Vulgar History - Women Behaving Badly, part 4： Elizabeth Báthory Bathed in Blood (Not Really)

00:00:00.000 hello this is ann foster and you are listening to vulgar history and this is really exciting

00:00:16.000 um this is the fourth episode and this is the first one that i've recorded since the podcast

00:00:21.080 has been out there in the world not on itunes yet but you know fingers crossed it's in it's

00:00:27.020 other places people have been listening and waving at you the listeners the the people who

00:00:32.420 are there on day one i also thanks to the generosity of my gorgeous patrons on patreon

00:00:39.580 i bought a thing a pop filter for my microphone so hopefully the the sound will be a bit more

00:00:47.000 professional sounding there won't be my esses won't be so sneaky or my peas won't pop quite

00:00:54.940 as much or I'm not sure what this does but super cute I'll put a picture of it on Instagram it's

00:00:59.640 got a little dog face on it anyway also from having recorded and edited the first three episodes I

00:01:06.940 realized how much I smack my lips so I'm gonna try and be mindful and not do that quite so much

00:01:12.460 because this is not an ASMR podcast this is Vulgar History the feminist women's history

00:01:19.920 comedy podcast hosted by me and foster and this week we're getting into the first so we've done

00:01:27.820 some british women we've done a french woman and today we are doing a hungarian woman

00:01:34.000 renaissance hungary is not a time or place that i knew lots about to begin with which is why it's

00:01:41.020 been a while for me to to read up on this and figure out what is going on just to sort of

00:01:45.480 understand the time and the place because this podcast and this episode of this podcast is really

00:01:50.340 about looking at this woman, what her life was like, not so much getting into the minutiae of

00:01:56.760 the wars that were being fought around her because she wasn't fighting in the wars, but they had a

00:02:01.760 profound effect on her life. The woman we are looking at today is a woman who we all, if you've

00:02:08.880 heard of her, you've heard of her, under her anglicized name, which is Elisabeth Bathory.

00:02:14.380 Her name in Hungarian was Elisabeth Bathory, but as she's famous as Elisabeth Bathory,

00:02:21.660 and since I'm talking in English, I'm going to refer to her as Elisabeth Bathory, because part

00:02:26.860 of what this episode is doing, and I also just posted an essay about her on my website,

00:02:33.180 at annfosterwriter.com as well, is just to try and do my little part to expand the conversation

00:02:40.100 about this woman. Because when you look up information about Elizabeth Bathory, especially

00:02:46.320 in the English version of the name, you just get a lot of information about the myth, the mythology

00:02:50.820 of her as the prolific female serial killer, etc. And what I want to do in this episode is to sort

00:02:59.900 of break down where that myth came from who she actually was what actually happened with her in

00:03:07.380 her life and that is what we're going to do today at the end of the episode like at the end of every

00:03:12.900 other episode we're going to break down her story onto our scale to see where she scores not that 1.00

00:03:19.040 the women whose stories we're sharing on this podcast are in competition against each other 1.00

00:03:22.820 but just so we can have a scale just sort of gauge where she fits in um in the general

00:03:28.360 scandaliciousness sorts of categories so in researching this I was reading a bunch and I

00:03:36.600 listened to a bunch of other podcasts about Elizabeth Bathory and more so than other things

00:03:42.500 of research and just because I think there's so much more in existence about Elizabeth Bathory

00:03:47.540 it's trickier to to look back and find what everybody's sources are that they're using

00:03:53.720 because when you're telling her story like a folktale then you don't really need a source

00:03:58.780 And side note, I believe the Grimbethers actually wrote her story as a folktale.

00:04:02.980 So trying to sort of like nudge away the levels of just storytelling and myth and pop culture to look at what the actual history was is part of what made this research more interesting and more challenging than some of the other stories I looked at.

00:04:21.340 so elizabeth bathory hungarian name erizabeth battery was born in hungary in 1560 so i'm going

00:04:32.320 to try and explain this in as concise a way as possible so you understand what will be helpful

00:04:38.280 for you to get sort of the context of this entire saga so and i've been reading about the history of

00:04:45.940 Hungary. And it's super interesting. And I recommend reading about it because it's all

00:04:52.300 really interesting. But today we're talking about Elizabeth Bathory. So we're just going to look at

00:04:56.440 what was up in Hungary during the time that she was alive, which is basically, so she was born in

00:05:02.160 1560. Hungary at the time was divided into three parts. And this has happened over the course of

00:05:08.440 numerous wars and things. So the Northwest part was kind of royal Hungary, the kingdom of Hungary,

00:05:15.260 And it was ruled over by the royal family, who are the Habsburgs, who are a family of, they're always involved when you're looking at the history of like Hungary, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire.

00:05:30.620 where they went over, they were intermarried with the Spanish royals.

00:05:35.460 Like there's just Habsburgs are all over the place. 0.98

00:05:39.660 Were we to make some sort of bingo card for this podcast, 1.00

00:05:42.580 I think they would be the center square because basically every story that I'm

00:05:49.360 going to look at, I just keep not on purpose.

00:05:51.880 I just keep finding Habsburgs connections.

00:05:53.360 So basically they were this super powerful, rich royal family,

00:05:58.260 And they were ruling the one part of Hungary, the northwest part, Royal Hungary.

00:06:04.600 And this is where Elizabeth Bathory was from, that part.

00:06:07.340 So her family, the Bathory's, were a noble Hungarian family.

00:06:11.880 The middle part of Hungary was overseen by the Ottoman Empire.

00:06:17.940 So this was sort of Turkish people were there.

00:06:21.780 And then the eastern bit was Transylvania, a place you might have heard of.

00:06:26.640 And it was sort of adjacent to Royal Hungary.

00:06:31.960 They were sort of allies, but they were sort of...

00:06:36.080 Transylvania was its own sort of independent principality,

00:06:39.800 but all these things kept, like, these borders weren't permanent or fixed.

00:06:44.460 Like, it kept moving back and forth who went where.

00:06:46.860 And the Hungarians versus the Turks was an ongoing series of wars that went on for...

00:06:53.640 started way before Elizabeth was born,

00:06:56.620 kept going way after Elizabeth died.

00:06:58.700 But basically you've got these three parts.

00:07:00.180 You have sort of royal, the kingdom of Hungary.

00:07:02.780 You've got the part overseen by the Turks. 0.70

00:07:06.720 And then you've got to the east, Transylvania.

