Speaking of Elizaveta's coup, I hit that part in Horowski last night, and it's worth sharing.
1730s: Anna Ivanovna is Czarina of Russia. (She and her court are thus the ones Suhm is pumping for money from Fritz. Also the one that Algarotti briefly visits in his eternal quest for a job.)
1740: She's dying. Her heir apparent is Anna Leopoldovna, her niece. But because Peter the Great made it so that each Czar gets to name his or her heir, Anna Leopoldovna's succession is not a given. Court intrigue leads the dying Czarina to name Anna Leopoldovna's son Ivan as heir instead. Unfortunately...
1740, August 23: Ivan is born.
1740, October 28: Anna Ivanovna dies. Meaning the new Czar is all of 2 months and 5 days old. Regency time!
1741: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI's mother, is regent.
1741, December: Elizaveta stages a coup that apparently involves walking through the palace asking all the guards she meets if they know who her father (Peter the Great) was, and they all swear to die for her. Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, Anna's husband, and the other kids are all taken prisoner in their sleep. Bloodless coup!
Now, one thing Elizaveta is famous for is not having executed a single person during her reign. So this bloodless coup consists of locking up Ivan VI, his parents, and his siblings...for the rest of their lives.
1742: HolsteinPete becomes (P)RussianPete, heir to his childless aunt Elizaveta.
1744: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, and the rest of the family have been hanging out in prison in the Baltic, in Riga, under guard for the last couple of years. This year, Elizaveta gives her minions until February 11 to get the imprisoned royal family out of Riga. They're removed on the last day of the deadline. On February 12, AnhaltSophie arrives in town, on her way to St. Petersburg to become RomKat, wife of (P)RussianPete.
1744: Fritz writes to Elizaveta that she seriously needs to relocate the Ivan VI family to the most remote corner of the earth, until Europe finally forgets about them.
She does. They get moved to the red dot (Khomolgory):
The original plan is actually to put them on the yellow dot (Solovetsky), an island off the north coast of Russia, in the White Sea, which freezes solid 6 months out of the year. But they don't make it in time, and they have to winter over at Khomologory. That makes Elizaveta realize that if she moves them to the frozen island, she won't be able to get regular reports from her minions. So she leaves them at Khomologory, nearly as remote and frozen and impossible to escape from, but where her messengers can come and go year round.
Ivan is locked in a single room with no visitors for his entire life. The rest of the family gets to live in an apartment, together, with a few servants, and have a vegetable garden and go for occasional supervised walks, at least. Ivan is eventually moved somewhere closer to St. Petersburg, when word gets out about where he's being kept. The rest of his family remains where it was. Elizaveta goes to get a look at Ivan shortly after his arrival in the new fortress.
1746: Anna Leopoldovna dies in this prison.
1764: At 23 years old, Ivan VI is killed, shortly after Catherine the Great stages *her* coup (she doesn't want any rivals either). Remember, he's been in prison since he was 1 year old, and in solitary confinement since he was about 3. Once Ivan VI is dead, Dad is offered permission to leave Russia forever, but he refuses to leave his kids. Mom's long dead.
1774: Dad dies.
1780: The surviving siblings of Ivan VI, who've never known anything except prison, get released to house arrest in Denmark for the rest of their lives. It is super difficult for them to interact with people outside their immediate family, since they have absolutely no experience with it. The end.
Now, the basic outlines of this I had already known from "Ekaterina", which gives Ivan VI some memorable screentime in the first season. But what I didn't know, and thanks to Horowski excelling at pointing out connections, I now know, is...
Ivan VI's dad in this story? Who gets locked away in a remote part of Russia just for being married to a Russian royal and landing on the wrong side of a coup? Is EC's older brother, Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick.
In fact, he and EC were only one year apart in age. See, I knew one of EC's siblings had married into the Russian royal family around this time, but I didn't know it was the one who'd gotten locked up for being the father of Ivan VI, and I certainly didn't know Fritz had advised locking him up in the most remote part of the world forever.
And you thought the condolence letter about EC's brother Albert after Soor was bad!
