Vulgar History - Women Behaving Badly, part one： Caroline of Brunswick, Rebel of the Regency (Rerelease)

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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

00:00:47.740 foster and today we're going to be revisiting one of our classic episodes in fact this is the first

00:00:53.380 ever episode of vulgar history it's where it all began and from what i can see when i look at the

00:00:58.340 statistics this is still the most listened to episode and I think it's because people find the

00:01:02.660 podcast maybe they listen to one of the newer ones or maybe they want to start at the beginning but

00:01:07.640 anyway everybody all of you it seems like are completionists and I respect that and so you want

00:01:13.160 to go back and listen to Callan or Brunswick and I especially appreciate that you listen to that

00:01:16.540 episode and move on to listen to more episodes of the podcast because that was very much I think

00:01:21.280 you get the vibe of what the show is and what it became I think it's pretty strong there from the

00:01:24.900 beginning, but also that's like, I was still figuring out how to use a microphone and how

00:01:29.900 any, anything works. So anyway, but the main thing that I wanted to do is to revisit this story and

00:01:35.440 to bring new context with new facts that I've since learned about Carolina Brunswick. I think

00:01:39.880 you all know if I was going to redo the episode entirely based on how thorough I have become,

00:01:47.100 based on my inability to cast aside any anecdotes, this will probably be like a five-part series.

00:01:51.820 So like the episode itself is still as it is. I'm going to air that coming up next. And then after that, stay tuned because I'm going to be revisiting the story just with my future reflections about it with Lana Wood Johnson, who is we're going to hear in this kind of like afterwards, her influence on this episode and this podcast and why I chose this to be the first episode of Vulgar History.

00:02:16.700 But most importantly, she was the first ever episode.

00:02:20.440 And so I didn't know how to compare her against anybody else.

00:02:23.660 When you're looking at the Scandaliciousness scale, I was just choosing numbers.

00:02:27.240 I wanted to have somewhere to grow, but I didn't realize I was starting with such a

00:02:30.800 Scandalicious superstar. 0.94

00:02:33.160 So the numbers are not where she would fit if I did the episode today.

00:02:38.580 So stay tuned.

00:02:39.700 After this, after the original classic Carolina Brunswick episode, I'm going to be revisiting

00:02:44.980 her story with Lena talking about it and including giving her a new score on the

00:02:50.620 Scandaliciousness scale. You know, justice for Carolina Brunswick, moving her up from the 20 0.63

00:02:56.320 that I originally gave her into a neighborhood where I think she fits in a bit better.

00:03:02.620 Yeah. So that's what you're going to hear. First of all, it's going to be the original

00:03:05.300 Carolina Brunswick episode. Newly edited. Christina, our editor, did the best she could

00:03:11.960 with my original recording. So the audio is cleaned up a bit. There's going to be less

00:03:15.800 lip smacking sounds and things like that. And then stay tuned after that original episode for

00:03:21.140 the continued discussion with Lana, including a rescoring for Carolina Brunswick.

00:03:33.640 Hello, and welcome to the Vulgar History podcast. This is season one, episode one. My name is Anne

00:03:39.940 Foster. And this is a feminist women's history comedy podcast, where I'm just going to share

00:03:46.220 some stories with you about women whose stories are not super well known, or even if you've heard

00:03:51.700 of them, you might not know all the details, but what they got up to exactly. It's a sort of history

00:03:56.380 podcast where I just have these stories that I've run into that I read about that I feel like are

00:04:01.120 really interesting. And I just really want to share them with lots of people. And I've already

00:04:05.420 shared them with all the people who I know in life. So I figured why not start a podcast so

00:04:10.360 even more people can learn all these bonkers, like, scandalous stories of all these amazing 1.00

00:04:16.300 women. And when I was thinking about, you know, making a little theme for my first season,

00:04:21.580 what I fell upon thanks to especially one of my Twitter mutuals, and I'm sorry, I didn't

00:04:28.160 write down what your name was. But one of my wonderful Twitter mutuals suggested,

00:04:32.520 well-behaved women seldom make history podcasts. So sort of inspired by the famous quote from 0.98

00:04:38.520 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who was a historian who was writing about Puritan burial rituals,

00:04:45.200 like funerals in oldie Puritan times in America. And just casually in the middle of one of the

00:04:51.600 paragraphs, this historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich just mentioned, well-behaved women seldom make 0.99

00:04:57.060 history. She was saying it in the middle of a bunch of other sentences. And she was basically 1.00

00:05:00.900 saying she's looking at these records and there's not a lot written about women because 0.89

00:05:04.880 back in the day, and it's not super different now in a lot of places in the world, a woman

00:05:12.020 was seen as being most successful if she just sort of like stayed out of the limelight,

00:05:17.640 stayed potentially inside the house, raising the children, not bringing any attention to 0.97

00:05:23.180 herself. 0.96

00:05:23.780 So what Laurel Thatcher-Ellrich is saying by this quote, well-behaved women still to 0.97

00:05:27.540 make history. 0.99

00:05:28.160 she's not saying like so get out there and misbehave women she's just saying like we don't 1.00

00:05:33.040 know a lot about a lot of women from the last several centuries millennium of patriarchal

00:05:40.780 western culture and that's because that was the culture was designed to not know about them so 0.98

00:05:45.800 the women who we do know about are the women who didn't quote unquote behave themselves and that's 0.96

00:05:51.620 who we're going to be looking at this season just women who made a spectacle of themselves in various 0.99

00:05:57.120 ways um who just sort of weren't just status quo and we know about them because of how they were

00:06:04.460 different from other people and we're gonna look at one of my most favorite women from history and

00:06:10.720 I've only just learned about her in the last year or so through a convoluted series of just you know

00:06:17.600 when you read about something and then that makes you read about something else and you're just in

00:06:20.960 this deep rabbit hole and you start learning about all these amazing facts um the woman who we're

00:06:25.460 looking at today, our first episode is a woman named Caroline of Brunswick. And her story is

00:06:33.380 especially, I think, resonant these days because there's been a lot of, well, I mean, we all are

00:06:40.540 in our own sphere. So I'm not sure what information you're seeing in your various social media, but

00:06:44.820 where I exist, sort of at the crossroads of British history and modern celebrity gossip

00:06:52.900 is the whole tabloid culture and what that has to do with the British royal family has been

00:06:58.000 under discussion, again, for various reasons. And we'll get into in this episode of this podcast.

00:07:05.200 But the thing with Caroline of Brunswick is she was kind of the first real tabloid member of the 0.91

00:07:10.760 royal family. And from then on, that's just kind of been part of what the British royal family's

00:07:15.220 whole deal is. So I'll just explain the story. It's got twists. It's got turns. There's a cameo

00:07:24.640 appearance by Jane Austen. And this is one of my one of my favorite women from history currently

00:07:32.840 who I know about. So her name was Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick. She was born on May 17th,

00:07:41.220 1768. Her mother was Princess Augusta of Great Britain. So her mother was the sister

00:07:48.920 of King George III of Britain. So Caroline was the niece of the British king. But her father

00:08:00.260 was basically German. So she grew up in basically Germany. This was in the time period before

00:08:06.600 Germany was called Germany, but basically she spoke German. She lived in a place that is now

00:08:12.140 considered part of Germany. So her father was called the Duke of Brunswick Wolfenbüttel.

00:08:19.000 So her father was a duke. Her mother was a princess. So she's basically royalty,

00:08:25.360 sort of like minor royalty. She wasn't a princess, but her mother was. The thing is that her parents,

00:08:31.860 Caroline's parents, Augusta and the Duke of Brunswick, Wolf and Butel, did not get along

00:08:37.800 with each other very well. They, in fact, seemed to quite dislike each other. So the Duke had a

00:08:44.760 mistress whose name was Louise Hertford. And this is a sort of time and culture and class of people

00:08:50.560 where like you just had your mistress and your mistress just hung out with you and you didn't

00:08:54.280 really hide it. And that's kind of what was going on. Princess Augusta, Caroline's mother,

00:08:58.680 was not a fan of that whole situation and so Caroline just kind of got caught in the middle

00:09:04.300 of this not great relationship between her parents so she was sort of like the father would be like

00:09:11.120 oh your mother's so terrible and the mother would be like oh your father's so terrible like send him

00:09:14.600 a message from me send her a message from me and she was just kind of like stuck in the middle of 0.97

00:09:18.240 all that so like in terms of relationship role modeling she didn't have the best um role models

00:09:26.580 to learn about what being a married couple was like. 0.99

00:09:31.080 As I mentioned, she grew up in basically Germany.

00:09:34.800 Her first language was German, but she was taught English,

00:09:38.400 partially because her mother was British,

00:09:39.980 but also because she was a minor royal

00:09:42.860 and she was similar age to the British king's son,

00:09:46.860 whose name was also George, and he was unmarried at this point.

00:09:50.780 So basically, sort of like in a Cinderella scenario,

00:09:53.440 every eligible young woman was being raised to be maybe the wife of the prince and even though if

00:10:02.040 you're got like a mental family tree in your head Caroline was the niece of the British king

00:10:08.260 the prince is the son of the British king the two of them are first cousins but that was like

00:10:13.060 not super weird at the time it was a little weird but at the same time she lived in Germany

00:10:21.720 it's not like they grew up together so like we're gonna get into other stories in other episodes

00:10:26.560 like this could be a lot weirder but it's basically sort of like a Targaryen game of

00:10:32.320 thrones sort of like staying within your own family sort of situation anyway so Caroline

00:10:38.320 being raised to be maybe the wife when she grows up of her first cousin Prince George

00:10:45.360 so they taught her english and that's kind of one gets the sense that's sort of like the main

00:10:51.960 thing that she was taught her parents weren't big into education in general of her so she didn't

00:11:00.620 get taught a lot of she just didn't get a lot of education so she wasn't as book smart as other

00:11:08.500 people might have been around her she also was very much kept away from socializing especially

00:11:14.760 with boys and men. So sort of like a Rapunzel-ish situation where she's like literally kept in her

00:11:21.860 room, not allowed to visit. Like she couldn't even know, like as a girl, she couldn't play

00:11:25.720 with boys. As a young woman, she couldn't like dance with boys. She could only, the only servants

00:11:30.480 she ever interacted with were female. But the thing is that sort of like Rapunzel in the movie 0.79

00:11:38.500 Tangled, she's got like a really spirited sort of personality. And so even though she's being

00:11:43.060 stuck in a room she's like that's not going to stop her but also she's nothing like rapunzel 0.92

00:11:48.000 entangled because you'll find out um she's somewhat less wholesome than that but basically 1.00

00:11:56.160 so she was allowed to go to balls sometimes like she begged and begged and finally let her go to 1.00

00:12:00.480 balls but she wasn't allowed to dance um she had to sit and play cards with the older women

00:12:05.860 so it's just sort of like of course she's going to rebel against this like she's got this like

00:12:11.280 huge opinionated spirit she's not being educated very much she doesn't have an outlet for her

00:12:16.600 energy she's not allowed to dance or interact with men so she just kind of builds up a whole

00:12:22.040 lot of rebellion sort of personality type traits so what happened is when she was about

00:12:30.740 when she was a teenager I want to say like around 15 years old but don't quote me on that

00:12:36.120 but basically her parents were at a ball I feel like the ball might have been in her own house

00:12:40.680 because they were able to get to her pretty quickly but basically she was tired of not being

00:12:45.580 allowed to go to balls and so she started she pretended that she was going into labor now she

00:12:51.160 was a young unmarried teenager who had as far as anyone knows like never interacted with any

00:12:58.140 male person other than her own father so that was surprising but she was like pretending she 0.84

00:13:04.880 was in labor she was like crying and screaming i don't know how she knew what labor looked like 0.88

00:13:09.100 but she was apparently impersonating it very well. So her parents rushed to her side. They

00:13:14.520 called a midwife. And then as soon as the midwife got there, Caroline basically stopped pretending 1.00

00:13:19.260 to be in labor. And she was like, guess what? I'm not having a baby. I just want you to pay 0.50

00:13:24.980 attention to me. I'm going to keep doing stuff like this if you don't let me go to the ball

00:13:29.040 and dance. So like this is the sort of person we're dealing with. Like when she doesn't get

00:13:33.500 what she wants, she might use unusual methods to get her point across. Unconventional, one might

00:13:42.420 say. And I also just, that was the sort of detail where I was first reading a biography of Carolina

00:13:47.020 Brunswick. And I just thought like she, she pretended to be going into labor to make a

00:13:51.820 point to her parents is sort of like, I just respect that a lot as like a teenage girl power 0.98

00:13:58.400 move basically what did she look like apparently she was really cute there's portraits of her like 0.77

00:14:06.220 contemporaneous portraits she had a round face curly blonde hair and just sort of like generally 0.71

00:14:13.360 sort of just a sweet pretty looking sort of person and then because of who her parents were

00:14:18.680 her mother being a princess the sister of the british king her father being this duke

00:14:23.240 she was an eligible young bachelorette so her mother was busy trying to find like the right 0.98

00:14:30.080 person for her to marry but also like secretly hoping that maybe Caroline would marry her cousin

00:14:34.760 Prince George which again was not as weird as it might be it was still weird basically but in the 1.00

00:14:43.040 meantime Caroline who like we know about her she did this like fake giving birth scenario to get 0.86

00:14:48.040 attention from her parents like they tried to trap her in her room but she is clever she's smart 1.00

00:14:53.240 She would go like horseback riding around the town.

