted to be alone with her plants. 0.99

01:19:54.140 In 1786, a woman named Margaret Nicholson tried to assassinate George with a butter knife. This 1.00

01:20:00.460 was a woman with mental illness. She thought that she was the rightful monarch. The knife 1.00

01:20:07.340 wasn't even sharp. It was just kind of like, oh, here's a woman in crisis. And George, to his

01:20:12.280 credit half half to his credit was like because they're like oh my god should we arrest her

01:20:17.980 whatever he's like she's troubled like let's just like send her for like medical help good

01:20:24.040 wow good not really good instinct to not send her in jail because he was just like don't worry 0.86

01:20:29.240 about it the place she was sent to was bedlam horrible horrific yeah so like the instinct to 0.95

01:20:34.920 like not punish her in a jail way is good but there was not another option that was better

01:20:42.760 there was you notice he never was sent to bedlam oh fair true um spoilers nana anyway um when

01:20:53.240 charlotte and her attendants were told that this had happened the attendants broke into tears but

01:20:57.280 Charlotte did not.

01:20:58.100 She said, I envy you, for I cannot cry.

01:21:06.320 Oh, Charlotte.

01:21:07.700 What are these human emotions?

01:21:10.320 But then she, guess what?

01:21:11.800 Later in life, would learn how to cry.

01:21:13.440 So 1788, George fell ill with terrible stomach pains.

01:21:17.580 This is the first bout of major illness for him.

01:21:20.300 He had influenza before and he was sickly before,

01:21:21.980 but this is like the illness that he will have so he gets sick then he gets better then he gets

01:21:29.000 sick again but i'm going to talk about the first illness i'll talk about it first lana and then

01:21:33.000 you can explain what maybe it was okay so he just terrible stomach pains so the doctor recommended

01:21:39.080 he go out of town to take the waters which helped out in a bit because similar to cc like the further

01:21:44.180 he got from london oh no this isn't like cc he did feel a bit better when he got out of town

01:21:48.780 But one of the reasons why he might have felt better was because the further he got from London, the less people hated him.

01:21:54.500 So maybe he just felt a bit better about things.

01:21:58.180 Anyway, they spent a few weeks relaxing on holiday and he seemed to get better, but he actually was not better.

01:22:03.700 They were at their queue home at this point.

01:22:06.400 He kept having symptoms.

01:22:07.960 So maybe getting out of town made him feel a bit better emotionally, but he was still ill.

01:22:12.620 So his symptoms...

01:22:13.560 Well, it depends what he had.

01:22:15.620 Yes. So I'm just going to say this next paragraph and then you can jump in.

01:22:19.660 So his symptoms included changeable moods. So by turns, irritable, angry, or overly affectionate.

01:22:25.300 He complained of mysterious pains. This is similar to the illness he had had in 1765.

01:22:30.740 Remember when Augusta came in to be like, oh, do you need a regency? So it's similar to that,

01:22:35.960 but that passed more quickly. He also had agonizing cramps in his legs and an angry red rash.

01:22:41.320 he was feverish and barely slept and he would talk and keep talking to the point he would like

01:22:45.940 froth at the mouth it's not like oh he had rabies it's like if you talk for 12 hours without stopping

01:22:51.440 like you will froth at the mouth so lana what are some options of what was going on

01:22:56.220 so this eventually starts to manifest this mental illness like like very clear manic episodes and so

01:23:07.000 the default assumption, there's two basic assumptions, which is a genetic condition

01:23:14.700 called porphyria, which is like your body isn't processing, your liver stops working properly and

01:23:23.420 stops processing some of the things that help you manage your emotions and whatnot.

01:23:28.480 Question, question, porphyria, is that not werewolf disease?

01:23:33.020 Yeah, that's one of the other things that they think.

01:23:35.300 i'm just looking it up because isn't that the thing like rumors of werewolves came because

01:23:39.340 people with porphyria sorry because this is the thing that people thought that mary queen of scots

01:23:44.280 might have also had it might have been genetic in that family tree yeah it it is a genetic condition

01:23:51.320 so they think it came from mary queen of mary's line yeah because she had we haven't even gotten

01:23:58.940 into her episodes but she had some various um oh yeah so porphyria can sometimes lead itself to

01:24:05.300 hair growth that can give the appearance of a werewolf it's an explanation for the origin of

01:24:09.760 vampire and werewolf legends because maybe you're pale it there's something about like maybe the sun

01:24:13.960 bothers you anyway in his case what symptoms he was having might would be would be like liver

01:24:19.800 related and some mental yeah well no it'd be it would be a lot of it like he would have had he

01:24:27.300 we don't know because they didn't keep great records for us they kept records but they weren't

01:24:32.380 great records we don't obviously don't have a lot of stuff for the genetic testing but what they have

01:24:39.540 discovered is that um he does have traceable arsenic in his like his remains have traceable

01:24:48.880 arsenic and so which as you well know green clothing had arsenic makeup had arsenic like

01:24:57.920 the use of arsenic was pretty widespread at that point like part of it like was in medicines and

01:25:04.580 stuff so it's not that he was being secretly poisoned by people he was being secretly poisoned

01:25:10.000 by living a wealthy life in society at that time even though he was like relatively spent thrift

01:25:18.360 But the arsenic poisonings, like if it got to a degree, that would trigger the porphyria, the genetic porphyria to start expressing itself.

01:25:30.880 So maybe he didn't have porphyria to an extreme degree that it began manifesting in early childhood, causing hair growth and whatnot.

01:25:41.220 but he had the predisposition for it and and this it came out when he he experienced so there's this

01:25:49.940 thing where like once your immune system starts getting like once something makes you sick

01:25:55.300 things that could be making you sick that your body's been able to fight start flaring up

01:26:00.140 and we're seeing a lot of that with long covid and and all of that stuff but you know long covid

01:26:05.640 could be a lot of things can't wait can't wait to find out what that is but like in this particular

01:26:10.760 case the porphyria may have been latent and not expressive and then uh that came forward

01:26:18.060 that came forward with the arsenic um there's another theory that he simply had but he was

01:26:23.880 simply bipolar and that would also be genetic predisposition towards that it does not explain

01:26:31.340 the physical pain though that's what i was gonna say yeah it doesn't explain the physical onset

01:26:36.640 that triggered it that said like once you get like once you get to a certain point like the

01:26:43.340 way they're manifesting it kind of doesn't matter like they're basically same same but different

01:26:48.460 yeah for all intents and purposes it's as if from this point forward he he was bipolar

01:26:53.620 and would have manic talking episodes and yeah like the overly affectionate that he develops

01:26:59.560 like paranoia and things. It's complicated enough in 2023 to have these sorts of health conditions.

01:27:07.000 And back then, like no one knew what to do. So yeah, so he was having these mysterious symptoms.

01:27:16.480 Charlotte sought solace in reading the Bible, which I'm not super familiar with

01:27:22.020 what passages these would be reading, but there's something that she got out of it that said,

01:27:27.240 basically, God would not impose any suffering without the knowledge that you could overcome

01:27:31.960 it.

01:27:32.520 So she was like that thing you were saying.

01:27:33.900 It's like, you know, I'm being set this challenge, but you know, God wouldn't give me more than

01:27:36.980 I can handle or whatever.

01:27:38.900 To me, I wrote, which honestly doesn't sound like anything God would say.

01:27:43.500 That would be the book of Job.

01:27:45.340 But I feel like God did a lot of smiting.

01:27:50.660 But anyway, she sought solace in that.

01:27:52.280 She's like, you know, this is a hard time.

01:27:53.920 but you know what with my faith like we'll get through this she would be reading job a lot

01:28:00.380 yeah which is the guy who like god just kept doing worse and worse things to him right

01:28:05.740 that's that story it's just like things got worse and worse yeah this is gonna get worse

01:28:10.880 so anyway um george refused to cancel any of his public appearances so he would go out in public

01:28:16.460 but he would look disheveled so like the public knew something was up with him this was troubling

01:28:21.500 prinny their son sent his like the george had his own doctor prinny had his own doctor so

01:28:26.840 prinny sent his doctor for a second opinion so then there's like two different warring doctor

01:28:30.420 factions being like who should we who should we do um she suspected that prinny's and i think she

01:28:36.440 was correct um because remember george had told her like be suspicious of everyone and she always

01:28:40.000 was and she should be so pretty wanted to have george declared unfit to rule so he could step

01:28:45.100 in as regent um which i think is true and maybe that's partially because like george kind of was

01:28:50.480 unfit to rule, but also it's like Prinney had a lot of debts and I think wanted to wear fancy

01:28:54.640 crowns. I mean, you can both be accurate and terrible as a human being. Two things can be

01:29:02.520 true at the same time. Correct. So George kept being ill. And so a bill was proposed that would

01:29:09.580 name Prinney as the regent, but it would allow Charlotte to retain power over the king's care

01:29:14.440 and over his household.

01:29:16.280 So he didn't get killed.

01:29:18.120 Yeah.

01:29:18.800 But also, so like, spoiler, 0.85

01:29:21.400 the Regency doesn't happen at this point.

01:29:23.240 He gets better.

01:29:24.140 But this was sort of like laying a track

01:29:26.240 for when the Regency eventually does happen.

01:29:27.920 And Charlotte, even at this, she was just like, 0.83

01:29:29.340 oh, I don't want that much power.

01:29:30.480 I don't want influence. 1.00

01:29:31.720 And some people are like, oh, Charlotte's so like power hungry. 1.00

01:29:34.040 She wants this.

01:29:34.600 She's like, I don't.

01:29:35.760 I do not.