It also gives new meaning to EC's letter to her brother Ferdinand when Fritz and SD and the siblings are all having excursions without the Brunswick wives, in which she writes, in March 1744, "I remain stuck in this old château like a prisoner, while the others have fun." In March 1744, their brother Anton Ulrich was on his way to Khomolgory.
:/
Have some screenshots from "Ekaterina". These are fictionalized, in that Elizaveta did not visit Anton Ulrich and the rest of the family (too far away), and in that, when she visited Ivan, he was a teenager, but I thought it worked pretty well as fiction.
Anton Ulrich on his knees directly in front of Elizaveta, the non-Ivan kids surrounding him, the new baby in the nurse's arms, Mom isn't here because she's just died (she did in fact die after giving birth):
Elizaveta being shown to Anna Leopoldovna's grave (very difficult to get a good shot because of all the leafless shrubbery):
Ivan VI, in his prison cell of solitary confinement, reaching out to touch Elizaveta's hand:
Catherine visiting now adult Ivan VI in solitary confinement, shortly before she orders his execution:
See, I knew one of EC's siblings had married into the Russian royal family around this time, but I didn't know it was the one who'd gotten locked up for being the father of Ivan VI,
Ahem. Ahem.
"Eh, she's going to give in any moment now," Georgii said, referring to the earlier question about Maria Theresia. "What else is there left for her? It's not like her man is any good on the field, or he'd faced us by now instead of hiding behind her skirts back in Vienna. No spine, that one, and that means she doesn't have it, either. In Russia, everyone was scared as hell of the last Czarina, because of that son of a bitch, her lover Biron. The new one is just married to a wet blanket, like the Habsburg girl, so she doesn't have any authority."
"That would be the King's brother-in-law we're talking about?" Fredersdorf enquired mildly, referring to the Regent Anna Leopoldovna's husband. It was also a test. Georgii shrugged and smiled disarmingly, evidently not discomforted.
" No one can help his in-laws, and it's not like the King cares about the Queen, right?
(I did read that chapter of Horowski, too.) It is an incredibly tragic story, That Anton Ulrich, when finally given the chance to go, refused because he didn't want to leave his kids struck me as yet another proof that EC's siblings come across as quietly heroic (or not quietly but competently heroic in Ferdinand's case). Let's hope she never found out about Fritz' advice.
I know, that's why I remembered one of her siblings had married into the Russian royal family! But I did not make the connection with "Dad stranded in remote Russia" from "Ekaterina". I knew the parts but hadn't connected the dots.
That Anton Ulrich, when finally given the chance to go, refused because he didn't want to leave his kids struck me as yet another proof that EC's siblings come across as quietly heroic
That interpretation had occurred to me as well. The other possibility is that we don't know how being in prison affected him psychologically: he might not have felt up to building a new life. Could be a little of both.
Let's hope she never found out about Fritz' advice.
I like how we're constantly going, "Let's hope so-and-so never found out that Fritz said X." Fritz! :P
Incidentally, I can think of a reason for him giving that advice in the first place that’s connected to my other Yuletide tale. Because I recall his frequent complaints about how Ulrike’s plans and actions will surely end up with the Swedish royal family in exile on his doorstep and him having to not just take them in but probably at least make a gesture towards restoring them (which would go against his treaty with Catherine about protecting the Swedish constitution).
Well, I’m pretty sure all the Hohenzollern/Brunswick marriages came with treaties and promises of mutual military assistance, and I seem to recall Fritz bitching every time it looked like Ferdinand of Braunschweig wasn’t at once at his beck and call as a a general. Didn’t the Ziebura book on the wives mention EC having to write some letters on the subject, or am I misremembering? Anyway, my point is: if Anton Ulrich and his children, with or without Ivan, had managed to escape Russia to, say, neighbouring Prussia (hello there, Königsberg, first stop for deposed monarchs!), Fritz would have likely been obliged not only to take them in but, if Anton Ulrich’s older brother, Charlotte’s husband as the reigning Duke of Braunschweig had demanded it, provide military assistance against Russia. => Fritz telling Elizaveta to look them out of sight and out of mind. At least imo.