00:14:55.460 And apparently while she was doing that, she fell in love with a man who may or may not have been an Irish soldier.

00:15:01.660 We're not sure.

00:15:03.060 But basically her parents forbid her from marrying this guy, whoever he was, because of his quote unquote low status.

00:15:10.520 Now, rumors, a lot of what we know about Caroline is like documented fact.

00:15:15.900 But a lot of what has been documented are rumors written by people who, because of what she did later, were sort of slandering her and sort of making fun of her and sort of trying to make paint her to be this crazy monster person.

00:15:30.400 Basically, a rumor exists in some writing from around that time, not when she was a teenager, but from later, that she secretly gave birth to a baby.

00:15:38.540 And the father was this Irish soldier.

00:15:41.220 But my guess, I mean, she might have given birth to a baby.

00:15:45.240 She might have.

00:15:45.900 like, entirely plausible. But also, I feel like the whole pretending to give birth is so weird

00:15:52.080 and so unusual that somebody might have just sort of confused that whole story. Basically,

00:15:58.620 for whatever reason, she did not get engaged until she was 26 years old in the year 1794.

00:16:05.760 And I just want to like, give a little hot take, which is, it's sort of a common perception that people in olden times got married when they were like 12 or whatever. And a lot of times, like an engagement might happen or betrothal when someone was really young. But the average age for women getting married in this time period was around 26.

00:16:29.900 Like, so she wasn't like an old maid type person that she didn't get married till then. 0.96

00:16:34.440 That's not weird. 0.99

00:16:36.000 Like she was super eligible.

00:16:37.260 Lots of people wanted to marry her and they just kind of tried to wait until they found

00:16:40.240 the right person and they did.

00:16:42.380 And who did she get engaged to in 1794, age 26?

00:16:46.340 Her first cousin, Prince George of Britain.

00:16:50.100 So this was not a love match to begin with in that Caroline and George had never met

00:16:57.360 at this point.

00:16:58.900 And also I just need to like side note, Prince George at this time was like maybe the least popular member of the British royal family and the British royal family itself was like really unpopular.

00:17:15.460 So he was kind of like technically a catch, quote unquote, but like, oh, let's get into it.

00:17:23.000 So 1794. This is shortly after the American Revolution. So it was Prince George's father,

00:17:30.680 King George III, who had been, he's the king from Hamilton, et cetera, who was the king when

00:17:36.120 the Americans did the whole Hamilton thing. You know, I'm not American, but you know the whole

00:17:43.300 thing, Betsy Ross flag, et cetera. So basically the British people were mad at the British Royal

00:17:48.320 family because they had lost this colony that was like providing them with lots of goods and

00:17:52.640 materials. And that was one reason why the British people are mad at the British royal family.

00:17:58.240 But also the country was like massively in debt, but the royal family was just kind of like

00:18:03.300 spending like money was no issue at all. It's the sort of thing where like,

00:18:08.000 when the economy is doing really badly, if the people in charge are just like lavishly spending

00:18:13.380 money on luxuries that's going to make the like everyday person a little bit mad at your royal

00:18:20.880 family and of the whole royal family the person who was the most sort of shopaholic like just

00:18:29.060 not paying attention to the mood of things was prince george who was like even considering this

00:18:36.340 is like the 18th century britain royal family the whole family spending too much money like

00:18:43.360 even he was spending so much money that even the rest of the royal family was like whoa he's spending

00:18:48.240 too much money so basically parliament cut off his allowance and they said and this is like exactly

00:18:55.120 like the beginning of sort of like cinderella slash maybe a regency era romance novel and we

00:19:00.640 are gonna get into the regency era in like 10-15 years from now basically they said you won't get

00:19:07.220 your money back until you marry someone, ideally a princess. So Prince George was like, okay,

00:19:14.320 well then I need to set up some sort of marriage of convenience so I can get my money, so I can

00:19:19.560 get back to buying like, I don't even know, you know, expensive shoes or whatever he was doing.

00:19:25.780 So he had a mistress at this time. He had lots of mistresses. He was like not a monogamous sort

00:19:31.780 guy. So his main mistress was named Frances Villiers, the Countess of Jersey. And she was

00:19:38.700 pretty amazing herself. And so he was like, Frances, I need to choose a wife. And she's like,

00:19:44.880 like winding her fingers together, like, you know, like lightning strikes, like mood lighting,

00:19:51.020 like she's just like, Oh, I'll help you find a mistress. So basically, Frances Villiers is

00:19:56.840 the mistress she knows that she can never be the wife for various reasons so she wanted to help him

00:20:03.200 find a wife who would not take away too much of her power she wanted to be like how caroline's

00:20:08.220 father had the mistress who like he took us his date to parties and stuff francis wanted to be 1.00

00:20:12.120 like the main number one mistress so she sort of felt like well we need to find a wife for my lover 1.00

00:20:19.140 who is like sort of a pushover and sort of like sort of maybe sort of like not well educated and 1.00

00:20:26.620 is somebody who like will just sit around and have babies while I, Frances Villiers, can just

00:20:31.600 live this amazing life. So she sort of like snooped around and she had lots of friends and

00:20:36.980 they're all good at gossip. And they told her word on the street was that Carolina Brunswick

00:20:42.100 was uneducated and sort of like socially awkward and seemed like she'd be sort of like a good, 1.00

00:20:48.260 easy to control puppet type person. So she was like, George, I think you should marry your first

00:20:54.760 cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. And he was like, great, because I want to get more money to buy

00:21:00.440 curtains or whatever. And then also Parliament was like, this is great, because they wanted

00:21:06.200 to make an alliance with Brunswick, which was where Caroline was from. And so everything's great.

00:21:12.840 The king sent a man over to Brunswick to pick up Caroline, and just make sure everything's okay,

00:21:19.020 and like escort her back for the wedding. And the man who he sent over was called

00:21:22.960 Lord Malmesbury. And this is where it gets even more sort of like the setup for a really amazing

00:21:31.420 Regency romance novel. So Lord Malmesbury arrives in Brunswick and he finds Caroline. She's just

00:21:40.180 like really cute, 26 year old, little ringlet hair, full of life, just like really interesting, 0.94

00:21:46.640 kind of weird um and also super sheltered and not super well educated and as it turns out she was in

00:21:55.020 no condition to marry the heir to the throne of great britain it's sort of like the beginning of

00:22:01.040 princess diaries where it's just like oh my god she doesn't know which fork is which fork her hair

00:22:05.540 is kind of frizzy she like makes these sort of like weird inappropriate jokes like slash the 0.99

00:22:11.180 beginning of My Fair Lady, basically. So Lord Malmesbury was like, okay, I'm not going to

00:22:17.340 bring her back to England right now. I'm just going to stay here in Brunswick and like teach

00:22:22.160 her table manners and like how to have good dinner conversation. So he was giving her princess

00:22:30.700 lessons. But the thing is, Caroline was like, I don't really feel like learning this stuff. Like

00:22:36.240 I'm engaged to Prince George. So let's just get on with it. And eventually, like her just weird,

00:22:42.380 interesting charm was so much that Malmesbury was like, you know what, like, I'm into this.

00:22:47.140 Like, I think, I think she's pretty great. And also she's clearly doesn't care about learning 0.87

00:22:53.500 manners. And so I guess we're just going to head back to England. The two of them didn't fall in

00:22:58.000 love. But like, let's get some fan fiction going. Because I think that would be an interesting

00:23:02.260 story. Basically, Momsbury was like, well, this is the best we're going to get. So let's go back

00:23:09.760 to England. So he accompanied her back to England, where she met Frances Villiers, who became one of

00:23:18.580 her ladies-in-waiting, because of course she did. And then she went to meet Prince George.

00:23:23.940 she said about him that he was nothing like as handsome as his portrait which is like a total

00:23:32.460 reverse Anne of Cleves scenario and I love it so she met him and she's like this guy and he saw her

00:23:40.380 and he was like this person I think she made some like off-color jokes or whatever because

00:23:45.480 she's Caroline just got a Caroline and so basically it was like loathing at first sight

00:23:52.580 Like they're both like, it's not just like, Ooh, I don't know if I want to marry this person.

00:23:56.340 They were both like, Oh my God, like I literally hate this person, but they were royals and the

00:24:02.660 engagement had been announced. And so they couldn't call it off. So Prince George basically

00:24:06.840 just got drunk for three days. Um, and they were married three days after they met the marriage

00:24:12.780 was on April 8th, 1795. Um, George was literally drunk throughout the ceremony. And this is where

00:24:19.500 we get to one of our big plot twist moments, which is that he had been married before. So

00:24:27.400 Prince George, before he met Francis, the like scheming lady-in-waiting slash mistress,

00:24:35.800 he had secretly and illegally married a woman named Maria Fitzherbert. And there was an episode

00:24:40.900 of the podcast Noble Blood about this a bit ago. But basically, George had fallen in love with a

00:24:48.240 woman named Moraphis Herbert, who was a Catholic. They basically lived as like, quote unquote,

00:24:52.940 man and wife for eight years. They had some children together, but he hadn't gotten his

00:24:59.300 father's permission to marry her. And she's Catholic. So it was not like officially recognized

00:25:03.600 as a marriage, but they were like, they had had a marriage ceremony. So he was sort of married,

00:25:10.660 but not really anyway so he was drunk for the wedding he hated her she hated him as well she

00:25:18.400 should he sounded awful basically uh he was super drunk he like tripped and fell on the ground and

00:25:26.560 she just like left him there and that was their wedding night yet but somehow well I mean I guess

00:25:32.800 we know how nine months later Caroline gave birth to a baby like nine months after the wedding so

00:25:38.260 like these two people sounds like had sex once spoiler ever so she had a daughter who was named

00:25:47.780 charlotte which was the name of her aunt slash mother-in-law um the wife of the king anyway so

00:25:55.900 princess charlotte was born and by then they'd been married for nine months um prince george

00:26:01.040 had come to just like profoundly hate caroline even more than when he'd first met her

00:26:08.260 After the baby was born, he changed his will and he said he wanted to leave everything to his wife,

00:26:13.800 Maria Fitzherbert, the Catholic who he sort of was married to already, and left Caroline one 0.96

00:26:19.900 shilling, which was just like making some sort of stupid point to his like postnatal wife. 0.99

00:26:27.620 Anyway, she had a baby, hated her. But remember how everybody in England hated the royal family 1.00

00:26:34.580 and especially prince george and so the tabloids were just sort of coming into being at this point

00:26:42.160 and so people from around the castle started like spilling secrets to them saying like

00:26:47.100 guess what so you know how how caroline just had this baby like it turns out that prince george is

00:26:53.600 like being really mean to her the whole royal family kind of hates her and the tabloids started

00:26:58.280 publishing this and so then the public started being like oh my god the royal family is being

00:27:02.400 really mean to Caroline and they all basically took her side partially because she was amazing

00:27:08.340 but also more likely partially because they just hated the royal family they saw her being

00:27:14.140 mistreated by them and then she became like a figurehead for their all sort of like nascent 1.00

00:27:18.480 rebellion feelings so like this got to a point where Caroline would take baby Charlotte out like

00:27:25.700 walking in like their little baby stroller and people would like cheer for her so she did this

00:27:31.400 more and more often because probably made her feel good probably made the royal family feel

00:27:34.980 annoyed like basically she was in this family that hated her being isolated from literally

00:27:41.580 everybody but the public was was there they were on her side and so just like today if you read

00:27:50.220 Lainey gossip the courtiers the people who were hanging around the palace just like kept spilling

00:27:56.000 more and more secrets to the tabloids to try and make whoever they supported the courtiers supported

00:28:01.240 look better or worse so basically francis villiers her name started coming up in the story so it was

00:28:08.520 like a real life soap opera situation where people just like the everyday people read the newspapers

00:28:13.420 or people who couldn't read people would tell them about it they're just like oh my god what

00:28:17.240 did caroline do and then francis did this prince george did this and basically the more the royal

00:28:22.720 family treated caroline badly the more the people of britain loved her and then that made the royal

00:28:30.120 family hate caroline even more but basically these were two married people who like hated each other

00:28:38.300 and so they legally separated which is like for late 18th century like not a common thing to 0.74

00:28:46.940 happen for the heir to the throne at all but this is great caroline got to be free she headed off

00:28:54.800 to live in her own residence like out of town she wasn't in london she got to live in the country

00:28:59.080 and she grew up trapped in this room not allowed to dance and then she got into this like toxic

00:29:04.960 awful family marriage relationship and now she got to just like live her own beautiful life

00:29:10.380 and so again this is where it's like what did she do what are rumors who's to say it sounds like 0.92

00:29:17.380 Caroline just like leaned into the her freedom and started having the most amazing time she flirted

00:29:23.140 with like literally every man she met perhaps had flings with the various men who she had over as

00:29:28.640 house gets she was just like throwing parties having an amazing time but she missed her daughter 0.99

00:29:36.100 Charlotte who she had to leave so Charlotte was off being raised by like governesses and nannies

00:29:42.020 back with the royal family and they had a shared custody arrangement but she didn't get to see her

00:29:49.960 daughter as much as she wanted to which is where Caroline this takes another turn you might not 0.70

00:29:55.960 expect, which is that she starts sort of collecting other people's babies. So just stick with me for

00:30:02.460 this. So basically, so Caroline made a friend, sort of a frenemy in her little country home,

00:30:09.780 whose name was Lady Douglas. And so she told Lady Douglas in 1802, she said that she was like,

00:30:16.600 can I tell you a secret Lady Douglas? And Lady Douglas is like, yeah, girl, yeah. And Caroline

00:30:20.820 was like, I am secretly pregnant. Don't tell anybody. But she didn't look especially pregnant

00:30:27.180 as per Lady Douglas. And then shortly after that, this baby boy named William Austin came on the

00:30:33.480 scene, who was three months old. It was sort of like unclear. Had it been Caroline's baby she had

00:30:40.940 three months ago? Or did you just like adopt someone else's baby? But like, who is this baby?

