Roman Emperor Elagabalus, many centuries earlier: I will put bears in everyone's room!1
Ivan the Terrible: I will set bears on people just to see what happens!2
Charles XII: I will get the bear so drunk it falls out the window to its death!
Gian Gastone: Ooh, you have bears? I want to see the bears! Bring me the bears.
*shortly thereafter*
GG: I'm so turned on rn. I want to have sex with--
Mildred: Please don't say the bear.
GG: The bear-handler. He's such a big brawny guy, yum.
Mildred: Oh, thank god.
GG: Also his two young assistants, also hot stuff.
Mildred: Still could be worse.
GG: The bear-handler and his boys3 will be added to my collection of male prostitutes.
Mildred: I already know about the collection of male prostitutes and so am not batting an eye!
GG: One night, the bear-handler will be drunk in his room when I get a hankering for him. I'm drunk also, it goes without saying. I will have him brought to me. But he's so drunk he doesn't want to get out of bed. But I'm the Grand Duke, and my pimp/boyfriend/life partner Giuliano will force him to come to my room. For more drinking, of course!
Mildred: Yep, sounds about right.
GG: We're having a great time, right up until I unleash a "prodigious vomit" all over his face and chest. I'm still having a great time, because I totally have a vomit fetish!
Mildred: ...Okay, you got me. I figured out you had an alcoholism fetish, but this one I didn't see coming.
GG: But he's furious and starts beating me black and blue to within an inch of my life. I bleat a little but am not really up for defending myself. Giuliano and other servants overhear the commotion and come running to save me from imminent death.
Mildred: Well, I don't blame him...
GG: Neither do I! In fact, he doesn't get punished at all and continues to draw his salary and live peaceably in Florence, probably because elsewhere in this narrative it's been recounted that I'm totally into getting beaten up and make the Ruspanti do it to me all the time!
Mildred: This narrative isn't very reliable, is it?
GG and Giuliano Dami, in unison: God no. Please treat this anonymous manuscript like the National Enquirer of the 18th century and don't believe anything you read about us in it. Unlike Harold Acton, who took it as gospel in his book.4
FW: My bears are the best attested!
Mildred and Gundling: ...That's not exactly a point in your favor.
Notes:
1. This is from a source that's so dubious that it's questionable how much it was even ever meant as history, so you shouldn't believe this happened so much as be aware that this is a story that was told and some people have believed it.
2. According to Massie in his Peter the Great bio. Not from any reliable source on Ivan the Terrible, which I have yet to read (but am starting to look into).
3. Called "boys", but the ages of the other "boys" that are given in the text as GG's prostitutes are around twenty, so not necessarily pedophilia here.
4. About which more when I've done some more research in the Italian books that draw on actual archival material that I recently bought and have started reading.
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When you give a monarch a bear
Date: 2021-11-17 12:25 am (UTC)FW: I will put a bear in Gundling's room!
Roman Emperor Elagabalus, many centuries earlier: I will put bears in everyone's room!1
Ivan the Terrible: I will set bears on people just to see what happens!2
Charles XII: I will get the bear so drunk it falls out the window to its death!
Gian Gastone: Ooh, you have bears? I want to see the bears! Bring me the bears.
*shortly thereafter*
GG: I'm so turned on rn. I want to have sex with--
Mildred: Please don't say the bear.
GG: The bear-handler. He's such a big brawny guy, yum.
Mildred: Oh, thank god.
GG: Also his two young assistants, also hot stuff.
Mildred: Still could be worse.
GG: The bear-handler and his boys3 will be added to my collection of male prostitutes.
Mildred: I already know about the collection of male prostitutes and so am not batting an eye!
GG: One night, the bear-handler will be drunk in his room when I get a hankering for him. I'm drunk also, it goes without saying. I will have him brought to me. But he's so drunk he doesn't want to get out of bed. But I'm the Grand Duke, and my pimp/boyfriend/life partner Giuliano will force him to come to my room. For more drinking, of course!
Mildred: Yep, sounds about right.
GG: We're having a great time, right up until I unleash a "prodigious vomit" all over his face and chest. I'm still having a great time, because I totally have a vomit fetish!
Mildred: ...Okay, you got me. I figured out you had an alcoholism fetish, but this one I didn't see coming.
GG: But he's furious and starts beating me black and blue to within an inch of my life. I bleat a little but am not really up for defending myself. Giuliano and other servants overhear the commotion and come running to save me from imminent death.
Mildred: Well, I don't blame him...
GG: Neither do I! In fact, he doesn't get punished at all and continues to draw his salary and live peaceably in Florence, probably because elsewhere in this narrative it's been recounted that I'm totally into getting beaten up and make the Ruspanti do it to me all the time!
Mildred: This narrative isn't very reliable, is it?
GG and Giuliano Dami, in unison: God no. Please treat this anonymous manuscript like the National Enquirer of the 18th century and don't believe anything you read about us in it. Unlike Harold Acton, who took it as gospel in his book.4
FW: My bears are the best attested!
Mildred and Gundling: ...That's not exactly a point in your favor.
Notes:
1. This is from a source that's so dubious that it's questionable how much it was even ever meant as history, so you shouldn't believe this happened so much as be aware that this is a story that was told and some people have believed it.
2. According to Massie in his Peter the Great bio. Not from any reliable source on Ivan the Terrible, which I have yet to read (but am starting to look into).
3. Called "boys", but the ages of the other "boys" that are given in the text as GG's prostitutes are around twenty, so not necessarily pedophilia here.
4. About which more when I've done some more research in the Italian books that draw on actual archival material that I recently bought and have started reading.