For comparison, see also Marie Antoinette’s Habsburg relations. Joseph tried to help her, but he died before things in France got really terrible for her, and Leopold dragged his feet as much as he could, saying that while he had a sister, Austria did not. Austria did end up going to war against France (as part of an overall HRE effort) later, - resulting in the defeat at the hands of Revolutionary France which no one had seen coming - , but that was when Leopold’s son Franz was already Emperor and after Marie Antoinette had been executed. I also seem to recall Axel von Fersen complaining that the Austrians were no help at all in his efforts to save the royal family.
Conclusion: if you are a deposed Royal, you better not count on your family coming to your aide, and you’re lucky if they don’t advise your rivals to send you to the backend of nowhere instead.
Fritz would have likely been obliged not only to take them in but, if Anton Ulrich’s older brother, Charlotte’s husband as the reigning Duke of Braunschweig had demanded it, provide military assistance against Russia. => Fritz telling Elizaveta to look them out of sight and out of mind.
wooow. That is... frighteningly plausible and IC. (Even before I read that Leopold was also not too keen on helping Marie Antoinette, though at least I guess he didn't advise Revolutionary France...)
No, that was Philippe d'Orleans. (Neither the gay brother of the Sun King nor his son the Regent, but the Regent's son (or grandson? Not 100% sure) who renamed himself Philipe l'Egalité and actually voted for Louis XVI. execution in the National Convent. Not that it saved him from the same fate in the long term.)
Great-grandson. The son, as I recall, was the one who became not only extremely pious and retreated from society, but decided to invent his own religion. In which, among other things, he denied the existence of death. When he wanted to talk to someone and was told they were dead, he refused to believe it and insisted it was a conspiracy to keep him from seeing them.
Somebody who knew how to manage him, once got him to sign paperwork instead of throwing a fit about it, by explaining that the word for "late" in whichever language it was didn't mean "dead", but was an honorary title given to all kings of Spain, an explanation which he accepted.
According to one of Horowski's wittiest remarks, he eventually "died, in refutation of his own pet theory." God, I love Horowski.
Only slightly less deranged but far more harmful was the Duc de Mazarin, husband of Hortense Mancini, niece of the Cardinal Mazarin. Fanatically religious, the Duke is famous for having knocked off all the penises from his family's statue collection (this story rings a faint bell, though I couldn't have told you who the guilty party was), and somewhat less famous for having forbidden the milkmaids on his estates from milking cows, lest they get ideas from handling udders aka cow-breasts, and according to Horowski, being narrowly talked out of having his daughters' teeth pulled to make them less attractive, to reduce the chances of them having affairs; according to Wikipedia, actually knocked out his maidservants' teeth for the same reason.
I'm like, look, dude, just because you're not getting any and therefore find cows disturbingly attractive, doesn't mean we all do! :P Also, leave women's teeth alone, ffs.
explaining that the word for "late" in whichever language it was didn't mean "dead", but was an honorary title given to all kings of Spain, an explanation which he accepted.
Bwahahaha that's kind of brilliant.
he eventually "died, in refutation of his own pet theory."
HEE. Okay, I am really liking Horowski too by proxy :)
The cow thing, I am just... that... doesn't even make crazy sense?? The maids have their own breasts, why would handling cow breasts make any difference whatsoever... On second thought, probably a good thing no one told the Duke that, he'd probably have tried to cut off their breasts.
Sigh. Images broken (they never did work on my phone for some reason, but are now not working on my computer either), but seem to be working on Rheinsberg.
Anyway, after finishing the Horowski chapter, I hit another part of the story I needed to report because ANGST.
Ivan siblings: Dear Catherine, we have no intention of escaping. We accept our fate. But there's a big fence around our prison, and we're told that on the other side of it is a meadow, where flowers grow in summer. We've never seen flowers in a meadow. We were born in prison, and have never known anything but prison for 30 years. Can we go walking in the meadow sometimes? We promise not to try to escape. We hear great things about flowers from our servants and guards!
Catherine: This sounds like an escape attempt. NO.
