Vulgar History - Women Leaders, part 8： Queen Anne： Bisexual Icon (Rerelease)

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is anne

00:00:16.240 and it is women's history month march is women's history month which it's sort of like i have a

00:00:23.400 calendar that i have at work just for fun but it every day it's you know it's like tuna sandwiches

00:00:28.940 day or it's like hug your cat day or whatever and i always like to know what day it is and when

00:00:34.220 there's a day that's like red hair people appreciation day i'm like hell yeah that's a

00:00:38.540 day for me a person with red hair and so for women's history month it's like hell yeah women's

00:00:42.820 history month that's a month for the thing that i like to talk about which i talk about women's

00:00:46.980 history all year round but i'm excited i'm excited when it's women's history month the same way i'm

00:00:51.140 excited when it's like red hair people are great day because it's just i feel seen i feel validated

00:00:56.640 and yeah and i also feel seen and validated because guess who is featuring has been featuring

00:01:03.660 vulgar history almost um as one of their women's history like podcast things and that is amazon

00:01:09.440 music so i just want to say thank you to amazon music for featuring my little podcast that i

00:01:15.040 record here at my desk in my apartment in saskatoon saskatchewan thank you for featuring my podcast

00:01:20.940 and hello to anyone who found this podcast from that feature check out vulgar history and amazon

00:01:25.260 on music. And yeah, keep celebrating women's history all the time. I mean, listen to this 1.00

00:01:32.120 podcast and you inherently are doing that. So it's all great. Today, we're going to be revisiting an

00:01:37.940 episode from 2020. And here's what's interesting about this. So first of all, it's the episode

00:01:43.200 about Queen Anne, who I used to always call Queen Anne from The Favorite. But that movie came out

00:01:48.180 in 2018 and won some Oscars in 2019. It's faded from the public consciousness mostly. So if I

00:01:53.760 say Queen Anne from the favorite, I don't know if you know what that means anymore. But what we do

00:01:59.440 have is more further context for who Queen Anne is. Queen Anne, comma, the niece of hot Charles II.

00:02:07.300 Queen Anne, the person who, because of the children she gave birth to, died. The crown of

00:02:13.140 England went over to George I in Hanover, which is how we get to George II, III, and IV, aka

00:02:20.240 A. Prinny, the husband of Carolina Brunswick, who I wrote a book of. It's called Rebel of the

00:02:25.520 Regency, the scandalous saga of Carolina Brunswick, Britain's uncrowned queen. So the connections are

00:02:31.560 all here, but also what we see in the story of Anne that you're going to hear, re-listen to,

00:02:37.040 she had various health concerns that later Carolina Brunswick had, Prinny had. The thing about

00:02:44.740 the British royal family, not so much today, but still a little bit today, is that they kept

00:02:51.720 marrying their relatives. And so that meant that the same illnesses kept going person to person,

00:02:58.000 person to person. Like we did a whole season about Mary, Queen of Scots, and she had various

00:03:02.140 health problems. Mary, Queen of Scots, her son, baby James, James I slash six, then he had

00:03:09.320 children. So, which leads to Anne, who we're talking about today, Queen Anne I. And some of

00:03:16.900 the health concerns that Mary Queen of Scots had seem kind of similar to some of the ones that

00:03:20.540 Queen Anne has, which seem kind of similar to some of the ones that Caroline of Brunswick has.

00:03:24.400 And that's just kind of like what happens when you keep marrying your own cousins. Just saying,

00:03:30.300 like, we're not at like a Habsburg level, but diversifying the gene pool is only ever a good

00:03:37.620 thing. So I just want to set up some of the context for who we're talking about today in

00:03:42.340 the sense of like episodes we've later done and how they connect back to her. But I also find it

00:03:48.220 interesting slash tragic that when you listen to this episode, which I recorded in mid 2020,

00:03:55.260 like early, early days of the pandemic before there even was a vaccine for people to get mad

00:04:01.600 about and or take was I was talking about like, you know, it's, it's weird, it's unprecedented

00:04:06.200 of times. This podcast is here to reassure you and to give you something to look forward to.

00:04:11.100 And I'm recording this in March of 2025. And there's other crises going on. COVID,

00:04:18.100 still a thing. And I'm also here still saying, this podcast sees your struggles. And I recognize

00:04:26.460 that there's a lot of fucked up things happening in the world, and especially in the United States 0.97

00:04:32.560 lately. And I don't want to not mention it on the podcast, but also I want this podcast to be like 0.91

00:04:38.500 an escape for you, like a respite. Like let's hear about oldie timey people and smallpox. You know

00:04:43.880 what? Because that distracts us from current times. And there's always going to be an episode

00:04:49.020 of Vulgar History one week later coming up. And that's a thing that you all have to look forward

00:04:54.220 to. Anyway, so I also, yeah, that context I think is important when listening to this episode. I do

00:04:59.420 talk about some 2020 related things but the main gist of it is the story of queen anne the niece

00:05:05.540 of hot charles the second did she know fubs maybe she got up to some real juicy gossip the stuff she

00:05:13.540 does in bath makes me think like the story does remind me in some ways of carolina brunswick who's

00:05:19.760 not her descendant because she didn't have any descendants that's the issue and why the crown

00:05:24.720 moved over but her relative her relative this kind of feels a bit like what if carolina brunswick 0.86

00:05:29.080 had been the queen and a lesbian. What would that have been like? Anyway, here's an episode.

00:05:35.240 Women's History Month coming to a close, but you know, it stays in our hearts forever and it stays

00:05:41.160 the theme of this podcast forever. So let's throw it back to 2020 Anne talking about someone else

00:05:46.560 called Anne and enjoy. Hello and welcome to Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster and this is a 1.00

00:05:58.200 feminist women's history comedy podcast. This is season two. And what we've been looking at

00:06:04.120 all season long are women leaders in history and the men who whined about them. And this was going

00:06:11.060 to be the season two finale. We've been sort of going in chronological order. And this is as close

00:06:17.900 to modern day as we were going to get. But then I found another story that I really wanted to do.

00:06:21.980 So there's going to be one more episode next week. So this is the penultimate episode of season two,

00:06:27.640 which is not to say the penultimate episode of this podcast forever is just of season two.

00:06:32.600 And if you go through the feed, if you're listening to this in real time, I'm recording

00:06:38.100 this during the pandemic era, and I've been releasing some mini-sodes for everybody,

00:06:44.060 just about some interesting stories about past pandemics and world histories and some

00:06:49.580 of the bonkers things that happened that people did during them.

00:06:53.640 So anyway, so what I was doing was I was researching different pandemic stuff, and then I

00:06:57.600 found the story that was really cool. And when I started to sort of write the context for it,

00:07:02.740 I realized like, oh, this is a full episode. This isn't just a pandemic mini-sode. All of which to

00:07:08.740 say, this is a regular episode this week. There'll be another regular episode next week. And in

00:07:13.700 between all kinds of pandemic specials, because I keep reading about it for some reason, how other

00:07:20.200 people dealt with pandemic type situations. Anyway, I'm pretty sure today's episode doesn't

00:07:26.160 have any plague in it. Although I think there is, there's smallpox. Smallpox is involved. People die

00:07:32.840 of various things because human bodies do that. But anyway, so we've been looking at women leaders 1.00

00:07:38.480 in history, most of them, many of them from England and or the United Kingdom as well. You know, we

00:07:47.140 also had a sojourn into ancient Egypt and ancient Rome. But the woman who I'm gonna look at this

00:07:54.880 week is one of, I think, am I right? One of only four officially recognized Queen Regnance of

00:08:05.180 England slash the United Kingdom. Pretty sure there's only four. And it is Queen Anne of Great