00:07:10.500 So at the time of her birth,

00:07:13.860 Transylvania was being overseen by Elizabeth's uncle,

00:07:17.420 who had been elected as the prince of Transylvania

00:07:20.820 because it was like a protestant place where you elected who your king was um and because the

00:07:26.380 Bathory's were so rich and powerful that's who was chosen when he died her nephew Gabor took over as

00:07:33.980 the new prince of Transylvania so just as a side note the Bathory family itself traces their name

00:07:41.520 um which is a Hungarian word basically that means good hero back to a medieval knight named Vitus

00:07:49.520 who is said to have fought a dragon and saved a village of grateful villagers and because they

00:07:55.760 were so happy that he'd saved them from the dragon they gave him the honorary name Bathory

00:08:01.080 as their good hero and that's why the Bathory family crest is sort of a dragon that's eating

00:08:07.360 its own tail in honor of him so basically this is like a hugely respected super wealthy super

00:08:14.020 powerful family in Hungary. Everything's great. And Elizabeth Bathory was born in 1560. So just

00:08:21.400 to have everything in context for what else is happening in other history with which you might

00:08:28.200 be familiar. So in 1560, that was two years after Queen Elizabeth I had taken over as queen in

00:08:37.220 England. Over in France, Charles IX had just taken over as king after the death of his brother

00:08:44.320 Francis, who had been Mary Queen of Scots' first husband. Over in Spain, the king was Philip II,

00:08:52.200 who was the widower of Elizabeth I's sister, Mary I. So basically, the Renaissance is happening,

00:09:00.580 and women were in power in a way that they hadn't been historically much before 0.62

00:09:09.260 in terms of Europe. 0.93

00:09:12.680 So in that sense, for Elizabeth Bathory to be born at this time was pretty lucky for her

00:09:19.360 because it was a time when women, noble women, were expected to become educated

00:09:24.480 in the sense of things they'd been taught before, which was like household management

00:09:28.460 and sewing and dancing and singing but also in math and languages and so she got a super amazing

00:09:37.580 very well-rounded education including the fact that she became fluent in four different languages

00:09:44.520 so she was smarter than most other people around her not just other women but everybody basically 0.97

00:09:52.620 so this was another thing that sort of separated people for class from the lower class people who 0.69

00:10:01.420 are the serfs of the times this is a sort of situation where the people who are super rich

00:10:07.040 were like so amazingly rich and the people who are poor were like living in the dirt basically

00:10:13.120 and it was a really strict and structured sort of class system and one of the ways

00:10:20.940 one of the things that differentiated the rich from the poor was the fact that people like

00:10:25.000 Elizabeth were well educated and had this more well-rounded view of the world and how things

00:10:29.380 worked and also again just as more sort of like backgroundy stuff just bear in mind that recently

00:10:37.920 ish um the serfs had been part of these military campaigns they'd gone off they'd been soldiers

00:10:45.400 they'd fought on wars on behalf of the noblemen and then they came back and so they were all kind

00:10:50.040 of armed and had a lot of strong feelings and sort of were feeling powerful. And so they had

00:10:56.780 revolted a bit and the upper classes had to sort of beat them back down. I mean, they didn't have

00:11:04.460 to, but that is what happened to retain this social order. What happened is that the rich

00:11:09.700 people felt they needed to brutally torture and murder the peasants. So they did. And that 0.98

00:11:15.200 basically quelled that so everything was back to sort of this sort of uncomfortable status quo

00:11:22.100 while still everybody was at war constantly all the time but it meant that the wealthy rich people

00:11:30.400 were in terms of being landowners and in terms of being the bosses of servants they were all

00:11:38.580 by necessity to maintain their position in society they were all really um ruthless and really

00:11:48.620 strict about things and there was no wiggle room for people to to break rules at all because if

00:11:55.980 they did um it seemed like chaos and revolution could break out at any moment not to say that

00:12:01.680 that happening would have been a bad thing but we're looking at elizabeth's life what she was

00:12:06.700 dealing with. So effectively, everybody who she was surrounded by, all the wealthy people were

00:12:13.800 constantly doing everything they could to keep the poor people from revolting against them.

00:12:19.940 So she was trained and she saw the importance of doing this. And I just want to point out,

00:12:25.800 for not, I'm sure the first time or the only time in this podcast, that just like everybody in this

00:12:31.580 story is terrible in all different ways and when everybody is terrible the only way to survive

00:12:40.520 and to thrive is for you to also be terrible like you could run into a situation like this and be

00:12:46.320 like present moral arguments and explain the common good and stuff and then you would probably

00:12:51.900 just have your head cut off or something there wasn't really room or space for that it was just

00:12:56.620 kind of like a survival of the fittest scenario and Elizabeth was coming into it with a huge

00:13:03.060 advantage being super rich and wealthy and educated so she kind of saw what her family was doing she

00:13:10.180 saw how they acted and she saw how they seemingly needed to act in order to to do well in a world

00:13:17.060 that was like this world they were living in so she was the only child of her parents and so it

00:13:23.980 was especially important that she get married to somebody that would be like a good alliance for

00:13:29.180 the Bathory family in terms of alliances with other super rich, powerful families. So when

00:13:37.460 she was about 11 years old, she was betrothed to a man named Lord Ferenc Nadasdi, who was 15 years

00:13:45.340 old. So just four years older than her. To me in general, I just always feel better about an

00:13:51.460 arranged marriage when people are within five years age of each other, even 10 years age of

00:13:58.080 each other. There's just so many situations where someone's 12 and they're betrothed to a man who's

00:14:02.260 75 or whatever. And I'm just like, come on, I'm not putting myself in the shoes of that young

00:14:09.720 girl. I'm happy when it's somebody her own age-ish because I just feel like there's more hope for

00:14:14.260 them to maybe get along as people. So they were betrothed at age 11, which is not weird, totally

00:14:21.840 normal in this situation. And then they didn't get married for another four years. So she was,

00:14:28.840 I think, 15 when they got married, making him about 18. So her husband, Ferenc, his father

00:14:35.460 was the Palatine of Hungary, which is basically a role that I need to explain to you because this

00:14:42.880 is going to become important in the story later on so the kingdom of hungary this one part of

00:14:49.920 hungary was ruled over by these habsburg kings but because they were busy and have a lot of stuff

00:14:55.820 to do they would elect someone called the palatine who is sort of like the governor i guess it's

00:15:02.320 somebody who would oversee the day-to-day stuff like go out and meet with the people and try to

00:15:06.900 solve problems so the king didn't have to bother himself dealing with all of that so pharynx father

00:15:11.700 was that role which was basically like second most powerful role in hungary to the king so

00:15:18.920 basically elizabeth's husband was coming from a super rich and powerful family

00:15:23.720 choose from a super rich and powerful family and when they got together it just made this huge

00:15:29.760 union of two massive families so faring himself seems like uh he was educated at least as much

00:15:38.460 as Elizabeth was maybe even more he had both of them because school wasn't a thing a place you

00:15:46.660 went but you learn stuff by sort of being sent to another rich person's home and having tutors and

00:15:52.580 sort of like apprentice mentoring watching other people doing the stuff that he needed to know

00:15:57.240 so both Ferenc and Elizabeth had learned a lot through this way when they grew up they took in

00:16:01.920 young people to do the same thing with them but Ferenc when he was 17 years old he was

00:16:08.360 this wasn't like a beauty pageant or whatever but somebody wrote in the letter that he was

00:16:12.580 the most promising young nobleman at the court so great things were expected of him so it's not just

00:16:17.980 that elizabeth and frank were of similar ages and the same class but they were also they'd have a lot

00:16:24.240 to talk about because they were both similarly well educated they could talk about all the books

00:16:28.280 they read etc so way later on after a whole bunch of stuff has happened i haven't told you about

00:16:35.720 There were rumors that during this betrothal period, when Elizabeth was somewhere between age 11 and 15, she secretly had an affair with somebody and secretly had a love child and that her family covered that all up.