00:30:46.440 and where did he come from? She adopted other children as well. Eventually she had collected

00:30:51.840 nine orphaned children, but Willie Mostyn was always her favorite. Fears later, Caroline and

00:30:58.260 Lady Douglas had, they just, you know, their friendship sort of crumpled into a horrible

00:31:04.240 bonfire. So Lady Douglas, and this is all again, like in the tabloids, like people were

00:31:12.420 telling these secrets because like the people of britain just like love hearing about caroline

00:31:17.180 so lady douglas said that caroline had been like sending her mean letters and then she also alleged

00:31:22.540 that caroline had committed infidelity on her husband and that william austin was caroline's

00:31:27.900 son um the father was someone who's not her husband so caroline wrote a letter to the editor

00:31:33.500 of the local newspaper and you know she wrote it because the grammar is like not perfect the

00:31:39.340 writing style is kind of odd like she's got her own way of writing that's like again she was not

00:31:46.080 like her education was not like top tier and also English is not her first language so it's like

00:31:50.840 yeah she wrote this this is like her style so basically the royal family was like oh my god

00:31:56.640 how is she back in the tabloids do we not get rid of her and so what they decided to do which was

00:32:01.800 kind of the worst possible idea if they wanted to like make this scandal go away is they launched

00:32:06.280 an official investigation into whether or not Caroline was the mother of baby William Austin.

00:32:12.820 So this whole situation became known as the Delicate Investigation. And it was supposed

00:32:19.940 to be secret, but obviously everybody was telling everything to the tabloids and they kept doing

00:32:24.440 that. So the commission who were investigating the Delicate Investigation, the Delicate investigators

00:32:31.040 were all old white men. 0.73

00:32:33.380 Like literally the prime minister was part of it, 0.93

00:32:35.660 the Lord Chief Justice, 0.96

00:32:37.020 like just men in their like, you know,

00:32:39.560 British judge wigs and whatever,

00:32:41.480 just being like, 1.00

00:32:42.480 let's just like investigate the sex life of this woman. 1.00

00:32:46.980 Anyway, so they called Lady Douglas to testify. 1.00

00:32:51.220 And just remember that Lady Douglas at this point hates Caroline, 1.00

00:32:55.580 had been leaking stories to the press about Caroline. 0.84

00:32:58.460 And basically this whole thing was her fault. 0.99

00:33:01.040 And so she testified and she was like, Caroline is basically a nymphomaniac. 0.99

00:33:04.460 She sleeps with literally every man, even the servants. 0.99

00:33:07.140 She tried to seduce me. 1.00

00:33:08.820 I think she's like, like she's an out of control nymphomaniac.

00:33:12.980 But then Caroline's servants came to testify and they're all like, oh, we didn't see anything

00:33:17.840 weird.

00:33:19.080 Also, she's our boss and she pays us well. 0.97

00:33:22.000 And then surprise final witness, like how to get away with murder moment. 1.00

00:33:26.240 A woman named Sophia Austin appeared and she was like, hey, my name is Sophia Austin.

00:33:31.040 William Austin is my son. It's not Caroline's son. Let's just all move on. And so they did,

00:33:39.100 sort of. The delicate investigation ended with them finding that Caroline had not cheated on

00:33:46.160 her husband. This was not her illegitimate baby, but she was forbidden to see Charlotte, her daughter,

00:33:53.520 while the investigation was going on. And when the investigation ended, she was only allowed to see

00:33:57.920 Charlotte once a week on supervised visits. And now we're just going to take a break for a word

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00:34:22.660 the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered

00:34:31.680 like bones in the dust now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying

00:34:38.420 the darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins

00:34:44.880 this is old school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that

00:34:51.800 flame dies, something else rises

00:34:53.740 to finish the job. This is a brutal

00:34:55.780 rules-light nightmare with a story

00:34:57.920 that emerges organically

00:34:59.740 based on the decisions that the characters

00:35:01.980 make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs

00:35:04.140 in the 80s, and man, it is

00:35:05.940 so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon

00:35:07.980 podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark

00:35:10.140 every Thursday night at 8pm

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00:35:13.760 theglasscannon with the podcast version

00:35:16.060 dropping the next day.

00:35:17.860 See what everybody's talking about and join

00:35:19.860 us in the dark.

00:35:21.800 welcome to the realms of peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas of veil

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00:36:50.300 And we're back.

00:36:52.000 And the supervisor of these visits was Caroline's mother.

00:36:55.080 Flashback, remember, Princess Augusta, the sister of the king?

00:36:58.820 So she was the chaperone.

00:37:00.640 Basically, her mother had been terrible to her as a child.

00:37:04.240 Now her mother was there supervising. 1.00

00:37:06.640 Her mother basically also hated her.

00:37:08.980 It was just like not a good scenario.

00:37:11.400 but then in 1811 everything changes substantially because the king king george the third the one

00:37:19.360 from hamilton um he was declared basically permanently insane so he had had mental health

00:37:26.440 issues for quite a while on and off and just getting worse and worse and that's a whole other

00:37:31.900 discussion like what what was going on there was a movie made about him called the madness of king

00:37:36.320 george that was this guy it's a good movie helen mirren is in it playing his wife

00:37:41.400 But basically he was like so ill, he couldn't be the king anymore, but he was the king.

00:37:47.680 But so what do you do when the king can't like do his king job is you bring out a regent

00:37:52.180 who's a person who like do the day to day king type work.

00:37:56.800 And so Prince George became the official regent and thus began the Regency era.

00:38:03.900 So this is just, you know, like empire waste,

00:38:06.060 drestis like pride and prejudice like the regency era so this is what's happening um but the thing

00:38:14.400 with this the regent prince george is like oh my god i have so much more power now and i have just

00:38:21.240 been like obsessively hating my wife now for years so he just started passing more rules to

00:38:27.200 punish caroline for just trying to live her life so he stopped letting her visit with her daughter

00:38:32.760 and he started saying like anyone who's friends with her goes to her parties is like not friends

00:38:37.380 with me anymore so all the friends started dumping Caroline to stay friends with Prince George it was

00:38:44.120 all just like petty high school stuff so Caroline was like okay sucks but I'm sure there's a way

00:38:53.400 that I can fight back for all this and she's clever and so she tried to find like the tabloid 0.98

00:38:58.260 press was still super supporting her like she had the entire british population of like working

00:39:03.240 people on her side as well as all the newspapers and tabloids but she needed she needed something

00:39:08.180 else to fight back against this because her husband was kind of the king at this point so

00:39:13.560 she found a guy named henry brougham who was a politician that hated the royal family so they

00:39:19.420 began a campaign of anti-royal family propaganda so just like sending sending stories to the

00:39:24.560 tabloids which they had been doing but just like with with this guy helping out it just he's kind

00:39:29.100 of like her pr expert he was just better at planting better stories so prince george was

00:39:35.960 mad about that and he leaked stuff to the tabloids to make caroline look bad and so anyway it was just

00:39:42.300 like all very much on the headlines everywhere everybody knew about it jane austen was around

00:39:48.280 because it's the regency era and that was her time to shine and she was entirely on team caroline

00:39:54.120 in the whole scenario. She wrote, I think this was in her journals or something, or in a letter,

00:39:59.260 she wrote about Caroline, quote, poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she

00:40:05.120 is a woman, and because I hate her husband. Like, if you're not sure whose side to be on in this

00:40:10.780 story, like Jane Austen thinks Prince George is the worst, supports Caroline. So, you know,

00:40:18.140 there's some information for you. The other notable literati of the time also had opinions on this,

00:40:23.720 For instance, Lord Byron was against Caroline, which again, if you're like, which side should I be on? It's like, well, Jane Austen's on Caroline's side. Lord Byron is on the prince's side. So just like, you know, choose your fighter.

00:40:37.100 so basically everything was just intense and crazy and like not great for her mental health

00:40:45.100 and finally caroline sorted out away with her ally um the politician who was helping her out

00:40:50.740 she negotiated a deal with the foreign secretary where she got to move to italy um and they would

00:40:56.580 give her generous allowance if she just basically stayed away forever and she was like yeah yeah

00:41:02.320 let's do this. So she purchased a villa on Lake Como, famously now the place where Amal and George

00:41:09.340 Clooney live. So just like glamorous. She hired new servants to go help her out there, including

00:41:15.220 a man named Bartolomeo Pargami. So she and Bartolomeo became very close and everyone

00:41:24.100 basically assumed they were lovers, even though they were both technically married to other people.

00:41:28.700 and there's a certain philosophy in history that i i just find simplifies things where it's like

00:41:37.080 if you find people in history and it's like it seems like they might have been sleeping together

00:41:41.860 like they probably were so let's just like go ahead with that assumption this is all alleged

00:41:47.020 but like i hope carolyn was sleeping with him because she deserves everything good so she and

00:41:55.360 her servants including Bartolomeo they basically lived in Lake Como and they went on these amazing

00:41:59.920 fabulous vacation adventures like they went on Mediterranean cruise they visited Malta and

00:42:05.960 Constantinople and Nazareth so remember she grew up like trapped in a room like literally trapped

00:42:11.520 in a room she had to play cards with old women instead of dancing like she was just like living

00:42:16.960 her best life there is a description of when she and Bartolomeo visited Jerusalem she entered the

00:42:23.820 city riding on a donkey among a convoy of camels which is just like do it Caroline like yes just

00:42:30.320 like you like you escaped your horrible husband the British royal family which were being the

00:42:36.140 worst to you and now you're just like living your life I love it but then as per ever she's being

00:42:43.140 so amazing that um people had to write about it and then stories of her adventures got back to

00:42:47.840 England the people were like oh my god she's amazing like hashtag goals and the British royal

00:42:53.500 family was just like, ugh, her again. Why won't you go away? And Prince George was just at this

00:42:58.460 point, like fully obsessed with how much he hated her and wanted to destroy her. So while she was

00:43:03.900 traveling around Europe, et cetera, her daughter, Princess Charlotte had grown up in this period of

00:43:09.080 time. And she got married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Salfeld in 1816. And then she died

00:43:17.860 a year later in childbirth complications so charlotte remember she had grown up like she

00:43:24.360 was in the stroller being pushed around and everybody cheered like she was like the people's

00:43:29.080 princess the like original people's princess and so when she died it became like based like a

00:43:34.700 national tragedy percy shelley the husband of mary shelley published a pamphlet called an address to

00:43:40.920 the people on the death of the princess charlotte basically a tribute to her like everyone was so

00:43:45.140 upset this 18 year old princess had died and now like also there was no heir to the throne which

00:43:50.860 complicated everything and also everybody hated the british royal family like the only people

00:43:56.340 that people liked were caroline and charlotte and caroline was in italy charlotte was now dead

00:44:03.540 so basically prince george is like okay he needs an heir like he he's not the king but he's basically

00:44:10.320 acting as a king he's the regent and he needs to have a legitimate child to become king after him

00:44:16.840 so he's like oh but i'm married to caroline like i'm never gonna have sex with her ever again i 0.90

00:44:21.360 hate her like so viciously so he's like what i need to do is divorce her so i can marry someone

00:44:27.280 else so i can have a new baby who can be my heir so he tried to um get parliament to agree to let

00:44:34.440 him get a divorce and they're like you're not henry the eighth hashtag also henry the eighth

00:44:39.380 didn't actually get divorced they're all just annulments and also this the government was

00:44:44.920 unpopular everybody loves caroline they're like no we're not going to let you divorce caroline

00:44:48.360 so caroline was just like all right you know what i'm just going to come back to england 0.73

00:44:52.640 sort this shit out she bid farewell to bartolomeo her maybe lover and hopped on a boat back to

00:45:00.260 england when she arrived literal riots broke out everyone was so excited to see her she was like 0.98

00:45:05.340 the main character and their telenovela there for real everybody freaked out about it also the

00:45:13.360 british people were just like hating the british royal family more and more and more and more which

00:45:17.140 made them love her more and more and more and more so they're all just like really excited

00:45:20.800 to have her back there um a bunch of members of the royal guard like the soldiers like they

00:45:26.180 mutinied like they they gave up being soldiers because they loved her so much like anyway prince 0.98

00:45:34.580 george was just like how can i get rid of this goddamn woman and he was like well there's rumors 0.99

00:45:40.420 that she's been having an affair with a servant called bartolomeo so if she had adultery then 0.99

00:45:46.140 they could get a divorce and so he's like okay i'm gonna hold a public trial because god like