00:08:10.900 Britain. And she suddenly became very well known after she was the subject of the film,

00:08:18.420 The Favourite in 2018 that won the Oscars in 2019 and her story is really really interesting and I'm

00:08:27.220 glad that The Favourite came out and that a lot of people saw it and it got a lot of people googling

00:08:32.380 who is Queen Anne because that did really good things for the search engine optimization on my

00:08:37.560 blog. Anyway but mostly more than anything I'm just glad that it's got people looking at her

00:08:42.460 and reassessing her and figuring out who she is so when i went to see the favorite for the first

00:08:48.360 time because i've seen it more than once obviously because it's an amazing movie i afterwards there

00:08:54.400 were some people in the audience and it was two i think it was two young men it was at least a

00:08:59.120 young man and companion and one of them was just like who like he had clearly just googled who is

00:09:05.020 queen anne and he was reading some stuff about like oh yeah and like he was reading stuff about

00:09:08.800 Anne Boleyn basically and I was just like should I correct him this is awkward and then I couldn't

00:09:16.560 stop myself I had to say like oh no no this this it's not the same as Anne Boleyn this is a whole

00:09:21.420 different time period so bold bold of Yorgos Lanthimos the filmmaker to make a film about

00:09:27.380 a woman that not a lot of people knew who she was to begin with and clearly a lot of people went to

00:09:33.180 see the movie and still didn't know who she was because I still get a lot of hits on my on my 0.84

00:09:37.320 website for who is she. So we're going to talk about it because it is an incredibly interesting

00:09:43.020 story with lots of twists, turns, and the whole thing about like women and leadership. A lot of

00:09:49.820 the themes we've looked at at other people this season all come into play again. So let's do it.

00:09:55.860 Anne with an E, I have to say, my name is Anne Foster without an E. Her name is Anne with an E.

00:10:02.220 It's a little strange for me to be talking about Anne in the third person, but here we go.

00:10:07.320 Anne, not me, was born on February 6th, 1665, and she was the fourth child born to, then, the king.

00:10:17.000 So the king at the time was King Charles II.

00:10:19.200 She was born to King Charles II's younger brother, Prince James, and his wife, Anne Hyde.

00:10:26.600 So King Charles II was very well known for having lots of mistresses and lots of children with his mistresses, but no legitimate children.

00:10:34.020 this meant that princess anne our main character her father the younger brother of the king was

00:10:40.480 heir to the throne because the whole thing was it goes from father to son from man to man and

00:10:46.180 in this case there wasn't even any women options like it was just going to go to him so her father

00:10:52.360 was heir to the throne meaning that her older brother who is named james her father was also

00:10:57.700 named james this is going to get confusing like these stories always do so i'll try and explain

00:11:03.600 who they are in context. So heir to the throne was Anne's father, James. And then next in line

00:11:10.180 to the throne was Anne's older brother, also called James. And then next in line to the throne

00:11:14.560 was Anne's older sister called Mary, and then her. So this is already looking like a pretty

00:11:20.400 unlikely scenario that she's going to end up becoming the monarch at all, right? Lots of

00:11:24.960 people ahead of her who could have their own children, et cetera. Oh, that's, we all know

00:11:30.340 what's going to happen. Well, you know where it's going to wind up, but you don't know what's going

00:11:33.540 to happen because how could you it is a wild story so prince james her father was widely rumored to

00:11:41.840 be a secret catholic and this was an era 1665 when the country's religion was protestant so

00:11:49.780 charles ii the king instructed that anne and all of her siblings should be raised as protestants

00:11:55.060 just in case they wound up taking over the country in the future so that there would continue to be

00:11:59.020 protestant monarchs so the first six years of anne's life were marked by a lot of death and i

00:12:05.940 mean just from what i've been reading about recently she was born february 1665 that was

00:12:11.260 just around the time that the great plague hit london slash england so there was a lot of death

00:12:17.820 of people she didn't know as well as people she did know so her brother james her older brother

00:12:25.000 died when Anne was two years old. And at around the same time, her parents had another son,

00:12:31.840 a new baby brother called Charles, who died in infancy at around the same time.

00:12:36.140 She also had a baby sister named Henrietta, one year later, who was born and then died in infancy.

00:12:41.340 And by this point, and again, this is just the first six years of her life,

00:12:45.980 Anne herself was already dealing with a medical condition of some sort. And it's the sort of

00:12:51.420 think even nowadays people might not know what it is you know when the symptoms are just like we're

00:12:55.720 not sure that's kind of not the symptom of anything so maybe it's all in your head because

00:12:59.660 you're a girl sort of thing so she had a lot of medical issues throughout her life the issue that

00:13:04.360 she had here was that her eyes watered excessively okay um so she was shipped off age four to stay

00:13:11.000 in france with her grandmother because they thought that maybe the fresh french air i don't know maybe

00:13:15.900 she would recuperate over there but shortly after she arrived her grandmother died so then ann was

00:13:21.400 transferred to stay with an aunt who is also in France. And then that aunt died. And so six-year-old

00:13:27.720 Anne was shipped back to England. Very soon after she returned, two more younger siblings died in

00:13:34.280 infancy. And at around the same time, her mother died. So if you're keeping track, we now just have

00:13:39.640 two royal siblings left. Mary, the older sister, and Anne, the younger sister. Unless their father

00:13:46.100 remarried and had another son, these two girls were second and third in line to the throne.

00:13:51.400 But remember how her father was rumored to be a secret Catholic?

00:13:55.300 He came out of the Catholic closet when Anne was eight years old, publicly converting to

00:14:00.320 being a full Roman Catholic, which was like the biggest scandal ever because the country 0.84

00:14:05.440 was Protestant. 1.00

00:14:07.120 There had been numerous wars about this.

00:14:09.480 And then her father chose a new wife, because remember his wife had died, who was a Catholic

00:14:14.440 princess named Mary of Modena.

00:14:16.860 Mary of Modena was 14 years old, making her just six years older than her new stepdaughter,

00:14:23.560 Anne.

00:14:24.360 And everyone started to freak out about the sons that James and Mary and Modena would

00:14:28.560 likely start having because the sons would be Catholic.

00:14:31.520 And because of primogeniture, they would be ahead of Anne and Mary.

00:14:34.680 And everyone's just panicking because it seems like, what if the next king is going to be

00:14:39.440 Catholic?

00:14:40.100 so in 1677 Anne's older sister Mary was married to their Protestant cousin William III of Orange

00:14:50.800 which is in the Netherlands so Mary the older sister sailed away to live with him in the

00:14:56.840 Netherlands to be queen over there. Anne was infected with smallpox at around the same time

00:15:02.580 as her sister's wedding so she couldn't attend and she wasn't able to say goodbye which is just

00:15:06.940 pretty sad um also having smallpox is a horrible thing i was reading about that for some of these

00:15:13.300 pandemic podcast episodes and just like it's great that she didn't die of it so speaking of sad um

00:15:20.820 her governess also cut smallpox and died so anne's bad luck of being constantly surrounded by death

00:15:26.520 and her being the only one who doesn't die continued on when she was 12 years old her uncle

00:15:33.200 King Charles II chose a husband for her so she got married to her cousin Prince George of Denmark

00:15:39.560 on July 28th 1683 which meant Anne got to move out of the family palace and start her own royal

00:15:46.460 court age 12 and she also got her own ladies-in-waiting and one of them was a childhood

00:15:51.700 friend of hers a young girl who she'd grown up with whose name was Sarah Churchill remember that 0.99

00:15:57.860 name because that's going to come up lots more later. Despite her young age, Anne's marriage to

00:16:03.980 George was consummated pretty quickly as she became pregnant really soon. Her first pregnancy