00:16:48.060 And that's just like not likely, but it sort of became part of the romantic myth of her later on.

00:16:55.540 Anything is possible, but also this just seems like probably not something that would have happened.

00:17:02.480 And there's no records of it happening contemporaneously, only later on, people writing weird made-up biographies of her.

00:17:10.260 So when Elizabeth and Ferencourt married on May 8th, 1575, sorry, she was 15 and he was 20 years old.

00:17:20.380 So it was a massive affair.

00:17:24.220 There was something like 4,500 invited guests, not including the peasants from the nearby countryside who were invited.

00:17:31.860 they could come and watch the festivities and hang out and like come to the market and stuff so it

00:17:35.900 was just like seemingly they were so rich and important but everybody wanted to be there and

00:17:41.660 everybody was and so they got married huge event and then they went off to to go and be newlyweds

00:17:49.280 together and one of the main reasons why two two families would marry off like this is so that they

00:17:58.840 could have a child and that child would sort of like be a living embodiment of those two families

00:18:03.580 being united elizabeth and farenk did not have any children for the first 10 years of their marriage

00:18:11.060 for i'm sure lots of reasons why that didn't happen but basically the way that medical knowledge

00:18:19.820 worked at this time and place was um it was believed that it was always the women's something

00:18:26.080 wrong with a woman if if a young seemingly healthy couple is having trouble conceiving 0.98

00:18:31.660 so they would have thought it was something wrong with her and perhaps something wrong with her

00:18:36.700 spiritually uh the sort of the overlap of like what is medicine with what is superstition with

00:18:45.500 like what is herbs and what is witchcraft were all sort of overlapping so who knows what what

00:18:53.220 different remedies she might have tried. But eventually, 10 years after, they were married in

00:18:59.400 1585. She gave birth to their first child, a daughter who they named Anna. Then they had

00:19:05.420 another daughter named Ursula and a son named Andrew. But Ursula and Andrew both died in infancy.

00:19:12.000 Then Elizabeth had another daughter named Catalin and then a son named Paul. So surviving children,

00:19:18.260 Two daughters, one son, Anna, Catalin, and Paul.

00:19:21.980 So because Ferenc was often away on military campaigns against the Turkish,

00:19:26.720 because this was a situation where the Hungarians and the Turkish people were at war constantly all the time,

00:19:34.900 and Ferenc was a military leader,

00:19:40.240 this was also a situation where the people who were the most rich and powerful men

00:19:44.980 personally went and fought on the front lines of battles which even 100 years later was not

00:19:52.080 as common but so frank would would go off and do that and so while he was away and there are

00:19:58.340 archival letters and documents showing this elizabeth would run the household and she was

00:20:03.520 really good at doing that it shows that she was like what letters and stuff still exist so that

00:20:10.480 She was really organized, super on top of things. 0.99

00:20:12.940 She was an extremely good CEO of running their enormous household and estates. 0.64

00:20:20.080 She was also really good at writing. 1.00

00:20:22.280 She didn't use flowery language at all.

00:20:24.280 Her letters are all written really well.

00:20:26.580 She, you know, good use of language and grammar and stuff and just nothing florid, no poetic touches.

00:20:33.260 She was very straightforward to the point sort of person.

00:20:36.860 around this time so the governess for the children seemingly this woman was the governess 0.95

00:20:45.320 of the children she might have had a different important servant job but anyway a woman named

00:20:49.680 Anna Darvulia is known to have joined their household at around this time there's also a

00:20:55.780 young man known as Fixco who became one of their servants and both of these people become important

00:21:03.420 later so Anna Darvulia in some of the myths of Elizabeth Bathory in some of the movies and

00:21:12.740 sexy books written about her Anna Darvulia is presented as like her sort of evil lover but

00:21:18.860 there's nothing in what a few records remain suggesting that that was the situation I'm not

00:21:25.160 like that could have been the situation but what we do know about Anna Darvulia is that her last

00:21:31.900 name. So Darulia was probably a nickname, but the word has neither Hungarian nor Slovak roots. We're

00:21:38.660 not sure where she came from exactly. But in 1602, so that's like 15, 17 years after the first

00:21:49.060 children were born and Anna Darulia was maybe their governess, a minister from near where they

00:21:55.540 lived recorded a complaint that Anna Darvulia had been acting cruelly to the young servant women.

00:22:05.240 So this suggests that Anna might have been sort of like the head housekeeper, the person who

00:22:11.460 supervised the young women servants. Unclear. But basically in this complaint, Elizabeth and

00:22:17.520 Ferenc were both also sort of condemned by this minister who said, like, basically these people

00:22:22.900 are up to no good, don't like what they're doing. And so just keep that in the back of your mind

00:22:28.680 for later. And then shortly after that happened, while he was away, Ferenc was, he came down with

00:22:36.560 some sort of mysterious disease that made him suddenly unable to use his legs. And then by

00:22:43.300 1604, he was basically dying and he knew he was dying. And he did a thing that very rich people

00:22:51.760 did in Hungary at this time, which is basically he wrote a letter to the new Palatine of Hungary.

00:22:56.860 So remember, his father used to be Palatine of Hungary, but now someone new was in that job

00:23:01.360 of like governor of Hungary. And Frank wrote a letter saying like, you know, once I die,

00:23:07.500 I requested you, the Palatine of Hungary, please look after my wife and my children and my estates.

00:23:13.440 And because women couldn't own property, so everything was supposed to get sort of complicated.

00:23:21.220 Anyway, the new palatine of Hungary was a man named Georgi Thurzo.

00:23:25.420 And he would become the man responsible for Elizabeth Bathory's entire downfall.

00:23:31.880 So the fact that Ferenc wrote him a letter being like, look out for my family,

00:23:34.920 is just sort of like huge foreshouting of everything.

00:23:39.580 So the thing is that Elizabeth was super powerful.

00:23:43.920 Her family's super powerful.

00:23:45.560 Her nephew was the Prince of Transylvania.

00:23:47.600 She owned, I forget, some huge proportion of just like all the property in Hungary.

00:23:52.440 Like between when her family joined a pharynx family, they just took over everything.

00:23:57.760 But now that she was a widow, her house and her estates and stuff would, I guess, go to her young son, Paul, who wasn't even 10 years old yet. 0.90

00:24:06.980 He was a little kid. 0.96

00:24:07.820 So sort of created a power vacuum where if she was a man, this wouldn't be a problem. 0.96

00:24:14.400 Or if their laws were different, this wouldn't be a problem.

