6 People Who Claimed to Have Been Romanovs

In 1917, the House of Romanov had been ruling Russia continuously for more than 300 years when the family was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Lenin. On this date (or possibly yesterday—there’s a debate about exactly when it happened) in 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his wife Alexandra and their five children, met a brutal end: they were shot and stabbed in the basement of the house where they were being held by the Bolsheviks, and the Romanovs’ extended family were either killed or exiled. Nicholas and his family were the last to hold the throne, and their deaths signified a permanent end to the royal family.

Over the years, a number of people have come forward pretending to be exiled members of the Romanov family. Some merely wanted to be famous, while others were convinced that they truly had royal blood coursing through their veins. Today, all members of the immediate family have been identified through DNA evidence as having been killed.

 

1. Marga Boodts // Claimed to be Olga

After Marga Boodts married a German officer in 1926, she shared a shocking secret: That she was actually Grand Duchess Olga of the Romanovs. Olga was the first daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, and her hand in marriage was considered very valuable.

Boodts claimed she’d kept the secret because she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. She said that she was being supported by her uncle, Kaiser Wilhelm II, until his death, and she promised him she wouldn’t tell anyone for “the protection of [her] own life.”

She went public with her claims when Anna Anderson (see below) decided to come out with her own claims of Romanov ancestry. Boodts wanted to destroy Anderson’s credibility while supporting her own. She even wrote aBOOK about everything she had supposedly gone through as a run-away Romanov, but it was never published.

Boodts died in 1976 and was buried under the name “Olga Nikolaevna”; the grave was supposedly ruined in 1995.

2. Larissa Tudor // Rumored to be Tatiana

Larissa Tudor married Owen Frederick Morton Tudor in 1923 and lived a very uneventful life with her husband until she died three years later, when she was just 28. Larissa never claimed to be Tatiana, the second daughter in the Romanov family, but rumors arose after her death.

When Larissa died, she left Owen with a large inheritance; its origins were unknown. More than 60 years later, author Michael Occleshaw discovered some inconsistencies in Larissa’s story. He found that she was buried under the name “Larissa Feodorovna,” even though her marriage certificate said “Haouk.” She looked similar to Tatiana and some neighbors, when seeing portraits of Tatiana, said the woman was Larissa.

Occleshaw wrote a book detailing the events and how Tatiana would have escaped and how she could have come to be known as Larissa, although his theory was later disproven.

 

3 and 4. “Granny” Alina and Ceclava Czapska // Said to be Maria by their grandsons

Granny Alina, according to her grandson, mysteriously showed up in South Africa and supposedly told her family there that she was a princess, but couldn’t tell anyone else out of fear of being shipped back to Russia. She died in 1969, and, in 2004, her grandson took her claims public. George Negus Tonight, an Australian program that focused on current events in the early 2000s, ran a show on it, and while the family was still investigating, the story was more or less closed.

Alexis Brimeyer also claimed that his grandmother was Maria, but his claims were taken significantly less seriously because he had a history of faking noble titles. He started with “His Serene Highness Prince Khevenhüller-Abensberg,” which he quickly gave up after he was sued by the actual Princess Khevenhüller.

After the legal dust settled, he took on several other names before claiming that his grandmother was actually Maria and that made him a Romanov as well. Brimeyer died in 1995, but not before he also laid claim to the Serbian throne. Until 2007, these conspiracies didn’t seem especially farfetched, because there were a son and daughter missing from the skeletons discovered. But that year, the missing Romanovs were discovered, proving both Brimeyer’s and Alina’s claims false.

 

5. Anna Anderson, a.k.a. Franziska Shanzkowska // Claimed to be Anastasia

 

Since 1918, dozens of women have claimed to be Anastasia, the fourth and youngest daughter in the Romanov family, but Anderson is by far the most famous imposter. Her story begins when she tried to commit suicide in Berlin in 1920 and refused to tell anyone her name. Two years later, she began telling people that she was the Grand Duchess.

Some people who knew the Grand Duchess backed up her claims, including family friends and Russian officials. But when relatives of the tsar investigated Anderson’s claims, they discovered that she was actually Franziska Shanzkowska, a woman who had suffered a series of tragic events and had not been heard from since around the time Anderson was found in the canal. Her family later denied her when Nazis threatened to throw her in jail if she was found to be Shanzkowska.