00:16:09.980 ended in a stillbirth, but she became pregnant twice more in the next two years. And she had

00:16:14.980 two daughters whose names were Mary, because the story doesn't have enough people named Mary in it

00:16:20.320 yet, apparently, and Anne Sophia, which is a nice name. And soon after that, her uncle King Charles

00:16:25.940 the second died meaning that her father became king james the second a catholic king and this

00:16:33.680 meant a whole bunch of new problems for basically everybody so from basically day one nobody was a

00:16:41.260 fan of king james the second especially the way that he fired all the protestant officials and

00:16:46.380 hired new catholic people in their place and who remember had been raised protestant because

00:16:51.460 remember her uncle the king had made sure that she was raised Protestant continued to practice

00:16:55.960 her own faith as did her sister off on the Netherlands with her husband William James II

00:17:01.520 was like so it would be really cool Anne if you had your daughters baptized as Catholics apparently 0.82

00:17:08.440 this made Anne burst into tears hated Catholics she didn't want her daughters to be Catholic 0.64

00:17:13.460 like she was so upset that from this point on after he suggested that she became estranged from

00:17:18.240 her father and her stepmother, Mary of Medina, who was, again, six years older than her. But

00:17:24.160 Anne didn't have a lot of time to focus on family estrangement because her life continued to be

00:17:29.100 unrelentingly tinged with death and tragedy. Over a period of one week in 1687, she had

00:17:37.540 another miscarriage. Both of her young daughters died of smallpox, and her husband George also

00:17:43.080 fell ill, presumably smallpox also. This is a story where anytime someone gets sick from this

00:17:49.920 point on, which I'm just assuming smallpox. So she and George were left grieving the death of

00:17:55.220 their children and the miscarriage as he struggled to survive. But George made a full recovery and

00:18:01.340 Anne became pregnant again later that year, which ended in another stillbirth. But someone else was

00:18:07.920 also not having much luck vis-a-vis pregnancies, her six years older stepmother, Mary of Modena.

00:18:14.920 So Mary of Modena, the stepmother, had become pregnant 10 times since she married Anne's

00:18:21.020 father. Each of these 10 pregnancies had ended in either miscarriage, stillbirth, or the infant

00:18:25.600 death of the child. And this is so sad for Mary of Modena as a woman, as a person, just to go

00:18:33.900 through this and was also freaking James out because he needed to have a new Catholic heir

00:18:38.420 otherwise his Protestant daughters would become his heirs and this was an issue of like oh no

00:18:43.120 women heirs but also like religion thing so as long as he and Mary of Medina didn't have a 0.95

00:18:49.040 surviving child then Mary and then Anne would be the next monarchs but then Mary of Medina suddenly 0.96

00:18:56.280 became pregnant and everybody waited to see how it was going to turn out if it was a son and he

00:19:00.900 survived he would be the new catholic heir to the throne which would change everything how lucky and

00:19:06.280 convenient that would be but ann thought this is all just like a little bit too convenient maybe

00:19:14.080 so ann had a theory that her stepmother wasn't really pregnant but was actually faking being

00:19:20.440 pregnant and the plan that ann thought her stepmother had was that on the delivery day

00:19:25.720 she'd pull a switcheroo with some random baby and claim that was the new catholic heir to the throne

00:19:29.860 why would they maybe do this well basically because mary of medina and james were really

00:19:36.320 desperate to have a surviving son and heir to continue on their catholic ways and they really

00:19:41.220 didn't want anne or mary to become the new queen and switch everybody back to being protestant

00:19:45.500 and anne didn't keep her theory a secret she made sure that everybody heard this rumor because

00:19:50.640 as we will see in later examples she lived for the drama of it all so a bit before her stepmother's

00:19:57.920 delivery date. Anne had another miscarriage, or she said she did, or she did and used it to her

00:20:04.320 advantage. Anyway, she went off to recuperate in the spa town of Bath. So normally, when the new

00:20:11.320 queen gives birth to a new heir, the other heirs come into the room to witness the birth to make

00:20:16.340 in case somebody dies and the others have to like quickly take over because childbirth was so

00:20:20.660 dangerous at this period. But Anne was like, sorry, I can't be there to watch this probably fake birth. 0.96

00:20:26.880 I'm too busy here at the spa because I just had a miscarriage. Bye. So it was kind of convenient.

00:20:34.980 And so this is where the rumors come from that she had maybe was lying about the miscarriage in

00:20:38.840 order to just have an excuse to not be present for the birth. So while Anne was in Bath, her

00:20:44.840 stepmother allegedly gave birth to a son or else pulled a switcheroo or one way or another, there

00:20:50.640 was a new heir to the throne who was a baby named James who was baptized Catholic. Every male person

00:20:58.380 in the story seems to be called James but this one is little baby James. So Anne wrote a letter

00:21:02.940 to her sister Mary in the Netherlands and she was in the letter she was like so allegedly this baby

00:21:08.940 James is our half-brother but I don't know if he really is there might have been a switcheroo

00:21:12.860 involved. I wasn't there at the birth because I was tragically at the spa that day so please feel

00:21:18.980 free to spread this rumor around the netherlands and her sister wrote back like solid theory um

00:21:24.560 also p.s william and i are probably going to invade and take over from our catholic father

00:21:28.740 don't tell anyone and ann was like amazing i'll keep her father distracted with all this fake

00:21:34.200 baby stuff so he'll be too busy to notice you and william invading and that is exactly what happened

00:21:39.160 so their father king james ii was really busy defending himself being like my wife just 100

00:21:46.660 percent gave birth to to a baby i can prove it look here there's 40 other people were in the

00:21:51.520 room when she gave birth and i'll get them all to testify and they'll all say that they saw the baby

00:21:55.640 came out of her vagina like ann can you please come and hear their testimony so you'll stop

00:21:59.820 spreading these rumors and ann was like i'm sorry i can't travel i'm pregnant um which for most of 0.97

00:22:06.620 her life would have been true but at this point was not she was totally lying so her father had

00:22:11.760 a written record of all the 40 witnesses testimony and he was like ann i can send you the minutes of

00:22:16.800 this testimony so you can read it to stop spreading these rumors and she was like no thanks and james

00:22:22.800 freaked out and ann just kind of kept him distracted with that and then revolution so

00:22:28.820 as her sister had hinted um she and william of orange invaded england on november 5th 1688 in

00:22:35.760 order to take over as protestant co-monarchs and it worked they were successful and the whole thing

00:22:41.920 became known as the glorious revolution so now back in england anne had been pretending like

00:22:47.920 she didn't know this was going to happen and in fact the only person that she told was her best

00:22:51.920 friend forever her bff sarah churchill duchess of marlrow remember her from earlier um her lady in

00:22:58.680 waiting so sarah churchill was connected to the very powerful churchill family who are side doubt

00:23:05.420 the ancestors of winston churchill um and so the powerful churchill family supported william and

00:23:10.560 mary's coup but then james found out that the churchills were against him and he ordered that

00:23:14.820 sarah should be arrested and anne freaked out she was like i will never betray my best friend

00:23:20.700 and she secretly snuck out the baxers of the palace with sarah to escape being arrested when

00:23:26.320 james found out that his daughter had deserted him he was like wow like not even my estranged

00:23:30.960 daughter supports me i guess i'll just go flee to france with my wife and baby james and that is

00:23:36.560 what they did so after all this happened the courtiers like all the people in the palace were

00:23:41.500 like whoa that was like super intense like anne are you okay and she was like it's fine um what

00:23:47.500 day is it tuesday oh tuesday that's the day i play cards let's play cards and everybody was like whoa

00:23:52.020 look how chill she is amid all this drama and she literally played cards but like look at her life

00:23:57.120 to this point she was like like a first responder type person like she's somebody who's like so

