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Re: Gian Gastone
Date: 2021-11-21 05:53 pm (UTC)And yes, Gian Gastone is definitely cleared of the suspicion of hitting on barely pubescent boys!
Re: Gian Gastone
Date: 2021-11-21 06:04 pm (UTC)I'm guessing Heinrich takes the "gritting his teeth, loyal to bigoted dad" instead of "loyal to paranoid scapegoating brother" route, as opposed to the fine Medici tradition of poisoning (Did they actually poison anyone? I can think of more suspicions otomh than actual proved cases), but the bonus in this universe is that he gets to be Grand Duke starting in his 50s!
OTOH, the Medici line still dies out for lack of a male heir, lol forever.
Re: Gian Gastone
Date: 2021-11-23 06:23 pm (UTC)OTOH, the Medici line still dies out for lack of a male heir, lol forever.
lol!
Real and AU Medici
Date: 2021-11-24 09:10 am (UTC)The later, since I can't see AU!Heinrich as a bigot, which Gian Gastone's Dad and predecessor was. I mean, if you as a son of FW manage to end up as a sceptic and deist, you'll do so as a son of Cosimo as well.
I was going to say that we don't actually know whether or not Heinrich would have been capable of siring children since he never tried, but then I recalled Gian Gastone's marriage was about as voluntary on his part as Heinrich's was in rl, meaning Medici!Heinrich would probably just as stubbornly have refused to have sex with his wife as Hohenzollern!Heinrich did. Well - unless the duchy being at stake motivates him. (The realm or the Hohenzollern line definitely weren't at stake for Heinrich in rl. The utter pointlessness of the marriage in every regard but as a submission gesture to Fritz was one big element that poisoned it from the get go, and maybe a marriage which has an actual purpose would have made him at least try? I mean, if Philippe d'Orleans could do it, repeatedly, in both marriages, and with several children as the result...
re: Mildred's question whether the Medici actually poisoned anyone: well, Ippolito de' Medici definitely got poisoned, and the poisoner (after severe interrogation, which, yes, included torture) said he did it on behalf of Alessandro, so there's that. (Plus Ippolito had tried to get Alessandro killed before that, with less success.) Catherine de' Medici probably didn't do any of the poisonings pop history laid at her feet, for example: brother-in-law the original Dauphin, the later Henri IV's, Henri de Navarre's mother Jeanne d'Albret; modern historians have exonorated her there, and I'm also with one biographer who says that if Catherine had had a poison handy at her disposal, her rival Diane de' Poitiers would have been the first to go, and Diane lived until a ripe old age (though Catherine did take her favorite chateau back from her) well beyond the death of her lover, Catherine's husband. (This isn't to say that Catherine was above assassinations. Just not by poison.) And then there's the case of Bianca Capello and Francesco de' Medici, who might have been poisoned by her brother-in-law and his brother, Ferdinand de' Medici - or they could have died of Malaria. (Though the fact they both died within a day from each other at a point where Francesco was working on making his son by Bianca legitimate and his successor is certainly suspicious. And yet, the Malaria parasite was found in Francesco's remains just a decade ago.)
Re: Real and AU Medici
Date: 2021-11-24 03:28 pm (UTC)True! That is one difference. Heinrich might have sucked it up for the good of the family.
I was wondering, in the event he doesn't, or can't, what he would do about the heir. Gian Gastone let the powers of Europe decide, but Heinrich isn't a pushover.
Ippolito de' Medici definitely got poisoned, and the poisoner (after severe interrogation, which, yes, included torture) said he did it on behalf of Alessandro
Right, yes, that one!
Catherine de' Medici probably didn't do any of the poisonings pop history laid at her feet
Exactly!
This isn't to say that Catherine was above assassinations.
Well, quite. I was amused by Marguerite-Louise being afraid of poisoning, and her daughter-in-law Anna Maria Franziska (Gian Gastone's wife) using poisoning as an excuse not to go to Florence! (At least allegedly, I haven't read her bio yet to see what's actually well attested.)
then there's the case of Bianca Capello and Francesco de' Medici
Did not know about that one, thank you! I need to brush up on my early Medici dukes, I somehow skipped them entirely. (Florence up through the early 16th century many years ago, then Florence starting with Cosimo III more recently.)
Re: Real and AU Medici
Date: 2021-11-27 05:09 am (UTC)Heh, point about Philippe d'Orleans, lol. (When I found out he had kids, I was like, "...how?!")
That is fascinating about the Medici, especially the bit about malaria!
Re: Real and AU Medici
Date: 2021-11-27 01:16 pm (UTC)Heh, point about Philippe d'Orleans, lol. (When I found out he had kids, I was like, "...how?!")
According to Liselotte, by hanging a lot of portraits of the Virgin Mary and other saints everywhere in the bed for encouragement. I kid you not. But not only did Philippe sire a lot of kids, but his progeny, the Orleans line of the Bourbons, survives into the present when that of brother Louis XIV did not. Philippe's children all in all:
With Henriette Anne, "Minette":
Marie Louise d'Orléans (26 March 1662 – 12 February 1689) married Charles II of Spain, no issue. (That was the genetic wonder, last of the Spanish Habsburg, whose death triggered the Spanish Inheritance War. Marie Louise was the one whom Sophie and daughter Sophie Charlotte met when they were visiting Versailles, and whom Sophie Charlotte crushed on a bit.)
Miscarriage (1663).[109]
Philippe Charles d'Orléans, Duke of Valois (16 July 1664 – 8 December 1666) died in infancy.
Stillborn daughter (9 July 1665).
Miscarriage (1666).
Miscarriage (1667).
Miscarriage (1668).