In 1928, she came to live in the United States at the expense of Xenia Leeds, a Russian princess who was distantly related to the Romanovs and living with her American husband. After a failed attempt to claim the Romanov estate, she moved from place to place before ending up in Germany. Once there, she again tried to get ahold of the estate and failed. She returned to the United States in 1968, where she married a wealthy man, and spent her final years in an institutional care facility.

Anderson claimed she was Anastasia until her death in 1984, but DNA evidence proved otherwise in the ’90s.

 

6. Michael Goleniewski // Claimed to be Alexei

Alexei was the youngest child and only son of Nicholas II, and a real problem for the communist regime in Russia. Like Anastasia, Alexei had quite a few claims to his name.

Michael Goleniewski lived a much less exciting life than Anderson, likely because so few believed his claims. He was born in Poland, and worked as a spy for the Soviet Union while employed for the Polish Secret Service, but he ended up working for the CIA and MI5.

Goleniewski defected to America in 1961 and was made a citizen by a private billpassed by both houses of Congress. Once in the States, he began to claim that he was Tsarevich Alexei and that the rest of the family was alive and in hiding somewhere in Europe. In 1963, Goleniewski had a reunion with another “Anastasia,” a Rhode Island imposter named Eugenia Smith.

Unfortunately for Goleniewski, documents proved he was born and raised in Poland and 18 years younger than Alexei. The tsarevich also had hemophilia, a blood disorder that makes clotting difficult, which was never confirmed in Goleniewski.

The CIA was not happy with Goleniewski for faking something so huge and ended his employment. Still, the wannabe Romanov claimed to know about the tsar’s money and even managed to spark an investigation. Like Anderson, he claimed to be Alexei until his death.

 

Defenestrations of Prague

The Defenestrations of Prague were two incidents in the history of Bohemia in which multiple people were defenestrated. The first occurred in 1419 and the second in 1618, although the term “Defenestration of Prague” more commonly refers to the later incident. Both helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond. Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

First Defenestration of Prague

 

The New Town Hall,the place of the first defenestration.

 The New Town Hall, the place of the first defenestration

The First Defenestration of Prague involved the killing of seven members of the city council by a crowd of radical CzechHussites on 30 July 1419.

Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice) on Charles Square. The town council members had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall.This enraged the mob and they stormed the town hall. Once inside the hall, the group defenestrated the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob.

King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, upon hearing this news, was stunned and died shortly after, supposedly due to the shock.

The procession was a result of the growing discontent at the contemporary direction of the Church and the inequality between the peasants and the Church’s prelates, and the nobility. This discontent combined with rising feelings of nationalism and increased the influence of radical preachers such as Jan Želivský, influenced by Wycliffe, who saw the current state of the Catholic Church as corrupt. These preachers urged their congregations to action, including taking up arms, to combat these perceived transgressions.

The First Defenestration was thus the turning point between talk and action leading to the prolonged Hussite Wars. The wars broke out shortly afterward and lasted until 1436.

 

Second Defenestration of Prague

The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitated the Thirty Years’ War.

In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg had settled religious disputes in the Holy Roman Empire by enshrining the principle of Cuius regio, eius religio, allowing a prince to determine the religion of his subjects. The Kingdom of Bohemia since 1526 had been governed by Habsburg Kings, who did not, however, force their Catholic religion on their largely Protestant subjects. In 1609,Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia (1576–1612), increased Protestant rights. He was increasingly viewed as unfit to govern, and other members of the Habsburg dynasty declared his younger brother, Matthias, to be family head in 1606. Matthias began to gradually wrest territory from Rudolf, beginning with Hungary. In order to strengthen his hold on Bohemia, Rudolf in 1609 issued the Letter of Majesty, which granted Bohemia’s largely Protestant estates the right to freely exercise their religion, essentially setting up a Protestant Bohemian state church controlled by the estates, “dominated by the towns and rural nobility”.^[2] Upon Rudolf’s death, Matthias succeeded in the rule of Bohemia (1612–1619) and extended his offer of more legal and religious concessions to Bohemia, relying mostly on the advice of his chancellor, Bishop Melchior Klesl.