01:29:36.480 Like, I love my husband and I want to like help

01:29:40.160 oversee his medical care, but I don't want any political power. 0.96

01:29:42.880 she reminds me of the moms like when when like the grandmas when the husband dies like of the 0.98

01:29:49.800 silent generation when your grandpa your older great grandpa or grandpa would die and then the

01:29:55.580 mom would be like oh i don't i don't know where the house like the deed of the house is i don't

01:30:00.840 know where like all of that that i i know nothing about anything that kept me alive and responsible

01:30:08.620 as a human yeah i don't know what bank we use like yeah that's and it's funny just because

01:30:13.780 the newspapers and stuff that hated her like today there's like warring factions within the 1.00

01:30:17.620 royal family leaking stories to the newspapers and they'd be like oh the queen wants this power

01:30:21.580 for herself and she's like could not be further from the truth like no anyway so this is i'm 1.00

01:30:28.840 gonna diagnose her as like displacing like the lack of control she had in that side of her life 0.51

01:30:34.400 so that she could have control over something,

01:30:36.520 she turned her attention to, I'm so sorry, to these six daughters 0.97

01:30:39.820 because it turns into a virgin suicides slash Lisbon sisters, 0.62

01:30:44.100 if you know that movie sort of thing, 1.00

01:30:45.920 where she just shuts them away from all of society 1.00

01:30:48.520 to keep them for herself, like her little forced friends. 0.80

01:30:52.340 So the six girls lived in what became known as the Windsor Nunnery,

01:30:57.320 like not officially, but basically.

01:31:00.300 The girls became her secretaries, confidants, and friends, 0.99

01:31:03.040 and she would not let anybody marry any of them. 0.93

01:31:06.280 So it's kind of like the 12 dancing princesses,

01:31:08.160 but not dancing.

01:31:09.700 Just with no one to come to save them.

01:31:12.760 Just princesses trapped with their like

01:31:14.920 very controlling mother.

01:31:16.980 Because just being like,

01:31:17.760 my childhood in Germany was so great.

01:31:19.920 Let's just be like that. 1.00

01:31:20.920 And they're just like, stop it.

01:31:23.580 Anyway, so George was moved from one house to another.

01:31:26.140 He's moved to Kew.

01:31:27.380 They thought he might improve there.

01:31:28.900 I don't know, like a bit further out of town.

01:31:30.540 the house there was known as the white house a phrase that comes up a few times in this book

01:31:36.000 and which has a very different connotation to americans so the white house was their home in

01:31:42.160 queue and it was divided into two households one for him and even like the rooms above where he

01:31:47.240 was nobody would go there so he wouldn't hear the feet walking because that might trigger him like

01:31:51.240 there's just him and his doctors would go to see him and everyone else was in the other household

01:31:55.980 Charlotte I think understandably like is going through this extremely stressful situation she

01:32:00.940 started having severe insomnia and fits of nervous exhaustion which I think just means

01:32:07.100 not doing great Bob like she was having anxiety like more than likely the two of them

01:32:14.800 the two of them were probably helping each other like maintain whatever that balance was

01:32:21.700 And when she didn't have him, she, she fell into what may have been her predisposition towards an anxious, like an anxious condition, possibly a neurodivergence, like something like that.

01:32:36.700 I don't think either of them were particularly suited for the life that they found themselves in.

01:32:45.180 And that is what mental illness tends to be.

01:32:47.540 It's like just a manifestation of not being suited for the life you find yourself in and needing assistance with that, whether that be medical or therapeutic.

01:32:57.900 So I think she was very, I think we would call her a nervous person. 0.85

01:33:03.080 And again, like that silent generation, she would have been somebody that just embraced the Valium. 0.86

01:33:09.400 Yeah. 0.85

01:33:11.180 And I am someone who would happily embrace the Valium if it didn't cause other nervous problems for me.

01:33:18.360 Like, sometimes you just need that little bit of help.

01:33:20.840 And she did not have that.

01:33:23.040 All she had was snuff.

01:33:24.460 She just said snuff. 0.70

01:33:25.940 She had snuff. 0.93

01:33:26.940 Cinnamon snuff.

01:33:28.200 She had dogs.

01:33:29.320 She had gardening.

01:33:30.360 but yeah like even when i was reading about her like before she gets to this point of like

01:33:34.100 you know emotional crisis like just the way that she was living where she's like these are the

01:33:37.760 rules everyone has to follow them all the time and then she's like i like gardening it's like okay

01:33:42.320 like these are like ways you're coping with your life that are worked that worked until they worked

01:33:48.040 until they didn't and then she doesn't have any she has no coping mechanisms left basically exactly

01:33:54.060 except for the one thing she could control is her daughters and we'll see how that goes yeah and 0.99

01:33:59.640 that's what you do when you don't have proper treatment or medication. You take it out to the

01:34:05.740 next generation. Yeah. Prepare some generational trauma. So her hair turned gray from the stress

01:34:11.600 of all of this, and she lost more and more weight. She had sort of like a, I'm not going to say a

01:34:17.700 disordered eating thing, but just like her weight would fluctuate with stress, like it happens to a

01:34:22.540 lot of people. And you see that in her portraiture. Sometimes she's very thin and fragile looking. 0.82

01:34:28.260 and a lot of the political cartoons exacerbate that appearance but then sometimes she looks

01:34:33.720 larger so i think she was just like she was self not medicating but just like doing what she had

01:34:41.320 on hand to try and get through every day well and insomnia messes with a lot of that as well

01:34:46.400 yeah you're right and it just like you don't have a lot of control over how much you want to eat or

01:34:51.420 how much you're capable of eating sometimes yeah no and that's where it's interesting and again in

01:34:55.900 the other Queen Charlotte episode we talk about, there's one portrait that was done of her. I think

01:34:59.360 it might be around this period where she looks worn out. She looks so thin and her hair... She's 0.99

01:35:05.200 wearing a wig, but the white hair, she just looks pale, so drawn. And apparently she hated this

01:35:10.580 portrait, presumably because it was accurate. It wasn't... Yeah, it wasn't put on public display.

01:35:16.100 Like she... Like, of course. Yeah, please don't. And it's a painting. It's not a photograph. It's

01:35:21.600 like, could you paint me not looking like I look? Thank you. Anyway, so George began to improve.

01:35:26.940 By 1789, the Regency talks ended. He and the family returned to Windsor amid a tidal wave

01:35:33.600 of public love. So news about his illness had been in the tabloids. And suddenly people are just

01:35:38.380 like, this might be also why they kept their heads. Like people were kind of rooting for him

01:35:42.580 in the illness. Maybe because they hated his son so much. I'm not sure. But people were happy he

01:35:47.500 got better charlotte planned a concert to celebrate his improved health and she pointedly did not

01:35:53.220 invite her two eldest sons because she'd been battling with them about like which doctors 0.99

01:35:57.880 should we have they're both pieces of shit and there's also a whole thing about like i'm not 0.99

01:36:02.900 gonna get into this and i refuse to learn about it the wigs and the tories when i see those words 0.99

01:36:09.280 my brain shuts off I can't care but anyway it's politics her sons were one of those things and

01:36:18.420 she was the other one of those things and that was like another bone of contention anyway so for the

01:36:23.320 next few years like years everyone just was kind of like everything's fine so it's just kind of

01:36:28.920 like let's try to not trigger that to happen again by following all of Charlotte's very strict rules

01:36:34.980 constantly as as someone with a chronic illness like man it managing flares yes yes it is a thing

01:36:42.980 i think this is part of where people go to her be like oh can you talk to the king about this

01:36:47.320 she's like no like i'm not going to upset him ever ever ever ever i'm not going to be like oh let's

01:36:53.660 do abolition it's like no like she's not going to be like oh can my daughter get married no like

01:36:57.800 she was not bringing anything to him because she was just like wanting to maintain his like balance

01:37:03.940 Because you don't know what will happen next.

01:37:05.960 You don't know when it'll come up.

01:37:07.120 And you don't know what's going to upset him.

01:37:08.760 You don't know what caused it.

01:37:10.140 You have no clue what caused it.

01:37:11.640 Yeah, but you want to think that it's something you can prevent.

01:37:14.740 Yes, very, very much.

01:37:17.280 Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette.

01:37:19.200 So Charlotte had been pen pals with Marie Antoinette for quite a while.

01:37:21.860 They'd never met in person, but they had a lot in common, as I mentioned before,

01:37:24.920 like German-speaking princesses sent to a foreign country. 1.00

01:37:28.440 Not especially beautiful, like not known as beauties,

01:37:31.500 but like they liked play acting gardens oh yeah speaking of charlotte had begun developing the

01:37:37.780 grounds of frogmore farm frogmore which is where contentiously megan and harry had been and now

01:37:45.140 aren't anyway so she referred to the grounds there as her little paradise so again like this is like

01:37:51.620 god bless like she's finding ways to self-care by just like doing this garden stuff oh fun fact 1.00

01:38:00.180 Marie Antoinette also had Pomeranians. 1.00

01:38:05.600 Tragically, we don't know their names.

01:38:07.740 Anyway, so these two had a lot in common, actually.

01:38:10.960 French Revolution happened.

01:38:12.740 So Marie Antoinette, like, I'm going to just assume people listening to this podcast at this point are familiar with the fact that the French Revolution was a thing that happened and that the royal family was deposed, dethroned, put in prison.

01:38:25.600 And Charlotte sent care packages of clothes and essentials to her friend, but like she couldn't be like, come stay with us in England.

01:38:33.380 Like she couldn't actually help her.

01:38:35.300 So again, it's just like Charlotte means well in her way, but it's like this isn't what Marie Antoinette needs right now.

01:38:42.320 But at least it was like she wanted to feel like she's doing something.

01:38:45.760 Marie Antoinette was executed. 0.98

01:38:48.260 Spoiler.

01:38:49.540 Anyway, and that was at around the same time they were going to be celebrating George III's Jubilee, but they canceled that.

01:38:55.600 out of respect for her having just been put to death and also because probably everyone would

01:39:00.500 have rioted and maybe killed him too so that's in the air the next subject heading on my notes if

01:39:05.780 you're following along lana is carolina front's explanation points so this is like you know

01:39:11.740 vulgar history season one episode one you can hear that whole saga there but to recap lana's and my

01:39:18.220 one of our favorites the goat c of b is everything so pretty the son had to marry somebody both

01:39:26.960 because he was the heir to the throne and he had to have children but also because he was in debt

01:39:31.220 and this would like the parliament had said if you marry someone will pay off your debts and he's

01:39:34.940 like great i'll marry her so he well no first he goes i'll marry uh the lady i think i'm married 0.88

01:39:42.320 to already and they're like uh that is not a valid option try again and then his like evil mistress

01:39:49.140 was like why don't you choose her and it's again it's like a big princess diana vibe it's like what

01:39:53.320 about this sheltered person who seems malleable jokes on them because that person was carolina

01:39:58.360 brunswick so she is the daughter of augusta ii george's sister and charlotte as i mentioned

01:40:05.960 before she was just like no like she knew what it what sort of person they wanted which was like 1.00

01:40:13.940 a her sort of person and everyone knew caroline was a hot mess it was known 1.00

01:40:19.280 she was augusta's daughter everybody knows like it's it's that it's your aunt your messy aunt

01:40:27.540 she's like your kid's not gonna be better well and it's like we do stuff about caroline like

01:40:32.080 like, Charlotte had heard, like, Caroline, like, what was the thing? It's like, she pretended to

01:40:36.320 be going, giving birth to stop her parents going to a ball, even though she had, like, never been

01:40:41.560 allowed around a man before. But then maybe there's a rumor that maybe she had had a baby, like,

01:40:46.400 she probably spread that herself. But, like, Caroline was a mess, and it wasn't a secret. 0.99

01:40:50.140 Oh, and family's gonna know that, of all people.