00:45:53.980 of course what else can happen at this point so witnesses from all across europe and like the

00:45:58.280 mediterranean from caroline and bartolomeo's cruise came by and they and like they were all

00:46:04.340 probably being paid by somebody or the other to say whatever but some of them said they'd seen

00:46:07.840 the two caroline and bartolomeo kissing they'd seen them together like semi-naked but with every

00:46:15.160 like new scandal it just made the british people love caroline even more more than 800 petitions

00:46:21.940 were circulated with more than one million signatures from people who wanted the case

00:46:25.800 against her to be dismissed but prince george would not stop trying to divorce her so he was

00:46:35.020 like we need to find more witnesses better witnesses so he like sent people to milan to

00:46:39.500 try and basically pay off people to say like 100 we saw her sleeping with patarla mayo

00:46:44.580 so the number of witnesses he was able to buy slash maybe they were real witnesses like the

00:46:50.720 whole thing just doesn't seem very legitimate to me. Anyway, things were not looking good for

00:46:55.360 Caroline. So she was like, considering maybe taking a deal like a payoff to like maybe get a

00:47:03.080 divorce. But she could only get a divorce if she if one of the other them admitted adultery. And 1.00

00:47:08.760 she's like, well, I'm not going to do that. But then everything changed. Ultimate plot twist,

00:47:13.420 January 19th, 1820, the king died. And so Prince George now became King George the fourth,

00:47:21.420 which meant because they were still married, Caroline was now the queen, sort of like she

00:47:28.380 wouldn't be officially the queen until she had a crown put on her head at the coronation. And so

00:47:33.920 he was basically at this point, it's just like, just looking for like loopholes. He's just like,

00:47:39.360 well, if I, if she doesn't come to coronation, then she'll never get a crown on her head. Then

00:47:42.640 she'll never be the queen like he's just like give up like god i hate this guy so his coronation was

00:47:48.700 planned and he was like what if we just don't invite caroline um but she found out about it

00:47:55.860 obviously the date is publicly known so it was being held at westminster abbey so she just like

00:48:03.660 showed up crashed the coronation to presumably just like march down the aisle grab a crown put

00:48:09.980 on her head so she tried to get in but the like staff there stopped her they're like no you're

00:48:15.440 not on the guest list so then she was like guess what there's more doors so she ran around the

00:48:20.180 building and tried another set of doors which these doors didn't open so then she ran around

00:48:25.020 again and tried to enter through the main door just like sliding in among the crowd like how do

00:48:30.180 you do fellow crowd but she would not be deterred they kicked her out again um she ran around again

00:48:36.980 and she found yet another door in the back she snuck in but then one of the kings the new king

00:48:43.320 her husband's staff somehow persuaded her to go back outside which she did and all this like

00:48:49.820 running around westminster abbey just was like pretty undignified it was like a step too far

00:48:56.120 for the adoring public and they're all just like you know what we don't love her anymore

00:49:01.340 so they jeered and booed her as she left in her carriage and then she felt ill that night sort of

00:49:08.400 like and again i'm not american but this happened to one of your presidents i saw it on drunk history

00:49:13.440 he gave his speech and it was raining and then he got sick and died so basically she got sick

00:49:18.820 she got sick from being locked out of westminster abbey and it was the early 1800s so medicine was

00:49:24.560 not amazing her condition got worse and worse and worse over the next three weeks and it started to

00:49:30.040 look like she was like, she was not going to get better. Carolyn was like, got it. Like I accept

00:49:35.140 this. And so she burned all of her papers, letters, and memoirs, which is just like,

00:49:40.580 if only, if only those hadn't been burned, this would have been like some great writing. I bet

00:49:46.720 she wrote a new will and organized her own funeral arrangements. And this is just like,

00:49:54.140 of course she did this. So she requested to be buried back in Brunswick, not in England,

00:49:58.420 which had not been a great place for her. And she wanted to have the following inscription put on

00:50:03.400 her tomb. Quote, here lies Caroline, the injured queen of England. So Caroline of Brunswick died 0.99

00:50:10.260 on August 7th, 1821, aged 53. It seems like she died of some sort of cancer type situation,

00:50:19.580 but rumors were flying around that she was maybe poisoned, which is like, I feel like

00:50:24.100 not impossible given everything that's been going on in the story so she had been kind of the queen

00:50:33.600 even though she was never coronated so it was just like polite for her to get the a funeral

00:50:39.580 procession through the streets of london but the whole thing the people of england like loved her

00:50:45.680 again you know they didn't like her for the running around the castle but then she died so now she's

00:50:49.320 like people's princess again people's queen so the people planning her funeral were like

00:50:54.080 like we're pretty close to like rebellion slash riots in london so like having the like effigy

00:51:02.260 of queen caroline go through the town would probably lead to more riots so what if so

00:51:08.460 basically usually the funeral procession goes like through london but they're like what if

00:51:12.120 our funeral procession goes like around london to try and make it be not a riot but of course

00:51:19.000 that didn't work because everybody wanted to pay tribute to their fallen heroine the best way they

00:51:24.100 knew how, like in her honor to throw one final riot. So people threw stones and bricks at the

00:51:30.900 soldiers who were in the procession. So the soldiers shot back into the crowd. And when

00:51:35.860 that didn't work, they waved their sabers around while riding on their horses. Basically, it was

00:51:40.520 chaos. And two people ended up dying, a carpenter named Richard Honey and a bricklayer named George

00:51:46.040 Francis. So after everything simmered down, this is just an interesting side note, just sort of

00:51:53.080 like the everyday people, they raised money in a kind of Regency era Kickstarter to erect a tomb

00:51:58.900 in memory of these two men, Richard Honey and George Francis, both of whom had died leaving

00:52:03.860 children behind. So it just sort of showed like the spirit of like unity among the working classes,

00:52:09.940 like Caroline's supporters were like good people. So the riot happened and the penal procession

00:52:15.520 organizers were like okay let's just go through the city hopefully that will stop the riot they

00:52:20.400 did and it did basically and the route ended at the waterfront and her body was placed on a ship

00:52:27.180 to be sent back to Brunswick for her to be buried in Brunswick Cathedral her body is like sailing

00:52:32.500 over to Brunswick Cathedral and some English ministers are like in a different boat like

00:52:37.040 heading over to like just go check in the tomb to make sure everything's okay and when they showed

00:52:41.140 up they found that the tomb had already been inscribed with here lies caroline the injured

00:52:45.520 queen of england and they were like oh what if it doesn't say that um and the people in brunswick

00:52:54.080 were like but we carved it like we're the grave carvers and this is what we did so then a huge

00:52:58.420 fight broke out between the brunswick church people and the english ministers which is just

00:53:03.900 like her whole life all it's been like caroline just like instigates such passion in people

00:53:09.360 ultimately the grave was changed and so they put a boring latin verse on it like all queens get 0.99

00:53:16.040 but anyway just like one last fuck you from caroline to the royal family so sort of like 0.98

00:53:24.520 queen anne from the favorite um whose story was written by people who hated her and so for a long 0.99

00:53:31.300 time we just kind of thought she was like useless and whatever caroline's story has not been

00:53:36.800 reclaimed by people like me who love her until now. But the book that I read to get most of

00:53:44.920 this information from was called Caroline and Charlotte, Lives of Caroline of Brunswick and

00:53:49.040 Princess Charlotte of Wales by Alison Plowden from 1989. It's a good book for informational

00:53:55.220 purposes, but it also leans a lot onto like, you get the sense Alison Plowden, the author,

00:54:01.780 kind of believes a lot of the worst rumors about Caroline and thinks she's kind of like 0.86

00:54:05.360 useless and stupid there's one movie out about this and there's a couple other books as well

00:54:12.100 if you want to read more about caroline but i think the best way to honor her is just by like 0.99

00:54:16.860 telling the story to other people and is i just sort of like uh it's a coda to the whole thing

00:54:26.240 so 16 years after caroline died and prince her husband george the fourth he didn't have any more

00:54:32.200 legitimate children so the throne went to his younger brother and then to his younger brother

00:54:37.160 and like none of these brothers had any children and it's just like oh my god who's going to be

00:54:40.940 the next king of england plot twist not a king so 16 years after caroline died um another high

00:54:48.420 spirited opinionated young german princess arrived in england to take on an important role

00:54:52.920 this was princess alexandrina victoria of kent the only legitimate grandchild of king george the third

00:54:59.760 she was crowned queen victoria in westminster abbey the same place that years earlier her aunt 1.00

00:55:07.020 carolina brunswick had faced her final humiliation queen victoria became known for her strict moral

00:55:12.860 code stubborn nature devotion to her country and to the monarchy basically queen victoria became

00:55:19.560 one of history's most well-behaved women while carolina brunswick is remembered not much at all

00:55:27.680 until now so I think inspired by some of my most favorite other podcasts I would like to give

00:55:36.460 each of the stories I tell here a score so I'm not scoring the person um I don't think anyone's

00:55:43.740 life is more valuable or important than another person's life but just like the story of it like

00:55:50.620 the whole thing of it. And so I have four different categories. The first of which is

00:55:57.900 scandalousness. So this is like, of the whole situation, not just like how scandalous was this

00:56:07.500 whole story, but like, how scandalous was it? Like the details of the scandal. So this is on a scale

00:56:14.740 of i guess zero to ten and when we're looking at caroline of brunswick story we've got the like

00:56:21.700 fake pretending to have a baby to get her parents attention as a teenager we've got the rumors that

00:56:29.020 she might have had a baby as a teenager she wanted to marry um an irish soldier despite the fact that

00:56:36.600 she was royal and then she wasn't allowed to do that um we've got the whole she refused to be

00:56:42.860 taught princess manners but then like oh that's just sort of like interestingness I guess like

00:56:49.800 the scandalousness of it like the liciousness comes in with the whole Bartolomeo situation

00:56:55.980 well actually first no so when she goes to live in the country and she's rumored to have all of 0.99

00:57:00.780 these flirting with all these men taking all these lovers which like I really hope she did 1.00

00:57:05.340 I hope she just like had lots of really great sex so there's a room she had the lovers then there

00:57:11.400 was like the william austin situation where it's like was that her baby was it not the fact that

00:57:15.580 that went to like a tribunal like the prime minister was trying to decide like did she have

00:57:21.000 an extramarital affair and then the bartolomeo of it all going off to lake como to live

00:57:27.280 this just sort of like life of like miss fisher's murder mysteries like just like deliciousness

00:57:35.160 like there's a lot and then coming back like the riots this is just like there's a lot

00:57:43.700 of scandalousness to this on a scale of zero to ten I'm going to give her a seven in that

00:57:51.040 category I think a firm seven I mean we're going to be looking at over the course of this whole 1.00

00:57:56.300 podcast series lots of lots of interesting women lots of scandalousness and I think for the first 0.97

00:58:03.520 episode this is like a strong strong start seven the next category is scheminess like how crafty 0.99

00:58:12.780 was she well not just like how smart was she what were her sort of like plans but like how 0.96

00:58:17.780 schemey was she like on a scale of like zero to Cersei Lannister like where where is she in like

00:58:26.140 secret backroom dealings and like secretly manipulating people and stuff and so the thing 1.00

00:58:32.240 with carolina brunswick is that she did have some scheminess for sure the whole like writing letter 1.00

00:58:37.260 to the editor like leaking stories to the tabloid press like hiring a pr advocate situation like 1.00

00:58:45.100 in that respect her scheminess was great but in the respect of like she didn't do a lot of like 1.00

00:58:54.060 backroom dealing she didn't do a lot of like jockeying for power against other people like

00:58:58.500 she just wanted to live her own best life she wasn't really out seemingly to me i don't think 1.00

00:59:04.620 for like power or glory or anything she just wanted to like have some fun so she was schemey 0.98

00:59:11.560 i'd say she's medium schemey i mean they give her a four a four out of ten for scheminess because

00:59:17.820 there's definitely some scheminess there like the tabloid involvement the like going walking with

00:59:23.180 Oh, they're going for walks. They're like really cultivating the British people's anti-monarchist feelings for her own ends. That was good. I'm going to bump her. I'm going to give her a five. Five for scheminess.