Conflict was precipitated by two factors: Matthias, already aging and without children, made his cousin Ferdinand of Styria his heir and had him elected king in 1617. Ferdinand was a proponent of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and not likely to be well-disposed to Protestantism or Bohemian freedoms. Bohemian Protestants opposed the royal government as they interpreted the Letter of Majesty to extend not only to the land controlled by the nobility or self-governing towns but also to the King’s own lands. Whereas Matthias and Klesl were prepared to appease these demands, Ferdinand was not, and in 1618 forced the Emperor to order the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on royal land. When the Bohemian estates protested against this order, Ferdinand had their assembly dissolved.

The Defenestration

On May 23, 1618, four Catholic Lords Regent, Count Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice, Count Vilem Slavata of Chlum, Adam II von Sternberg (who was the supreme burgrave), and Matthew Leopold Popel Lobcowitz (who was the grand prior), arrived at the Bohemian Chancellory at 8:30 am. After preparing the meeting hall, members of the dissolved assembly of the three main Protestant estates gathered at 9:00 am, led by Count Thurn, who had been deprived of his post as Castellan of Karlstadt by the Emperor. The Protestant Lords’ agenda was to clarify whether or not the four regents present were responsible for persuading King Matthias to order the cessation of churches on royal land. According to Martinice himself:

Lord Paul Rziczan read aloud… a letter with the following approximate content: His Imperial Majesty had sent to their graces the lord regents a sharp letter that was, by our request, issued to us as a copy after the original had been read aloud, and in which His Majesty declared all of our lives and honour already forfeit, thereby greatly frightening all three Protestant estates. As they also absolutely intended to proceed with the execution against us, we came to a unanimous agreement among ourselves that, regardless of any loss of life and limb, honour and property, we would stand firm, with all for one and one for all… nor would we be subservient, but rather we would loyally help and protect each other to the utmost, against all difficulties. Because, however, it is clear that such a letter came about through the advice of some of our religious enemies, we wish to know, and hereby ask the lord regents present, if all or some of them knew of the letter, recommended it, and approved of it.

Vilem Slavata of Chlum, 1618 enamel on copper, by follower of Dominicus Custos

Before the regents gave any answer, they requested that the Protestants give them the opportunity to confer with their superior, Adam von Waldstein, who was not present. If they were given the opportunity, the Protestants would get an official answer to their grievance by the next Friday (this was taking place on the eve of Ascension Day and they all must observe the holy day). The Protestants demanded an immediate answer. Two regents, Adam II von Sternberg and Matthew Leopold Popel Lobcowitz, were declared innocent by the Protestant Estate holders and too pious to have any responsibility in the letter’s creation. They in turn were removed from the room; however, before leaving, Adam II von Sternberg made it clear that they “did not advise anything that was contrary to the Letter of Majesty”. This left only Count Vilem Slavata of Chlum, Count Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice (who had replaced Thurn as Castellan), known Catholic hard-liners, and Philip Fabricius the secretary to the Regents. They eventually claimed responsibility for the letter and, assuming they were only going to be arrested, welcomed any punishment the Protestants had planned.

Count von Thurn turned to both Martinice and Slavata and said “you are enemies of us and of our religion, have desired to deprive us of our Letter of Majesty, have horribly plagued your Protestant subjects… and have tried to force them to adopt your religion against their wills or have had them expelled for this reason”. Then to the crowd of Protestants, he continued “were we to keep these men alive, then we would lose the Letter of Majesty and our religion… for there can be no justice to be gained from or by them”. Soon after, the two Regents were defenestrated along with the Regents’ secretary, Philipus Fabricius, but survived the 70 feet (21 metres) fall from the third floor. Catholics maintained the men were saved by angels or by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who caught them; later Protestant pamphleteers asserted that they survived due to falling onto a dung heap, a story unknown to contemporaries and probably coined in response to divine intervention claims. Philip Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title Baron von Hohenfall (literally “Baron of Highfall”).

 

Aftermath

Immediately after the Defenestration, the Protestant estates and Catholic Habsburgs started gathering allies for war.After the death of Matthias in 1619, Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman Emperor. At the same time, the Bohemian estates deposed him as King of Bohemia and replaced him with Frederick V, Elector Palatine, a leading Calvinistand son-in-law of the Protestant James VI and I, King of Scotland, England and Ireland.

Because they deposed a properly chosen king, the Protestants could not gather the international support they needed for war.Just two years after the Defenestration, Ferdinand and the Catholics regained power in the Battle of White Mountain on November 8, 1620. This became known as the first battle in the Thirty Years’ War.