00:24:17.600 but basically she was 44 years old and had been basically single-handedly running all these

00:24:26.020 estates for this whole time because Frank was away so often. So she was capable of doing this,

00:24:32.280 but just legally she couldn't be in charge of anything. And so a bunch of men were like,

00:24:37.180 aha, this is our chance to take over and get some more money because just a reminder, everybody

00:24:41.620 in the story is the worst so thurzo the pautine of hungary was like seemed to be interested in

00:24:51.020 taking over some of her land um her son paul's guardian slash tutor who's a man named imri

00:24:57.560 meguri also seems to have wanted to maybe get a bit more control than harry had and her two

00:25:05.600 daughters had both married and their husbands also seemed to have been like keen to to get 0.99

00:25:12.760 some of her money in the states her daughters probably did too because basically everybody

00:25:18.800 wanted her money so it's the sort of thing where like when you become the most rich and powerful

00:25:24.400 person like you have the money and you have the power but that also puts you the most at risk

00:25:29.620 because now everybody wants to steal it from you everybody was sort of scheming around to see what

00:25:37.000 they could do and cerzo had an extra reason for wanting to to get rid of her which was basically

00:25:44.560 that he as the representative of the king wanted to take over transylvania because transylvania was

00:25:52.860 this like independent principality currently being ruled over by elizabeth's nephew gabor

00:25:57.280 who was like 17 years old and pretty awful from everything I read about him.

00:26:04.880 He was sort of like Nero meets Caligula meets Joffrey from Game of Thrones,

00:26:10.180 like just sort of a grosso.

00:26:12.660 But the reason that Thurzo wanted to get rid of him was because Thurzo, I think,

00:26:18.740 wanted to make Transylvania part of the Kingdom of Hungary again

00:26:22.880 and perhaps wanted to make himself Thurzo the new prince of it.

00:26:27.280 He was sort of fearing that if Gabor, the Prince of Transylvania, teamed up with Elizabeth Bathory, with all of their power and wealth and stuff, that this wouldn't be good for Thurzo.

00:26:38.440 It might get him out of power, and so he tried to figure out what to do.

00:26:43.140 And his first plan was to just have Gabor assassinated, but that plan was foiled at the last minute.

00:26:49.420 And so then he moved on to plan B, which was basically to destroy the Bathory family reputation, which is what he started to do next.

00:26:59.860 So a couple of just things to point out.

00:27:03.700 First of all, is that in 17th century royal Hungary, if you weren't a noble person, you basically didn't have any rights at all.

00:27:15.700 like if people killed someone's servant that was seen as not as bad a crime as killing someone's

00:27:24.720 cow like killing serfs was sort of not a crime which is something that happened in a lot of

00:27:35.680 cultures and a lot of societies all over the place but i'm bringing it up because what is 0.98

00:27:39.980 going to happen, spoiler, for fairly well-known history, is that Elizabeth is going to be

00:27:45.920 accused of mass murder, serial killing, hundreds of peasant girls. And so I just want to point

00:27:55.440 out at this point that basically, even if she did do that, which she might have done

00:28:00.660 that that wasn't a crime at the time so thurzo basically i think was trying to figure out things

00:28:11.560 to do to get rid of elizabeth to to make her headless power and he would have come across this

00:28:17.160 thing that the minister wrote saying that the fed that that household was treating their servants

00:28:23.400 especially cruelly and there was sort of word on the street that maybe the that house was um

00:28:30.640 that some of the female servants were being mistreated there.

00:28:35.820 And I mean, side note, servant women were being mistreated everywhere, 0.93

00:28:41.560 but potentially it was, they're being mistreated more than the usual amount in this house.

00:28:47.120 But again, that's not against the law.

00:28:50.400 Schussverzo is not the sort of person to be like morally outraged by that.

00:28:55.260 He's not someone who's like, we need to change the laws

00:28:57.360 so we can protect the serfs from being mistreated by their mistresses.

00:29:00.300 he was just like oh this is a way i could get rid of elizabeth bathory amazing let's just see where 0.99

00:29:04.880 this takes us so i just want to clarify that like she might have killed a bunch of people 0.95

00:29:12.800 thurzo went after her for allegedly having done that but that wasn't because he thought that was

00:29:22.860 a bad thing for her to have done he was doing it because he thought it was a way that he could take

00:29:27.560 over her house basically. So he was sort of running around like casually informally chatting

00:29:36.060 with people in the nearby village being like so tell me about how Elizabeth Bathory is maybe like

00:29:40.620 totally awful and mistreats her servants and the young women who are sent there to learn from her

00:29:45.680 and he started collecting sort of statements from people. The statements were mostly coerced

00:29:51.500 and they were mostly from people who were related to him or indebted to him in some way

00:29:56.120 or were people who were tortured so they're not everything they said could be true but his methods

00:30:02.160 put that into question elizabeth clearly seemed to suspect what he was up to because at one point

00:30:09.140 before she was even arrested she went to a local authority with the mother of one of her servants

00:30:13.860 who died while living with her to explain that the girl had been ill and had just died of natural

00:30:18.860 causes. So that's super interesting in and of itself, because again, like even if she had

00:30:25.380 killed the servant, that wasn't a crime. So to take the girl's mother into the authorities to

00:30:31.500 be like, hey, guess what? Elizabeth Bathory didn't kill my daughter. It's just interesting

00:30:35.620 because even if she had, the authorities would be like, who cares? So it seems like she kind

00:30:41.000 of knew that these charges were maybe coming against her. And she thought of, well, here's

00:30:43.960 this one person who died. So I'm going to make sure that they don't accuse me of killing this

00:30:48.320 one person. And so the thing is that a lot of people were dying in and around this place at

00:30:56.420 this time for lots of reasons, including the plague, dying in childbirths, lack of medical

00:31:04.200 intervention, penicillin hadn't been invented, lots of things. So for someone running a huge

00:31:10.420 estate like she had, every year probably some servants would die regardless. But Therzo is

00:31:17.480 trying to make it seem like there was something weird and suspicious about how many people were

00:31:21.020 dying and now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors welcome to the realms of

00:31:28.480 peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas of veil the paranormal mysteries of liminal

00:31:37.940 London, and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg. Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows

00:31:48.220 like Oxventure and No Rolls Barred. Search realms of peril and glory to find out more.

00:31:58.100 The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered

00:32:06.040 like bones in the dust.

00:32:08.060 Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world,

00:32:12.260 praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.

00:32:15.500 But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.

00:32:19.800 This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.

00:32:23.300 Your torch ticks down in real time.

00:32:25.620 And when that flame dies,

00:32:27.120 something else rises to finish the job.

00:32:29.100 This is a brutal rules light nightmare

00:32:31.420 with a story that emerges organically

00:32:34.120 based on the decisions that the characters make.

