which is possibly related to how they managed to produce a bunch of kids
In general I don't think I understand when it's OK to randomly have kids by some other guy and not. For a royal, right out, I get that. But if you're not royal it's OK? (Also see Emilie.)
Sorry, if it wasn't clear, I meant that Anna's marriage to a Brunswick sibling produced a bunch of kids! I.e. Ivan VI and all his siblings who got locked up. Unlike Heinrich and Fritz's marriages, where they not only had no interest in their spouse, they had no interest in the opposite sex, which contributed to the no kids. (As did the trauma. Philippe d'Orléans, Selena is poised to type, managed to produce kids with Liselotte. :P)
As for royals in general, Catherine's supposed to have managed it, but Russia is special. It's hard to tell for sure without a paternity test, though she was clearly doing things that lead to extramarital offspring during her marriage. As we saw for EC2, that was a no-go in Prussia.
As for non-royals, I think a lot depends on the husband. Emilie's husband was supportive of her affairs! Some husbands left the kids to their brother and their brother got the cheating wife locked up in Spandau. *cough* Gundling brothers.
In general, a lot of women's experience historically has depended on whether they had supportive men in their lives or not. I think of my two maternal great-grandmothers, living in the same town in the early 20th century. One (the Mildred after whom this blog is named) got college education, career advice, and bob cuts, and didn't marry until her 30s, when she was the family breadwinner. The other learned to cook and keep house, married in her early teens, produced 15 kids, and never went to school a day in her life or learned to read. Why? Because they had different fathers.
ETA: Also worth clarifying, if it wasn't clear, that Anna Leopoldovna is very much a royal: she's the niece of Anna Ivanovna (she of the ice palace wedding), she was expecting to be named the heir up until the last minute, and instead her 2-month old son was named heir, so now she's the equivalent of queen mother and regent. Does it matter if her husband is the father of the heir, given that the succession right is coming through her and her husband is just some duke? Probably, but not as much as in, say, Prussia. (Or as in Catherine's case, later, when Paul was at pains to prove he was Peter's son and therefore a Romanov by blood.) That said, Ivan VI was conceived a few months after the wedding, and Lynar didn't arrive until he was born, so Ivan is probably Anton's. And most of the rest of the kids were conceived in prison.
Catherine's supposed to have managed it, but Russia is special. It's hard to tell for sure without a paternity test, though she was clearly doing things that lead to extramarital offspring during her marriage.
She also had one more advantage most other royal wives didn't, though it was one that was by no means a guarantee: her fate during her marriage (except for the last six months of same) depended on her husband only secundarily. Mainly, it depended on Elizaveta as the Czarina. And Elizaveta had the problem that the future of the House of Romanov depended on (P)Russian Pete and Catherine producing children, or otherwise locked up Ivan IV. and his elsewhere locked up siblings might have a chance again. Since for the first seven years of the Peter/Catherine marriage there were no children (and likely no sex, or not very much of it), Catherine was downright encouraged to take her first lover (Saltykow, the possible father of Paul); Elizaveta seems to have decided to hell with the Romanov bloodline, even a nominal grandnephew she could raise was better than Ivan & siblings. Of course, she also could have decided that it was Catherine's fault and what Peter needed was a new wife to produce heirs with, but: Peter didn't have illegitimate children (that I know of). Catherine, otoh, once she started to take lovers, had no problem getting repeatedly pregnant. So it must have been pretty clear to Elizaveta where the problem lay, and replacing Catherine as Peter's wife would not solve anything from her perspective.
(Once Elizaveta was dead, Catherine's fate really did depend entirely on Peter until she accomplished her coup, and whether Peter would or would not have gotten rid of her if she hadn't done that has been debated ever since. Not least since her defenders were invested in presenting it as a very real danger. Which, given the precedent of Peter the Great ridding himself of his unloved first wife by putting her into a nunnery without bothering to get her consent, I can see, but of course it's still debatable since we know who ended up locking up whom.)
One and a half generations later, you have Lady Melbourne, mother of William Lamb the future Lord Melbourne who was Victoria's first PM in his old age and the husband of scandalous Lady Caroline Lamb in his youth. Lady Melbourne was one of the most famous Georgian society ladies and salon hostesses, and famously declared that all you owed your husband was exactly one male heir who was undoubtedly his. After that, you were free to do as you pleased as long as you did it with tact and discretion. (Since William was a younger son who only inherited the title due to his older brothers' deaths, no, he was not the son of Lord Melbourne, and he as well as the rest of the family knew it.) Given that aristocratic marriages were mainly (with a very few exceptions) political and business alliances, fair enough. But as Mildred said: it really depended on the husbands. If they decided not to go along with this, or have the open marriage only open in one direction (i.e. theirs), with their wives punished for adultery, that was utterly in their power, and some did. If they wanted to abuse their wives, they could. Let me remind you of Madame de Graffigny again, same generation and social class as Émilie, who got an abusive jerk who beat her instead of a supportive "live and let live" Marquis, and the only thing she was able to do was to beg her father (i.e. another man, and one outranking her husband) for help.