There was plundering and pillaging in Prague for weeks following the Battle. Several months later, twenty-seven nobles and citizens were tortured and executed in the Old Town Square. Twelve of their heads were impaled on iron hooks and hung from the Bridge Tower as a warning. This also contributed to catalyzing the Thirty Years’ War.

Further defenestrations

More events of defenestration have occurred in Prague during its history, but they are not usually called defenestrations of Prague.

A defenestration (chronologically the second defenestration of Prague, sometimes called one-and-halfth defenestration) happened on 24 September 1483, when a violent overthrow of the municipal governments of the Old and New Towns ended with throwing the Old-Town portreeve and the bodies of seven killed aldermen out of the windows of the respective town halls.

Sometimes, the name the third defenestration of Prague is used, although it has no standard meaning. For example, it has been used to describe the death of Jan Masaryk, who was found below the bathroom window of the building of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10 March 1948. The official report listed the death as a suicide.^[10]However, it was widely believed he was murdered, either by the nascent Communist government in which he served as a non-partisan Foreign Minister, or by the Soviet secret services.^[11] A Prague police report in 2004 concluded after forensic research that Masaryk had indeed been thrown out the window to his death. This report was seemingly corroborated in 2006 when a Russian journalist claimed that his mother knew the Russian intelligence officer who defenestrated Masaryk.

Princess Charlotte of Wales 1796-1817

 

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales was the only daughter of George IV, then Prince of Wales and his first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick . Theirs was an arranged marriage, which George agreed to in order to get parliament to settle his enormous debts which at the time amounted to £630,000 . On first sight of his future wife, George was thoroughly dismayed and in a state of shock, “I am not well”, he announced “pray get me a glass of brandy,” The marriage ceremony proceeded as arranged, attended by his well pleased father, George III, on the evening of 8th April, 1795 at the Chapel Royal at St. James’ Palace. The bride wore a elaborate dress of silver tissue and lace and a velvet robe lined with ermine. The distraught bridegroom spent his wedding night lying on the bedroom floor by the fireplace in a drunken stupor.

Although he was repelled by his wife, he did his duty and brought himself to consummate the marriage and the Princess of Wales gave birth to a daughter and heir to the throne, Princess Charlotte, exactly nine months after the marriage, on 7th January, 1796 at Carlton House. After the birth of the child George promptly abandoned Caroline.

George III, who was sympathetic toward the plight of his niece, Princess Caroline and never on the best of terms with his errant son, expressed a desire to have Charlotte live with him so that he could supervise her upbringing and education.

A battle of wills followed over who was going to control the raising and education of Princess Charlotte. The prince was willing to accede to the wishes of his father, but wanted Caroline to have no influence in her daughter’s education, while king wanted her to be party to decisions about her daughter. A reconciliation took place between George and his father and an agreement about Charlotte’s future finally reached. She was to remain under her father’s care. The Princess of Wales was forbidden to see her daughter on a daily basis and in 1799 was banished. She went to live abroad, inviting scandal by taking lovers and running up vast debts. The child’s first governess was Lady Elgin.

Not surprisingly Charlotte grew up to be a stormy and rebellious teenager. After a failed attempt to force his daughter into a marriage with the Prince of Orange, whom she loathed, the Regent married his daughter and the heiress to the throne to Leopold George Christian Frederick of Saxe-Coburg- Saalfield, (pictured right) her own choice as a husband. Leopold was the youngest child of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf. The couple were married on 2 May, 1816, at Carlton House. After spending their honeymoon at Oatlands in Surrey, the country seat of the Duke of York, the couple set up home at Claremont. The cool and collected Leopold was to prove a calming influence on his tempestuous and headstrong wife.

After two miscarriages, Charlotte became pregnant with what was hoped would be a grandson and the heir in the next generation to the British throne. She went into labour on 3rd November, 1817. The Prince Regent was summoned and hurried to be present when the labour proved to be difficult and protracted, Caroline’s ordeal lasted for for fifty hours. Finally the child was born at nine o’clock on 6th November, a boy, born dead. The sad news was related to George on his reaching Carlton House, being told that his daughter herself was doing well, he retired exhausted to bed.