00:32:36.780 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s,

00:32:39.220 and man, it is so good to be back.

00:32:41.520 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark

00:32:44.500 every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern

00:32:46.540 on youtube.com slash the glass cannon

00:32:48.840 with the podcast version dropping the next day.

00:32:52.220 See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

00:32:59.320 Hi, I'm Whitney.

00:33:00.880 And I'm Katie.

00:33:01.880 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

00:33:04.120 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

00:33:08.040 We get right to the story. 0.95

00:33:09.580 We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.97

00:33:15.940 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.89

00:33:18.600 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

00:33:22.700 BTK and his awful poetry.

00:33:24.840 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

00:33:27.840 we look for the stranger than fiction stories like the case of patty james a killer catfish

00:33:33.360 before the internet was even a thing or howard walmsley a sentient wad of damp laundry who

00:33:38.520 convinced his town he'd won the lottery fleeced local businesses out of thousands and then became

00:33:43.680 a romance scammer we've covered tons of cases you've never heard of cults scammers killers

00:33:49.240 so come find your next great binge listen to true crime campfire on apple podcasts spotify

00:33:55.040 or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Friday. Reality TV is messy. Pop culture

00:34:01.720 is louder than ever. And the internet completely unhinged. Welcome to Roxanne and Chantel,

00:34:08.020 the podcast where cousins Roxanne and Chantel break down reality TV, celebrity drama, and the

00:34:12.940 stories everyone's texting about. We recap the shows, spill the headlines, and sit down with

00:34:18.620 the stars themselves no filter no boring takes just the tea new episodes every week if it's

00:34:25.940 trending we're talking about it this is roxanne and chantelle let's get into it

00:34:31.760 and we're back so that being said it does seem like some of the young women who were working

00:34:44.700 in her house were treated really badly which again they probably were in other places too

00:34:49.000 but the fact that some people found it like a bit much or a bit weird would ultimately fall

00:34:55.600 on elizabeth because she was the owner um and all the servants worked for her but it seems like it

00:35:00.760 might have been her sort of higher up servants people like anna darvulia who maybe were really

00:35:06.360 rough on the other servants so did elizabeth know how much they were doing we don't know 0.97

00:35:12.180 Did Elizabeth instruct them to use these methods? We don't know. But again, it was sort of a brutal

00:35:16.860 time and place where servants would have been treated really poorly. Anyway, so I'm just kind

00:35:25.320 of trying to show all the sides here. It does seem like maybe something weird happened at least once

00:35:32.280 in her house with regards to a young woman dying. Were 650 people murdered? We'll get to that, but

00:35:42.180 I'm thinking no.

00:35:43.680 So, but again, if servants are being killed, if people are being mistreated, like the minister

00:35:48.100 wrote up a note and everyone was kind of like, big, who cares?

00:35:51.160 But Thurzo was like, hmm, maybe there's something here.

00:35:53.760 But still at the same time, like that wasn't something he could charge them with.

00:35:57.440 So what he had to do was find a way to suggest that she had been responsible for killing

00:36:03.240 someone who wasn't a servant, someone who was seen as a person.

00:36:06.540 And so we had to start suggesting that she had been responsible for the murder of wealthy young women, like some of the young women who would be sent to her house for schooling type purposes. 0.55

00:36:19.720 So the other thing about all of this is because she was so rich.

00:36:23.800 And so just the way that sort of the law worked as well, which said that like serfs are not people.

00:36:30.720 Rich people are people.

00:36:32.440 But it basically said that rich people are such people.

00:36:35.920 like you can't charge a noble woman with anything you can never put a rich person on trial that was

00:36:41.480 basically as i understand it from having been researching this for like two weeks it seems

00:36:46.900 that was the law so thurzo knew that even if he found something he could charge her with he would

00:36:52.740 never be able to put elizabeth on trial because she was so rich basically she could counter sue

00:36:57.040 him for charging her with a crime but the loophole he figured out was that if he was able to catch

00:37:04.240 her in the act of doing a crime she could be arrested without even needing to be put on trial

00:37:10.540 so this is where we get sort of two two parallel narratives which is sort of what the legend is

00:37:19.080 the legend and the myth is that he walked in on her in the act of murdering a young woman

00:37:26.600 what the records seem to suggest is that he said he did that he uh so on december 30th

00:37:38.980 as elizabeth and her her household were sitting down for sort of a nice christmas season meal

00:37:45.640 um he came in and arrested her along with four of her servants and he said that he had

00:37:51.080 seen her killing someone so the story of him walking in on her killing someone

00:37:57.580 seems to not be true because if that was the case why would he then leave come back later and

00:38:04.800 arrest her and why would she just be like casually having dinner if she knew that she'd just been

00:38:08.700 caught murdering someone doesn't quite add up so basically he came in he said i'm here to arrest

00:38:16.100 her because i saw her killing somebody and they were like well where's your evidence of that and

00:38:20.260 he's like, hang on. And then 24 hours later, he provided the dead body of a dead girl that had

00:38:27.040 been dug up from outside the castle. So this could be a girl who died of lots of different

00:38:32.100 things. She could have died of plague. She could have died, which plague was happening all over

00:38:37.760 the place. She could have died of many different things. She might have been murdered by Elizabeth

00:38:40.940 Bathory. The body was like, sort of tied up, which some people thought was like a hint of

00:38:47.220 Elizabeth Bathory doing sort of weird sex things or whatever. But that's basically what you did to

00:38:52.260 bodies to bury them. So that's not actually weird. And he also brought in a young woman who was not

00:38:57.020 dead, but who is pretty grievously injured. So again, he might have found someone who is injured

00:39:02.860 to bring her in as evidence. He might have perhaps injured her himself to bring her in.

00:39:08.020 Or maybe he is telling the truth and these were Elizabeth Bathory's victims. But basically,

00:39:12.660 he came in and arrested her and so the four servants that were arrested as well were named

00:39:17.700 helena joe dorothy senties who is known as dorco a woman named katalyn benneke and a young man

00:39:25.820 named fisco anna darvulia not there anymore to me she's like the most interesting part of this

00:39:31.600 whole story like people kept being like it was nasty it was anna darvulia where it's like

00:39:35.200 that's who i think the legend should be all about she's the one who like should be called dracula

00:39:40.500 where did she go where did she come from like what's anyway she's long gone by this point

00:39:45.740 whatever elizabeth and four of her servants were arrested and the thing is that he couldn't put her

00:39:52.620 on trial because again she was super rich so he just put her in jail and put the four servants

00:40:00.340 on trial so just sort of another side note i guess which is that this isn't like georgie

00:40:08.280 thurzo coming up with this genius idea on his own for the first time ever he himself had done this

00:40:14.460 he'd railroaded other nobles like this and then took over their castles this was a thing he had

00:40:18.680 done um he knew that it was an effective technique um the hapsburg royal family who he worked for