00:24:02.120 constantly living through extremely stressful dramatic things her tolerance for highly stressful

00:24:07.380 situations was clearly much higher than that of the average person and so she played cards and

00:24:12.800 William and Mary were Protestant co-monarchs of England and everything was glorious for like five

00:24:18.200 minutes so since William and Mary didn't have any of their own children a whole decision had to be

00:24:23.460 made about who would be their heir as co-monarchs whichever one of them died first would be succeeded

00:24:29.200 by the other one so sort of like if you listen to the podcast from two weeks ago the whole Isabella

00:24:34.100 Ferdinand scenario so so it's like William's heir is Mary and Mary's heir is William but once they're

00:24:39.680 both dead who would it go to um and so the next heir would be Anne or her children if she had any

00:24:46.480 children at this point she did not um but then the year after the glorious revolution Anne had another

00:24:52.780 child he had a son who named william um he not only survived childbirth and infancy but like

00:24:58.820 kept growing up so he was now the heir to william and mary baby william so william and mary were so

00:25:04.940 grateful to sarah and the churchill family for having supported them during the whole revolution

00:25:08.740 that they gave her husband the title earl of marlborough and this is how sarah herself becomes

00:25:14.100 the duchess of marlborough and then again everything's great for five minutes and then

00:25:18.720 becomes chaos again because that is like what this whole woman's life is like so everything

00:25:24.500 is amazing so ann was like my sister is the queen she's a protestant like me william and mary i 0.99

00:25:30.800 would like to have a palace i can live in and also lots of allowance money thank you and william and

00:25:36.280 mary were like we'll give you a palace but we're not going to give you any allowance money and ann

00:25:41.280 was like okay but can you give my husband george an important military role mary and william were

00:25:46.880 like, no. And then Anne was like, okay, well now we're estranged forever. The only friend I need

00:25:53.460 in my life is Sarah Churchill. Goodbye forever. So she just like, when someone burned a bridge

00:25:58.880 with Anne, she was just like done with them. Clearly a character trait. So the only friend

00:26:03.780 she had or that she felt she needed was Sarah Churchill. So they were really, really, really

00:26:09.240 close in a way that princesses and duchesses weren't usually. And in a way that they kind of

00:26:15.660 weren't supposed to be based on like cultural expectations etc in the film the favorite they

00:26:21.740 showed them as being in a sexual relationship maybe they were um who knows but they were

00:26:26.740 definitely really really close and saw the two of them as equals and as such they called each other

00:26:31.780 by the nicknames mrs morley and mrs freeman to indicate how they were on the same level like

00:26:37.120 class base system wise but then william and mary began to suspect that sarah's husband was secretly

00:26:44.000 meeting with supporters of the deposed King James in France and this was treason so they fired the

00:26:49.820 Earl of Marlborough from his various important jobs and demanded that Anne remove Sarah as one

00:26:53.980 of her ladies-in-waiting but like clearly at this point like Anne was never gonna betray her best

00:26:59.240 friend um so it all got super intense to the point that Mary personally fired Sarah herself which was

00:27:05.320 like really not really done because Sarah was technically a lady-in-waiting for Anne and then

00:27:10.760 ann just like went full-on nuclear option so ann stormed to the castle and ran off to live in a 0.99

00:27:16.520 different castle because she couldn't even stand to look at her sister anymore after this betrayal 1.00

00:27:20.680 and mary then she fired ann's guard of honor and officially forbid anyone from talking to her like

00:27:27.840 none of the servants could talk to her like no one would talk to her um so ann was in this other

00:27:32.560 palace surrounded by people who weren't even allowed to acknowledge that she was there so

00:27:36.860 This, like, sisterly drama playing out in this, like, 17th century royal setting.

00:27:42.080 It's just wild.

00:27:43.780 I want to have, like, a prequel, like, miniseries to The Favourite about young Anne and Mary.

00:27:48.960 Because this is just, like, my god.

00:27:50.660 Okay.

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00:31:21.040 and we're back so as ever i mean ann was pregnant through all of this like just assume

00:31:30.000 until her husband dies she is constantly pregnant because she was um so in the midst of all this

00:31:34.940 drama with her and her sister she gave birth to another son who only lived for a few minutes

00:31:39.040 sadly william was still there though she still had one son so after this latest child death

00:31:43.800 mary headed off to the other castle and so you think like was she gonna go and make amends with

00:31:48.080 her sister was she gonna like help grieve with her over this child death um of course not what 1.00

00:31:53.380 happened is mary stomped into anne's room being like oh stop being friends with sarah i hate you 0.99

00:31:57.980 and then anne was like well i hate you too and then she moved to another different castle even

00:32:02.160 further away and she never saw her sister again because mary died two years later of smallpox and

00:32:08.540 these were two women who could hold a grudge so mary is now dead which means william becomes the

00:32:14.960 solo king on his own because he was the co-monarch and kind of her heir. So his heirs at this point

00:32:21.420 were Anne's son, baby William. And Anne was kind of the next heir, I guess, until William had his

00:32:29.080 own other baby William had his own son. So the king, King William, decided to try and smooth

00:32:33.740 over the relationship between him and Anne because basically that's all he had vis-a-vis heirs. So he

00:32:39.500 gave back all the possessions and titles that Mary had previously removed from her. He allowed 0.93

00:32:43.620 of people to talk to her again and invited her to come back and live in the main palace he even

00:32:48.300 gave ann all of mary's jewels and then restored sarah and her husband to their former positions

00:32:52.800 so everything was doing great on one way but health-wise ann was doing not so well so her

00:33:00.140 17th 17th pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at around this time um and all for other health

00:33:07.440 various health problems became even worse um so doctors back then had different methodologies

00:33:13.220 and diagnoses than we do now. But based on her symptoms, it seems like Anne likely had a pretty

00:33:19.920 bad combination of arthritis, gout, and other things, including the aftereffects of being

00:33:24.900 pregnant 17 times. Increasingly frequently, she had trouble walking. So she sometimes used a chair

00:33:30.200 with wheels on it because wheelchairs hadn't been invented yet. She sometimes had people carry her 0.91

00:33:35.060 around in chairs without wheels on them. So she's living with chronic pain, presumably psychological

00:33:41.920 issues based on like literally her whole life so far. And then her son, William, died aged 11.

00:33:48.920 I'm not sure of what. I'm going to guess smallpox, but some sort of health-based issue.

00:33:55.960 His date of death was July 30th, and Anne decreed that every year on July 30th, everybody in the

00:34:01.100 household that lived with her were to mark that day as a day of mourning. And what this meant with

00:34:06.460 his death was that anne is literally the only remaining heir to king william so parliament was 0.89

00:34:12.900 pretty frantic at this point but the issue of who would be heir after all these childless people

00:34:17.440 not only because they're like a woman inheriting like that's we don't love that idea but also like 0.55

00:34:23.480 what if the next person in line was catholic or something like if anne inherited like it's not

00:34:28.820 their top choice but also like she didn't have any surviving children so who would inherit after her

00:34:33.120 so it's like a two-pronged two-stage inheritance crisis um so they unfurled the family tree

00:34:39.500 crossed off everybody who was catholic and looked to see who was left like 50 names were removed

00:34:45.800 from the line of succession which meant that a very distant relation um who was a protestant

00:34:52.340 woman named sophia elector of hanover went from 51st in line to first in line who is sophia

00:34:59.540 Elector of Hanover? I'm glad you asked. She was the granddaughter of James I, who was Mary Queen

00:35:06.240 of Scots' son. So James I had a daughter named, who was Elizabeth of Bohemia, and then Sophia

00:35:14.280 was a descendant of her. So she was the great-granddaughter of Mary Queen of Scots,