Though the mother seemed at first to be recovering well from her horrendous ordeal, she complained that evening of severe stomach pains and began to vomit. She later developed a pain in her chest, before going into convulsions. It has been suggested that Charlotte may have died as a result of porphyria, inherited from her grandfather, George III.

Soon after the Regent was awoken by his brother, the Duke of York and informed that his only daughter was dead. Highly emotional by nature, George was extremely distraught. The following day he went to visit his bereaved son-in-law at Carlton House. In contrast to the sad but composed Leopold, George was overcome and worked himself into a very distressed condition, which was the cause of further alarm.

Charlotte and her son were buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Her elaborate carved memorial is situated in a side chapel toward the back of the nave. George’s recovery from his bereavement was slow, he became somewhat reclusive and dwelled excessively on the shock of the sad event which had overwhelmed him. Charlotte’s obstetrician, Sir Richard Croft was widely blamed for the Princess’ death and was said to have been negligent. Both the Regent and Prince Leopold publicly exonerated him from blame, but the damage to his reputation was done and eighteen months later Croft shot himself.

Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield was later to act as principal adviser to his young niece Victoria. In June 1831, he became king of the Belgians, fifteen years after Charlotte’s death , he married Louise-Marie, daughter of Louis-Philippe of France, and they had four children, one of whom was named Charlotte in her honour. He was to be instrumental in arranging the marriage of Queen Victoria to his nephew, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The English Black Queen

Queen Charlotte died nearly two centuries ago but is still celebrated in her namesake American city.

When you drive from the airport in North Carolina, you can’t miss the monumental bronze sculpture of the woman said to be Britain’s first black queen, dramatically bent backwards as if blown by a jet engine. Downtown, there is another prominent sculpture of Queen Charlotte, in which she’s walking with two dogs as if out for a stroll in 21st-century America.

Street after street is named after her, and Charlotte itself revels in the nickname the Queen City – even though, shortly after the city was named in her honour, the American War of Independence broke out, making her the queen of the enemy. And the city’s art gallery, the Mint museum, holds a sumptuous 1762 portrait of Charlotte by the Scottish portrait painter Allan Ramsay, showing the Queen of England in regal robes aged 17, the year after she married George III.

Charlotte is intrigued by its namesake. Some Charlotteans even find her lovable. “We think your queen speaks to us on lots of levels,” says Cheryl Palmer, director of education at the Mint museum. “As a woman, an immigrant, a person who may have had African forebears, botanist, a queen who opposed slavery – she speaks to Americans, especially in a city in the south like Charlotte that is trying to redefine itself.”

Yet Charlotte (1744-1818) has much less resonance in the land where she was actually queen. If she is known at all here, it is from her depiction in Alan Bennett’s play as the wife of “mad” King George III. We have forgotten or perhaps never knew that she founded Kew Gardens, that she bore 15 children (13 of whom survived to adulthood), and that she was a patron of the arts who may have commissioned Mozart.

Here, Charlotte is a woman who hasn’t so much intrigued as been regularly damned. In the opening of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities she is dismissed in the second paragraph: “There was a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England.” Historian John H Plumb described her as “plain and undesirable”. Even her physician, Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, reportedly described the elderly queen as “small and crooked, with a true mulatto face”.

“She was famously ugly,” says Desmond Shawe-Taylor, surveyor of the Queen’s pictures. “One courtier once said of Charlotte late in life: ‘Her Majesty’s ugliness has quite faded.’ There was quite a miaow factor at court.”

Charlotte’s name was given to thoroughfares throughout Georgian Britain – most notably Charlotte Square in Edinburgh’s New Town – but her lack of resonance and glamour in the minds of Londoners is typified by the fact that there is a little square in Bloomsbury called Queen’s Square. In the middle is a sculpture of a queen. For much of the 19th century, the sculpture was thought to depict Queen Anne and, as a result, the square was known as Queen Anne’s Square. Only later was it realised that the sculpture actually depicted Charlotte and the square renamed Queen Square.

Hold on, you might be saying. Britain has had a black queen? Did I miss something? Surely Helen Mirren played Charlotte in the film The Madness of King George and she was, last time I looked, white? Yet the theory that Queen Charlotte may have been black, albeit sketchy, is nonetheless one that is gaining currency.