00:40:24.420 had also done this sort of thing and they all knew that doing sort of a show trial where you

00:40:29.900 make somebody seem like they're doing something terrible and then public perception is colored

00:40:34.900 is a way to dispatch of your enemies so it's not like legend of elizabeth's serial killing

00:40:43.640 spread far and wide and they had to do this thing that was weird it's like no this was a thing they

00:40:48.300 did all the time to lots of people this is just an instance of it where it got really extreme

00:40:55.480 so basically again elizabeth might have been totally or partially responsible for the deaths

00:41:03.180 of some young women who'd been in her care but even if she had been that wasn't a crime in this 0.58

00:41:09.800 time and place it would be a terrible thing it would make her sort of a shitty person but that's

00:41:16.420 not why therzo had arrested her really he just wanted to ruin her reputation and saying that

00:41:21.580 she had killed some servants wasn't enough to ruin her reputation because everyone would be like

00:41:26.120 big shrug like whatever we all kill servants we're like the noble rich people of renaissance

00:41:31.100 hungry so he had to make it seem like weird and also extreme which is why he started getting

00:41:37.100 testimony and witness statements from people who started saying stuff that like she was into

00:41:41.860 like weird sex stuff um that she hadn't just killed one or two people but like hundreds of

00:41:47.900 people like they just made took it to this whole extreme level to explain why it was so bad that

00:41:52.700 she had to be locked up and have her land taken away and the land given to him so this is where

00:41:59.120 the interviews slash interrogations began so the four servants themselves are questioned and all

00:42:04.580 of them kind of all blamed each other and or Anna Darvulia but also it's sort of hard to

00:42:10.920 in the book I was reading about it was explaining how the way the pronouns worked

00:42:17.240 in Hungary at the time and potentially Hungary at this time I'm not familiar with

00:42:21.380 contemporary hungarian linguistics but basically um pronouns the same word was used for he

00:42:29.360 and for she so even within that it's hard to tell when the and the the notes taken from these

00:42:36.180 servants statements aren't complete because it's somebody writing down what somebody said

00:42:41.160 so when they say like she did it she killed him like that could be saying he killed her

00:42:45.860 he she killed him like you don't know who they mean but basically they all the consensus seemed

00:42:53.140 to be that the one servant named dorko was perhaps the most responsible so she might have been the

00:43:00.140 one who took over as being in charge of the servants after anna dervulia left unclear but

00:43:05.900 basically out of all the servants the woman named catalan everyone sort of agreed that she was like

00:43:13.480 the least responsible like she had been asked to to torture these girls in some way that she was

00:43:20.360 uncomfortable with and she refused to do it so then she herself got tortured but basically they

00:43:24.500 were saying like they were they were confirming that servants in this household were treated

00:43:29.900 abominably but at the same time they were all tortured themselves before they gave these

00:43:35.540 statements sort of like in salem witch trials if you listen to aaron mankey's podcast about that

00:43:41.880 he gets into this where it's like the statements that people give under duress like where they've

00:43:48.080 been tortured into saying things when they're giving details of stuff about witchcraft or stuff

00:43:52.980 about like weird sex serial killing like that says more about the questioners and it does about the

00:43:58.140 people or what really happened like all the weird messed up details are what's coming i think

00:44:03.220 suspect strongly suspect that's just coming from the questioner's own imaginations and they're

00:44:08.240 putting the words into these people's minds rather than those people repeating those things

00:44:13.160 necessarily i mean it's been proven numerous times between then and now and even then that

00:44:20.320 torture um testimony that it provided from a torture situation is not always true that's not

00:44:29.440 a method to get people to tell the truth that's just a method to get people to say what you want

00:44:33.660 to hear so you'll stop torturing them and thurzo himself clearly even knew that because he took

00:44:39.860 these records and it said on the records like this testimony was gotten by torture but then

00:44:44.160 when he wrote up his report for the king he was like cross that off so the king wouldn't know

00:44:47.800 that these statements were were made under dress so at this point so there's there's this trial

00:44:55.800 is going on all these witnesses are appearing elizabeth herself not appearing because she

00:45:00.120 as a noble person wasn't allowed to appear or like it would be unseemly for her to appear

00:45:07.120 and the trial was technically for the servants and not for her so like we'll just tuck her away

00:45:12.820 for a minute we'll get back to her in a second but all these people were testifying like hundreds

00:45:16.820 of people testifying many of them were the relatives or in-laws of thurzo himself what a

00:45:22.600 coincidence or uh servants who had been tortured to say whatever and then also just like sort of

00:45:29.340 a widespread momentum start building up where people are just like, if you were part of

00:45:33.920 this, the lower class, and you would have been treated so shittily for so long, if you

00:45:39.400 see like, oh, this is a place where I can like come and say these horrible things that 0.96

00:45:42.640 happen, and maybe some justice will happen.

00:45:45.580 So people just started chiming in.

00:45:47.080 So hundreds of people started testifying, and among them was a woman known only as Susanna.

00:45:52.920 And so she appeared, we don't even know her last name.

00:45:55.620 so she said that her friend had seen elizabeth had been keeping a list of how many people she

00:46:03.740 had killed so like just think of that for a second so susanna a woman with no last name

00:46:09.460 who never appeared again we don't know who she is anna darvulia in disguise i mean no but like

00:46:16.260 maybe so susanna appears she says you know i never saw anything but my friend who worked there

00:46:22.480 said that he had been working there one day and he saw a list that Elizabeth Bathory had been

00:46:28.480 keeping and it was a list of all the people she had killed and there was like 650 names on the

00:46:33.940 list. And that's where we get this 650 number from. No one else ever said that. The first

00:46:40.260 servants had estimated like 30 to 50 people died per year, which in Renaissance Hungary is not

00:46:49.880 weird considering how many people would have been working in Elizabeth Bathory's home.

00:46:54.840 But 650 is a massive number. The only evidence, quote unquote, evidence we have for that is a

00:47:00.520 woman named Susanna, no last name, said her friend saw a list. And they were like, great. So can you

00:47:07.060 provide us the list? And she never did. But that's where that number comes from. And today,

00:47:13.040 Elizabeth Bathory is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific female serial killer,

00:47:17.480 killing up to 650 people so literally that's the only place that number comes from anyway

00:47:25.000 other witnesses started seeing other things that thurzo i suspect kind of got them to do just so

00:47:30.480 he could have some backup plans to root her reputation some people mentioned witchcraft

00:47:34.940 one person said that elizabeth bathory had made a secret magic cake that she was going to feed

00:47:41.060 to her enemies to try and kill the king, etc. So it was just like a huge show trial. Everybody was

00:47:48.520 lying. And at the very end of it, the four servants were all found guilty. Three of them were executed

00:47:54.760 for their crimes. The force person, Catelyn, the one who everyone sort of agreed, wasn't as involved

00:48:01.980 in the tormenting of young servant girls. We're not sure what happened to her. She might have been