Catherine: *finally has grandkids*
Catherine: Okay, potential claimants to the throne. I'm feeling pretty good about the security of my family's succession. You can leave your prison and go live in house arrest in Denmark.
Siblings: *are 30-40 years old*
Siblings: If you had let us go when we were younger, we would have liked that. But our parents are dead, we only have each other, we literally know no other world than this prison, and we've gotten used to it here. Also, we don't speak a word of Danish. Nothing about this leaving plan sounds better than staying. So if you're loosening up...could you maybe let us stay here instead, with permission to walk in the meadow sometimes and see the flowers?
Catherine: Nonsense. Off to Denmark with you.
OMGGGGG. Hopefully they got to see flowers growing in Denmark while under house arrest, but seriously. :(
What? It's still not working for me here (different links), but it went from not working in incognito mode or on my phone in Rheinsberg to working in both places!
Hmm. Okay, it's working in Chrome but not Firefox. What browser are you on?
ETA: Okay, now it's not working in either browser. Omg, I give up. I'm going to find something other than Google Photos to host. Stay tuned...
Son of ETA: Okay, I see what's happening. The Google album archive url changes constantly, so it only works temporarily. I guess the url that doesn't embed for me is the only one that's actually permanent. Argh.
If someone wants to do a really depressing anthology, children of royal families finding themselves on the wrong side of a power struggle make a good subject. EC's brother and his kinds remind me in this regard of the grandkids of the other Friedrich II. of interest, the medieval Emperor, stupor mundi, who died undefeated but in the middle of yet another power struggle with the papacy. In the subsequent years, most of his sons died, and after the defeat and death of his son Manfred by by the Pope-backed Charles d'Anjou, Manfred's children, Frederick's grandchildren, were locked up under barbaric conditions in, for extra sadism, Frederick's favourite residence, the Castel del Monte in Apulia. To quote wiki: (Manfred's wife )Helena and all her children were captured by Charles of Anjou after Manfred's death in 1266. Helena died in prison in Nocera in 1271. Her three sons with Manfred – the oldest only four years old at the time – were imprisoned in the Castel del Monte until 1299, when Charles II had them unchained and moved to the Castel dell'Ovo. Their living conditions were exceptionally miserable compared to the norm for noble prisoners. Kept in darkness, in heavy chains and with barely enough food to survive they became "blind and half-mad". The stress of the move proved too much for Azzolino, who died soon after (in 1301). Henry survived another eighteen years, dying aged fifty-four on 31 October, 1318, "half-starved, half-mad and probably blind".
Then there are the children of the last two Welsh princes of Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffud and his brother Davydd ap Gruffud. After Llywelyn ap Gruffud died and Edward I. had captured Davydd, he invented the punishment of "hanged, drawn and quartered" for Davydd, put Llywelyn's sole daughter and Davydd's daughters who were all small children into nunneries (where they remained for the rest of their lives, but not even the same nunnery, no, they were all separated), and Davydd's sons, also children, were imprisoned in Bristol Castle for their remaining lives. Davydd's widow Elizabeth was not allowed to see any of her children ever again. And Edward made his own son (future Edward II) the first English Prince of Wales to express how thoroughly he had defeated the Welsh. (I could be wrong, but I think Charles, the current Prince of Wales, is the first one to bother learning the Welsh language and show an interest in the culture.)
Moving on a few centuries, following the big who-killed-the-Princes-in-the-Tower debate, there's the not mysterious at all fate of their cousin, the late George of Clarence's son, who was also a child when Richard III died, another Edward by name (and Richard's heir after the death of Richard's own son). Henry (VII) Tudor had little Edward locked up in the Tower until he was an adult and then had him executed under a pretext. (Conspiring with rebels, which is tricky to do if you're locked up in a cell.) Edward's sister Margaret otoh was allowed to live, got married, lived in fact for decades, but the Tudors got her anyway - she sided with Katherine of Aragon in the big Henry VIII divorce struggle, and later Henry accused her of plotting against him thereafter, and Margaret's execution has the dubious honor of being one of the bloodiest and most botched, with her struggling against it - I think the stories differ between seven and eleven (!) strokes with the axe being necessary.
