Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

[cahn]

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

Comments

Re: Leopold II

[selenak]

Speaking of mothers with that many children, cahn, if you do manage the History of the Germans podcast, you will encounter the lady Dirk refers to as the unnatural fecund Agnes of Waiblingen, who had 22 of those, NOT counting undocumented stillbirths in between. Her fertility was quintessential for German history, since she had the children from two different husbands, and thus spawned two important families allied to each other, one of which were the Staufer (who called themselves Waiblinger after her) and the other the Babenberger. (Otto of Freising was one of the later.)

Re: Leopold's cunning plan re: Hungaria, alas since he died after only a very few years of government, it didn't work out (his son Franz squashed both what had remained of Joseph's reforms and most of Leopold's and was an arch reactionary), and so we will never know whether it would have, had he lived longer.

Re: Leopold II

[cahn]

I feel tired just thinking about being pregnant/giving birth that many times, withotu even thinking about parenting the resulting children!

Living in the ages before birth control...

[selenak]

To be fair, even in high medieval times, a high ranking noblewoman like Agnes would not have been expected to do the raising on her lonesome, but would have had lots of servants and tutors available. Still, that didn't spare her all the pregnancies and births!

(And that's why in my earliest Frederician story I had MT react to that "you never faced death on the battlefield" remark with basically "oh yeah? Try being pregnant and giving birth just once!")

Re: Living in the ages before birth control...

[cahn]

Yeah, Fritz! And without epidurals and a much higher chance of death!