00:48:08.760 put to death. She might have been sent to jail, but she was like slightly higher class than the 1.00

00:48:13.940 other servants. So maybe she was just like sent off to a nunnery or something like that. During 0.99

00:48:18.660 all this, Elizabeth still set aside. We'll get to her in a minute. So the four servants were found

00:48:23.180 guilty. This whole thing was just like trashing the Bathory family name. And Elizabeth's longtime

00:48:30.500 some sort of advisor. There was a woman named Irvitsy who was the wife of a farmer and she

00:48:38.420 was some sort of folk healer who had been helping Elizabeth for a long time with various things

00:48:46.300 because that wasn't a strange thing to do. Was just sort of grabbed and burned at the stake for

00:48:52.280 allegedly being complicit in Elizabeth's crimes. And this is based on what some of the witnesses

00:48:56.820 had said during the trial she wasn't even put on trial or it's each she just was grabbed and burned

00:49:02.380 basically specifically for having been involved in baking that evil magic poison cake so while

00:49:10.980 this is all happening elizabeth was just kept in a room by herself and not just a room with a door

00:49:20.360 like sometimes when you hear about british people who were sent to the tower of london

00:49:23.940 for prison it's basically like fancy apartments this is like she's put in a room that was briffed

00:49:30.300 in so there's no door and no windows and just a little sort of like hole for air and also that

00:49:37.880 like food could be slid in and out of and so and that's just where she was kept so while this trial

00:49:45.820 was going on thurzo is sending his records to the king in hungary being like yep here's what's up

00:49:50.240 You know, Elizabeth Bathory, he has all these statements, totally didn't torture anybody.

00:49:53.480 This is what's going on.

00:49:54.800 The Hungarian king was like, shouldn't we get like a statement from her?

00:49:58.440 Shouldn't we like let her testify on her own behalf?

00:50:01.460 And Thurso was like, yeah, sure.

00:50:03.440 And for three years, he just never did.

00:50:07.880 So part of why he didn't do that was he had agreed on a deal with Elizabeth's male relatives.

00:50:14.320 So her son's guardian, her son's in law, that basically if she was never put on trials and they would divide up her money and estates between themselves.

00:50:26.740 So she was kept in a room in her same castle where she had been living.

00:50:30.380 I think the same one where she was arrested, perhaps.

00:50:33.120 I'm not sure. She had a lot of castles, but for sure a castle that she used to live in.

00:50:36.780 So she was just trapped in a room for four years, during which time all these trials were happening.

00:50:42.040 she had no voice like I'm sure she had a voice she could talk but like she had no no one would

00:50:49.360 listen to her nobody was on her side so she'd been so so so so powerful but then just suddenly

00:50:55.900 not at all and because she wasn't put on trial she wasn't convicted of anything she wasn't even

00:51:03.400 charged with anything just the servants were so it's like she was just put in jail not put on

00:51:09.180 trial and they just kind of waited for her to die and at one point thurzo's wife um was given

00:51:17.440 basically a citation by the authorities for being a horrible person for going into elizabeth's castle

00:51:22.620 and taking her money and dresses or something so like everybody in the story is terrible

00:51:27.780 elizabeth might have been terrible also but at this point hurt not to feel badly for her

00:51:33.500 So she was 54 years old when she died, bricked up in this room. They just found her body there. She had never been formally charged with anything. She had never been found guilty of anything. She'd just been hidden away in a little room, sort of not treated like a person for four years.

00:51:52.220 One year before she died, her nephew Gabor, the Prince of Transylvania, had been murdered, perhaps by Thurzo or on Thurzo's instruction.

00:52:03.240 But basically, that paved the way for the Hungarian Empire to take over Transylvania. 0.66

00:52:07.960 And with his death and Elizabeth's death, basically, that marked the end of the Bathory family's power and influence in Eastern Europe.

00:52:16.740 But the story doesn't end there, of course.

00:52:21.200 More than 100 years later, a man named Laszlo Turotsky wrote sort of an unauthorized biography of Elizabeth Bathory.

00:52:31.440 And he's the one who threw in the detail that she liked to bathe in the blood of young victims.

00:52:36.060 So again, if you're like, oh, Elizabeth Bathory is so creepy.

00:52:38.680 It's like, no, you know who's creepy is the people writing these stories.

00:52:42.380 So like the whole thing about bathing in blood never came up once over the course of hundreds of victims during the actual trial.

00:52:49.300 what did come up was um bathing in ice which a lot of people thought was weird

00:52:54.920 and which might have been just some sort of weird medical thing they were into but anyway bathing

00:53:02.260 in blood not mentioned at all until this one guy wrote a biography that included that this is where

00:53:07.720 we start getting stuff about her secret illegitimate teenage baby as well then the myth

00:53:13.780 started getting embellished even more especially in the victorian time period where more people

00:53:18.280 started writing about it because you know dracula and stuff became the popular story

00:53:22.640 allegedly on bram stoker is so the inspiration for dracula itself was the translovanian

00:53:32.200 soldier um vlad tepesh but he might have been also inspired by some of the folk stories about

00:53:38.540 elizabeth bathory which was basically the story became that she was an older woman who was jealous

00:53:45.420 of young women and so she killed them and based on their blood to magically make herself look young 0.99

00:53:51.120 or something um she's also the blood aspect started making her become presented as maybe

00:53:57.160 sort of a vampire and as i noted before she is still as of the time i'm recording this in the 0.62

00:54:04.100 guinness book of world records as the most prolific female serial killer even though 0.91

00:54:07.840 on their page on guinness book world records it says she is alleged to have killed up to 650 people

00:54:15.400 which is like is that what it takes to get the world record in something just like

00:54:20.280 a random woman named Susanna with no last name says her friend saw a list of names that you think

00:54:26.180 was a list of murder victims anyway the castle where she died is in so it's called catch teeth

00:54:35.720 castle it's in modern-day Slovakia the castle itself was abandoned in 1708 and it's basically

00:54:43.200 ruins, but you can visit it in the city of Cachtice, where there's also a museum. And that's

00:54:49.240 also where the church where Elizabeth's body was interred, is housed. So I for sure want to shout

00:54:56.140 out the book that I learned so much of this about, which is a biography by a man named Tony Thorne

00:55:02.120 that is called Countess Dracula, The Life and Times of Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess.

00:55:08.040 He used a lot of original texts, a lot of the archival materials written in Hungarian and Slovakian to really look at Elizabeth's letters, to look at the witness testimony.

00:55:21.540 He even got current lawyer to look over the case and testimony to think like, you know, if you were the lawyer, would you have found her guilty, etc.

00:55:28.940 There's so many things that are like Elizabeth Bathory, the blood countess, and they don't really delve into, but what was the actual story?

00:55:34.740 Like, what's the actual history in this biography?