01:40:52.840 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Augusta is, like, George's sister. Like, so it's like, oh, my, like, niece,

01:40:58.260 like, yeah, of course, Charlotte knows all about Caroline. And she is. I love her. And thank God

01:41:02.620 her energy is entering this story. But like, she was a disaster in the best way, like as the 0.97

01:41:09.540 choice of bride. Anyway, Brittany was like, I don't know, I just need to pay off my debts. I'll

01:41:14.280 marry her. They got married. It did not go well from the minute they met each other. They had sex

01:41:20.040 once, I guess, because she had a daughter nine months later. The daughter was named Charlotte

01:41:25.960 Augusta after her two grandmothers. But by then, Caroline Brunswick and Prinny had separated,

01:41:33.520 lived separate lives, hated each other. They were not...

01:41:36.800 Didn't even pretend.

01:41:37.860 No. And this is where the public loved Caroline. Because as you'll recall, the public,

01:41:44.280 even though every now and then they're like, yay, the king isn't sick anymore.

01:41:47.700 They mostly hate the monarchy conceptually, but also personally. And the fact that Caroline came

01:41:54.400 in and they're all like she is our hero we will riot for her because like they don't like her

01:42:01.580 like it anyway it's like the parallels are there to like princess diana or megan markle or whatever

01:42:06.780 it's just kind of like everyone loves her because the royal family does not get along with her and

01:42:12.780 they hate the royal family this is where i noted please note carolina brunswick's nickname for 0.74

01:42:16.760 charlotte was old snuffy which i'm sure charlotte she probably said it to her face caroline

01:42:23.880 of brunswick like i love her she anyway at least in her hearing she at least said it

01:42:31.920 in her hearing apparently her voice is very loud too anyway so charlotte i wrote here charlotte

01:42:36.600 hated caroline but i don't think she did i think she just felt she was ill not suited for this

01:42:40.220 role which she was not they would never be friends but charlotte didn't like drama charlotte didn't 1.00

01:42:44.860 like people behaving incorrectly and that's all caroline brought to the party was but she's also 0.99

01:42:51.520 not going to correct her or like be mean about it or make any problems she's going to be like that 0.99

01:42:58.220 horrible passive aggressive like just do it better while she's around and then not not even

01:43:06.720 acknowledge that she's done anything no exactly it's like the let's avoid confrontation to a toxic

01:43:12.000 extent really so george the king was fond of caroline because it's his niece um because he

01:43:19.680 liked his sister Augusta I wrote he liked her because he had good taste I like her too but

01:43:27.140 also because Carolina Brunswick was the mother of Charlotte who was like now going to be the next

01:43:33.260 heir to the throne baby Charlotte and they loved babies they do love babies meanwhile back at the

01:43:39.140 nunnery the six daughters the six adult daughters were very much wanting to get married for various

01:43:44.740 reasons, including because then they could leave this virgin suicides situation. So Charlotte

01:43:50.200 couldn't give permission from them to marry. She would have to take it to George and she was not

01:43:54.220 bringing him anything. She didn't want to upset him. So she didn't forward any of the proposals

01:43:58.700 to him. This annoyed them. So again, it was a 12 dancing princesses, but without the dancing,

01:44:03.140 they're just like trapped there. Some gray gardens vibes. In 1795, Crown Prince Friedrich

01:44:08.980 of Württemberg inquired about marrying the eldest daughter, whose name was Charlotte.

01:44:14.820 So if you're playing at home on the Vulgar History bingo card, daughter named after self.

01:44:20.340 You can mark up that square. Anyway, Princess Charlotte, the Princess Royal, was desperate for 0.85

01:44:24.900 this to happen. And she just, I don't know what she did, but somehow after two years,

01:44:30.920 she got her mother to ask her father. She got to get married and she got to leave.

01:44:35.140 charlotte our charlotte made her daughter's wedding gown herself by hand and there's something about 0.99

01:44:41.120 like you know charlotte like our charlotte the main one she wanted thought the wedding dresses 0.98

01:44:46.280 should be like white and silver but her daughter was like no white and gold and charlotte's like

01:44:50.700 okay and she like to her credit did it in the colors her daughter wanted although i'm sure

01:44:54.400 she was just like thought to herself this is so tacky she probably said it all the whole time

01:44:59.100 Oh, this would be so lovely and gold.

01:45:01.580 Oh, absolutely.

01:45:02.880 Yeah.

01:45:04.080 So then there was a royal wedding.

01:45:05.740 Yay.

01:45:06.440 So then there's the next assassination attempt.

01:45:09.200 Because remember, the people of London still hate the royal family, except for Caroline.

01:45:14.820 So May 1800, a man named James Hatfield took a shot at George as he entered his box at Drury Lane Theater, like literally with a gun.

01:45:23.240 So this is what a theater is, kind of like Abraham Lincoln vibes.

01:45:27.320 Anyway, he missed, I think, because adrenaline,

01:45:30.080 but also guns then were unwieldy and hard to aim.

01:45:34.580 There's only one bullet.

01:45:35.940 It takes 25 minutes to like load it.

01:45:38.720 Anyway, this was obviously distressing to them both.

01:45:41.660 And it just kind of shows that like people still really hated this family.

01:45:44.100 And that would really probably lend itself to the two of them being like,

01:45:46.740 let's just stay in our garden and never go in the world ever.

01:45:49.640 But then one year later, George came down with a severe fever

01:45:52.140 to the point everyone thought he was going to die.

01:45:54.560 And so he didn't want the same doctors caring for him who had last time because the treatments

01:45:59.320 they'd done were traumatized.

01:46:00.600 They're called, it was like Dr. Willis.

01:46:02.380 He was just like, not those guys, anyone but those guys.

01:46:04.600 So he fired them and he went off to Q where he was confined. 0.96

01:46:09.060 He underwent various, you know, medical treatments, which I won't get into, but, you know, shitty

01:46:16.160 oldie time medical treatments for mysterious illnesses.

01:46:20.000 Eventually on Vulgar Peace, Peter, I am probably going to make you watch The Madness of King

01:46:24.340 george and then you will know yeah straitjackets are involved so here's the thing so he was having

01:46:29.760 a fever they thought he was gonna die he was taken up for care but he wasn't having the mental health

01:46:33.740 aspect at this time so he was able he had his i don't know for a better phrase like his wits about

01:46:38.360 him like he was able to make demands he was able to be like stop this like go away he was in full

01:46:44.120 control of his faculties he had he had full faculties yeah in terms of like unfit to rule

01:46:49.220 like he was he was just like a king who like had a fever anyway but this was like an unpleasant

01:46:54.160 situation and like going back to q like that's where he was the first time that he was undergoing

01:46:58.980 serious medical stuff and so he just had so many traumatizing memories of that house he had the

01:47:03.880 house the white house torn down like and that's where he and charlotte and their kids had had

01:47:08.140 such a nice time living there a lot as the kids were growing up earlier in their marriage but now

01:47:12.700 it's just it's too hard he couldn't today um if you go to that spot a sundial marks the spot where

01:47:19.180 it once stood. And I guess the rest is these gardens, the cute gardens. So that was 1800.

01:47:23.800 And then in 1804, he fell ill again. And he had made Charlotte promise that he would not call

01:47:28.920 those doctors he hated. So she called different doctors, but they like, all the doctors are going

01:47:35.080 to have the same ideas because it's 1804 and he had a mysterious disease. So again, he was put

01:47:41.720 in a straight jacket, all these horrible things like medical treatments that they were trying to

01:47:45.540 help him with. This time he had the mental health aspect. So in his mania, quote unquote, or manic

01:47:52.540 state, he insulted Charlotte. He said very sexual things about her and about other women.

01:47:58.880 And he would be overly affectionate, like not in a sexual way, I don't think, but like with

01:48:03.380 their daughters. So like she wouldn't let him be alone with the daughters. She wouldn't be alone

01:48:06.840 with him herself. The relationship never recovered from this period of time and just the things that

01:48:13.680 he said and the way that he acted she was never alone with him again and wouldn't let him be alone

01:48:19.180 with any of the daughters because it was just unpredictable and distressing especially to like

01:48:24.140 really young children that that is uh it's a symptom of certain types of dementia where

01:48:31.460 when when my husband's grandfather had it we were referring to it as dirty old man syndrome

01:48:37.820 where they just they lose any ability to like filter their their thoughts and they don't

01:48:45.820 necessarily even have like they're not thoughts they would have normally had but like their

01:48:51.520 brains just misfiring at that point exactly exactly so i think there's something about like

01:48:55.900 charlotte it's not that she wished that he was dead but she started acting as though he was

01:49:01.840 because the person she knew was gone yeah like this was a person who looked like him but the

01:49:07.940 things he was saying weren't things that he would have said like the way that he was acting like it

01:49:11.100 was all and it was very very very very very distressing obviously like he um for a while he

01:49:17.360 wouldn't be away from her so like she couldn't leave the room but then they thought we need to

01:49:22.520 keep them apart because being around her is maybe freaking about more and then he would like break

01:49:26.240 out of his room and like there's one like he snuck into her room at night like she had to have like

01:49:31.720 not guards but just like they had to be so separated and she was moved to different rooms

01:49:36.100 so he wouldn't know where to find her like it would be so scary for her for everyone like he

01:49:43.200 he never knew what he was gonna do yeah he was he was having mania and bouts of psychosis