In conclusion: sometimes, one almost believes the kids who were killed instantly were the lucky ones...
Louis XVII. Even if many of the most graphic accounts of his abuse in prison have to be taken with a grain of salt called "post-restoration royalist bias", after being imprisoned, then separated from his family, having his mother (Marie Antoinette) accused of sexually abusing him, and his parents being executed, he apparently refused to speak in the last months of his life. Supposedly out of protest at how his mother was treated but if you ask me, likely out of trauma. Then died at age 10, still in prison. Still better off than Ivan VI, but sucks to be any of them.
Ugh! Yeah, I am thinking the kids who were killed instantly were the lucky ones :P It's one thing (although still awful) to do it to an adult, and another thing entirely to do this to kids, and their whole lives :(
Also, seven and eleven strokes with the axe?? I am really really hoping she lost consciousness early on and those were autonomic struggles, omg.
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timeasmymeasure
Ivan VI
Date: 2021-01-31 06:09 pm (UTC)1730s: Anna Ivanovna is Czarina of Russia. (She and her court are thus the ones Suhm is pumping for money from Fritz. Also the one that Algarotti briefly visits in his eternal quest for a job.)
1740: She's dying. Her heir apparent is Anna Leopoldovna, her niece. But because Peter the Great made it so that each Czar gets to name his or her heir, Anna Leopoldovna's succession is not a given. Court intrigue leads the dying Czarina to name Anna Leopoldovna's son Ivan as heir instead. Unfortunately...
1740, August 23: Ivan is born.
1740, October 28: Anna Ivanovna dies. Meaning the new Czar is all of 2 months and 5 days old. Regency time!
1741: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI's mother, is regent.
1741, December: Elizaveta stages a coup that apparently involves walking through the palace asking all the guards she meets if they know who her father (Peter the Great) was, and they all swear to die for her. Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, Anna's husband, and the other kids are all taken prisoner in their sleep. Bloodless coup!
Now, one thing Elizaveta is famous for is not having executed a single person during her reign. So this bloodless coup consists of locking up Ivan VI, his parents, and his siblings...for the rest of their lives.
1742: HolsteinPete becomes (P)RussianPete, heir to his childless aunt Elizaveta.
1744: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, and the rest of the family have been hanging out in prison in the Baltic, in Riga, under guard for the last couple of years. This year, Elizaveta gives her minions until February 11 to get the imprisoned royal family out of Riga. They're removed on the last day of the deadline. On February 12, AnhaltSophie arrives in town, on her way to St. Petersburg to become RomKat, wife of (P)RussianPete.
1744: Fritz writes to Elizaveta that she seriously needs to relocate the Ivan VI family to the most remote corner of the earth, until Europe finally forgets about them.
She does. They get moved to the red dot (Khomolgory):
The original plan is actually to put them on the yellow dot (Solovetsky), an island off the north coast of Russia, in the White Sea, which freezes solid 6 months out of the year. But they don't make it in time, and they have to winter over at Khomologory. That makes Elizaveta realize that if she moves them to the frozen island, she won't be able to get regular reports from her minions. So she leaves them at Khomologory, nearly as remote and frozen and impossible to escape from, but where her messengers can come and go year round.
Ivan is locked in a single room with no visitors for his entire life. The rest of the family gets to live in an apartment, together, with a few servants, and have a vegetable garden and go for occasional supervised walks, at least. Ivan is eventually moved somewhere closer to St. Petersburg, when word gets out about where he's being kept. The rest of his family remains where it was. Elizaveta goes to get a look at Ivan shortly after his arrival in the new fortress.
1746: Anna Leopoldovna dies in this prison.
1764: At 23 years old, Ivan VI is killed, shortly after Catherine the Great stages *her* coup (she doesn't want any rivals either). Remember, he's been in prison since he was 1 year old, and in solitary confinement since he was about 3. Once Ivan VI is dead, Dad is offered permission to leave Russia forever, but he refuses to leave his kids. Mom's long dead.