00:35:20.600 and the great-great-granddaughter of Henry VIII's older sister, Margaret Tudor. But what mattered

00:35:26.880 most to everybody like and she's a woman and they're like as long as he's protestant even being

00:35:31.740 a woman is okay and so an act was written up saying that she was the next heir after anne and

00:35:38.600 then her protestant descendants after her but first things first so william died in 1702 which

00:35:45.880 may mean meant that queen anne anne became queen anne she was at this point 37 years old and doing

00:35:51.980 poorly health-wise to the extent that she had to be carried down the aisle of Westminster Abbey in

00:35:57.140 a chair as she couldn't walk for her coronation. But to make it all dramatic, someone, probably

00:36:03.120 Sarah Churchill, arranged for a low back to be put on the chair so Anne's long train could unfurl

00:36:08.040 dramatically behind her down the aisle, which sounds amazing. Among her first acts as queen

00:36:12.860 was to give a bunch of important titles to her husband George, as well as to Sarah and to Sarah's

00:36:17.660 husband. And this is basically where the movie The Favorite begins. So Anne, now the queen,

00:36:25.020 was beyond devoted to her best friend Sarah Churchill to the point that everyone around them

00:36:28.740 was like, this is weird. Why is Sarah Churchill so important to this woman? Anne did things like

00:36:35.940 she gave Sarah her own palace and did basically everything nice for her. And Sarah was sort of

00:36:42.460 mean to her sometimes. And it was seemingly a sort of toxic scenario where Anne sort of like

00:36:48.060 indulged her and the Sarah was sort of mean back to her. And again, like you can see this all in

00:36:52.140 the favorite, the film. And then into this codependent scenario arrived a new courtier

00:36:57.060 named Abigail Hill. And this is the role played by Emma Stone in the movie. And Anne liked her

00:37:02.800 a lot. And they became secret friends because she knew that Sarah didn't want her to be friends

00:37:07.900 with anybody else. Sarah didn't even know that they were friends until Abigail got married to

00:37:12.840 a man named Baron Masham, making her now Abigail Baroness Masham, and Anne was a guest at the

00:37:18.260 wedding. So Sarah found out that Anne and Abigail were close enough that Anne got a wedding invitation

00:37:23.120 and Sarah Churchill freaked out in like rage, jealousy. So there were special rooms at Kensington

00:37:29.400 Palace reserved for Sarah when she came to stay there to visit her friend, the Queen. But since

00:37:34.460 Sarah spent most of her time off in her own personal castle and let Abigail move into Sarah's 0.86

00:37:39.800 rooms. And then Sarah freaked out when she found out about that. And then everything just gets 0.65

00:37:43.960 wild. So Sarah showed up at court with a very like raunchy poem all about how the queen was

00:37:51.120 in a sexual relationship with Abigail. Sarah didn't write the poem. She had like commissioned

00:37:55.900 it from a poet. And so she had this poem that she had written. And then she went to the queen like,

00:38:01.620 oh my god look someone wrote this poem but you and abigail spending time with her is ruining

00:38:05.500 your reputations you should stop being friends with her you should be friends with me instead

00:38:08.620 and anne was like can't i have two friends but secretly anne seemed to enjoy having sarah and

00:38:13.920 abigail fighting over her again the movie the favorite goes through the stuff and a lot of this

00:38:18.700 drama was a very sort of etiquette battle sort of thing like one of sarah's jobs is picking out

00:38:25.160 which jewels the queen would wear each day and one day the queen chose to wear different jewels 0.96

00:38:29.520 from the ones Sarah had chosen and then Sarah freaked out because not wearing the jewels she'd 0.91

00:38:34.000 chosen was like the etiquette version of being punched in the face so Sarah who clearly had

00:38:38.940 quite a temper that she was not afraid of demonstrating literally yelled at the queen 0.98

00:38:42.720 in public to shut up which is like you're not allowed to do that that's kind of treason but

00:38:49.280 nobody stopped her and Anne didn't punish her so it's all just sort of like a that's that's the

00:38:54.180 culture that's going on and so to add to all of this just like wild sequence of events um anne's

00:39:01.300 husband suddenly died again i'm guessing smallpox and was super upset about this obviously they've

00:39:07.360 been husband for decades um they've been through a lot together as a couple such as 17 pregnancies

00:39:13.840 and all the child death she'd always had a portrait of her husband george hanging in her room and one

00:39:18.660 day she went into her room and it was gone and sarah was like yeah that was me i took down the

00:39:22.640 portrait because I thought it would make you sad and you shouldn't look at it. And then Anne was

00:39:26.640 like, put it back. And Sarah was like, make me. And Anne was like, I'm the queen. And Sarah was

00:39:32.060 like, me, me, me. And then they just sort of had this huge fight. And that's the sort of stuff

00:39:36.740 that was going on. Eventually, Anne wrote a letter to Sarah's husband, like, can you please tell your

00:39:40.120 wife to stop being mean to me and stop yelling at me and stop stealing paintings of my dead husband?

00:39:44.720 And Sarah's husband was like, what's going on, Sarah? And so Sarah went to have a face-to-face

00:39:49.360 with Anne, which happened on April 6th, 1710, and they had a friend breakup. These two were now

00:39:55.520 officially estranged, and say what you will about Queen Anne I, but when she decided to end a

00:40:01.480 relationship with somebody, she just like, she did. She wouldn't. No looking back. So meanwhile,

00:40:08.520 back in France, Anne's father, the former king, James, was hanging out with his wife, Mary of

00:40:13.260 Modena, their son, baby James, and they had another child who they named Louisa Maria Teresa.

00:40:19.360 So by now, Baby James, who is now an adult, had been brought up being told that he was actually the rightful king of England and he believed it.

00:40:27.340 And he kind of was the rightful king of England because William and Mary sort of like took over.

00:40:34.740 Anyway, so James, the younger, formerly Baby James, and his supporters were called the Jacobites.

00:40:42.200 And they decided to sail over to Scotland and begin the work of taking the country back and making it Catholic.

00:40:47.420 they had some secret allies who he thought would help but Anne had spies of her own who intercepted

00:40:53.380 James and chased him away but then Sarah Churchill a woman who could seriously carry a grudge was 0.67

00:40:58.760 spreading the story that Anne secretly wanted her half-brother James to become the heir instead of 0.90

00:41:04.260 Sophia Elector of Hanover and just like how it was impossible for her father to prove that his child

00:41:10.020 wasn't secretly switcherooed Anne found it impossible to convince anyone that this gossip

00:41:14.860 wasn't true because when people don't like you they can't really be convinced that mean rumors

00:41:18.840 about you aren't true throughout all of this like this is all just like personal life stuff and

00:41:25.040 that's what i tend to be most interested in and what i tend to talk about on the podcast but bear

00:41:29.600 in mind anne was also being the queen so she sat in more cabinet meetings than any previous english

00:41:35.420 monarch had ever done and also more than most of the later monarchs did she was interested in what

00:41:40.720 was going on in parliament and did lots of important political stuff that other people

00:41:44.100 have written about i'm just here to tell you the juicy gossip bits but i'll put some some 1.00

00:41:48.700 recommended reading in the show notes for this if you want to read about her uh political side of 1.00

00:41:54.720 her life um even though ann's health concerns were becoming more and more exacerbated like she became 0.99

00:42:01.160 basically a bedridden invalid um she before like she could walk but she sometimes needed a wheelchair 0.88

00:42:07.820 instead now she like couldn't even walk anymore she would wheel herself in her chair with wheels

00:42:12.480 or have people carry her into parliament where she attended like all nighter meetings to go over

00:42:17.360 important government business and then on july 30th 1714 which is the anniversary the 14th

00:42:24.360 anniversary of the death of her son william the date that she always had everyone commemorate

00:42:28.820 as a day of mourning anne had a stroke that left her unable to speak and then she passed away on

00:42:34.040 April 1st, 1714, aged 49.