01:49:49.100 so he was his actions were very unpredictable and I mean some of that might have been his treatment

01:49:54.980 some of it might have been the disease it might have been he was in fact having a severe form of

01:50:00.460 dementia in his older age and like it could have been a lot of things they don't know no one knows

01:50:06.300 for sure but he was he was verging on danger to himself and others level of problems yeah and so

01:50:13.940 just especially and i think this is part of what the queen charlotte bridgerton show it's kind of

01:50:18.580 like her what it looks like it is this is her in you know the bridgerton timeline thinking back to

01:50:23.720 when she and him were first in love and they were young but we know in bridgerton that he is ill and

01:50:29.700 having these effects because he showed up in season two so just like knowing what little nerds

01:50:34.420 they were to begin with to see it become this just kind of like i don't know it's oh it's like this

01:50:40.540 sort of thing is always devastating but in this we're telling this person's story and like charlotte

01:50:44.440 had been so like the relationship had been so solid for so long and they were just like

01:50:49.720 doing their little gardens together like they had a nice relationship and it's gone and if she was

01:50:56.740 dealing with untreated anxiety and one of the things that quite often happens as someone who

01:51:02.320 lives with anxiety when it's untreated when things are at their worst you start denying reality you

01:51:08.500 start denying like it may have gotten literally gotten to the point where she just pretended like

01:51:13.140 he didn't exist because that was easier for her than acknowledging the reality of his life as it

01:51:19.620 was right now and their life as it had been before. Yeah. And she was still wrestling what

01:51:26.880 control she could over her life by just like keeping her daughters trapped in the nunnery. 0.70

01:51:32.940 In delusional and inappropriate ways, but it was, it was what she knew and what she knew how to do.

01:51:39.160 Yeah. Well, and to her, it's almost like sort of a twisted version. I don't mean twisted and well,

01:51:43.880 it is not good. I don't mean twisted and bad. I just mean like sort of like altered of how as a

01:51:48.860 child her family and the time with her family was so valuable to her this is the way that she's

01:51:53.340 trying to make get that comfort from her own children yep like with cc and the horses and

01:51:59.560 the exercise and the being outside it was that it was a thing she had power over and it reminded her

01:52:06.600 of a time where her life was better yeah anyway so like people every now and then would want to

01:52:14.320 marry one of the daughters she wouldn't agree to the match the one that she got closest to was her

01:52:18.000 brother charles and this is the one who i think is in the queen charlotte show anyway he asked

01:52:21.520 about marrying his eldest son to one of the daughters and charlotte was like okay sure but

01:52:26.460 like choose which one you want and he saw them and he's like none of them never mind and it's

01:52:32.540 just like the virgin suicides house it's just these like haunted eyed girls who haven't been

01:52:36.220 allowed outside and he's just like backs away slowly charlotte's youngest daughter amelia aka

01:52:42.040 emily had fallen in love with charles fitzroy her father's equerry 21 years her senior if anyone

01:52:49.440 has listened to the crossover episode i did with worst bestsellers about um the other boleyn girl

01:52:55.080 this is kind of like when mary boleyn fell in love with the horse man so just sort of like

01:52:59.520 anyway she was not it was a man and she saw him yep yep so anyway she was not allowed to marry

01:53:06.740 him because charlotte would at this point so when any of the girls turned 25 they like the rule 0.78

01:53:12.940 about like you have to get permission they could have chosen their own husbands after age 25 before 0.92

01:53:17.180 that charlotte would have to take it to the king because he was still the king there was an regency 0.57

01:53:20.800 and he would have to prove it and she was not going to do that but even after the girls turned

01:53:24.820 25 none of them chose their own marriages because they had been broken down emotionally to the point

01:53:32.480 they would never do that yeah anyway um princess elizabeth one of the other daughters wrote we go

01:53:38.580 on vegetating as we have done for the last 20 years of our lives not exaggerating so this this

01:53:46.220 is what they were doing so elizabeth fell for louis philippe the duke of orleans and you might

01:53:51.440 think like oh a french duke he was a school teacher in twickenham because of the french revolution he

01:53:57.200 had to flee and then that was the job he found anyway charlotte did not approve of this match

01:54:03.040 because he was catholic but also she never approved of any matches she wasn't gonna let 0.99

01:54:06.460 any of her children marry anyone ever meanwhile through all this prinny is still on his bullshit 0.97

01:54:11.880 trying to like taking carolyn brunswick to court trying to get a divorce trying to prove her 0.91

01:54:16.580 affairs but the king wouldn't allow you know what it's like charlotte is being like i can't upset

01:54:22.680 my husband. And Prinny is just like, here's what I'm doing. Like, fuck.

01:54:27.020 Like, I care about my sisters. 1.00

01:54:29.660 Anyway, so he's like, Prinny is just like going to court, Carolina Brunswick, like that's all

01:54:34.040 happening simultaneous to all of this, which might also be not as big a part, but a part of Charlotte

01:54:40.520 being like, I have to have control over something in my life. I can control these children by not

01:54:45.120 letting them go outside. So it's 1809. George is heading towards his golden jubilee, which would be

01:54:50.600 celebrating 49 years on the throne. It was a pretty shitty year, as Queen Elizabeth II might

01:54:55.580 say. Enos Horribilis, 1809, this year of his jubilee, started with a fire that ravaged Charlotte's

01:55:02.400 apartments at St. James, and it went downhill from there. So buckle in. So George, by now he was

01:55:09.280 basically blind, crippled by rheumatism, and often in a state of confusion. He never appeared in

01:55:16.080 public. The public appearances were left for Charlotte and or his daughters, except for

01:55:20.740 Amelia, the youngest, who was dying of this season's constant companion, tuberculosis.

01:55:28.120 I don't remember having so many cases of tuberculosis on this podcast until this,

01:55:34.040 until I learned about it from that cowboy movie. And now it's just constant.

01:55:40.400 Tombstone. Best cowboy movie.

01:55:43.240 We cover that in Valkyrie's Theater and Lana thoroughly explained tuberculosis to me there,

01:55:47.260 but you have thoroughly explained tuberculosis on other episodes because as we know, I mean,

01:55:54.160 do you want to explain it yet again? It's like, it like flares up and down and you can have it for

01:55:58.320 years, right? It's yeah. It's also called the consumption. It's, it's a disease that's

01:56:03.680 relapsing, remitting. So you can have like really bad bouts and really not bad bouts.

01:56:08.340 but no matter what it does is slowly eating your lungs away. And you're really only contagious

01:56:15.020 in like the first bout, like the first time you have it, that's when you're contagious. And then

01:56:19.720 after that, when it comes and goes, you're not contagious anymore. So you can be around people

01:56:25.000 and have bad days and good days, and nobody will be harmed by that. So it's a disease that's easy

01:56:33.160 to catch because usually you don't know what it is when you first get it. And you can spread it

01:56:37.280 to a whole bunch of people. And then you just spend the rest of your life, long or short,

01:56:41.400 depending on how nice it is to your body. Coughing.

01:56:44.380 Coughing up blood like sateen in Moulin Rouge.

01:56:46.980 Yes.

01:56:48.000 Which is interesting, like how it's, you know, it's contagious just for a bit and then it's not

01:56:52.260 because Amelia has spent the last decade plus trapped in a house with her sisters and none of

01:56:57.820 them got it. So she would have had it before that happened, I guess.

01:57:02.560 possibly had it before possibly just was they kept her separated when she first got sick and

01:57:09.240 and then the others just didn't catch it yeah yeah so she's the one who wanted to marry charles

01:57:13.920 fitzroy the horseman but um charlotte would never take that request george because she didn't want

01:57:18.800 upset him amelia had loved and wanted to marry the horseman for 10 years and she was now dying

01:57:24.820 uh she wrote in her will that she wanted him to inherit basically everything she had

01:57:30.100 to leave simultaneously. So Amelia was sick. George, her dad was also sick. And they were 1.00

01:57:35.860 sort of like sick pals. They would have meals together. They would hang out together. And

01:57:40.720 Amelia had always been his baby. She was the youngest and the two of them had always been

01:57:44.840 close. And now they were sick slash dying simultaneously. So they hung out together.

01:57:49.400 George took a turn for the worse. And so at this point, the Regency scenario was not a question of

01:57:56.100 if but when and it's interesting like through reading this like through researching this

01:58:00.500 I've heard forever the phrase like the regency era and now I'm just like oh my god it's such

01:58:05.480 a grim thing like knowing what caused it I just thought of it as like saying the tutor era like

01:58:10.400 it's just a word describing a thing but it's like no now it's the regency I'm just like oh god

01:58:15.960 this is so sad and it's weird how divorced from these strong personalities it was like

01:58:22.480 these are serious problems that are happening and things like destroying this family and this

01:58:27.940 terrible person who is the regent being the regent and all of this stuff and you never hear any of

01:58:33.920 that at all all you hear is it's the regency because all of the nobility just scatter

01:58:39.480 and they go out to the country and they they come in and they do their thing and they have nothing

01:58:44.920 to do with the king and the queen and like the house of lords has more power and all of that

01:58:49.100 but you like you don't hear anything about the king and the queen because no one wants to deal

01:58:52.900 with that situation at all it's not polite to talk about it because it's so awful it is it is

01:59:00.480 and so just like the regency and it's like you know there's like regency associations i hold a

01:59:05.400 regency like to me regency means like that kind of dress and like jane austen books is what i would

01:59:11.380 have formed like and i'm just like i don't know why it's called that but that's called the regency

01:59:14.820 but now it's like this is this grim situation like the regency the region himself piece of 0.98

01:59:19.860 shit the regency caused by this like horrifying medical awful decades-long nightmare and we're 0.97

01:59:27.720 just like the regency like i don't know it's wild and well jane austen was like who is like the face 0.92

01:59:34.320 of the regency why why it is so popular today she lived out in hampshire she lived out in the

01:59:38.860 country she wasn't there she wasn't involved in any of this she was landed gentry at best

01:59:44.620 there was the joke that that the neighbor goes to saint james and he's he's a knight like that's

01:59:50.860 as close as they get is the bottom bear the the absolute bottom of the nobility and aristocracy

01:59:58.140 and like they have nothing to do with any of that and that's where a lot of the and everybody's