1774: Dad dies.
1780: The surviving siblings of Ivan VI, who've never known anything except prison, get released to house arrest in Denmark for the rest of their lives. It is super difficult for them to interact with people outside their immediate family, since they have absolutely no experience with it. The end.
Now, the basic outlines of this I had already known from "Ekaterina", which gives Ivan VI some memorable screentime in the first season. But what I didn't know, and thanks to Horowski excelling at pointing out connections, I now know, is...
Ivan VI's dad in this story? Who gets locked away in a remote part of Russia just for being married to a Russian royal and landing on the wrong side of a coup? Is EC's older brother, Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick.
In fact, he and EC were only one year apart in age. See, I knew one of EC's siblings had married into the Russian royal family around this time, but I didn't know it was the one who'd gotten locked up for being the father of Ivan VI, and I certainly didn't know Fritz had advised locking him up in the most remote part of the world forever.
And you thought the condolence letter about EC's brother Albert after Soor was bad!
It also gives new meaning to EC's letter to her brother Ferdinand when Fritz and SD and the siblings are all having excursions without the Brunswick wives, in which she writes, in March 1744, "I remain stuck in this old château like a prisoner, while the others have fun." In March 1744, their brother Anton Ulrich was on his way to Khomolgory.
:/
Have some screenshots from "Ekaterina". These are fictionalized, in that Elizaveta did not visit Anton Ulrich and the rest of the family (too far away), and in that, when she visited Ivan, he was a teenager, but I thought it worked pretty well as fiction.
Anton Ulrich on his knees directly in front of Elizaveta, the non-Ivan kids surrounding him, the new baby in the nurse's arms, Mom isn't here because she's just died (she did in fact die after giving birth):
Elizaveta being shown to Anna Leopoldovna's grave (very difficult to get a good shot because of all the leafless shrubbery):
Ivan VI, in his prison cell of solitary confinement, reaching out to touch Elizaveta's hand:
Catherine visiting now adult Ivan VI in solitary confinement, shortly before she orders his execution:
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-01-31 06:23 pm (UTC)See, I knew one of EC's siblings had married into the Russian royal family around this time, but I didn't know it was the one who'd gotten locked up for being the father of Ivan VI,
Ahem. Ahem.
"Eh, she's going to give in any moment now," Georgii said, referring to the earlier question about Maria Theresia. "What else is there left for her? It's not like her man is any good on the field, or he'd faced us by now instead of hiding behind her skirts back in Vienna. No spine, that one, and that means she doesn't have it, either. In Russia, everyone was scared as hell of the last Czarina, because of that son of a bitch, her lover Biron. The new one is just married to a wet blanket, like the Habsburg girl, so she doesn't have any authority."
"That would be the King's brother-in-law we're talking about?" Fredersdorf enquired mildly, referring to the Regent Anna Leopoldovna's husband. It was also a test. Georgii shrugged and smiled disarmingly, evidently not discomforted.
" No one can help his in-laws, and it's not like the King cares about the Queen, right?
(I did read that chapter of Horowski, too.) It is an incredibly tragic story, That Anton Ulrich, when finally given the chance to go, refused because he didn't want to leave his kids struck me as yet another proof that EC's siblings come across as quietly heroic (or not quietly but competently heroic in Ferdinand's case). Let's hope she never found out about Fritz' advice.
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-01-31 06:34 pm (UTC)That Anton Ulrich, when finally given the chance to go, refused because he didn't want to leave his kids struck me as yet another proof that EC's siblings come across as quietly heroic
That interpretation had occurred to me as well. The other possibility is that we don't know how being in prison affected him psychologically: he might not have felt up to building a new life. Could be a little of both.
Let's hope she never found out about Fritz' advice.