00:59:38.380 the next category is significance and so this is like again no one person

00:59:46.880 in the history of everything like everyone's life is everyone's life but in terms of like

00:59:54.040 you know if we were looking at somebody it's like did she invent penicillin

00:59:57.480 did she invade a country like what are the long-term repercussions of the events of the

01:00:05.600 story that we looked at and so for caroline brunswick regrettably um she was never crowned

01:00:11.940 queen her daughter charlotte died young so there's not like a long lineage to look at like caroline

01:00:18.480 of brunswick did amazing things for herself um i think she really reached self-actualization

01:00:25.560 in the course of her just like really interesting bonkers life but in terms of like the long-term

01:00:32.380 historical repercussions like okay so if she and her husband had gotten along better maybe they

01:00:38.320 would have had more children maybe those children would become the next monarchs of england maybe

01:00:42.920 queen victoria would never have become queen you know like there's some significance to what she

01:00:48.240 did um the fact that she just she really england got really close to a full revolution because of

01:00:58.420 her just sort of like everything she was up to but it didn't have a revolution like if there had

01:01:03.880 been an actual like revolution if like a french revolution moment had happened with like the end

01:01:09.800 of monarchy that would be huge significance but i'm gonna give her a bit for significance

01:01:14.400 like her very existence in the world everyone gets at least one everyone's significant in their

01:01:21.020 own way and the fact that she was so she hated her husband so much that they never had any more

01:01:28.080 children did have repercussions for the whole future of the royal British royal family but

01:01:33.620 overall I'm just going to give her I think a three three for significance and then the final

01:01:41.060 factor this is a score out of 40 the final factor is what I'm just calling is sexism basically so

01:01:51.220 like how much how much was her life thwarted by patriarchy and by sexism and by people just like

01:01:59.220 not just letting her live because she was a woman you know there's a number we're going to be

01:02:04.100 looking at so many cool people like I can't wait to record these other episodes but like there's

01:02:07.600 people who because they were women they were able to accomplish great things because they could get

01:02:12.760 into certain spaces okay that's pretty rare it's usually people like the people we're looking at

01:02:17.860 will be like they accomplished great things despite the fact they were a woman they accomplished

01:02:21.700 great things and then they got burned as a witch because they were a woman like sexism is such a

01:02:26.580 huge part of all of this stuff so like in terms of significance like if she if the british royal

01:02:31.640 family had let women become heirs like augusta caroline's mother was the older sister of george

01:02:38.520 so like if it wasn't a son to son thing um augusta could have been the queen and then caroline would

01:02:46.360 have been the next queen like her life would have been totally different and then the whole thing

01:02:50.480 about like her husband was just like having a fair as a mistress and like it was no secret

01:02:54.740 illegitimate children but then they're like the fact that he was so just like oh my god did she

01:03:00.020 have sex with another man and like that was like I mean basically every every woman's story we're

01:03:06.820 going to be looking at in this podcast sexism is always like I can't think of a story where that's

01:03:11.440 not going to be there so we're giving her points it's like making up points it's like a bonus for

01:03:16.880 like how much sexism did she have to put up with and yet she still led this interesting life 0.93

01:03:23.140 this is tricky on a scale of zero to ten for sex it's definitely at least a five

01:03:29.100 i think i'm going to stick with a five of five for sexism so let me just do some quick math

01:03:36.960 since 20 carolina brunswick score is a 20 out of 40 on the vulgar history scale so that's the story

01:03:45.820 um if you want to read more about her like again the main book i use for research here

01:03:49.820 um is caroline and charlotte lives of caroline of brunswick and princess charlotte of wales by

01:03:54.600 allison plowden um which again it's like the information is good but the book is just like

01:04:01.060 really down on her it's just like a newer biography might be better and if you know of one

01:04:07.520 hey let me know um you can email me at vulgar history pod at gmail.com i've also got like

01:04:14.680 7 000 million social media things to tell you about but basically my name is ann foster

01:04:19.820 this is the vulgar history podcast i have a website at ann foster writer.com um and i'm

01:04:28.360 also on twitter at ann foster writer i'm on patreon.com slash ann foster writer and if you

01:04:35.580 enjoy this episode of vulgar history like all the podcast hosts always say you know subscribe rate

01:04:41.380 and review on your favorite podcast app and i can't wait to tell you another story next time

01:04:46.480 and take care, everybody.

01:04:55.400 So no revisiting of the story of Carolina Brunswick.

01:04:59.260 I couldn't, I would never possibly do it

01:05:01.440 without inviting Landa Wood Johnson to come and join me.

01:05:04.880 Lana, can you share your thoughts

01:05:07.260 about Carolina Brunswick?

01:05:08.840 I'm here for justice.

01:05:13.580 Carolina Brunswick is my new favorite

01:05:16.080 and it's because of Anne that she's my favorite.

01:05:19.100 Everything I know about her, I know from Anne

01:05:20.940 and the wild ride we had one day

01:05:25.300 when we discovered her existence.

01:05:28.220 We're still uncovering every single thing it meant,

01:05:31.180 but I'm here for her and what she deserves.

01:05:35.140 Yeah, let's recap for everybody.

01:05:37.780 So I don't even know what this was,

01:05:39.320 like five years ago or something.

01:05:41.160 I saw a call for submissions.

01:05:43.140 Somebody was putting together a book

01:05:44.440 that was like one chapter about each of the royal monarchs or consorts, royal consorts of Great

01:05:50.780 Britain. And they were like, Hey, this was their second call. They're like, Hey, we got a lot of

01:05:55.420 people applying for this and this and this, but you know, here's the ones that nobody's submitted

01:06:01.080 about yet. And I was like, ha ha. And that's my usual strategy when submitting to things. I'm

01:06:04.880 like, well, if I'm the only one submitting on this topic, then chances are better. They're

01:06:08.720 going to choose me instead of someone else. I mean, spoiler, they didn't choose me,

01:06:11.340 but they gave a list of like I forgot five or six people who nobody had submitted about yet so I was

01:06:16.320 like well who are all these people and I just looked them up on Wikipedia and one of them is

01:06:20.200 Carolina Brunswick and her Wikipedia I was just like oh my god and I think I started sending you

01:06:23.780 screen captures I was just like Lana Lana look at this story and then I got a biography out of her

01:06:29.820 and I just and I was reading it as an e-book and I was sending you just paragraph just screen

01:06:33.100 captures of just I'm like Lana she pretended to have a baby when she was a teenager like to get

01:06:38.300 out of a park yeah yeah it was so relatable she was mad because her parents wouldn't let her go

01:06:46.380 to a dance so i think she was trying to make them not go or something like that it was just chaos

01:06:51.760 like it was it was a weird plan she had never in her life like she had been raised in this like

01:06:57.900 rapunzel sort of way like she wasn't allowed to see any men or do anything fun ever so like

01:07:03.980 clearly she wasn't actually pregnant. Like there is, that was pretty anyway. But then from then 1.00

01:07:10.280 on for the rest of her life, there were these rumors that like she had a secret baby and maybe

01:07:13.580 she did. And then there was the baby collection. I think that's, yes. Tell us your thoughts about

01:07:20.440 her baby collection that she amassed. I, that's the thing about it is I could go either way

01:07:27.940 equally like they're either all her kids or she was literally just collecting babies to make her 0.60

01:07:35.560 husband pay for them like i'm i'm equally happy with both outcomes of her just collecting orphans 1.00

01:07:43.300 to make it more expensive for george which like good on her do that make him pay for all of the 0.78

01:07:50.640 people you know the all the whole of of england like that that works for me but like yeah secret 0.99

01:07:57.060 kids. Sure. She could do that too. I, I'm happy that it goes either way because I spent so much

01:08:03.440 of my life learning about the Regency and no one told me a thing about this woman. And I resent 0.89

01:08:09.500 that. Yeah. I just resent it. It's what, well, no, it's what else I've been recently for undisclosed

01:08:15.120 reasons, reading some more biographies of her and just I'm sending you more facts as I learn them

01:08:20.440 because it's no one appreciates them as much as you do. It gets better. It's so weird. Like,

01:08:25.280 yeah what you just said about like you know the regency era it's like such a well-known time

01:08:28.880 period and i'm reading these things and it's like all these people who you one knows about from this

01:08:33.800 era and it's like in the you know like i said in the podcast you know jane austen said this about

01:08:37.880 her and lord byron said this about her but they said other things about her too she was the most

01:08:43.080 famous woman in england for a really long time because of like the court cases right and then

01:08:49.960 she kept writing letters to the editor defending herself that just made everything worse like

01:08:54.340 she was so explosively famous, but I have not read a lot of Regency era things. But

01:09:03.080 at this point of my Carolina Brunswick research, I would know if she showed up in any book because

01:09:08.480 I've been trying to find any mention of her anywhere.

01:09:12.680 She's kind of like, as I've said before, real housewives of Regency England. But she's also

01:09:19.480 a little bit margaret mitchell like the um whistleblower one of the whistleblowers for 1.00

01:09:24.040 the watergate case was the wife of the chief of staff for nixon that chief of staff that then 1.00

01:09:33.520 became not going into that that's too nerdy but she was like a little bit unhinged and she would

01:09:39.160 tell reporters anything and they loved her for it and like it it gives both of those vibes at

01:09:45.240 the same time I love her I just love her I love her and I love like there's so many what I hope

01:09:54.480 to do one day is to I mean I'll just say like I I'm I want to write a book about her and if anyone

01:10:01.100 out there listening is an editor you should buy it because I want to be able to go into these

01:10:06.880 archives and find the letters that she sent none of the biographies really go as deep into the

01:10:14.080 messiness that as i would editors by my proposal but i want to read more of these messy ass letters

01:10:20.680 because they're like the royal her husband prinny like he has an archive of like all of his letters 0.96

01:10:25.080 so we see him being a bitch about it we see his mom our least fave queen charlotte what she wrote

01:10:33.460 about it but there is there's so many there's so many letters and they exist and i want to read 0.90

01:10:40.420 them because she was like i don't know i'm trying to think about who else is someone it would be

01:10:45.920 it's a real energy of someone who would go to instagram and just be posting videos and or notes

01:10:52.760 callbacks to every comment that anyone ever said to them it's real housewives yeah no exactly

01:10:59.420 exactly but it's the regency era version of that where she would just like if any anything any like

01:11:04.700 wrong that was done to her whether she felt like it was a wrong whether it was a wrong like she

01:11:10.240 would just be like, how dare you? And she'd write a letter to the editor. She'd write a letter to

01:11:14.960 the person. She would keep writing that she would show up. She'd air it for everybody.

01:11:20.060 I love the messiness. Like this is, this was the reason she was the first episode of vulgar history

01:11:26.440 ever. I think because she was for both of us, she was such a discovery of a person that we didn't

01:11:32.220 know about who is existing at time period that is so well known. And she's such a messy, like

01:11:38.440 i recorded it was the first episode so like tits out energy was not a phrase but like she epitomizes

01:11:44.080 it she's just like she does unstoppable like it's amazing and i think that hits both of our

01:11:52.920 sweet spots of i really love it when we see the authenticity of people in the past like so much

01:12:02.060 of it is watered down. Mary Queen of Scots gets watered down into this bland person that is just

01:12:09.720 the mother of a king. And so many people just become nothing in the course of history. And you

01:12:17.440 are all about the messy bitches of history. And so she is our overlap of this is the reality of 1.00

01:12:25.520 a situation that everybody tries to make look like this nice, perfect, lovely time. And she's

01:12:30.480 married to this horrible human being like just yeah just absolute useless waste of space yeah i 1.00

01:12:37.140 mean just picturing i don't know bridgerton or whatever and she just like bursts open the doors 1.00

01:12:42.080 of some dinner party to be like hey bitches i'm here you know like she could show up in any of 1.00

01:12:46.960 those things and i love picturing her or like you know what like any pride and prejudice movie where 0.96

01:12:52.000 everyone's like i mean jane austen is a very sort of the way that people act in jane austen book but 0.95

01:12:57.860 of Carolina Brunswick just showed up to be like fuck everybody like I just love the thought of 0.79

01:13:03.040 her like we think of what the Regency era is like and that is not what it was like that is what we 0.99

01:13:09.240 retroactively imagine it was like people who do and no shade at all but you know Regency reenactors

01:13:15.200 who like throw the balls and like like to cosplay as being that era I love it I think it's great

01:13:21.500 comma, and this was also happening. It was not, it was not this idyllic time period. Like

01:13:30.480 it was as messy as a Shonda Rhimes. And that's, that's what I love about her is like, you can

01:13:36.080 only erase her from history because you cannot make her tolerable. Yeah. Well, and that's the

01:13:41.560 thing. And we're not going to get into all of this, but like a lot of it is Queen Victoria

01:13:46.380 came along afterwards and she in her time was responsible for a lot of the watering down

01:13:51.860 the sanitizing of a lot of past because she was just like the royal family is like this is the

01:13:57.540 narrative i want everyone to think about us the british royal family lana's face um but right

01:14:03.820 because so much she really set the tone for what a lot of people think even now about the british

01:14:10.440 royal family and we're not going to dive into that but about everything she made everything

01:14:16.360 seem like it was so much nicer and sweeter and good and perfect and like we're talking about

01:14:20.980 literal colonizers like yeah yeah no okay speaking of speaking of one of the reasons why i presume

01:14:30.460 she did that is that everybody hated caroline's husband like there was riots there's people like 0.70

01:14:40.060 he sucked like he did i don't i don't think there's many people who would argue that he was 0.94

01:14:46.820 a good person or a good king but he was a shitty person and this is where caroline got some of her 0.99

01:14:52.860 power from was because and it's a bit it's very very charles and diana adjacent where diana had 0.98

01:14:59.940 her chaotic moments but she was uh i wouldn't say messy bitch was her main personality trait 1.00

01:15:07.360 she could bring that out when it was needed but she was like a gracious kind person who like did 0.97

01:15:13.360 good stuff too caroline was only a messy bitch but the people of england in a similar way like 1.00

01:15:21.040 they hated their husbands so much that they just rallied behind this person like the political 0.97

01:15:26.980 cartoons i've seen when i've been reading about her now is they're all making fun of her husband

01:15:31.500 and like inherently like if you're going to hate her husband then you need to like her because 1.00

01:15:37.680 she's the antithesis of the husband she also hates the husband so she is this messy bitch but 0.99

01:15:43.280 everyone is rallying behind her and that's so fascinating to see because in another context 0.99

01:15:48.640 you would see the con the cartoons would be making fun of her but instead they're making