02:00:03.420 fighting napoleon like that's napoleon's a bigger feature than the regent himself

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02:01:23.200 The war is over

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02:02:18.600 and join us in the dark and we're back so at this point like i said he and amelia had been like

02:02:28.640 hanging out and stuff and this was like he was obviously sick and having all these problems

02:02:32.040 blindness, rheumatism and stuff. But like he and Amelia were able to hang out, but his madness was

02:02:37.920 returning. So again, in sort of like a bipolar thing, like it would come and go, like the madness

02:02:43.240 side of things. Anyway, so he was isolated from Charlotte and his family, George. So it's not like

02:02:49.640 he went mad and stayed mad for years and years and years and years. It would come and go. But he also

02:02:55.220 had other health problems simultaneously. And then Amelia died in 1810. Her last words were

02:03:03.080 tell Charles I die blessing him. Charles being the horseman. And some people, dumbasses, thought,

02:03:10.940 oh, now that Amelia's dead, maybe the king will rally because he doesn't have to worry about her 0.99

02:03:14.840 anymore. That's how emotions work. Yeah, that's how that works. Anyway, and then the doctor that

02:03:22.840 he hated was called upon dr willis and so charlotte was worried firstly that if he thinks

02:03:30.500 that she had authorized this doctor that he would never forgive her she was also worried that if

02:03:35.000 george knew the contents of amelia's will that would upset him like charlotte i don't know she's

02:03:40.760 just really trying to not upset him by choosing just anything she can think of so anyway she got

02:03:45.980 her oldest sense yes she got picking all the wrong things no i know i know so she got her oldest

02:03:51.940 sons to change the will, naming themselves as the beneficiaries instead of the horseman.

02:03:56.440 So anyway, no other option. A regency was begun. As in the original documents, Charlotte was

02:04:03.280 responsible for care of his person and for appointments to the royal household. And this 0.71

02:04:08.080 gave her level of political power she never wanted, never had. And you were saying, you know,

02:04:13.240 it's kind of like, you know, the husband dies and the wife is just like, oh, do we,

02:04:17.420 do we have a credit card? Like just people who just don't.

02:04:20.200 can you remind me what a butler does again like who do we do we pay for the electricity or

02:04:26.400 so she didn't want this and obviously she's like emotionally overwhelmed and this is 1.00

02:04:30.380 a shitty situation if she had a reasonable son she could have handed that off to 0.83

02:04:34.780 one of the other kids but no the regent was regrettably goddamn pretty june 1812 uh was 0.90

02:04:42.740 the last time that she saw george like you said i think she i don't know if it's just like

02:04:47.380 pretending this isn't happening but just like for her own reasons like she just couldn't bear to see

02:04:52.940 him anymore he was not the man she knew so she just never visit him again she might have also

02:04:58.580 been worried that even speaking to him would have ruined his life that's true and just went with

02:05:03.700 that like like her own anxiety probably overwhelmed her exactly like she'd think like what if i say

02:05:09.460 what if i breathe the wrong way and that sets him off anyway so now there's a regent so the

02:05:13.580 the sisters are like, great. Our brother is the regent now. He's the one who could maybe

02:05:18.380 approve our marriages. So they're like, can you please talk to Charlotte and try to get her to

02:05:24.720 let us do anything? Like leave the house, go to a party. Meet some other guy than a horse dude.

02:05:32.620 Yeah. So Princess Augusta, who's now in her forties, like the sisters had been there for

02:05:39.380 like 20 years she'd been in love for years now with another horseman whose name is so close to

02:05:45.540 an actor from star trek but is not that name brent spencer okay i love how you go for brent

02:05:53.740 spicer brent spencer but you completely just miss james hatfield and james hetfield singer of

02:06:00.860 i don't know that name

02:06:02.020 it says a lot about us as people it does but it says a lot about me as a person every time i

02:06:09.240 looked at this, I was like, Brent? No, not the guy who plays Data. I'm like, Brent? Every time

02:06:13.540 I saw that, I'm just like, Brent? And I just picture Brent Spiner, the actor.

02:06:18.540 Spiner, that's what it was.

02:06:19.600 Brent Spiner being an equerry in the Regency era.

02:06:22.260 And he'd do it.

02:06:23.780 So she just needed her brother's permission. As far as we know,

02:06:28.880 Brittany did not give permission for her to marry Brent Spiner, the actor who plays Data on Star

02:06:32.500 Trek. But maybe she secretly married him. I don't know. She didn't leave the nunnery.

02:06:36.600 So anyway, what Brittany was able to do is he convinced Charlotte to let one of the other sisters, Princess Mary, act as a chaperone to young Princess Charlotte, the daughter of Carolina Brunswick, who was just entering society and was a pretty nightmare person herself.

02:06:52.640 Thank God she had inherited Carolina Brunswick's entire personality.

02:06:57.280 Just copy paste. 1.00

02:06:59.460 She was great.

02:07:00.580 But not Brittany's, thank God.

02:07:02.400 No, just like she was a direct clone of her mother.

02:07:06.600 even though she was never allowed near her exactly somehow just like the genetics of it 0.71

02:07:11.260 anyway so mary was so excited about this she wanted a shopping spree bought like outfits to

02:07:16.480 wear to be the chaperone to her young niece and then they're like okay we get to do stuff now so

02:07:20.940 she and princess elizabeth asked charlotte if they could attend the state opening of parliament

02:07:25.340 and charlotte said no but just like cinderella they snuck out and went anyway that's your big

02:07:32.260 night out the state opening of parliament i'm gonna go see parliament open it's like in the

02:07:36.380 virgin suicides when they go to prom um yeah anyway so they returned charlotte like lost her

02:07:43.020 mind she was so they had a huge fight but like maybe it's sometimes good like as much as charlotte

02:07:48.260 avoided conflict it's like now that they like laid it all on the line she did from thenceforth 0.88

02:07:53.520 occasionally let some of the girls do do the things they wanted sometimes in fact when william

02:08:00.100 Friedrich, Duke of Gloucester, asked for the hand of Princess Mary in 1816, Charlotte agreed.

02:08:06.180 Whoa. 0.74

02:08:07.380 Next section, return of Carolina Brunswick.

02:08:10.200 So Charlotte, young Charlotte, had inherited her mother's fun-loving and opinionated ways

02:08:15.140 good for her.

02:08:16.100 This made Prinny panic and it made Charlotte worry as well because she was an anxious person,

02:08:23.100 but also it's just like, what's going to happen?

02:08:25.360 she couldn't trap prince like young charlotte in the house like she's like the heir to the throne 1.00

02:08:32.000 she kind of like has to like get married and like be on the scene she also would have like 0.98

02:08:36.880 this is this is absolutely a person that would have strung the sheets together and gone out a

02:08:41.020 window like i feel like she did like she may have tried that when she was 10 and the men didn't see

02:08:49.000 her again for three weeks like that kind of a situation like young princess charlotte like

02:08:53.600 the granddaughter carolina brunswick's daughter like i feel like if she was trapped in the nunnery 0.85

02:08:57.620 she would like climb up the window on a sheet run off find a horse man like go to gretna green 0.99

02:09:02.720 marry him like or there would have been a riot like a riot in the nunnery 0.99

02:09:08.240 within within a week she would have like led all the sisters yeah exactly so like they kind of had 1.00

02:09:13.120 to let her not they knew that was not gonna stop her so um prinny arranged a marriage for her to 0.82

02:09:20.140 William of Orange. But then young Charlotte met Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Solfelt at a party

02:09:28.760 and she was like, that's my guy right there. It's those Saxe-Coburg guys. They get you every time.

02:09:34.660 Because that's where Albert was from, right? Yep.

02:09:37.500 Yeah. No, he had that same smolderiness maybe. And she was just... Anyway, so she's like,

02:09:41.920 here's who I choose to marry. And her dad, Prinny, was like, no way. And he was...

02:09:46.740 I locked her away in one of the castles,

02:09:48.540 but I believe what happened was

02:09:49.960 she found out he was going to lock her away

02:09:51.920 and then she ran off to see her mom 0.99

02:09:53.380 to see Carolina Brunswick.

02:09:56.820 Who was like, what am I going to do? 0.98

02:09:59.800 Did she like run all the way to Italy? 0.99

02:10:02.000 I want to say she ran all the way to Italy. 0.96

02:10:03.800 Let's say that.

02:10:03.980 I'm not going to double check it. 0.98

02:10:05.060 She probably just ran up to Carolina Brunswick's 1.00

02:10:06.700 like country house where she was like 1.00

02:10:08.200 collecting the adopted babies.

02:10:10.220 The adopted babies.

02:10:12.940 Yeah, just collecting babies.

02:10:14.920 Big air quotes.

02:10:16.520 Anyway, well, and the thing about Caroline as well,

02:10:18.260 like she was like England's sweetheart.

02:10:21.200 Everybody loved, everybody loved Caroline Brunswick.

02:10:24.480 And so they loved Princess Charlotte too.

02:10:26.240 Like those were the only royals anyone didn't hate right now.

02:10:29.920 And the tabloids were still tabloiding.

02:10:32.140 They all hated Prinny, the regent.

02:10:35.180 So they were all on her side.

02:10:36.560 Like they wanted Charlotte to be able to marry like young,

02:10:39.160 I'm going to call her young Charlotte. 0.99

02:10:40.540 They wanted young Charlotte to be able to marry who she wanted to marry,

02:10:44.080 like the people.

02:10:44.680 and this is the period of time where people of London would ride at the drop of a hat if it was

02:10:49.120 against the monarchy. In fact, Queen Charlotte one day was just out and about in her carriage

02:10:54.280 and a mob came upon her carriage, hammering on the glass, demanding she answer for her son's

02:11:01.020 actions. They're like, let your granddaughter marry the man you want. I could just see Charlotte

02:11:07.680 like, you can't do that. You can't touch my carriage. That's against the rules.

02:11:12.000 exactly exactly like in the past when there had been similar ish situations not quite that extreme 0.65

02:11:18.380 charlotte had just been like i'm unflappable but now she's just like this is terrible because she's

02:11:23.460 like broken down by life allegedly she said i am above 70 years of age i've been more than 50 years

02:11:30.080 queen of england and i never was hissed by a mob before and the crowd backed off i find that hard

02:11:35.380 to believe they were mean to me and i feel like she has been hissed by a mob well if she wasn't

02:11:40.900 That's because she just stayed in her garden all the time.