00:42:38.920 Queen Anne was buried in Westminster Abbey,

00:42:41.340 the same place where 12 years before,

00:42:43.040 she'd been carried down the aisle in a chair with a low back

00:42:46.400 so that she could have a train.

00:42:48.380 She was laid to rest next to her husband, George,

00:42:50.540 as well as the remains of many of her stillborn and infant children,

00:42:54.240 as well as her son, William, who died aged 11.

00:42:58.760 And Sophia, a lector of Hanover, who had been her heir,

00:43:01.940 actually died just a few months before,

00:43:03.600 which meant that Anne's heir was Sophia's son, who became King George I. And we'll talk about

00:43:09.720 that another time. Oh, he was the one who was the king during Mary Toft, giving birth to rabbits 0.96

00:43:16.220 scenario, if you want to just like match these Jenga pieces up in your mind. But the story doesn't

00:43:22.160 end here because Sarah Churchill was not willing to let go of her grudge, even though Anne was dead. 0.90

00:43:27.580 So Sarah lived for 30 more years after Anne had died and later published a memoir that basically trashed Anne as being a simpleton slash idiot and spilled lots of like, quote unquote, secrets that may or may not have been true.

00:43:41.560 But because everyone knew how close Sarah had been to the Queen, her word was taken as truth, and this affected Queen Anne's reputation for centuries to come. 0.69

00:43:50.180 Because conveniently, Sarah's description of Anne as this kind of useless and overly emotional woman fell neatly into that patriarchal stereotype of women being unsuited for leadership roles, which may also be why her story was accepted so readily.

00:44:03.840 but the third point of the the favorites sort of love triangle abigail masham left royal court

00:44:12.220 after anne's death and lived out the rest of her life in private so sarah churchill is the only

00:44:16.680 one who's just like clinging onto this whole thing and although anne's reign was relatively

00:44:21.160 short i don't know it was 12 years which is shorter than some longer than others she was

00:44:27.900 the sitting monarch during a number of hugely important political events such as england and

00:44:32.020 scotland uniting into europe's then largest free trade area she oversaw numerous successful battles

00:44:38.200 like she wasn't on the battlefield but a king wouldn't have been either actually sarah churchill's

00:44:43.700 husband lord marlborough led a lot of these battles but she was the queen while these battles happened

00:44:47.960 especially a lot of sea battles she was a noted patron of the arts and literature and was the

00:44:52.940 namesake for the well-known queen anne style of architecture and furniture um the timing of her

00:44:58.280 reign coincided with a time of a whole lot of colonization by english people in eastern north

00:45:04.260 america so a bunch of places were named after her including the american city of annapolis

00:45:08.980 the nova scotian annapolis royal and annapolis valley and fort anne as well as princess anne

00:45:15.040 street in fredericksburg virginia and queen square in bloomsbury london so it's time to go

00:45:22.840 through a scandalous scale for queen anne and this is an interesting one like in terms of like

00:45:27.660 women leaders and the men who whined about them like there was her reputation suffered a lot

00:45:32.560 and a lot of that was because of how sarah churchill whined about it frankly and it's

00:45:38.620 interesting too because of the whole religious the whole catholic versus protestant thing

00:45:42.520 that she was a woman which was not a lot of people's first choice but she was protestant

00:45:48.620 and that was preferred to a catholic same with sophia of hanover but we're going to go into the

00:45:55.680 scandalicious scale here and the first category is scandaliciousness and i think queen anne gets 1.00

00:46:03.860 a 10 for scandaliciousness just because she was super into um gossip the whole thing where she 1.00

00:46:10.560 like went to the spa on purpose potentially pretending to have had a miscarriage just so 0.89

00:46:14.760 she could like continue to spread rumors about her half-brother maybe having been switched at

00:46:20.440 birth um the whole i mean the sarah churchill screaming at her in front of other people

00:46:25.980 sarah churchill showing up with the like lesbian poems like just the whole the court at this time 1.00

00:46:32.580 seemed to have been quite scandalous and that was a lot of her you know what i'm gonna give her like 0.64

00:46:37.460 an maybe not 10 maybe like an 8 an 8 for scandalousness because there's like a lot of 0.98

00:46:43.560 juicy gossip type stuff going on but in terms of like comparing her to other people that we've done

00:46:47.780 on the show there has there's not like a there's no murder moment you know there's not that one

00:46:53.060 major scandal that really tips everything over but just her life she lived her life in a

00:46:57.060 scandalous sort of way that i respect scheminess um i'm gonna give her a nine for scheminess i 1.00

00:47:03.940 think because while we don't know a lot of the schemes that she got up to like the ones that 0.87

00:47:09.060 we do know about like again like spreading rumors about her half-brother being maybe

00:47:12.920 switched up earth the whole thing with like the fact that she knew that her sister was going to

00:47:18.080 invade and she didn't tell anybody um the way that she snuck away in the middle of the night

00:47:21.740 to keep sarah churchill from being fired like her scheminess is good and then also because we looked

00:47:26.880 at other people this way in terms of like how they ruled how they led like she they had a lot 0.99

00:47:32.140 she oversaw a lot of successful military campaigns which is sort of scheminess her significance 0.99

00:47:38.840 is a tricky one because well she for a long time was seen as quite insignificant she was queen for

00:47:47.500 12 years and during those 12 years a lot of stuff happened that was um helpful to england such as

00:47:55.500 the beginnings of great britain happening um a lot of military victories a lot of places were named

00:48:00.720 after her um so it's sort of like she was significant in a way like annapolis is like a

00:48:06.500 a lot of people have heard about even if people don't know who she was to the point when the movie

00:48:10.420 the favorite came out everybody started googling who is she and read my essay i'm gonna say

00:48:16.080 6.5 6.5 for significance and the final category is the sexism bonus and this is interesting 0.99

00:48:26.280 to consider because on the one hand if she had been um in a situation where women were more 0.99

00:48:33.100 respected um like she would have just been the heir and her father maybe wouldn't have gotten

00:48:38.060 married there wouldn't have been the whole jacobite rebellion and stuff but it's interesting

00:48:41.680 in a way like that her gender didn't super get in her way like she became the heir because there

00:48:47.780 was no one else to be the heir after william and mary and then she had i mean 17 pregnancies um

00:48:56.440 like a lot of health problems like a lot of and that was all related to her biology and stuff

00:49:02.260 if she hadn't been pregnant all those many times maybe she wouldn't have had health problems

00:49:06.480 i don't know i mean i can't give her less than a five for sexism but honestly and intriguingly i

00:49:13.120 don't think that was really one of the big challenges they got in her way so let me just

00:49:17.480 add this up we have 28.5 so where does that land her um next week when i do the finale for the

00:49:28.560 season i'm gonna post kind of all the scores so everybody else can see them because i always find

00:49:32.780 it interesting to see i always say and i mean it very genuinely like i'm not putting these women

00:49:37.260 against each other to say like who's cooler than the other who's better than the other but just

00:49:41.080 i'm scoring on four different things and where does everybody fall when you score them in this

00:49:45.780 way but 28.5 puts her in fifth place overall like in terms of scores she is shockingly 0.5

00:49:55.040 above cleopatra and so she's just below elizabeth bathory who has a 29 i feel like they sort of have

00:50:01.940 some some similarities there i'll post this whole list next week i think because it is interesting

00:50:06.920 to see where everybody goes but frankly um and maybe it's because this season we've been doing

00:50:11.220 women leaders which inherently means they're i guess more significant but the top three right 0.83