I like how we're constantly going, "Let's hope so-and-so never found out that Fritz said X." Fritz! :P
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-01 05:09 am (UTC)Well, I’m pretty sure all the Hohenzollern/Brunswick marriages came with treaties and promises of mutual military assistance, and I seem to recall Fritz bitching every time it looked like Ferdinand of Braunschweig wasn’t at once at his beck and call as a a general. Didn’t the Ziebura book on the wives mention EC having to write some letters on the subject, or am I misremembering? Anyway, my point is: if Anton Ulrich and his children, with or without Ivan, had managed to escape Russia to, say, neighbouring Prussia (hello there, Königsberg, first stop for deposed monarchs!), Fritz would have likely been obliged not only to take them in but, if Anton Ulrich’s older brother, Charlotte’s husband as the reigning Duke of Braunschweig had demanded it, provide military assistance against Russia.
=> Fritz telling Elizaveta to look them out of sight and out of mind. At least imo.
For comparison, see also Marie Antoinette’s Habsburg relations. Joseph tried to help her, but he died before things in France got really terrible for her, and Leopold dragged his feet as much as he could, saying that while he had a sister, Austria did not. Austria did end up going to war against France (as part of an overall HRE effort) later, - resulting in the defeat at the hands of Revolutionary France which no one had seen coming - , but that was when Leopold’s son Franz was already Emperor and after Marie Antoinette had been executed. I also seem to recall Axel von Fersen complaining that the Austrians were no help at all in his efforts to save the royal family.
Conclusion: if you are a deposed Royal, you better not count on your family coming to your aide, and you’re lucky if they don’t advise your rivals to send you to the backend of nowhere instead.
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:23 am (UTC)=> Fritz telling Elizaveta to look them out of sight and out of mind.
wooow. That is... frighteningly plausible and IC. (Even before I read that Leopold was also not too keen on helping Marie Antoinette, though at least I guess he didn't advise Revolutionary France...)
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 05:27 pm (UTC)Crazy d'Orleans and Mazarin heirs
Date: 2021-02-13 05:50 pm (UTC)Great-grandson. The son, as I recall, was the one who became not only extremely pious and retreated from society, but decided to invent his own religion. In which, among other things, he denied the existence of death. When he wanted to talk to someone and was told they were dead, he refused to believe it and insisted it was a conspiracy to keep him from seeing them.
Somebody who knew how to manage him, once got him to sign paperwork instead of throwing a fit about it, by explaining that the word for "late" in whichever language it was didn't mean "dead", but was an honorary title given to all kings of Spain, an explanation which he accepted.
According to one of Horowski's wittiest remarks, he eventually "died, in refutation of his own pet theory." God, I love Horowski.
Only slightly less deranged but far more harmful was the Duc de Mazarin, husband of Hortense Mancini, niece of the Cardinal Mazarin. Fanatically religious, the Duke is famous for having knocked off all the penises from his family's statue collection (this story rings a faint bell, though I couldn't have told you who the guilty party was), and somewhat less famous for having forbidden the milkmaids on his estates from milking cows, lest they get ideas from handling udders aka cow-breasts, and according to Horowski, being narrowly talked out of having his daughters' teeth pulled to make them less attractive, to reduce the chances of them having affairs; according to Wikipedia, actually knocked out his maidservants' teeth for the same reason.
I'm like, look, dude, just because you're not getting any and therefore find cows disturbingly attractive, doesn't mean we all do! :P Also, leave women's teeth alone, ffs.
Re: Crazy d'Orleans and Mazarin heirs
Date: 2021-02-13 06:09 pm (UTC)Bwahahaha that's kind of brilliant.
he eventually "died, in refutation of his own pet theory."
HEE. Okay, I am really liking Horowski too by proxy :)
The cow thing, I am just... that... doesn't even make crazy sense?? The maids have their own breasts, why would handling cow breasts make any difference whatsoever... On second thought, probably a good thing no one told the Duke that, he'd probably have tried to cut off their breasts.
Re: Crazy d'Orleans and Mazarin heirs
Date: 2021-02-13 06:12 pm (UTC)That's what I thought!
The cow thing, I am just... that... doesn't even make crazy sense??
It does if you're into cows! :P I mean...that's the only explanation I've got. (ETA: See also this guy I knew.)
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-06 06:24 pm (UTC)Anyway, after finishing the Horowski chapter, I hit another part of the story I needed to report because ANGST.