02:11:43.640 Right. 0.95

02:11:44.000 No one saw her.

02:11:44.840 Anyway, to her credit, though.

02:11:45.960 So she's like she's going somewhere in the carriage.

02:11:47.400 This happened.

02:11:48.080 She went to meet Prinny.

02:11:49.020 He was like, OK, on your way back, maybe like take bodyguards.

02:11:51.840 And she was like, no.

02:11:53.080 And she didn't.

02:11:53.980 So it's like good for her.

02:11:55.200 She's not backing up.

02:11:56.600 My country.

02:11:58.380 Oh, OK.

02:11:59.000 Yeah.

02:11:59.200 So here.

02:12:00.000 Yeah, I just corrected my own notes.

02:12:01.920 Yeah.

02:12:02.180 So she heard young Charlotte heard she was going to be trapped in a house.

02:12:06.020 So she here we go.

02:12:07.660 Yeah.

02:12:07.800 she commandeered a cab to take her to her mother what does that look like i don't know but i want

02:12:16.160 that to be another bridgerton series where charlotte and george are like the old silent

02:12:21.580 era couple like middle class couple c and b c and prinny to me are the hollywood couple

02:12:28.540 where the kid is like the afterthought and they keep pushing her back and forth and not caring

02:12:33.980 about her yeah well that's the thing like young charlotte went to see her mother and caroline

02:12:38.320 brunswick was like oh my darling daughter i miss you so much she was like this is gonna look bad

02:12:42.480 on me caroline like i'm gonna get in trouble so you should go back to your father so i can keep

02:12:47.740 my partying ways i've got this i have this italian married lover we're gonna go ride camels on a 1.00

02:12:54.020 mediterranean cruise anyway this whole thing like young charlotte running away commandeering a cab 1.00

02:12:59.320 panic printy because like she was England's national sweetheart. And so he kind of like

02:13:05.020 King Charles now, he's like, I really want the public to like me. So can I make them hate me a

02:13:11.060 bit less? So he allowed her to break the marriage contract and she could marry sexy Leopold.

02:13:17.600 And so there's two royal weddings that year. There was young Charlotte marrying Leopold.

02:13:21.580 And there's also Princess Mary got permission to marry Prince William Friedrich, Duke of Gloucester.

02:13:25.540 Oh, I mentioned that before, but I didn't mention that his nickname is Silly Billy.

02:13:29.320 So, and then another bad year, 1816, Charlotte's brother, Charles died and then protests against

02:13:37.540 Prinney turned violent.

02:13:39.420 His carriage was attacked at Westminster and then young Charlotte died in childbirth and

02:13:44.840 the child was stillborn.

02:13:47.540 So this is the whole thing.

02:13:48.800 Oh, so Charlotte, our Charlotte, the main one had been at Bath taking the waters.

02:13:53.340 There's, I've never said taking the waters as much as in this episode.

02:13:56.820 It's just a lot of baths. 0.95

02:13:58.200 It's very CeCe.

02:13:59.380 This was the height of taking the waters.

02:14:01.620 Other than that CeCe movie, Corsage,

02:14:03.680 I've never experienced so many baths being taken by royals. 0.99

02:14:07.360 Anyway, Charlotte had been a bath taking the waters when this happened.

02:14:10.000 So when young Charlotte gave birth and she died and the baby died,

02:14:14.040 our Charlotte came back to Windsor

02:14:16.680 and her carriage was heckled in the street by the crowds. 0.91

02:14:19.820 I just picture that woman from Princess Bride being like, 1.00

02:14:22.240 Boo! Boo! 1.00

02:14:25.520 They were mad at her. 0.98

02:14:26.760 They were mad at Charlotte because they thought that she didn't care her granddaughter had died.

02:14:31.600 It's like they just hated her.

02:14:32.880 And they were sad and mad that their beloved young princess had died.

02:14:37.580 I didn't even count, but I feel like the 14th person in the story called Friedrich,

02:14:42.580 the hereditary prince of Hessehomberg, asked for the hand of Princess Elizabeth.

02:14:47.020 He had years before asked to marry Princess Augusta, but had been refused.

02:14:51.060 Elizabeth was like, please, can I?

02:14:53.040 And Charlotte agreed.

02:14:53.940 And so she got married.

02:14:54.760 So like one by one, the princesses are like in their 40s getting married.

02:15:00.680 Charlotte made her final public appearance April 1818 when she appeared at a prize giving ceremony in honor of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor, where she made a donation of 500 pounds.

02:15:12.600 Can I make one small comment about 1816?

02:15:16.780 The worst year?

02:15:18.020 Yeah.

02:15:18.660 The worst year.

02:15:20.160 That was actually the year without a summer.

02:15:21.820 Was it?

02:15:22.200 That was Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

02:15:24.000 Yeah.

02:15:24.760 yeah that was that was the year there was no summer so it was a really terrible year

02:15:29.360 for everybody not just charlotte that was so 1816 yeah that was because what it was there's a

02:15:35.300 volcano somewhere and then like the sun yeah in indonesia there was a massive volcano in indonesia

02:15:42.180 so 1816 it's kind of like the mood it's like what if mercury retrograde but for a whole year

02:15:48.580 for everybody for everybody and it ruins the crops yeah so everything yeah so things were

02:15:55.620 pretty shitty so charlotte in her later years she fell ill she's in her 70s now she's like 74

02:16:01.600 so she'd been experiencing i mean whatever like she has various symptoms i don't know what she

02:16:07.000 was experiencing spasms doctors were on hand with her she knew the death was near and so she wanted

02:16:13.320 to return to her husband's side even though she hadn't seen him in at this point four years

02:16:17.840 this is where i was like wait is he still alive yes yes yes he was he's just off um being very

02:16:26.260 very sick but she was too being tortured by his doctor she's too fragile to make the journey

02:16:31.560 to get all the way to him she got to cue her legs had swollen from dropsy aka edema which

02:16:38.980 you've described before and other so just swollen like water or like fluid retention in the legs

02:16:45.680 and stuff or in various parts in her it was in her legs it starts in your legs typically okay yeah 0.79

02:16:50.860 so she could no longer walk you know remember she had to walk she had a garden she couldn't visit

02:16:54.720 her menagerie anymore her chair was fitted with rollers so sort of a proto wheelchair so she could

02:17:01.420 be wheeled around indoors but eventually even that amount of movement was too painful then she got

02:17:06.480 pneumonia and at this point the doctors just shifted to like palliative care like she was

02:17:11.360 clearly dying and because they knew she was dying she died with four of her children were there

02:17:15.500 Princess Mary, Princess Augusta, and her two oldest sons were there.

02:17:18.820 Prinny held her hand as she passed away.

02:17:21.300 Age 74, she'd been Queen of England for 57 years.

02:17:24.420 And that's the second longest consort ship.

02:17:27.900 The longest is Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband.

02:17:31.940 And the second longest consort ship in Great Britain, not of any country.

02:17:37.260 George was not told that she had died because they thought that would upset him.

02:17:41.340 And when her funeral procession made its way to Windsor where he was,

02:17:44.540 straw was scattered in the courtyard to muffle the sound of the horses and the hearse so he

02:17:48.860 wouldn't be like, oh, what's that noise? And he died 15 months later and they were buried side

02:17:53.380 by side at St. George's Chapel in Windsor, which is where Meghan Markle and Prince Harry got

02:17:58.200 married. I feel like Henry VIII is also buried there. It's got like a lot of notable graves.

02:18:04.400 Places. So Charlotte was the queen during a time of a lot of colonization. So there's numerous 0.50

02:18:10.440 places. I just put a couple here. So in Canada, there is the Queen Charlotte Islands in British

02:18:17.680 Columbia, which are now the name, it's referred to by the indigenous name, Haida Gwaii, but

02:18:21.900 sometimes referred to as the Queen Charlotte Islands. There's Queen Charlotte Sound on the

02:18:26.260 South Island in New Zealand. There's several fortifications, including Fort Charlotte and

02:18:30.540 St. Vincent, Charlottesville, Virginia, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Charlotte,

02:18:35.880 North Carolina, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and there's also one in Virginia,

02:18:40.900 and Charlotte County in both Virginia and in Florida. In Tonga, the royal family adopted the

02:18:46.720 name Salot, which is the Tongan version of Charlotte in her honor. So that's like,

02:18:52.500 that means like queen, I think there. So she funded the general lying in hospital in London

02:18:59.880 during her life that prevented it closing. Today is called the Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea

02:19:04.000 hospital it's a maternity hospital interestingly because of you know how her granddaughter well

02:19:09.440 how she had so many babies but then also her granddaughter died in childbirth queen charlotte's

02:19:13.920 ball the annual debutante ball i think is still going not sure anyway that's named after her

02:19:20.500 and there's a statue of queen charlotte in queen square and bloomsbury london and what's

02:19:25.560 interesting about that is for a while like it was erected i think by king george during one of his

02:19:31.380 like not sick times. But then later, for some reason, people started thinking it was Queen Anne

02:19:36.560 and it was only recently-ish. It was figured out like, oh, no, it's Queen Charlotte.

02:19:42.040 Because people just call it Queen Square and it's just kind of like, it's one of the queens.

02:19:46.060 Which queen? Doesn't matter.