01:15:52.660 fun of her husband and using her as their sword like she is their champion and she's just like 0.98

01:15:57.740 Yeah. Like, and she loves it. She loves that this, she gets this attention. She loves that 0.96

01:16:02.640 people are behind her. In the post-Victorian era, they would have been like, they're both

01:16:06.800 terrible people. They're ruining the monarchy. Everything is awful about this. They would have

01:16:10.600 pulled a full Harry and Meghan on them. But pre-Victoria, who had this false sense of society 1.00

01:16:20.280 and propriety that she didn't embody really. Before that, people could be messy and we would 0.96

01:16:27.540 like them and so we're finally freeing ourselves from her well like i just love every moment

01:16:34.800 it's it's funny i've been rereading by the time this episode comes out people will know why

01:16:39.180 anyway i've been rereading a couple different things you know when i've been rereading the

01:16:42.240 the fredigan book and stuff i'm just like yeah like reading these moments i'm like oh that is

01:16:46.560 so iconic that's so great so reading about caroline like there's moments where she goes

01:16:49.660 to the opera and everybody's everyone stands up and cheers for her like these moments like

01:16:55.860 and that's an england that you don't hear about in like regency era stuff like the they were ready

01:17:02.280 to riot at the drop of a hat like they were just like like they loved her they hated the king

01:17:08.180 they're very very close to pulling a full french revolution and it was it was touch and go there

01:17:13.940 for a while and that's the thing this is like it's the same era it's the same it's the exact

01:17:18.780 same era yeah yeah like queen charlotte and marie antoinette were besties pen pals and this is the

01:17:24.680 era of there was so many revolutions like there was the haiti revolution like this is like revolution

01:17:29.400 was in the air so peep and england was like on the precipice and ready and carolina brunswick was

01:17:34.400 like this energy gives me attention and so i'm gonna just like ride this wave and like stoke it 0.96

01:17:40.520 a bit more because i'm a messy bitch like and the crowds were just like we love you you're so messy 0.86

01:17:46.160 like i love i love that the people loved her the whole thing about like her funeral like just to 0.96

01:17:52.100 recap for an episode that everyone just heard me do but like when they did her funeral and they're

01:17:56.820 like okay people are gonna riot so we need to like reroute the parade and people are like how

01:18:00.860 dare you reroute the parade and then they had a riot anyway they were gonna riot you can't stop 0.99

01:18:08.320 a couple people died yeah yeah like they just and then her petty bitch the how she put on her tomb 1.00

01:18:16.440 like the wronged queen and everything it's just like to the end she's just like fuck you the 1.00

01:18:22.500 british royal family fuck you the british royal family i don't think this was in the episode 0.99

01:18:28.860 because it's something i just just read in my recent rereading but she had memoirs that she 0.99

01:18:34.600 would carry around with her in like a trunk and she like had a guard who would like guard the

01:18:39.980 trunk she's like no one could get in that trunk that contains my memoirs and everybody knew this

01:18:45.880 like she was i don't know if it did contain her memoirs it could also contain alcohol 1.00

01:18:50.000 it could also contain i don't know like some cute outfits like but she could a couple serious 1.00

01:18:58.020 babies but yeah like people knew that she had this trunk that she took with her that had 1.00

01:19:02.140 allegedly her memoirs and like people made cartoons about that like people wrote about 0.63

01:19:06.900 that in the newspapers like oh if she ever publishes these memoirs i wish she published

01:19:11.500 those memoirs but and that's an argument in favor of like there was there wasn't actually memoirs 0.91

01:19:16.100 and I think that would be her to date she would be out there like like the housewives like she

01:19:21.640 would have her like my side of the story like would be published the energy it's interesting

01:19:26.580 it's a bit Fergie it's a bit who Fergie is very firmly back in the fold of like the contemporary

01:19:32.440 British royal family but for a while Fergie was out there she was like a Weight Watchers spokesperson

01:19:37.320 person she was like having her toes sucked on a yacht like that's that's the energy of carolina 0.89

01:19:44.220 brunswick i think she yeah that that comparison at least a little bit reminds me of her so lana

01:19:51.820 you call her the the greatest of all time and and why do you say that just because of the sheer

01:19:58.980 level of chaos that she brings to an era that is that tries very very hard to be portrayed as the

01:20:05.480 least chaotic era a lot of the reason they were trying to portray themselves as the least chaotic

01:20:09.640 was so that people didn't revolt so that they didn't end up like the french revolution like

01:20:15.740 napoleon was a genuine threat during this entire era like jane austen uses it in her stories but

01:20:23.740 she does so because they're like that was the reality of the situation was napoleon could come

01:20:29.420 at any time and take over the island and so like there was a lot that could potentially have been

01:20:34.980 chaotic and they're trying the propaganda machine was so strong that even to this day it still

01:20:40.180 maintains but she kind of gives lie to that situation of everybody's happy and we were so

01:20:46.800 civilized like they were not civilized they were not happy they were not united they did not agree

01:20:55.320 on things and and she is like the embodiment of the absolute chaos that once you dig underneath

01:21:01.820 once you get just past that surface of everything's great and civilized you can see that

01:21:08.520 again she probably had a party in that trunk like who knows it i would not have been surprised if

01:21:16.300 she had anachronistic like you open it up and it has a full stereo and a full bar and like just was 1.00

01:21:22.460 ready to have a beachside party like whenever wherever like that's the energy she brings to

01:21:29.600 every situation there's something about when she left england the first time when she was just kind 1.00

01:21:37.920 of like over fighting with prinny and so she went off to italy to just like be a messy bitch there 0.99

01:21:42.220 and like take up with her married lover and you know entered enter all these countries like on 1.00

01:21:47.040 camels and whatever um when she left she was wearing this gargantuous hat she wasn't leaving

01:21:53.900 like you know like sneaking out like ashamed like she hadn't gotten when she wanted she was just 0.93

01:21:59.820 like look at me i'm leaving and she's wearing some sort of you know like two foot tall feather

01:22:04.000 on her hat and this like so people drew pictures of that because it was like very iconic as well

01:22:08.500 she's like i guess me and this giant hat are just gonna we're just gonna take my trunk of

01:22:13.940 maybe memoirs she's just like everything was this like everything was a major scene like she was

01:22:23.400 really like today we see it's funny like you only can take it for granted like today like every

01:22:28.200 celebrity is like calling the paparazzi on themselves and doing all this stuff and like

01:22:32.600 she brought that energy in a time where it's like people had to draw cartoons of you like there was

01:22:37.440 not cameras like you couldn't be caught candidly so like these things that she did that we know

01:22:42.640 about it's like it's as though she called basically the paparazzi but it was like a bunch of people

01:22:47.060 with sketchbooks you know she's like people need to know what I'm doing and if they're not there

01:22:53.600 to know what I'm doing then she's gonna like get some get word to be like here's what I think and

01:22:59.380 here's what I and if that didn't work she would write a letter to the editor she was just like

01:23:03.380 and this is like what I find so interesting gonna get attention just mine she's getting

01:23:08.820 attention she was so famous at this time period um and she was just like dedicated to people

01:23:15.600 knowing what she thought about everything and that's what's wild about the way that it was

01:23:20.120 stomped out to the point that like you like a person who knows this time period really well

01:23:25.720 like who knows about the king georgias and stuff like you didn't know any of this stuff like

01:23:30.360 she lived so large and it was it's a bit fredigand-esque to be like this

01:23:35.020 woman who is like so sensational and everybody knows her name but then like if it's stomped out

01:23:42.020 then you just like no one says the name and then it's forgotten about like she when you start

01:23:47.800 looking for stuff about her there's so much stuff about her but it's like no one cares anymore

01:23:53.780 except for me and this is what makes me happy it's the first episode of vulgar history which is why 0.97

01:23:59.440 it's the most listened to episode ever because like the tits of brigade are completionists like

01:24:05.460 they begin at the beginning so everyone who's listening to the podcast is like let's start at

01:24:08.780 the start. It is our way. Yeah. Like year after year, it's like, what's the most listened to

01:24:12.600 episode? It's always Carolina Brunswick because everybody starts there. So I'm just like, good

01:24:17.640 people like those people now know. But, but her score is a travesty. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just

01:24:25.600 going to say that. So I will, one of the reasons I'm doing this, like, and for the next several

01:24:30.720 weeks, like partially it's to give myself a bit of a hiatus, but partially it's because the first

01:24:35.080 season I was just you know I didn't know about tits out energy all these things like you didn't

01:24:39.180 have anything to compare it to no exactly so I'm just like I don't know I'm just choosing a number

01:24:43.980 so I didn't know who to compare Caroline of Brunswick to so I was just choosing numbers

01:24:48.220 I just invented the score and so part of why we're here you said at the very beginning land

01:24:52.120 are you here for justice and so am I I just did on Instagram several weeks ago to you listeners

01:24:59.060 but I didn't ask me anything and somebody said what are some episodes what are some scores or

01:25:04.080 some people you'd like to revisit. And I said, Carolina Brunswick, Francis Howard, and Cleopatra,

01:25:09.260 because those are ones that in retrospect, based on all the people I've done since, I'm just like,

01:25:14.020 these numbers are not correct. This is not where they should slot in. This is not who they should

01:25:17.680 be in the neighborhood of. So we're going to bring justice for Carolina Brunswick with a complete,

01:25:23.960 a complete redo. And I mean, Lana, you are the website person. So like the original Carolina

01:25:31.380 brunswick score is going to stay there but it's going to be carolina brunswick revisited you know

01:25:35.360 and that will be to me her real score like that'll be the one that i compare her to because she does

01:25:41.940 not deserve to be down near mary taft like that's just that's just not okay no she has no i mean

01:25:49.700 listeners she has a 20 that's like even the people who i talk about with allison they all get like

01:25:56.200 23 and me people who have no significance yeah it's kind of the well the allison and lana

01:26:05.000 sort of like suburb of people who are really high in some things and then really low in like

01:26:10.380 significance i think um there's real high scandal um but really low everything else

01:26:15.640 we can make them interesting allison and i have the capacity to make them interesting

01:26:20.800 but Caroline is interesting on her own well here's the thing right so we're saying this so

01:26:26.140 like Empress Cece has a 21 but that's correct like that's Empress Cece you know that's you know

01:26:33.400 like that's a recent score that was a thoughtful we did that yeah anyway you know Queen Charlotte

01:26:39.680 has won and that is also fair but Caroline Brunswick let's elevate her out of the 20

01:26:45.500 and up into the neighborhood where she belongs based on everything you've just heard us talk 1.00

01:26:50.620 about everything from the original episode so the first category is scandalousness

01:26:55.980 a seven lana what are your thoughts 30 35 1.00

01:27:02.060 like she was scandalous as a teenager who didn't want like she didn't want to go to a party so she 0.68

01:27:15.400 made up a whole scandal yeah like how is she anything less than a 10 well and everything we

01:27:23.580 just said like the letters to the editor the baby collection the fact that like george was like yeah 0.99

01:27:28.620 i'm gonna try to divorce her and she was like fuck you i'm gonna write a letter to the editor i'm 0.99

01:27:32.880 gonna air all of your dirty business i'm gonna share the letters your mother wrote to me like 1.00

01:27:38.960 and then when she finally left she's like i'm gonna take up with this married man 0.81

01:27:42.520 like the the two trials the two adultery trials the first one which is just like are these her 0.96

01:27:47.620 babies and then the second trial being like did she sleep with this italian man like

01:27:52.380 didn't she bring him back to england with her to contest the fact that he was trying to force her

01:28:01.120 she brings back her married lover with her yeah and then the whole trial like people like they've

01:28:08.360 just brought all these people from italy and then like they pretty had sent all these sort of like

01:28:13.540 spies or people like everyone who she interacted with in italy was like oh yeah no that's totally

01:28:18.180 her lover but when they went on trial like they're all being paid off because the political oh my god 0.94

01:28:23.280 the tories and the wigs i don't give a shit but like that was all part of this and so the people 0.96

01:28:28.580 who didn't like the king the political party they were all supporting caroline so like i think they 0.99

01:28:32.560 were paying off some of the witnesses to be like no i never saw her fuck that italian guy like it 0.94

01:28:37.940 was like imagine like court tv like this case like it's the drama of it and the fact that the 0.97

01:28:44.060 case was the are these her babies or not that case the delicate investigation it ended with

01:28:49.800 a dramatic perry mason-esque reveal of the mother of the babies arrived and she's like i'm the mother

01:28:55.180 of the babies like you can't make that up it was it was everything for drama she did everything for

01:29:03.720 drama and when it wasn't she made it drama like i just yeah don't even know how you could score

01:29:10.060 her anything less than a 10 i just don't and even like this is just like a kind of runs like love 1.00

01:29:15.060 fest but the whole coronation situation her showing up her just crashing the coronation

01:29:21.360 that she had been specifically not invited to when she couldn't get in the door running to the other 1.00

01:29:25.800 door running to the other door like in front of what thousands of people like this bitch like she 1.00

01:29:32.240 she lived for drama. And there's nothing she did in her life that was not entirely for scandal 1.00

01:29:39.340 reasons. And that's why I love her. Yeah. So 10, if we could go higher than 10, I could,

01:29:44.840 like I would, but 10, that's where she sits. Next is scheminess. I gave her a five originally. 0.92

01:29:52.680 I may not be mad at that. So here's the thing with her scheminess. 1.00

01:29:55.940 like she always had a scheme but they're all kind of half-hearted and random and not good like

01:30:03.960 almost all of her schemes are i hate my husband and i'm going to make his life miserable or i

01:30:10.480 hate my parents and i'm going to make their lives miserable it wasn't really like it wasn't they're

01:30:17.500 not well executed plans like scheminess i like for some people i rephrase it especially when i'm 0.84

01:30:25.340 explaining to a guest specialist but it's sort of like it has to do with like cleverness like

01:30:31.580 intelligence like the ability to see a situation and maneuver your way around it yeah and she just 0.99

01:30:37.880 was a bull in a china shop energy like she wasn't scheming she had what one could call schemes but

01:30:45.100 they were more just kind of like messy random chaotic sort of just like it feels very like

01:30:51.760 not well thought out they had the effect of well thought out schemes but she just like she had so

01:30:57.820 many of them that most like 99 of them failed and the one percent that did were just amazing

01:31:06.140 but it wasn't scheminess it wasn't and you know me i love scheminess it's my favorite thing but

01:31:11.520 this is like i'm not mad at a five like she she aspired to scheminess is about as close as we can

01:31:18.180 get. It reminds me of, not that I know the chess world at all, but you know, it's kind of like

01:31:24.180 people who play chess, like they all memorize the moves and the stuff and they play against each

01:31:27.660 other and they're all have the same knowledge. And once in a while, some random chaotic person

01:31:31.900 comes in who doesn't really know the rules of chess and the things they do is so startling

01:31:35.540 to a chess master, you know, that sometimes the effect of that can be that that person does well.