00:55:37.120 absolutely does. And it's really well written and I recommend it a lot. And now it's time to score

00:55:43.720 Elizabeth Bathory on her scale. So the first category is scandalousness. And this is tricky

00:55:54.300 because we're looking at her and who she was and what she might have actually done. But the scandal

00:56:01.340 itself like the fact that she met is the fact that her legend is now that she was a lesbian 0.98

00:56:10.400 vampire who sex murdered 650 virgins to bathe in their blood is pretty extremely skandalicious

00:56:18.060 at the time what the trial alleged was that she might have killed up to 650 people also in like 0.95

00:56:25.280 a weird sex crime sort of way did she actually do what we don't know but people i'm gonna give her

00:56:32.180 a nine out of ten because the allegations are maximum scandalous but the fact that she may

00:56:39.260 not have actually done it is why i'm taking off one one point to keep her from a ten in terms of

00:56:45.780 scheminess. This is tricky because she, if she was a serial killer of 650 people, 0.98

00:56:56.420 you know what, even if she was, I wouldn't have been a lot of scheminess because if she was this 1.00

00:57:00.040 super rich noble, serial killing a bunch of servant girls, she wouldn't have had to have 1.00

00:57:04.320 been schemey because nobody would have stopped her. So, and the fact that she was caught would

00:57:10.220 mean that she wasn't scheming. She was really capable. She was good at running the household.

00:57:17.060 No, Thurzo truly out-schemed her. I don't think I'm going to give her, I'm going to give her a

00:57:26.380 three for scheminess, I think, because she did a good job running the household, which might have 0.99

00:57:33.480 included some scheminess. The fact that she went to the authorities at that one point to be like,

00:57:37.040 hey, guess what? I didn't kill this person. The fact that she lost as long as she did surrounded

00:57:41.500 by entirely horrible people means she would have a certain innate level of scheminess, but

00:57:47.220 both her alleged crimes and what she might have actually done, neither of which involved a very

00:57:52.920 high level of scheminess, her significance. This is where I think she's gonna rack up some points 0.96

00:58:00.220 because she's super famous well she isn't herself but the legend of her the whole story of her there's

00:58:07.360 like countless like death metal bands and songs and books and movies people remember her in a way

00:58:15.800 that they don't anyone else any of the other women that we've done thus far in the show like her 0.98

00:58:22.700 significance to like world history you know she wasn't a queen she didn't affect things in that

00:58:30.400 way but i'm gonna give her seven for significance because i think her legend is significance even

00:58:38.500 if she herself didn't affect the events of world history personally the last one is the sexism 1.00

00:58:46.480 bonus and i am giving her a goddamn 10 in this because if she had been a man none of this shit 1.00

00:58:53.040 would have happened to her she could have serial killed 5 000 young seven girls and nobody would 1.00

00:58:59.520 have batted an eye or cared but because she was a woman when her husband died she became vulnerable 0.58

00:59:06.420 and that's why basically everybody in her whole life turned on her so that gives her a huge total

00:59:13.260 29 that gives her a score of 29 which is the highest highest score of anybody that we've done

00:59:21.940 so far so yeah this is such a tricky thing to talk about and i hope i've done it as respectfully as

00:59:28.820 possible the whole thing is just when i started reading about her something just didn't seem

00:59:35.000 right when i was reading about like yeah she was this noble woman and she killed all these people

00:59:40.600 and she bathes in her blood and it's like okay well then why didn't anyone ever find any bodies 0.62

00:59:46.040 like there was the one that there's a brought in but if she killed 650 bodies and if 650 women

00:59:53.580 and all these people had witnessed it like why was there no evidence for it and why didn't

01:00:00.840 thurzo ever put her on trial for it and why like it just doesn't all add up to me which is why i

01:00:09.180 was really grateful to find that one book, Tony Thornton's biography, which I'll put a link to

01:00:15.000 in the show information. Anyway, as this is the fourth episode of Vulgar History, but the first

01:00:22.380 one since I've had a lot of infrastructure set up. So I just wanted to let you know about a bunch of

01:00:27.620 places where you can catch up with what's all things Vulgar History. So we have Twitter, which

01:00:33.240 is at vulgar history we're on instagram at vulgar history pod and that's where i'm going to post um

01:00:39.880 some images and stuff related to the episode if you want to see pictures of elizabeth and that

01:00:44.340 sort of stuff and i have a merch store which is at teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history

01:00:53.000 and what i've been doing is creating a different t-shirt slash other item for each person who we

01:00:58.980 look at in each episode. So for Elizabeth Bathory, it's sort of like a black t-shirt with just the

01:01:04.980 little crest, the like dragon eating its own tail in a circle crest. So it sort of looks almost like

01:01:09.860 a private school shirt with a little crest in the breast area. And on the back, it says Bathory

01:01:15.060 and white letters, sort of like a sports jersey. It's like the most goth thing you could ever

01:01:19.580 imagine. So you can find that at teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history. My name is

01:01:27.180 Anne Foster. I have a Patreon that's at patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. And my other writing is

01:01:35.480 at AnneFosterWriter.com. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll talk to you all next time.

01:01:45.460 Vulgar History is hosted, written and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi.

01:01:57.180 Legendary stories, awe-inspiring sound, and endless adventure.

01:02:04.780 Welcome to the Realms of Peril and Glory.

01:02:10.900 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

01:02:15.720 the paranormal mysteries of Liminal London,

01:02:21.060 and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.

01:02:27.180 Fall in love with our core cast, or be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure, Three Black Halflings, and No Rolls Barred.

01:02:42.080 Ignite your imagination and discover the Realms of Peril and Glory today.

01:02:47.580 Go to RealmsPod.com or search Realms of Peril and Glory wherever you listen to podcasts.

01:02:57.180 Do you ever watch a TV show set in a historical time period and think, how accurate is this really?

01:03:03.880 But also, does it matter if it's accurate or not?

01:03:07.140 NeferTV is a new podcast about shows set in ancient times.

01:03:13.260 This season, we're recapping every episode of the show Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

01:03:18.320 I'm Anne Foster, and I have never seen this show before.

01:03:21.960 And I'm Gina Berry, and I have watched this show maybe too many times.

01:03:25.960 Join us every other Monday on the NeferTV podcast as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, Blood, and Sam.

01:03:33.620 Follow NeferTV, that's N-E-F-E-R-T-V, wherever you get your podcasts.

01:03:41.940 Oh please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood.

01:03:46.240 Could we get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here?

01:03:49.200 Are you a fan of true crime TV shows?

01:03:52.320 And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jump-started all of our love of true crime?

01:03:57.300 I'm Ellen Marsh.

01:03:58.640 And I'm Joey Taranto.

01:04:00.040 And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries.

01:04:10.340 Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics?

01:04:17.380 New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon.

01:04:24.020 And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week.

01:04:31.220 So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Vulgar History - November 27, 2019

Women Behaving Badly, part 4： Elizabeth Báthory Bathed in Blood (Not Really)

Episode Stats

Transcript