02:19:48.400 And then there's a statue of her at Charlotte Douglas International Airport

02:19:51.340 and the International Trade Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. And we talked about in the other

02:19:57.600 queen charlotte episode the erection of one of those is that the word that feels inappropriate

02:20:03.240 when the charlotte one of the charlotte statues was put up in charlotte north carolina in i think

02:20:10.020 the 1980s the discussion about like but was she secretly a black person kind of sped up again

02:20:17.420 became more widespread uh rutgers the state university of new jersey was chartered in 1766

02:20:22.620 as Queens College, in reference to her. It was renamed in 1825 in honor of Henry Rutgers,

02:20:28.620 a Revolutionary War officer. Its oldest extant building is called Old Queens,

02:20:34.020 and the city blocks it forms the historic core of the university. Queens Campus retains its

02:20:38.500 original name. And then I like this because she was a little botany nerd. So there's a kind of 0.98

02:20:43.580 flowering plant native to South Africa that has become ubiquitous in warm weather regions

02:20:48.560 worldwide is called Strelitzia is named for Charlotte's native Mecklenburg Strelitz do you

02:20:55.740 have any things you know that are called Charlotte that you know about no but I used to um live in

02:21:01.980 Mecklenburg County Virginia for a very very short amount of time but yes I wanted to mention several

02:21:09.280 of those names because maybe someone is listening who is lives nearer is from one of those places

02:21:13.600 and they could be like i didn't know that history with queen charlotte so scoring is gonna be

02:21:19.840 interesting because can i just make a hot take and say scandalousness is zero yeah like in honor of

02:21:27.520 like aggressively zero like her scandalousness is zero to the point that like had there been some 0.98

02:21:35.040 maybe she would have done better i don't know i don't know i don't know it's like the opposite 0.94

02:21:40.800 of scandalousness like keeping her daughters locked up and like never engaging with anybody

02:21:44.800 like eventually that becomes like i don't know as a matter of respect to her i feel like

02:21:49.440 if i gave her even a 0.5 for scandalousness she would be very upset with me what do you think for 0.82

02:21:55.520 scheminess like she wasn't zero she wasn't schemey no honestly no she and even like i 0.99

02:22:06.540 she wasn't she was anti she was the opposite of scheming like she wasn't trying to like

02:22:12.260 use power for good she wasn't trying to use power for evil she wasn't trying to trick anybody

02:22:16.840 like the closest she got to scheminess is being mildly passive aggressive sometimes yeah and even

02:22:23.700 like for some people i sort of like reframe scheminess it's like was she smart was she

02:22:27.860 resilient did you come up with plans even if they weren't schemes but she didn't she just did 0.70

02:22:32.040 gardening gardening and giving money to maternity hospitals like and not asking her husband for

02:22:39.880 things because it might bother him yeah that this this is gonna okay significance i mean i think

02:22:48.500 in terms of like there is a show about her and the show is like as i think we've just

02:22:53.540 described in aggressive detail not actually about actual her but like the significance like the

02:23:01.700 whole. It's not about her though. It's she happened to be there. She, she happened to be

02:23:07.820 there. And even the stuff about like, you know, was she the first mixed race Royal or whatever?

02:23:12.480 It's like, whether or not you believe that, that didn't, she didn't move and she wasn't treated in

02:23:19.560 the world that way. So she behaved very white. Yeah. Like whether her 15 times great grandmother 0.81

02:23:26.340 was potentially from North Africa. I don't think I'm not going to give her significance points for

02:23:32.760 being like potentially the first mixed race royal because that's not actual. That's not her. That's

02:23:38.300 not about her or anything she did. No. Not when you're that German Lutheran all of the time

02:23:44.880 aggressively to everyone you meet. I am going to say significance. There are places named after her 1.00

02:23:50.060 and not everyone has that. So that's at least one point. But is it because of her or is it

02:23:56.000 because she happened to be queen at the time and if the queen had been named sophie they would have

02:24:03.020 all named been named after sophie and everything all of all of the statues would be about this

02:24:08.320 sophie person and like she herself okay here's what i'm gonna say significance she funded a

02:24:15.320 hospital and yes that is significant and it's still a hospital i lana i can't give her zero

02:24:24.940 zeroes I would I'm gonna give her one okay you give her one and then to your show

02:24:32.960 they're your point they're your imaginary points I just have to put them on the website and I think

02:24:40.300 it is significant that she funded a hospital and like there's lots of people who went in the

02:24:44.900 hospital and are probably alive today because a hospital exists could someone else have funded it

02:24:49.180 yes, but she's the one who did. She also brought kangaroos. That's not significant. 0.99

02:24:56.620 Are you writing these down? No, no. You have to put them in your new fancy spreadsheet.

02:25:01.800 I'm marking down the scores. Yeah. And then the final category is I'm marking down,

02:25:06.500 Lana, in my Google Doc. Your new fancy Google Doc.

02:25:10.160 We will say, listeners, if you didn't hear that part of a previous episode,

02:25:15.940 Lana and I had a discussion about a couple episodes ago about,

02:25:22.040 well, we had a discussion in real life.

02:25:23.400 Then on the episode, we talked about how

02:25:25.140 she's been working on the website, vulgarhistory.com

02:25:27.880 and how the Scandalicious Scale.

02:25:30.520 I was like, can you put this on the website? 0.73

02:25:31.660 And she's like, sure, send me your spreadsheet.

02:25:33.580 And I was like, you mean send you this list

02:25:35.280 that I keep in a Google Doc that's in order of score? 0.52

02:25:40.380 And I had a very small Charlotte-like meltdown.

02:25:43.600 Lana experienced some nervous exhaustion.

02:25:46.260 And then we said in that episode,

02:25:50.080 is there anyone out there who is a fan,

02:25:54.000 who like has a thing, who keeps these numbers?

02:25:57.320 A couple of people stepped up to say

02:25:58.700 they would compile them and stuff,

02:26:00.100 but somebody stepped up who had compiled them.

02:26:02.600 And that is Shaylin.

02:26:04.600 And Shaylin, amazing.

02:26:07.800 Shaylin sent me this document

02:26:09.540 with all the scores per category.

02:26:12.100 thank you very much tits of brigade you are you never fail to your perfection you never fail to

02:26:17.860 impress me anyway this is gonna like really affect the score if her final score is one 1.00

02:26:23.320 she deserves to be the bottom she would want nothing less the final category 0.98

02:26:29.860 she would she would be offended if you didn't exactly and i wouldn't want to upset her

02:26:34.820 the sexism bonus I think is a zero I don't think I think I think she was happy she liked when they

02:26:43.500 gave her power she was like no I shouldn't have power I'm a woman like but I'm a woman yeah like

02:26:48.600 can I I don't know how to hire people I haven't signed a check in my life

02:26:53.280 so yes so her total score is one your father handed all that which is interesting because

02:27:03.240 i would presume that the shonda rhimes character would probably get a much higher score oh yes

02:27:11.060 absolutely she's a queen she's fabulous i love her but like irl queen charlotte's like i see

02:27:17.320 why changes were made to make this tv show yeah literally okay so just so you know previously

02:27:23.620 the lowest score was 20 this is a very special episode it kind of it kind of counts but kind

02:27:33.160 it doesn't know like like this is not someone you would do an episode no that's the thing like

02:27:38.640 we're talking about a person who i never would have talked about on this podcast like even the

02:27:42.120 fact like and i will say again like the biography by charlotte curzon is really really good it

02:27:45.980 really covers her story in a really readable digestible way but also it's short because

02:27:50.420 there's like nothing there she just like had babies made a garden struggled with her husband's

02:27:57.720 illness trapped her daughters in a house it's like that's it like that's why there has not

02:28:03.000 been a full-length biography of her before because there's like nothing there i do think i do think

02:28:08.300 the fact that carolina brunswick is that 20 is disservice to carolina brunswick for anybody that

02:28:15.060 may not have listened back to that first episode that's true queen charlotte has one mary toft is

02:28:19.820 20 carolina brunswick also has 20 and that's where it's interesting so here's i'll tell you and i

02:28:24.740 guess anyone who's listening my secret plans so in future i am gonna be re um christina hard

02:28:32.760 working god bless her editor of these increasingly long unhinged episodes i was actually she's 0.64

02:28:39.260 actually gonna start editing vulgar piece theater as well so that's gonna have a professional sheen

02:28:44.740 do we deserve it i don't know what was i saying so the carolina brunswick yes so christina has been

02:28:54.120 remastering the old episodes, which I recorded before I had an editor, before I knew how to

02:28:59.300 use a microphone. She's been making them sound as good as they can. And so I'm going to be

02:29:02.740 re-releasing some of those in the future. And I think I'll add like a new introduction and a new

02:29:06.680 conclusion, which might include me revisiting some of the scores. Because Caroline Brunswick

02:29:11.460 was the first episode. I didn't, if I was just like, yay, 40, then it's like, where do you go

02:29:14.940 from there? You know, I didn't know. You didn't know Fredigo even existed yet. I didn't know

02:29:19.320 Lola Montez like I didn't know where we were heading so it was just really even like

02:29:24.200 Carolina Brunswick has uh surprisingly low score like so does um Frances Howard honestly she's 26

02:29:30.180 like because I in those early episodes I didn't I didn't know where the scale was I didn't know

02:29:35.480 what a 10 was I didn't know what a zero was so in future when I re-release those episodes we'll

02:29:40.800 still keep the scores because those were the original scores but I might have like revisited

02:29:45.660 you know here's what the remastered score might be but yeah cc's staying exactly where she is

02:29:52.340 oh no when i say revisiting scores i just mean like season one maybe season two cc has a 21

02:29:57.560 and that's appropriate to her as well but also like we did cc because there's the movies and

02:30:02.980 the tv suit like it was just sort of in the public sphere of attention like these are not vulgar

02:30:07.880 history people i thought you did it because you like and also because i like you

02:30:12.240 i just wanted to talk about cc for hours leave me alone i'm gonna be honest that is one that is

02:30:20.200 also the reason i think there was these cc tv shows and movies coming up and i'm just like

02:30:25.080 i've wanted to do this for a while but how can i and then it's like oh if i bring lana then it'll 0.58

02:30:30.380 make sense but cc is an interesting like she is a scandalicious person she's just not 0.90

02:30:37.680 scandalicious to the degree of let's say catherine de medici cc was scandalicious in her own quieter

02:30:45.980 way yeah like she deserves she deserves she's on the scale unlike charlotte charlotte is not on the

02:30:53.760 scale charlotte is not on the scale like charlotte is like she has a one and even that i'm like is

02:30:58.560 that too high but no she invent she made a hospital and i'll give i will give anyone who 0.94

02:31:02.900 founds a hospital that like functions like especially like a maternity hospital in that

02:31:07.860 era like that's that's one point yeah but yeah it's that's bananas to me the scale looks ridiculous

02:31:14.780 but again like like lola montez herself only has a 23 doesn't mean lola montez doesn't deserve to

02:31:25.060 be the chaos exactly exactly the chaos demon this episode was fun though i was like when i read the

02:31:31.500 biography I was just like Lana there's nothing in this this woman's life is actually really basic

02:31:35.840 but it's funny the same way that like listening to a podcast like worst bestsellers for instance

02:31:40.120 I think it's even more fun when it's not a good book to hear or like how did this get made when 0.98

02:31:46.060 they talk about a bad movie so here like if we talk about a woman who is so aggressively not

02:31:50.900 skandalicious that becomes fun you like turn around a corner and suddenly it is fun because

02:31:56.060 she's so virtuous it's just like she's aggressively attempting to be non-problematic

02:32:04.080 to the degree that she actually in fact becomes problematic exactly and that's fascinating

02:32:08.400 i'm just gonna say i don't know i'm gonna do the like wrap up thing now because why not you're here

02:32:14.140 and you probably you might have things to add so um people can follow me on instagram at vulgar

02:32:19.840 history pod usually with all the episodes i post like at least one like what's it called where you

02:32:26.040 put the like on the main feed like I just post it so we can have like discussion you know I like to

02:32:30.900 see what people say about episodes like the Catherine did Medici there's been some good

02:32:34.660 feedback Lana I love that one your your sliding doors moment anyway so if you have thoughts about

02:32:42.060 any of the episodes you can always go back to Instagram and there's a post per episode

02:32:44.820 but also use my stories um very chaotically and but pretty regularly just to sort of like let you

02:32:51.380 know what I'm thinking about what I'm researching I ask questions after episodes it's an Instagram

02:32:55.820 I'm also on TikTok, where I have now got over 5,000 followers.