Anne Marie d'Orléans (27 August 1669 – 26 August 1728) married Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy (future king of Sardinia) and had issue.
Bear in mind that the Philippe/Minette marriage really was terrible. While Jude Morgan goes for an entirely negative characterisation, it's somewhat justified, not least due to the Jemmy pov (Philippe really did throw a fit when an adult Monmouth was visiting France, and later when Minette was visiting England demanded she was not to meet Jemmy, which Charles ignored), and by every memoirist and letter writer ever describing the marriage after the first few months as the marriage from hell. And yet, all these pregnancies. Here, I suspect spite worked as a motivation as well, because according French and English gossip, after finally agreeing to Minette visiting her family in England (which was important to Louis XIV because she was simultanously negotiating the treaty fo Dover with Charles), Philippe supposedly had sex with her every night in the hope she'd get pregnant and then he'd have a reason to forbid the journey which his brother would have to accept. It was hate sex all the way.
Which it wasn't with Liselotte. They also had their ups and downs, but generally got along far better, and this resulted in:
Alexandre Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Valois (2 June 1673 – 16 March 1676) died in childhood;
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (2 August 1674 – 2 December 1723) married Françoise Marie de Bourbon, Légitimée de France, and had issue. (This was Philippe the Regent, married to Louis XIV's illegitimate daughter by the Marquise de Montespan.)
Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans (13 September 1676 – 24 December 1744) married Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, and had issue. (To wit, Franz Stephan (and his younger brother), and thus every Habsburg after MT.)
Philippe d'Orléans and wives
Date: 2021-12-03 06:06 am (UTC)WOW.
Which it wasn't with Liselotte. They also had their ups and downs, but generally got along far better
Why do you think this was? I mean, Liselotte seems obviously super, but Minette also seemed pretty great at least from Jude Morgan's portrayal... One of Morgan's scenes has Philippe going at her for all those miscarriages and non-living kids (which, UGH) -- was part of it that they didn't have a living son?
Re: Philippe d'Orléans and wives
Date: 2021-12-03 10:26 am (UTC)Several reasons I've seen named, in addition to general sexual incompability (and let's not forget, they'd married young, so while Philippe undoubtedly knew he loved men several years prior to that, he might not have realised he really did not enjoy sex with women until actually living with one):
1) Several layers of jealousy, most, but not all, focused around Louis. Because whether you see Philippe as irredeemably terrible or as with good qualities as well, the relationship with his brother was undoubtedly the most important in his life. They'd been late children of a severely dysfunctional royal marriage themselves, born shortly after another, then gone through the Fronde (the last big uprising of the nobility) together when their mother was regent and they were children, and they did not have other siblings. (Neither legitimate nor illegitimate siblings.) And whether or not Louis and Minette had an actual sexual affair or "just" an emotional one, it was intense enough to get noted not just by the court gossips but by both their mothers, resulting in maternal reprimands. This in the first year of marriage. Blaming Minette over blaming Louis for this was sure as hell something likely to happen in a less patriarchal society as theirs. And then, years later, when a Louis/Minette affair, either emotional or sexual, wasn't an issue anymore because Louis had moved on to other mistresses, Minette still was trusted by Louis in a political fashion in a way Philippe was not. Other than some military victories early on, Philippe had nothing whatsoever to do at court (other than partying and etiquette). Whereas Minette was the unofficial English ambassador, trusted by two monarchs to negotiate between them when Philippe was not.
2.) Her flirting with his pre-Chevaliere de Lorraine boyfriend, de Guiche, probably was an issue as well. (Again, we have no idea how serious this was, but your boyfriend being into your wife is not fun.
3.) Once the Chevalier was on the scene, there was the additional problem of him actively scheming against Minette (to the point of taking her confessor and ladies in waiting away and replacing them with people he controlled), and then, when Louis finally had it with the Chevalier and banished him, Philippe definitely believed Minette had used her influence and was to blame for his lover's exile.
Most of this didn't apply to his marriage with Liselotte. She sure as hell never was suspected of having an affair with Louis; while Louis liked her, Liselotte had zero political influence; no one raved about Liselotte's beauty and charm, least of all one of Philippe's boyfriends.
Lasty, precisely because his first marriage ended so terribly that half of Europe thought Philippe was a wife murderer (he most likely wasn't in the physical sense, but he definitely had made her life hell), he started the second marriage in a somewhat chastened manner.
(I did link you to my review of the Minette and Charles correspondence before, didn't it? Which covers a lot of this from the Minette pov. (And btw is why we have such details as Minette menunstrating on her wedding night which supposedly horrified Philippe. How do we know? Because it comes up when Charles' wife does the same thing on their wedding night. Charles didn't have a problem there, being presumably familiar wiht the female body in every condition before that.)
Re: Real and AU Medici
Date: 2021-11-27 04:38 pm (UTC)And so did Gian Gastone! Or if not outright deist, then at least reeeeally laid back about religion. To wit: bisexual older brother Ferdinando, the great supporter of music and the arts who partied himself to death and died of advanced syphilis, unable to recognize the people around him. Also, Uncle Francesco Maria, the Cardinal, who partied himself to death via overeating rather than via sex.
Note that the older son, Cosimo III, becomes Grand Duke, and the younger Francesco Maria, becomes Cardinal, irrespective of which one is the bigot and whic one is super laid back abou the whole thing.
So between these two examples, I think AU!Heinrich, taking Gian Gastone's place as the younger Medici son of Cosimo III, would have managed not to be a bigot like Dad. (Who got his bigotry from his mother, Vittoria della Rovere. Who was not a big fan of her husband, Grand Duke Ferdinando II, being all into science and the arts and protecting Galileo.)
Re: Real and AU Medici
Date: 2021-12-03 06:06 am (UTC)