If you google Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, you’ll quickly come across a historian called Mario de Valdes y Cocom. He argues that her features, as seen in royal portraits, were conspicuously African, and contends that they were noted by numerous contemporaries. He claims that the queen, though German, was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family, related to Margarita de Castro e Souza, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman nine generations removed, whose ancestry she traces from the 13th-century ruler Alfonso III and his lover Madragana, whom Valdes takes to have been a Moor and thus a black African.

It is a great “what if” of history. “If she was black,” says the historian Kate Williams, “this raises a lot of important suggestions about not only our royal family but those of most of Europe, considering that Queen Victoria’s descendants are spread across most of the royal families of Europe and beyond. If we class Charlotte as black, then ergo Queen Victoria and our entire royal family, [down] to Prince Harry, are also black … a very interesting concept.”

That said, Williams and many other historians are very sceptical about Valdes’s theory. They argue the generational distance between Charlotte and her presumed African forebear is so great as to make the suggestion ridiculous. Furthermore, they say even the evidence that Madragana was black is thin.

But Valdes suggests that the way Queen Charlotte is depicted in Ramsay’s 1762 portrait – which US artist Ken Aptekar is now using as the starting point for a newart project called Charlotte’s Charlotte – supports the view she had African ancestors.

Valdes writes: “Artists of that period were expected to play down, soften or even obliterate undesirable features in a subject’s face. [But] Sir Allan Ramsay was the artist responsible for the majority of the paintings of the queen, and his representations of her were the most decidedly African of all her portraits.”

Valdes’s suggestion is that Ramsay was an anti-slavery campaigner who would not have suppressed any “African characteristics” but perhaps might have stressed them for political reasons. “I can’t see it to be honest,” says Shawe-Taylor. “We’ve got a version of the same portrait. I look at it pretty often and it’s never occurred to me that she’s got African features of any kind. It sounds like the ancestry is there and it’s not impossible it was reflected in her features, but I can’t see it.”

Is it possible that other portraitists of Queen Charlotte might have soft-pedalled her African features? “That makes much more sense. It’s quite possible. The thing about Ramsay is that, unlike Reynolds and Gainsborough, who were quite imprecise in their portraits, he was a very accurate depicter of his subjects, so that if she looked slightly more African in his portraits than others, that might be because she was more well depicted. How can you tell? She’s dead!”

Shawe-Taylor says that a more instructive source of images of Queen Charlotte might well be the many caricatures of her held at the British Museum. “None of them shows her as African, and you’d suspect they would if she was visibly of African descent. You’d expect they would have a field day if she was.”

In fact, Charlotte may not have been our first black queen: there is another theory that suggests that Philippa of Hainault (1314-69), consort of Edward III and a woman who may have had African ancestry, holds that title.

As for Valdes, he turns out to be an independent historian of the African diaspora who has argued that Peter Ustinov, Heather Locklear, the Medicis, and the Vanderbilts have African ancestry. His theory about Charlotte even pops up on http://www.100greatblackbritons.com, where she appears alongside Mary Seacole, Shirley Bassey, Sir Trevor McDonald, Zadie Smith, Naomi Campbell and Baronness Scotland as one of our great Britons. Despite being thus feted, Charlotte has not yet had much attention, say, during the annual Black History week in Britain.

Perhaps she should get more. The suggestion that Queen Charlotte was black implies that her granddaughter (Queen Victoria) and her great-great-great-great-granddaughter (Queen Elizabeth II) had African forebears. Perhaps, instead of just being a boring bunch of semi-inbred white stiffs, our royal family becomes much more interesting. Maybe – and this is just a theory – the Windsors would do well to claim their African heritage: it might be a PR coup, one that would strengthen the bonds of our queen’s beloved Commonwealth.

Or would our royal family be threatened if it were shown they had African forebears? “I don’t think so at all. There would be no shame attached to it all,” says the royal historian Hugo Vickers. “The theory does not impress me, but even if it were true, the whole thing would have been so diluted by this stage that it couldn’t matter less to our royal family. It certainly wouldn’t show that they are significantly black.”

What’s fascinating about Aptekar’s project is that he started by conducting focus group meetings with people from Charlotte to find out what the Queen and her portrait meant to citizens of the US city. “I took my cues from the passionate responses of individuals whom I asked to help me understand what Queen Charlotte represents to them.”