00:50:17.180 now so agrippina the younger has 31 empress matilda has 30 juana the first of castile is 30 and then

00:50:24.020 those are all from this season elizabeth bathory from season one is at 29 and then queen anne is

00:50:30.140 fifth place at 28.5 with cleopatra and lucy hay tied just below her at 28 anyway that is queen anne

00:50:38.320 of great britain there are a bunch of books okay sorry there's not a bunch of books there's literally

00:50:43.180 like two books um there's a book called queen anne the politics of passion by anne somerset

00:50:49.100 which gets into i think it's a great title the politics of passion because her her emotional

00:50:55.280 like her relationships with people are so it's such a significant part of her she also had a lot

00:50:59.680 of as they describe it here in the description of the book um personal misfortune just the death

00:51:05.660 that constantly surrounded her um just a lot of the health problems she had so yeah if she had

00:51:11.000 been i don't know i'm reconsidering like if she had been a man king with similar problems like i

00:51:16.140 don't think anyone would be like oh my god this poor man he had 17 pregnancies well i mean chances

00:51:22.060 are he wouldn't but like people don't look at her husband and saying like oh this poor man

00:51:25.700 his he fathered 17 failed pregnancies so no she's really judged harshly it's not like

00:51:32.640 it's like she was judged harshly in her time she's judged harshly in retrospect by people who say

00:51:39.220 like oh you know she was a woman she was emotional she had these like relationships with people she

00:51:44.780 all these pregnancy health problems in a way that men wouldn't be judged but to the point that it

00:51:50.520 sort of supersedes her what she actually did as a monarch which was lots of impressive stuff seeing

00:51:56.760 england through a pretty rocky time so there's that book queen anne the politics of passion by

00:52:01.420 anne somerset and there's also a book called um the favorite colon the life of sarah churchill

00:52:07.480 and the history behind the major motion picture so this is about sarah churchill slash anne is

00:52:13.760 another book um and i'll put all the links to that in the show notes i don't know is this is

00:52:19.600 i don't know i've never done this before but i think i'm gonna bump up her sexism bonus a little

00:52:23.620 bit because in her time she didn't face a lot of it but like afterwards she did i gave her a seven

00:52:29.500 for sexism and i feel like i'm gonna give her an eight for sexism which yes is going to increase

00:52:36.220 her score now she's at 29.5 because she i don't know everybody did it's not a contest um but the

00:52:44.560 people who are up here are she faced i don't know i feel i feel good about that just talking it

00:52:50.300 through so now she's fourth place agrippina the younger 31 empress matilda 30 juana the first of

00:52:56.580 castile at 30 queen anne the first 29.5 elizabeth bathry 29 these are all women on this list who

00:53:04.540 faced they all face sexism anyway that's kind of the theme of what we're looking at anyway this is

00:53:10.920 the vulgar history podcast my name is ann foster i'm just going to run through um the things that

00:53:16.980 i always say at the end just like little reminders for you for instance um if you want to find some

00:53:23.460 books to read some i think they're all historical non-fiction books um the ones that i recommend

00:53:30.940 the ones that i've been using for researching this podcast and other projects i'm working on

00:53:34.380 are all listed on my bookshop.org page so if you go to bookshop.org

00:53:39.940 slash lists slash vulgar history recommends with dashes between vulgar history recommends

00:53:45.660 you can find a list of these books about queen anne as well as other books about other women we've

00:53:49.860 been talking about and other books about just non-fiction books that i recommend bookshop.org

00:53:54.180 is a fantastic site um the money from there goes towards independent bookstores who need

00:53:59.100 so much support right now in this pandemic era um so i'm supporting them in this little way

00:54:06.760 that i can the link to that will be in the show notes as well i've got my little merch store so

00:54:11.720 if you go to teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history you can find t-shirts tote bags

00:54:18.260 mugs all different sorts of items that are all celebrating commemorating the women who we've

00:54:23.540 been looking at during this season um i've got one like a an item for each of the different women

00:54:29.420 so if there's somebody who's your fave there's somebody who you want to represent um i just put

00:54:33.260 out the juana of castile stuff which is just a portrait of her and it says like la reina like

00:54:39.220 the queen um it's pretty great the thing about the merch store is that i basically want to buy

00:54:44.040 everything from it for myself but maybe you'll like some of the stuff as well um and again that's

00:54:47.800 teespring there'll be an item there when this episode drops um for queen anne as well because

00:54:54.060 she's someone who is very much worth celebrating i think um if you're going to support me slash

00:55:00.460 this podcast my patreon is patreon.com slash anne foster writer the original essay that i wrote

00:55:06.160 about queen anne um which again because of this film and people seeing it and no one knowing who

00:55:11.060 she was i had it did amazing things for my website this film just people googling who is this person

00:55:17.020 and then reading my essay about it.

00:55:18.760 So you can find that essay

00:55:19.700 at annfosterwriter.com.

00:55:22.020 The podcast is also

00:55:23.060 on Instagram and Twitter.

00:55:24.980 And if you have thoughts

00:55:27.280 or comments or whatever,

00:55:28.880 you can email that

00:55:29.700 at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

00:55:32.980 And yes, this is,

00:55:34.440 there's going to be one more episode

00:55:35.360 in this season 1.00

00:55:36.360 of Women Leaders in History

00:55:37.760 and the Men Who Whined About Them

00:55:38.940 that'll be coming out next Wednesday.

00:55:41.300 In the meantime,

00:55:42.660 there's going to be some more

00:55:43.920 catch up on the bonus episodes,

00:55:45.360 the pandemic super specials.

00:55:47.020 and on the patreon i've been planning and there's more in the works um i have some patreon only

00:55:53.720 mini episodes that are called so this asshole looking at various men in history rereading

00:55:59.300 through all the stuff about queen anne i feel like her father james ii would be a suitable 0.88

00:56:06.680 subject for so this asshole so those are just on the patreon page as well um yeah so my name is

00:56:13.600 Dan Foster. This is the Vulgar History Podcast. I hope you're all doing well. I hope that these 0.95

00:56:19.480 gossipy stories of history are a fun distraction for everybody. And I'll talk to you all next time.

00:56:29.920 So you just heard my 2020 self list off a bunch of things, websites for merch stores,

00:56:35.880 things like that. That's out of date. Here's the more recent information. So actually,

00:56:41.300 first I want to say, so at the time I did this episode, I had not yet done like 200 others.

00:56:46.700 So where Queen Anne fits now with her score of 29.5. And if you do, if you're interested in

00:56:51.000 seeing the whole scandalous scale, it is on my website, vulgarhistory.com. There's a thing at

00:56:55.140 the top that says scores, and you can see the whole scale and link through to see what episode,

00:56:59.900 to listen to the episodes in question. But so where she is, Queen Anne, 29.5. Same score,

00:57:07.060 interestingly as her, again, not ancestor, but relative, Lady Jane Grey, also 29.5.