02:33:00.660 I was very impressed by that. I saw that today.

02:33:03.200 Once I figured out you can do TikToks, but I don't have to show my face, I was like,

02:33:07.660 oh, I can do this. I can talk extemporaneously for three minutes while looking at a portrait

02:33:13.040 of Catherine Parr. That's doable. So anyway, I'm on TikTok at Vulgar History. And that's fun. And

02:33:19.520 also I'm getting this... I find the TikTok community is a lot of commenting, a lot of

02:33:23.880 feedback. When people ask me questions, then I can make a video responding to it. And I like that

02:33:27.580 give and take. It's fun there for me now. Shocker, as an elder millennial, I was just like,

02:33:33.600 oh, TikTok is fun and useful. I know you've been on TikTok a lot longer than me, Lan. I like using

02:33:37.960 it. I don't think you have one. Yeah. I mean, I'm a Gen X cusp, but I love TikTok. I eventually am

02:33:46.780 going to get into it, like actually making things. I just haven't gotten there yet.

02:33:51.080 Yeah, it was sort of a self-challenge during Women's History Month, which was March. I just

02:33:55.660 thought, you know what, I'm just going to do TikTok. So I did a TikTok every day in March.

02:33:59.300 That was when I didn't know that you could make... I didn't know how to make them longer than 15

02:34:02.800 seconds. So every day, I posted a 15-second TikTok about someone I've done on vulgar history to the

02:34:07.360 point there's now one TikTok per person. Because I was like, wait, I was looking up hashtags on

02:34:11.640 TikTok. And I'm like, there's not a Frances Howard hashtag. There's not like a Sophia Dorothea

02:34:16.700 of seller hashtag. So like all the women I've talked about on the podcast now, at least have 0.95

02:34:21.060 one TikTok. So if you look up their hashtags, Catalina de Arraso, that's there now. Yeah. 0.99

02:34:26.180 I absolutely love that. I had to yell at you to promote your own podcast on your own TikToks.

02:34:31.180 Like, no, you have to say, watch it more here.

02:34:35.180 No, that's fair. Because I was doing this. I was like, Lana, I did TikTok. And Lana's like,

02:34:38.280 you're not, you don't say in your TikToks that you have a podcast and the people can hear the

02:34:42.360 whole story. It just seems like a chaotic TikTok of 15 second discussions of very obscure women

02:34:48.920 from history. So thank you, Lana. That's good. But also I've since learned you can make TikToks

02:34:54.280 that are 60 seconds, three minutes. That's really helped me be able to describe things better.

02:35:01.620 They took away the 10 minutes on TikTok. So you can't do that anymore.

02:35:05.220 Oh, I never would have. And I never watched TikToks for 10 minutes.

02:35:07.620 my attention span is not so long anyway tiktok vulgar history that's where it's happening and

02:35:14.800 then also there's the new merch store so if you go to vulgar history.com slash store it directs

02:35:21.600 you to the new amazing tea public store lana made that happen with the website it does you look

02:35:26.960 nervous but that's what it does i may have forgotten to do something you told me to do and

02:35:31.040 i'm going to make sure that i remember to do that now but by the time this episode comes out if you

02:35:35.200 go to bloggerhistory.com slash store. It takes you to the TeePublic store.

02:35:38.840 Oh, it takes you to the right place. It will also take you to the right place the right way.

02:35:42.820 Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds good. It's a good move. I know we were at the other site for a really

02:35:49.060 long time, but TeePublic has, first of all, a functioning customer service department. Great.

02:35:54.220 But also the products they sell, there's a more wider array of products. And also you can choose

02:35:57.920 colors. If there's a t-shirt, but you want a different color than just white, you can choose

02:36:02.300 that i have already purchased two stickers and they're on my computer of course they're the

02:36:07.580 chevalier sticker and the cc sticker i would expect nothing less but yeah and i'm working

02:36:13.380 right now with like various artists because that's the other thing like i'm taking the

02:36:16.720 opportunity of switching the store to um kind of upgrade the quality of the design of the merch i'm

02:36:22.360 working with artists and i'm paying human beings to design beautiful and it's been really fun to

02:36:28.880 work with artists to tell them it's like, could you make a thing that says, you know, goth queen

02:36:34.020 mom friend and see what they come up with. So like there's new merch coming and every time

02:36:37.520 there's new stuff, I'll post it on Instagram as well. But like, just keep an eye on there

02:36:40.840 because they also have sales all the time. And then also I have a Patreon. So patreon.com

02:36:44.720 slash Anne Foster writer. And that's where if you pledge at least a dollar a month, you get early

02:36:48.940 ad free access to all the Vulgar History episodes. And if you pledge at least $2 or more a month,

02:36:53.680 you get the early ad free access, but you also get you can vote in polls and other feedback I

02:36:59.340 ask for there. And then if you pledge at least $5 and more a month, then you get all of the above

02:37:04.080 plus also access to Vulgar Peace Theater or Lana. And our friend Allison joins us to talk about

02:37:09.740 costume dramas. At some point, for sure, The Madness of King George will be one of those.

02:37:16.640 And I also do So This Asshole episodes there. We're talking about men from history,

02:37:20.220 although i'm diversifying the portfolio because sometimes i don't want to talk about men from 0.99

02:37:25.560 history i'm just well we are i get the first woman yeah len is going to do so this asshole 0.87

02:37:30.960 queen victoria that's coming but no what i'm saying is like sometimes i want to talk about 0.91

02:37:35.660 men from history who were okay oh okay that's yeah i'm not always in the mood to just read

02:37:40.440 about some shitty man so most recently as of when you hear this podcast of vulgar history

02:37:46.900 The most recent, I called an episode. So these guys, Bush Rangers, and Allison joins me to talk 0.92

02:37:52.680 about Australian bandits. And that's where I get to deploy, as I previously mentioned,

02:37:59.520 my newly acquired Australian accent. And we will be watching Ned Kelly

02:38:06.120 in short order. I'm having, I don't know. In the coming months. I accidentally discovered

02:38:13.340 Bushrangers in the middle of... I was reading Mary Queen of Scots. This podcast came on and I'm just

02:38:17.760 like, what's this? And then it was an author being interviewed named Meg Foster. I was like,

02:38:22.180 Foster? No relation. And she wrote a book about Bushrangers. And I was like, I need to read that.

02:38:26.880 And then I got the ebook and I was just like, I'm obsessed with it. It's like, Anne, you're

02:38:29.600 supposed to be researching Queen Charlotte, Mary Queen of Scots. So many other things. I was just

02:38:33.580 like, no, I'm reading about Bushrangers. So I'm doing this episode of So These Guys with Allison,

02:38:38.800 basically just to get it out of my system because I am too excited to not talk about it.

02:38:42.300 so that's what Allison's for anyway um get things out of your system Lannett thank you for being

02:38:48.200 co-host for the entire front half of the season of vulgar history I'm sure you'll be back again

02:38:54.580 when there's something involving Hobsburg's America the the Holy Roman Empire HRE some

02:39:04.320 periods of French history Prussia question mark oh absolutely Prussia yeah I don't know if there's

02:39:10.680 any good women there but anyway thank you so much for having been on all these episodes tell

02:39:15.240 everybody about your books um so i have two books out right now that are young adult contemporary

02:39:21.100 novels that have and as one review described it an unnecessary amount of history for little rom-coms

02:39:28.320 they are if you want to learn more about them you can find them on my website lanawoodjohnson.com

02:39:34.480 the first one is technically you started it which is the text transcript of two nerdy teenagers

02:39:38.720 And the second one is Speak for Yourself, which is a my love letter to Academic Decathlon and also Accidentally Fast and the Furious.

02:39:49.900 It's got a real combination of unexpected things, as this podcast sometimes does, where we're talking about Queen Charlotte and then you're teaching me about Metallica.

02:40:00.600 Is that what it was?

02:40:02.140 Yeah, because people can be history nerds and also have other random interests.

02:40:06.560 Anyway, thank you so much, Lana.

02:40:07.740 This one, honestly, I don't know what's wrong with me.

02:40:10.020 I thought this would be an hour and a half

02:40:12.760 and it is almost three hours.

02:40:14.240 And of course it is,

02:40:14.980 because it always is when it's me and you.

02:40:16.660 So thank you so much.

02:40:18.400 I was trying to be quiet, but no, there's too much.

02:40:22.020 Well, and honestly, when I was making the notes,

02:40:23.760 I'm just like, there's nothing to this story.

02:40:25.680 Like this episode is gonna be 20 minutes long.

02:40:27.680 Au contraire.

02:40:29.640 There's a lot to talk about.

02:40:31.360 Thank you very much, Lana.

02:40:32.860 Volker History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster

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02:42:22.300 the success that always looks like it happened to someone on a different planet.

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Vulgar History - May 10, 2023

Queen Charlotte Was Not As Cool As On Bridgerton, I'm Sorry

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