The resulting suite of paintings is a series of riffs on that Ramsay portrait of Charlotte. In one, a reworked portion of the portrait shows the queen’s face overlaid with the words “Black White Other”. Another Aptekar canvas features an even tighter close up, in which the queen’s face is overlaid with the words “Oh Yeah She Is”.

Among those who attended Aptekar’s focus groups is congressman Mel Watt, one of very few African-Americans in the House of Representatives and who represents the 12th district of North Carolina which includes Charlotte. “In private conversations, African-Americans have always acknowledged and found a sense of pride in this ‘secret’,” says Watt. “It’s great that this discussion can now come out of the closet into the public places of Charlotte, so we all can acknowledge and celebrate it.”

What about the idea that she was an immigrant – a German teenager who had to make a new life in England in the late 18th century?

“We were a lot more immigrant-friendly in those days than we were friendly to people of colour,” says Watt. “We all recognised that we all came from some place else. But there was always a sense of denial, even ostracism, about being black. Putting the history on top of the table should make for opportunities for provocative, healing conversations.”

Does Valdes’s theory conclusively determine that Queen Charlotte had African forebears? Hardly. And if she had African forebears, would that mean we could readily infer she was black? That, surely, depends on how we define what it is to be black. In the US, there was for many decades a much-derided “one-drop rule”, whereby any white-looking person with any percentage of “black blood” was not regarded as being really white. Although now just a historical curio, it was controversially invoked recently by the African-American lawyer Alton Maddox Jr, who argued that under the one-drop rule, Barack Obama wouldn’t be the first black president.

In an era of mixed-race celebrities such as Tiger Woods and Mariah Carey, and at a time when in the US, the UK and any other racially diverse countries mixed-raced relationships are common, this rule seems absurd. But without such a rule, how do we determine Charlotte’s ethnicity? If she is black, aren’t we all?

It’s striking that on US and UK census forms, respondents are asked to choose their own race by ticking the box with which they most closely identify (though there can be problems with this: some people in Cornwall are angry that the 2011 census form will not allow them to self-define as Cornish because only 37,000 ticked that box in the 2001 census and that figure has been deemed too small to constitute a separate ethnic group). We will never know which box Queen Charlotte would have ticked, though we can take a good guess. But maybe that isn’t the most important issue, anyway.

For congressman Watt’s wife Eulada, along with some other African-Americans in Charlotte, the most important issue is what the possibility that Queen Charlotte was black may mean for people in the city now. “I believe African-American Charlotteans have always been proud of Queen Charlotte’s heritage and acknowledge it with a smile and a wink,” she says. “Many of us are now enjoying a bit of ‘I told you so’, now that the story is out.”

But isn’t her heritage too sketchy to be used to heal old wounds? “Hopefully, the sketchiness will inspire others to further research and documentation of our rich history. Knowing more about an old dead queen can play a part in reconciliation.”

And if an old dead queen can help improve racial trust in an American city, perhaps she could do something similar over here. Whether she will, though, is much less certain.

The case of Kaspar Hauser

Kaspar Hauser (30 April 1812 (?) – 17 December 1833) was a German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. Hauser’s claims, and his subsequent death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy. Theories propounded at the time linked him with the grand ducal House of Baden. These have long since been rejected by historians.

First appearance

On 26 May 1828, a teenage boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. He carried a letter with him addressed to the captain of the 4th squadron of the 6th cavalry regiment, Captain von Wessenig. Its heading read:

Von der Bäierischen Gränz / daß Orte ist unbenant / 1828 (“From the Bavarian border / The place is unnamed / 1828”).

The anonymous author said that the boy was given into his custody as an infant on 7 October 1812 and that he instructed him in reading, writing and the Christian religion, but never let him “take a single step out of my house”. The letter stated that the boy would now like to be a cavalryman “as his father was” and invited the captain either to take him in or to hang him.

There was another short letter enclosed purporting to be from his mother to his prior caretaker. It stated that his name was Kaspar, that he was born on 30 April 1812 and that his father, a cavalryman of the 6th regiment, was dead. In fact this letter was found to have been written by the same hand as the other one (whose line “he writes my handwriting exactly as I do” led later analysts to assume that Kaspar himself wrote both of them).