00:57:14.900 Claire Claremont, also a scandalous type person, often misunderstood, 29.5. Lady Catherine Grey,

00:57:23.720 Jane Grey's sister, the 29. Louisa May Alcott, 29. Hortense Mancini, a person who Anne might 0.89

00:57:29.660 have known because she was a mistress of her uncle, Hot Charles, has a 29. Hatshepsut,

00:57:36.720 a 29, great company, Elagabalus, the teen trans Roman emperor, 29, Mary Shelley, 29. We've got

00:57:45.360 a lot of 29s. Anyway, so that's the neighborhood Anne is in. And like, that's, you know how people

00:57:50.720 say it's like dream blunt rotation? That kind of is. Like Lady Jane Grey, Claire Claremont, Queen

00:57:56.920 Anne, Catherine Grey, Louisa May Alcott, Hortense Mancini, Hatchepset, Elagabalus, Mary Shelley,

00:58:01.940 Elizabeth Bathory, what a dinner party that would be. And so also I will let you know all the up-to-date

00:58:08.900 information about me and the show, et cetera, and everything that's going on. So in the intervening

00:58:14.980 five years since I recorded this episode the first time, you know, there's been many changes

00:58:22.080 in the world. There's been many changes in the internet and how things are done. And what I'm

00:58:27.380 doing lately is I have a mailing list, which is once a month, I will send you an email with all

00:58:32.240 of the Ann updates. So if you're like me and trying to divest from just like social media

00:58:36.840 and all the notifications of all the things, it's like, you can get like one email once a month

00:58:42.240 from me being like, hey, here's like four to five points of interest. That's it. It's not

00:58:46.920 overwhelming. You can read it at your own leisure. And the way that you subscribe to that mailing

00:58:51.100 list is go to vulgarhistory.com slash news. And you can join the waiting list, not the waiting

00:58:57.740 list, the mailing list. They come out about mid month usually. And in there I'll have like the

00:59:03.700 latest updates about, and the updates are getting fast and furious, too fast, too furious, these

00:59:09.340 updates, because the book comes out in a year. Rebel of the Regency, the scandalous saga of

00:59:15.400 Carolina Brunswick, Britain's Uncrowned Queen. And lots of stuff coming up, lots of updates there.

00:59:20.340 So I put those in the newsletter. I also mentioned the latest information about in-person events,

00:59:24.780 Toronto. I haven't yet announced that yet, but like I'm looking at you, Toronto.

00:59:31.740 Highlights from what the podcast has been doing. Um, and also my own personal book and movie and

00:59:36.600 TV show and podcast recommendations. So again, sign up for that. The most low key, no stress

00:59:42.180 way to get information from me at your own pace. Vulgarhistory.com slash news is how you sign up

00:59:48.200 from my mailing list. You can also follow me on Substack at vulgarhistory.substack.com.

00:59:53.380 Every other week, I post essays about women from history. So if you want to keep Women's History 0.65

00:59:57.860 Month vibes going, even not in the month of March, you can get all that content there.

01:00:03.820 You can also follow me on Patreon at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter. And that is where, again,

01:00:10.540 I'm posting more stuff there because of social media is unpredictable. People can be mean.

01:00:17.220 algorithms make you not see stuff from people you're following so this is where like if you 0.98

01:00:22.120 literally want to follow what i'm talking about that's where i'm posting my shit patreon.com

01:00:27.020 and foster writer you can follow for free there get a free membership and you'll see just kind 0.59

01:00:31.400 of the stuff i post there just like updates about the book and like links about things

01:00:34.840 that are interesting and just like there's chats there like that's where it's happening

01:00:38.880 and then if you want to also financially help me out a little bit there too and get a little

01:00:44.840 more content. If you pledge $1 or more a month, you get early ad-free access to all episodes of

01:00:50.400 Vulgar History. And you don't have to like go on Patreon to listen to the episodes. You can like

01:00:54.520 sync it to wherever you get your podcasts from, Amazon Music or Spotify or Apple Podcasts or

01:01:01.200 whatever. You can do that. If you pledge $5 or more a month, you get access to bonus episodes

01:01:06.060 of Vulgar Peace Theater where we have not... What we do on that show, which we haven't recorded for

01:01:10.100 a while because I've been writing a book. Alison Epstein, my other co-host, has been writing a

01:01:14.260 book let letterwood johnson guess what writing a book we're we haven't been able to do it but we

01:01:19.260 will again soon and we have not yet done an episode about the favorite but maybe we will

01:01:24.140 now the queen anne is fresh in our minds again so anyway five dollars a month you get the bonus

01:01:31.780 episodes and also if you join the patreon at five dollars or more a month you can also join our

01:01:36.440 discord which is just like a giant group chat where we're all just like emotionally supporting

01:01:40.420 each other, wishing each other a happy birthday, sharing pictures of our pets, talking about

01:01:45.560 Survivor, just like having a nice time. We also are partnered with Common Era Jewelry. I'm excited

01:01:52.600 whenever there's like a specific overlap in what Common Era Jewelry has in their designs and the

01:01:57.300 person we're talking about today. I will say Queen Anne was briefly famous around the time of the

01:02:03.640 2019 Oscars when the favorite won some Oscars, but most people have forgotten about her by now.

01:02:08.900 there is not a necklace with her face on it from common era jewelry but common era jewelry does

01:02:13.860 have necklaces with various other people's faces on um hatshepsut who i mentioned being one of them

01:02:19.700 so this is a woman-owned business that it's a small business the pieces are made in new york

01:02:26.060 city everyone involved is health care and good wages it's a company that i feel good about being

01:02:31.000 partnered with and they have their latest collection which is zodiac jewelry inspired

01:02:36.560 by a 17th century alchemical manuscript these pieces are gorgeous and also kind of weird

01:02:42.040 like weird in a good way kind of like conversation starters type things more than adornment these

01:02:47.920 pieces are modern talismans symbols of connection intention and the timeless magic of the stars

01:02:52.600 you can get common eras they make beautiful pendants and also rings and you can get their

01:02:57.140 pieces in solid gold as well as a more affordable gold vermeil the gold vermeil zodiac stuff is like

01:03:03.480 on a waitlist at this point,

01:03:05.200 but join the waitlist

01:03:05.960 so you know when it's available.

01:03:07.700 And then when you're buying it

01:03:08.960 or anything from Common Era,

01:03:10.480 Vulgar History listeners

01:03:11.320 always get 15% off everything

01:03:13.300 from Common Era

01:03:14.560 by going to commonera.com slash vulgar

01:03:16.900 or using code vulgar at checkout.

01:03:19.740 If you want to rep your favorite podcast,

01:03:22.380 if this is your favorite podcast

01:03:24.260 and you want to rep your favorite podcast,

01:03:26.300 I'm your favorite podcast's favorite podcast.

01:03:28.820 Go to vulgarhistory.com slash store.

01:03:31.300 If you're in the US,

01:03:32.440 that's where you can get.

01:03:33.480 some stuff. Or if you're outside the US, you can shop from our Redbubble store,

01:03:37.240 which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com. Get in touch with me. There's a form at vulgarhistory.com.

01:03:43.920 It just says there, like when you go to vulgarhistory.com to see the scandalousness

01:03:47.600 scale, click on scores and see those. And then click on contact me if you want to contact me

01:03:52.060 for some reason. And I am, I keep saying like I'm trying to divest from social media, but I'm still

01:03:58.000 on social media. I'm just trying to diversify what I'm doing. Anyway, I'm on various social

01:04:04.320 media places like Blue Sky, Instagram, and Threads. At Vulgar History Pod, you can DM me

01:04:08.960 on Instagram as well. Next week, we're going to be having another blast from the past with some

01:04:14.640 new connotations. And a week after that, guess what we're going to be doing? Diving back into

01:04:20.160 the French Revolution. So I'm here every week with an episode for you. I love to hang out with you

01:04:26.900 in your ear holes and I'll talk to you all oh keep your pants on and your tits out talk to you all 1.00

01:04:34.900 next week when it will no longer be women's history month but we carry it with us in our 1.00

01:04:39.800 hearts always on this podcast vulgar history is researched written and hosted by ann foster

01:04:46.940 that's me the editor is christina lumagi theme music is by the severn duo the vulgar history

01:04:53.900 show image is by deborah wong transcripts are written by avilene malik find transcripts of

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Vulgar History - March 26, 2025

Women Leaders, part 8： Queen Anne： Bisexual Icon (Rerelease)

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Transcript