01:31:41.260 But it's not because that person is good at chess. It's just because that person is so much

01:31:47.300 not playing by the rules that the other person just yeah so just in the interest of like

01:31:52.380 reparations i'm gonna say six i'm gonna give her just for the sheer volume of schemes like they

01:32:00.320 were not good schemes but there was so many of them that just inherently i'm gonna give her a

01:32:08.280 significance i gave her a three i oof significance is where she falls down as well

01:32:17.440 like she's significant to me she deserves to be significant no well that's the thing everyone on

01:32:26.480 the show is significant to us but here's what i was thinking i've been thinking about this a lot

01:32:30.360 so her significance lana like you know what like she was quite easily erased from history and from

01:32:38.160 memory. But her significance is that she was just like, my husband sucks and I'm going to 0.96

01:32:45.020 leave him. If she had been a different kind of person and stuck around and had more children, 0.97

01:32:50.160 we wouldn't have had Queen Victoria. Oh yeah. Like the fact, the fact that she left 1.00

01:32:56.640 Prinny led to the entire situation that led to Queen Victoria, who herself is significant. 0.95

01:33:03.360 so if caroline like she fucked pretty once and then was like never again he was on board with

01:33:10.180 that like he didn't he wasn't he wasn't trying to fulfill his duty with her either no for sure 0.98

01:33:16.920 but like if queen charlotte had been married to printy she would just be like well my husband

01:33:20.560 sucks but anyway it's my duty to have 17 children with him so i'm not saying that this is a 10 i'm

01:33:25.460 just saying like the significance of carolina brunswick is that her terrible marriage to 0.55

01:33:30.060 of which she was 50 of that terrible marriage oh yeah led to uh queen victoria so yeah that's 0.68

01:33:39.200 absolute facts and yeah charlotte charlotte dying that sucked her daughter yeah yeah well that's

01:33:47.640 the thing so if oh god her everything i've been reading as well her daughter charlotte i love

01:33:53.340 i just want to be clear not queen of charlotte the boring woman from bridgerton but sorry the

01:33:59.040 actual boring woman who then bridgerton made not boring so carolina brunswick and perney had their 0.98

01:34:03.560 daughter princess charlotte who was copy paste carolina brunswick in the best ways she was a 1.00

01:34:10.120 messy bitch in her jeans you know if you do like nature versus nurture like they kept her away from 1.00

01:34:15.000 caroline as much as possible and that just made her become even more like caroline she was great 0.99

01:34:20.140 there was one part of the story i was reading where there was some sort of important meeting

01:34:24.380 or it might have been when her father was officially named the region and it was in like

01:34:28.200 some room princess charlotte was like outside they're like charlotte you can't be involved and

01:34:32.780 she's like charlotte no charlotte yes and she's like riding a horse back and forth outside trying 0.87

01:34:38.400 to peek in the windows like she's just like no subtlety um will not take no for an answer like 1.00

01:34:44.300 she they there was a whole they had arranged a marriage for her and she was like but i met 1.00

01:34:48.900 someone else who i like better fuck you and they're and they're they had to like you know 1.00

01:34:52.520 the whole thing about like even with carol brunswick like they arranged this marriage 0.99

01:34:55.520 she and prinny hated each other but they're like well we've already done the planning you have to

01:34:58.980 get married princess charlotte they had done the planning and she's like i'm gonna say no and then

01:35:05.400 they had to undo all the plan like she was such a strong-willed person she would have been a really

01:35:09.180 cool queen she would have been amazing like the effect would have been what if carolina brunswick

01:35:14.080 she ran away from home that time like she took a taxi she's the anti-victoria and i'm so mad that 1.00

01:35:23.740 she died in childbirth this is why people just need to wash their freaking hands wash your hands 0.93

01:35:29.020 it's so sad yeah wash your hands doctors between touching corpses and putting her hands up inside 0.91

01:35:36.720 of people having babies but um right so there's like a lot of situations that led to victoria

01:35:41.960 becoming queen but one of them was the fact that carol runswick had one child so anyway what i'm

01:35:46.760 saying is she's more than a three okay i i trust you at least in that way and then in ways that i

01:35:53.060 can't define because I don't know enough about all of this but I think that her involvement in

01:35:59.280 politics and stuff like that help weigh things in one direction or the other like when different

01:36:04.580 factions would sort of lean on her the development of the tabloid press I think that she really led

01:36:09.980 to that anyway it's so tricky when there's somebody who is so significant in their era

01:36:14.540 but then isn't anymore and we usually judge based on how in their significance not just

01:36:21.100 within the time they lived but later on and she lived in a very tumultuous time as i have already

01:36:26.040 said so like her her encouraging editors to be chaotic and treat the royal family the way they

01:36:34.620 did that may have contributed to victoria that may have contributed to the perception of the royal

01:36:40.880 family we have we have today like i wouldn't even be surprised because it's only been 200 years

01:36:46.580 and the relationship that they have with the media

01:36:49.580 and the relation, like calling the media

01:36:52.560 and planting stories, like, does that sound familiar?

01:36:57.540 And she was the first one to do that.

01:37:00.440 She invented that. 1.00

01:37:02.940 Yeah. 0.68

01:37:03.780 You know what?

01:37:04.300 That's interesting because part of what I've been reading

01:37:06.020 as well was about like the media.

01:37:08.200 And this is something you know more about than I do,

01:37:09.960 like the tabloid journalism being invented and stuff.

01:37:13.160 But like they hated George III.

01:37:15.320 is that the hamilton one yes george the third is the bridgerton sorry yes the farmer they hated

01:37:22.120 the farmer king the farmer george yeah no sorry just side note i want to say i i have an off on

01:37:29.700 relationship with being on tiktok and one of the ones i posted i was talking about calendar

01:37:35.140 brunswick and i mentioned her husband or i mentioned king george and i was like you know

01:37:38.940 the guy from hamilton and some dude was like how dare you define george the third as the guy from

01:37:46.700 hamilton when he did this and i'm just like i'm just gonna uninstall this app right now because

01:37:52.680 this is not an energy i need in my life but also frankly to the people listening to this you mostly

01:37:58.580 know him if you you know him from hamilton and now you know him from like bridgerton presents queen

01:38:04.100 charlotte as farmer george no one's like oh anyway so the america guy he didn't do things

01:38:10.980 he did not do things he did not care about you he did not care about us he was not a governor

01:38:17.160 he he was a dude who just wanted to be left alone he it's a big um tiberius from ancient

01:38:25.520 rome energy yes anyway anyway so people hated him because he lost the american colonies and like

01:38:33.380 and because all the revolutions were happening and stuff so like they were primed to hate the 1.00

01:38:37.360 royal family already and then his son was piece of shit stupidest nickname prinny who came along 1.00

01:38:43.580 and was just of what we know about farmer george and charlotte the queen like they were just nerds 1.00

01:38:50.020 like you know having zebras and like growing plants or whatever and being frugal and stuff 0.99

01:38:56.040 And then Prinny was just like this like shopaholic asshole in debt guy. 0.99

01:39:02.640 So there's lots of there was every reason for the people of England to hate all of these people. 0.98

01:39:07.600 And then Charlotte came along and she was like, I'm going to escalate this.

01:39:10.700 I'm going to start like telling you inside stories about what.

01:39:16.020 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

01:39:16.560 She kind of invented the leaking to the press and to the fact that the royal family then had to then they had to start leaking to the press to counteract what she was doing. 0.99

01:39:23.420 Like she kind of oversaw that.

01:39:25.240 she created a culture yeah for good or for bad I didn't think about this did not think about that

01:39:32.320 was her yeah so what do you think about a five for significance I think if I I know with this

01:39:39.080 new information yes I would I'd give her a five yeah I was in a one and then I talked myself into

01:39:44.960 a five well I think because like the five everything we just talked about equals a five

01:39:49.900 and then how the way that she was so easily erased from history is the other missing five

01:39:55.160 basically yes like her effects yeah so that's the significance and then 0.98

01:40:01.960 okay and then the sexism bonus how much does sexism get in her way and i'm

01:40:10.380 interested in what you think because i think it might be a cc slash lola montez scenario where 1.00

01:40:18.020 sexism kind of didn't get in her way well because she's able to use it to her advantage she was a 0.99

01:40:24.540 princess a german like of a german state and she would have stayed home was she the oldest she was 1.00

01:40:33.260 am i remembering correct that she was the oldest she must she must have been yeah yeah otherwise

01:40:38.260 they would have given someone else as the yeah we're talking like just before ludwig but that

01:40:46.000 like that same Ludwig II or Mad King Ludwig kind of situation of somebody running a comparable

01:40:57.640 country. If she'd been male, she would have been the prince. She would have just been

01:41:03.980 being absolute chaos at the Habsburgs, which I appreciate. I always appreciate anybody being 1.00

01:41:10.420 chaos at the Habsburgs. No, like either of the Ludwigs, I think she would have brought that 1.00

01:41:14.680 energy where she's just like you know what we're gonna do build fairy tale castles or like you know

01:41:18.740 what we're gonna do like i think she would have had she been able to just vibe out there i think 0.98

01:41:26.600 she would have done her chaotic stuff within the confines of that you're right yeah she would have 1.00

01:41:32.420 been capable of accomplishing things if we hadn't only given power and leadership to males she would 1.00

01:41:40.220 have been far better at everything than prinny like well and we see that with her like mini me

01:41:46.400 princess charlotte who would i think have been a cool and interesting monarch but you know what

01:41:53.080 and that's the thing you're right you're right like she was married she's thrown into this

01:41:56.580 marriage she did not want um treated horribly by this is a bit megan markle adjacent but they're

01:42:04.400 all like oh my god why would she leave the royal family when we all constantly treated her like 0.96

01:42:08.700 shit the whole time from minute one it's like shove your shove this person that loves people 1.00

01:42:15.320 and loves doing things and having parties and having a good time and like shove her in the 0.99

01:42:19.980 country and just leave her there like you're right like it all traces back to like all of 0.64

01:42:28.160 her behavior like like the it's a lot of and this is giving me because i read her biography recently

01:42:33.900 but britney spears this memoir it's just like the lashing out like britney spears this memoir to

01:42:38.640 me, I loved it. And it was, it's just a catharsis. It's just like, this is the shit that was done to

01:42:45.080 you, to me and fuck you. But also I'm going to rise above like Carolina Brunswick was stuck in 1.00

01:42:52.160 this house. Like they wanted her to just go away. And she's just like, I will not like you put me

01:42:57.240 in this situation. Fuck all of you. Everyone is going to know you're all pieces of shit. 1.00

01:43:02.080 Yeah. And so like, there's a lot of things going on there, but like part of that is just the 1.00

01:43:06.100 inherent sexism of like let's just marry off this person she has no choice in the matter 0.81

01:43:10.720 the marriage is terrible she like if she's not gonna have she found a way farm yeah yeah and 1.00

01:43:18.540 then she was such a chaotic mess in the farm that they were just like would you please leave the

01:43:23.340 continent um and she's like thought you'd never ask thought you'd never ask i'm just gonna go on 0.99

01:43:28.740 to fuck cruise with my married lover and his wife american so yeah everything does trace back to the 0.99

01:43:38.280 fact that she's put in this shitty marriage yeah and then like she the power that she found like 1.00

01:43:45.520 the independence she's able to like was on top of that and then yeah well and then it's funny too

01:43:51.820 because like pretty kept trying to divorce her so he could marry someone else and have heirs and 0.84

01:43:56.400 she's just like fuck you you stuck with me so that's like that was like some that was some of 1.00

01:44:02.480 her that was the power she had so that was her turning the sexism around but yeah so i don't 1.00