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Re: Saxon envoys and Russian threesomes
In general I don't think I understand when it's OK to randomly have kids by some other guy and not. For a royal, right out, I get that. But if you're not royal it's OK? (Also see Emilie.)
Sorry, if it wasn't clear, I meant that Anna's marriage to a Brunswick sibling produced a bunch of kids! I.e. Ivan VI and all his siblings who got locked up. Unlike Heinrich and Fritz's marriages, where they not only had no interest in their spouse, they had no interest in the opposite sex, which contributed to the no kids. (As did the trauma. Philippe d'Orléans, Selena is poised to type, managed to produce kids with Liselotte. :P)
As for royals in general, Catherine's supposed to have managed it, but Russia is special. It's hard to tell for sure without a paternity test, though she was clearly doing things that lead to extramarital offspring during her marriage. As we saw for EC2, that was a no-go in Prussia.
As for non-royals, I think a lot depends on the husband. Emilie's husband was supportive of her affairs! Some husbands left the kids to their brother and their brother got the cheating wife locked up in Spandau. *cough* Gundling brothers.
In general, a lot of women's experience historically has depended on whether they had supportive men in their lives or not. I think of my two maternal great-grandmothers, living in the same town in the early 20th century. One (the Mildred after whom this blog is named) got college education, career advice, and bob cuts, and didn't marry until her 30s, when she was the family breadwinner. The other learned to cook and keep house, married in her early teens, produced 15 kids, and never went to school a day in her life or learned to read. Why? Because they had different fathers.
ETA: Also worth clarifying, if it wasn't clear, that Anna Leopoldovna is very much a royal: she's the niece of Anna Ivanovna (she of the ice palace wedding), she was expecting to be named the heir up until the last minute, and instead her 2-month old son was named heir, so now she's the equivalent of queen mother and regent. Does it matter if her husband is the father of the heir, given that the succession right is coming through her and her husband is just some duke? Probably, but not as much as in, say, Prussia. (Or as in Catherine's case, later, when Paul was at pains to prove he was Peter's son and therefore a Romanov by blood.) That said, Ivan VI was conceived a few months after the wedding, and Lynar didn't arrive until he was born, so Ivan is probably Anton's. And most of the rest of the kids were conceived in prison.
Re: Saxon envoys and Russian threesomes
She also had one more advantage most other royal wives didn't, though it was one that was by no means a guarantee: her fate during her marriage (except for the last six months of same) depended on her husband only secundarily. Mainly, it depended on Elizaveta as the Czarina. And Elizaveta had the problem that the future of the House of Romanov depended on (P)Russian Pete and Catherine producing children, or otherwise locked up Ivan IV. and his elsewhere locked up siblings might have a chance again. Since for the first seven years of the Peter/Catherine marriage there were no children (and likely no sex, or not very much of it), Catherine was downright encouraged to take her first lover (Saltykow, the possible father of Paul); Elizaveta seems to have decided to hell with the Romanov bloodline, even a nominal grandnephew she could raise was better than Ivan & siblings. Of course, she also could have decided that it was Catherine's fault and what Peter needed was a new wife to produce heirs with, but: Peter didn't have illegitimate children (that I know of). Catherine, otoh, once she started to take lovers, had no problem getting repeatedly pregnant. So it must have been pretty clear to Elizaveta where the problem lay, and replacing Catherine as Peter's wife would not solve anything from her perspective.
(Once Elizaveta was dead, Catherine's fate really did depend entirely on Peter until she accomplished her coup, and whether Peter would or would not have gotten rid of her if she hadn't done that has been debated ever since. Not least since her defenders were invested in presenting it as a very real danger. Which, given the precedent of Peter the Great ridding himself of his unloved first wife by putting her into a nunnery without bothering to get her consent, I can see, but of course it's still debatable since we know who ended up locking up whom.)
One and a half generations later, you have Lady Melbourne, mother of William Lamb the future Lord Melbourne who was Victoria's first PM in his old age and the husband of scandalous Lady Caroline Lamb in his youth. Lady Melbourne was one of the most famous Georgian society ladies and salon hostesses, and famously declared that all you owed your husband was exactly one male heir who was undoubtedly his. After that, you were free to do as you pleased as long as you did it with tact and discretion. (Since William was a younger son who only inherited the title due to his older brothers' deaths, no, he was not the son of Lord Melbourne, and he as well as the rest of the family knew it.) Given that aristocratic marriages were mainly (with a very few exceptions) political and business alliances, fair enough. But as Mildred said: it really depended on the husbands. If they decided not to go along with this, or have the open marriage only open in one direction (i.e. theirs), with their wives punished for adultery, that was utterly in their power, and some did. If they wanted to abuse their wives, they could. Let me remind you of Madame de Graffigny again, same generation and social class as Émilie, who got an abusive jerk who beat her instead of a supportive "live and let live" Marquis, and the only thing she was able to do was to beg her father (i.e. another man, and one outranking her husband) for help.
Re: Saxon envoys and Russian threesomes
And yeah, Émilie got super lucky. :( for the ones who didn't.