Ivan siblings: Dear Catherine, we have no intention of escaping. We accept our fate. But there's a big fence around our prison, and we're told that on the other side of it is a meadow, where flowers grow in summer. We've never seen flowers in a meadow. We were born in prison, and have never known anything but prison for 30 years. Can we go walking in the meadow sometimes? We promise not to try to escape. We hear great things about flowers from our servants and guards!
Catherine: This sounds like an escape attempt. NO.
Catherine: *finally has grandkids*
Catherine: Okay, potential claimants to the throne. I'm feeling pretty good about the security of my family's succession. You can leave your prison and go live in house arrest in Denmark.
Siblings: *are 30-40 years old*
Siblings: If you had let us go when we were younger, we would have liked that. But our parents are dead, we only have each other, we literally know no other world than this prison, and we've gotten used to it here. Also, we don't speak a word of Danish. Nothing about this leaving plan sounds better than staying. So if you're loosening up...could you maybe let us stay here instead, with permission to walk in the meadow sometimes and see the flowers?
Catherine: Nonsense. Off to Denmark with you.
OMGGGGG. Hopefully they got to see flowers growing in Denmark while under house arrest, but seriously. :(
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:24 am (UTC)CATHERINE! omg! :(
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 01:58 pm (UTC)Okay, are they working now? It appears I had the same problem with my latest blog post too. :/ Embedded images have been my nemesis lately.
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 05:01 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 05:04 pm (UTC)I think it was a permissions problem, which hopefully I've now solved. Cahn can confirm when she's awake and has time.
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:02 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:06 pm (UTC)Hmm. Okay, it's working in Chrome but not Firefox. What browser are you on?
ETA: Okay, now it's not working in either browser. Omg, I give up. I'm going to find something other than Google Photos to host. Stay tuned...
Son of ETA: Okay, I see what's happening. The Google album archive url changes constantly, so it only works temporarily. I guess the url that doesn't embed for me is the only one that's actually permanent. Argh.
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 09:51 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
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Date: 2021-02-13 06:14 am (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 02:08 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 05:24 pm (UTC)Then there are the children of the last two Welsh princes of Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffud and his brother Davydd ap Gruffud. After Llywelyn ap Gruffud died and Edward I. had captured Davydd, he invented the punishment of "hanged, drawn and quartered" for Davydd, put Llywelyn's sole daughter and Davydd's daughters who were all small children into nunneries (where they remained for the rest of their lives, but not even the same nunnery, no, they were all separated), and Davydd's sons, also children, were imprisoned in Bristol Castle for their remaining lives. Davydd's widow Elizabeth was not allowed to see any of her children ever again. And Edward made his own son (future Edward II) the first English Prince of Wales to express how thoroughly he had defeated the Welsh. (I could be wrong, but I think Charles, the current Prince of Wales, is the first one to bother learning the Welsh language and show an interest in the culture.)
Moving on a few centuries, following the big who-killed-the-Princes-in-the-Tower debate, there's the not mysterious at all fate of their cousin, the late George of Clarence's son, who was also a child when Richard III died, another Edward by name (and Richard's heir after the death of Richard's own son). Henry (VII) Tudor had little Edward locked up in the Tower until he was an adult and then had him executed under a pretext. (Conspiring with rebels, which is tricky to do if you're locked up in a cell.) Edward's sister Margaret otoh was allowed to live, got married, lived in fact for decades, but the Tudors got her anyway - she sided with Katherine of Aragon in the big Henry VIII divorce struggle, and later Henry accused her of plotting against him thereafter, and Margaret's execution has the dubious honor of being one of the bloodiest and most botched, with her struggling against it - I think the stories differ between seven and eleven (!) strokes with the axe being necessary.
In conclusion: sometimes, one almost believes the kids who were killed instantly were the lucky ones...
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 05:53 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:20 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:20 pm (UTC)Also, seven and eleven strokes with the axe?? I am really really hoping she lost consciousness early on and those were autonomic struggles, omg.
Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 06:27 pm (UTC)Re: Ivan VI
Date: 2021-02-13 05:29 pm (UTC)