01:44:07.520 know like are you happy with the general five yeah a five for sexism like that's what i was 1.00

01:44:12.340 gonna say is another five would be good there yeah so where this lands her she's elevated from

01:44:18.680 a 20 to a 26 and i'm just gonna regale you that's the score so many people get i'm gonna

01:44:26.180 to give you some of their names. Marie de Guise, 26. I love her. I love her. Let's see. Margaret

01:44:34.700 of Anjou, 26. You love her. Ethel Fled, 26. Like this is, this is the neighborhood where I think

01:44:45.560 Carolyn Brunswick would have a real nice time. Yes. Like these are people who have, these are, 0.99

01:44:51.000 yeah she doesn't belong up with the the lofted heights of like catherine de medici who is who

01:44:58.920 lived her entire life at the edge yeah no and she's not like up with like enjinga you know

01:45:05.780 like she's not up there but i think she is this is a neighborhood of people who like did stuff

01:45:10.120 people who like challenged the patriarchy of their time yeah these are people who like

01:45:17.680 did stuff no it's i think it's a great neighborhood to be about to be within i'm just looking for some

01:45:24.160 of the other of your some other like again like the the lana people are not often like 27 there's

01:45:30.980 a lot of great people in 27 yep i have some instincts for a good vulgar history person but

01:45:36.900 like my my personal taste is very more middle of the road than yours is except for you know

01:45:43.140 exactly who is special and different yeah but like people you've suggested like

01:45:48.740 like sushi from china like she's a 35 yeah you know like catherine medici 35.5 like that's like

01:45:55.540 extreme levels of all four things um and it's hard to get a really high score in significance when

01:46:02.940 you're not a ruling monarch basically but 26 is just like that's where the girlies are that's a

01:46:07.660 cool crowd that's where she is she's now above cc yeah cc had a 23 like she's above there because 0.85

01:46:15.440 she was such a messy bitch anyway i'm really happy to have her re re-implemented into this scale 1.00

01:46:24.380 where she should be carolina brunswick no longer at the bottom correct she doesn't she does not 1.00

01:46:32.780 belong near mary toft like all love to mary toft and her rabbit babies yeah she does not belong

01:46:39.400 there that is not her place no no no no mary toft like mary in terms of just like people who were in

01:46:46.600 a delta shitty hand and couldn't get out of it that's mary toft like she correct i think was

01:46:52.460 just like can i just be a farmer's wife and like live on this farm and like do manual labor not 0.99

01:46:59.700 that that's what she wanted, but that would be preferable to what happened to her. She would 1.00

01:47:03.060 have taken that. The people around her were scheming and then she got thrust into a situation.

01:47:07.800 Caroline was the one implementing things, making things happen. Like nothing other than the

01:47:12.660 marriage, nothing happened to her. Like Caroline did things. And that's where she, that's where

01:47:20.020 she grew up on the scale. Can we give, can we give a bestie award? A bestie award? To Princess 0.57

01:47:26.240 charlotte she had her mom's back it's true princess charlotte i think i think she deserves

01:47:34.080 i think that that whole situation deserves that she people she was girl yeah princess charlotte

01:47:40.200 like again that's what i've been reading lately like she was really indoctrinated like she was 1.00

01:47:44.100 raised to be like your mother is a piece of shit never be like her she's awful and charlotte is 1.00

01:47:50.600 like or is she great and should i be exactly like her to the point that i'm gonna run away 1.00

01:47:57.720 to hang out with her more i agree i agree like it's not jeweled tortoise territory but it's

01:48:05.100 definitely the lady jane seymour memorial award territory yeah sorry there's been recently so

01:48:11.840 many elizabeths i'm making sure i have my elizabeths right yeah cc is 21 points elizabeth

01:48:18.300 of Russia is 23 points. That's the other. I was like, who is who? But yeah. And Carolina Brunswick

01:48:25.100 above them both, 26. Hanging out with Marie de Guise, drinking wine, talking shit about John 0.99

01:48:33.040 Knox, having a good time. Hating the English altogether. Thank you so much, Lana. When I 1.00

01:48:42.100 decided I was going to be revisiting these episodes, I was just like, I can't not get your

01:48:46.740 input on Carolina Brunswick because yeah, she's so important to us both and she's important to

01:48:52.460 this podcast. And I had to bring her justice. She deserves, she deserved it. She deserved better. 0.72

01:48:59.360 Thank you for letting me bring my opinions to our favorite. She's somebody who I would love

01:49:06.060 in future when I'm, you know, a wealthy retiree. If that happens, I'd like to retrace her steps.

01:49:14.120 i'd like to go on the same mediterranean cruise she did and then end things in bavaria or whatever 0.91

01:49:20.920 and go visit her tomb that i like her her final bit of trolling where she like got the thing to 0.99

01:49:26.860 say like the wronged queen or whatever and then they they changed it but like for a minute her 0.95

01:49:33.220 tomb did say basically hashtag justice for cfb until they change it she's somebody who i would

01:49:40.380 like to pay respects at her her final resting place just to be like you were a real one you

01:49:45.320 know thank you for revealing that the regency era was not just like people doing dinner parties and

01:49:54.200 dancing very politely while making smoldery eyes at each other and i want you to achieve the

01:49:59.320 original goal of this podcast which is to write a book about carolina brunswick

01:50:06.820 Build a platform that allows you to write a book about Carolina Brunswick.

01:50:12.060 That was, in fact, listeners, the whole point of this podcast.

01:50:17.580 And I have a proposal.

01:50:20.120 Editors, editors, get in touch.

01:50:23.180 You know, I'm ready.

01:50:26.340 I'm ready for this book.

01:50:27.960 She is important and necessary.

01:50:30.860 I mean, when...

01:50:32.240 Oh, actually, sorry, Lana, can we just talk briefly?

01:50:34.220 i didn't watch queen charlotte a bridgerton story but you told me about the complete erasure of

01:50:40.280 carolina brunswick from that show complete and and um for people that do watch that show

01:50:46.320 when um charlotte was saying uh thoughts and prayers at the funeral that was princess charlotte's

01:50:53.320 funeral she was it was the whole thoughts and prayers is oh no sorrows sorrows prayers sorrows

01:51:01.240 that is that is princess charlotte and there was no caroline of brunswick and pretty as far as the

01:51:08.600 show is concerned sad pitiful he was actually sad he was actually sad she died and i was like no

01:51:16.520 that's not how any of this works sounds fake but as far as that show is concerned princess charlotte

01:51:22.700 emerged fully formed from pretty's forehead or something like they don't and i get it if you 0.99

01:51:27.860 want to mention like where's her mother oh she's currently having a fuck cruise in italy with a 0.99

01:51:31.820 married guy like i know you don't want to throw that into queen charlotte because then you're 0.98

01:51:35.440 like wait why is there a show about queen charlotte and why is there a show not about 0.96

01:51:37.680 the person on the fuck cruise but um correct but no lana you were messaging me you're like 0.83

01:51:44.100 i'm watching bridgerton and i'm like oh my god is caroline there and you're like no 0.98

01:51:49.060 i'm like well then how do they explain who this dead princess is and you're like they don't

01:51:55.020 I think I was most sad about the very fact that like I wanted to see what Chandra Chandra Rimes did with Carolina Brunswick because like that seems like one of her characters it seems like someone she would have loved to yeah play like she produced that Anna Delvey series like I do some more thing but historical Carolina like Bridgerton presents Carolina Brunswick like the love story could be her and the Italian married man I don't know or invent a new person or something.

01:52:25.020 thing but anyway but again like so much stuff like the foundations I keep being reminded of this

01:52:32.480 and this is something else there's so much you told me Lana and I'm just I just keep being like

01:52:36.500 two years later I'm like oh that's what Lana meant when she told me that thing that time

01:52:40.820 but like the way that Queen Victoria put a stranglehold on what British history is and

01:52:46.260 how people understand it like she created these narratives that people kept retelling

01:52:51.040 and then new people retell and then stuff like the bridgerton books are like oh the regency era

01:52:56.120 and then the shondaland show is like based on those books so it's like there's this myth like

01:53:00.900 invented by victoria basically and not just about this also about mary queen of scots and lots of

01:53:05.100 things where like it's like the the interview i did a bit ago with um john guy and julia fox about

01:53:12.660 their new anne boleyn book they were like we're gonna go to the original the letters the diaries

01:53:17.760 Like we don't want to look at anyone else's book about Anne Boleyn because we want to make our own opinions and find these things.

01:53:22.700 And it's like, yeah, so much of British history, especially as people looking back at these like 19th century writings and then just reinterpreting those instead of seeing like, well, wait, what actually happened in the actual era?

01:53:36.400 And that's all Victoria's fault.

01:53:37.960 anyway i'm just saying bridgerton is you know like a fantasy and whatever and like removed in

01:53:44.660 a bunch of ways but it's still hues to the same original core understanding of the regency era

01:53:49.920 which was invented by victoria entirely whole whole stock yeah yeah and i hate her

01:53:56.880 as much as i love carolina brunswick i hate victoria one day and we've said this before

01:54:03.580 on the podcast and i will just remind everybody at some point i'm gonna have lana on to do 1.00

01:54:07.840 on the patreon to do so this asshole victoria who's going to be our first lady asshole um and 1.00

01:54:13.080 i'm just i'm just the the way that allison just unleashed on the great on our patreon i'm just 1.00

01:54:19.100 gonna let you just go i'm gonna just like set up my microphone put myself on mute and just let you

01:54:23.360 go no you have to ask me questions you have to prompt me for for each of my each of my rants i

01:54:29.860 need a little small prompt because i forget things because she did so much to hate okay no i will be

01:54:35.780 there with the promise for sure but that that is to come in future listeners please just know

01:54:41.540 it's sort of been a long-standing thing like lana hates queen victoria and one day you will i i will

01:54:48.320 when we're both ready yeah we will record that victoria is my napoleon that's victoria is your

01:54:56.200 henry the eighth to me yes you have henry the eighth allison has napoleon and i have victoria

01:55:03.400 and and that's like that explains to everybody exactly the extent in the depth into your soul

01:55:13.400 of the hatred yeah well thank you for helping me bring justice to carolina brunswick thank you for

01:55:20.080 for having me she deserves she deserves this 26 and she also deserved much more in life but 0.93

01:55:26.700 you know we we celebrate her now we elevate her name she is the reason for this podcast

01:55:32.920 Carolina Brunswick so I'm so happy we did that I'm so happy we got to revisit the story of

01:55:45.020 Carolina Brunswick and I'm being super serious when I say if you're an editor for a publishing

01:55:49.620 company reach out to me because I have a book proposal about this person and I think all the

01:55:56.380 tits of brigade would buy copies and it would be a bestseller anyway so just a couple reminders

01:56:02.400 about various Vulgar History things,

01:56:04.220 you can get in touch with me

01:56:05.380 using the form at vulgarhistory.com

01:56:07.920 or emailing me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com

01:56:10.800 with suggestions or feedback or thoughts or opinions.

01:56:14.620 But especially, I always like,

01:56:16.560 I like all those things.

01:56:17.980 And for the people who send me in suggestions

01:56:20.340 or requests of people to talk about on the show,

01:56:22.360 I save those all.

01:56:23.580 I take this all really seriously.

01:56:24.640 I've got such a long list of like people

01:56:26.620 I hope to talk about one day.

01:56:28.120 And some of the most exciting episodes

01:56:31.120 have been from suggestions from people just like you. So I always love to hear from you,

01:56:35.000 the listeners. I'm also on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod. And we have, you know,

01:56:41.080 I know it's getting close to like Christmas, but if you need some last minute gifts that are

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01:56:51.600 available at vulgarhistory.com slash store. Or if you're outside of the US, the shipping is a bit 0.70

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01:57:02.000 I'll put the link here, but also there's a highlight in my Instagram of the Vulgar History

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01:57:29.220 support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer, where for $1 a month,

01:57:33.940 you get early ad-free access to all episodes. For $5 or more a month, you get the early ad-free

01:57:38.460 access, as well as access to bonus episodes of Vulgar Peace Theater, where I talk about costume

01:57:43.340 dramas with Alison Epstein and Lena Wood Johnson. Coming up is going to be the recording of our

01:57:48.260 Christmas special of Vulgar Peace Theater. We're talking about A Lion in Winter,

01:57:53.040 the Eleanor of Aquitaine movie with Catherine Hepburn. Anyway, there's also other bonus

01:57:58.060 episodes on available to people at that $5 and more a month level. There's the episodes of So

01:58:04.020 This Asshole where I talk about horrible men from the podcasts. I just scream about how much I hate 1.00

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01:58:15.100 transcripts of recent episodes of this podcast. If you go to vulgarhistory.com, just go to the

01:58:19.260 episode you want the transcript for. It's like the newer ones have the transcripts and then

01:58:23.000 our partner with the wordery Aveline Malik is working backwards with the transcript so anyway

01:58:27.840 those are available there for people who prefer or just in addition to like to read their podcasts

01:58:34.080 in any way thanks for listening to this special revisiting episode of Carolina Brunswick and until 0.97

01:58:40.000 next time keep your pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is hosted written and researched 0.97

01:58:46.320 by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi.

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Vulgar History - December 13, 2023

Women Behaving Badly, part one： Caroline of Brunswick, Rebel of the Regency (Rerelease)

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