A shoemaker named Weickmann took the boy to the house of Captain von Wessenig, where he would repeat only the words “I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was” and “Horse! Horse!” Further demands elicited only tears or the obstinate proclamation of “Don’t know.” He was taken to a police station, where he would write a name: Kaspar Hauser. He showed that he was familiar with money, could say some prayers and read a little, but he answered few questions and his vocabulary appeared to be rather limited.

He spent the following two months in Luginsland Tower in Nuremberg Castle in the care of a jailer named Andreas Hiltel. Despite what many later accounts would say, he was in good physical condition and could walk well; for example, he climbed over 90 steps to his room. He was of a “healthy facial complexion”and approximately 16 years old, but appeared to be intellectually impaired. Mayor Binder, however, claimed that the boy had an excellent memory and was learning quickly. Various curious people visited him to his apparent delight. He refused all food except bread and water.

Hauser’s story about his life in a dungeon

At first it was assumed that he was raised half-wild in forests, but during many conversations with Mayor Binder, Hauser told a different version of his past life, which he later also wrote down in more detail. According to this story, for as long as he could remember he spent his life totally alone in a darkened cell about two metres long, one metre wide and one and a half high with only a straw bed to sleep on and two horses and a dog carved out of wood for toys. However the young man showed no sign of medical conditions such as rickets which would likely have resulted from such prolonged sunlight deprivation.

He claimed that he found rye bread and water next to his bed each morning. Periodically the water would taste bitter and drinking it would cause him to sleep more heavily than usual. On such occasions, when he awakened, his straw was changed and his hair and nails were cut. Hauser claimed that the first human being with whom he ever had contact was a mysterious man who visited him not long before his release, always taking great care not to reveal his face to him. This man, Hauser said, taught him to write his name by leading his hand. After learning to stand and walk, he was brought to Nuremberg. Furthermore, the stranger allegedly taught him to say the phrase “I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was” (in Old Bavarian dialect), but Hauser claimed that he did not understand what these words meant.

This tale aroused great curiosity and made Hauser an object of international attention. Rumours arose that he was of princely parentage, possibly of Baden origin, but there were also claims that he was an impostor.

Further life in Nuremberg

Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, president of the Bavarian court of appeals, began to investigate the case. Hauser was given into the care of Friedrich Daumer, a schoolmaster and speculative philosopher, who taught him various subjects and who thereby discovered his talent for drawing. He appeared to flourish in this environment. Daumer also subjected him to homeopathic treatments and magnetic experiments. As Feuerbach told the story, “When Professor Daumer held the north pole [of a magnet] towards him, Kaspar put his hand to the pit of his stomach, and, drawing his waistcoat in an outward direction, said that it drew him thus; and that a current of air seemed to proceed from him. The south pole affected him less powerfully; and he said that it blew upon him.”

On 17 October 1829, Hauser did not come to the midday meal, but was found in the cellar of Daumer’s house bleeding from a cut wound on the forehead. He asserted that while sitting on the privy, he was attacked and wounded by a hooded man who also threatened him with the words: “You still have to die ere you leave the city of Nuremberg.” Hauser said that by the voice, he recognized the man as the one who had brought him to Nuremberg. As was obvious from his blood trail, Hauser at first fled to the first floor where his room was, but then, instead of moving on to his caretakers, he returned downstairs and climbed through a trap door into the cellar. Alarmed officials called for a police escort and transferred him to the care of Johann Biberbach, one of the municipal authorities. The alleged attack on Hauser also fueled rumours about his possible descent from Hungary, England or the House of Baden. Hauser’s critics are of the opinion that he inflicted the wound on himself with a razor, which he then took back to his room before going to the cellar.^[8] He might have done so to arouse pity and thus escape chiding for a recent quarrel with Daumer, who had come to believe that the boy had a tendency to lie.

The “pistol accident”

On 3 April 1830, a pistol shot went off in Hauser’s room at the Biberbachs’ house. His escort hurriedly entered the room and found him bleeding from a wound to the right side of his head. Hauser quickly revived and stated that he climbed on a chair to get some books, the chair fell and while trying to hold on to something he accidentally tore down the pistol hanging on the wall, causing the shot to go off. There are doubts whether the benign wound was actually caused by the shot and some authors associate the incident with a preceding quarrel in which, again, Hauser was reproached for lying. Whatever the case, the occurrence led the municipal authorities to come to another decision on Hauser, whose initially good relationship with the Biberbach family had soured. In May 1830, he was transferred to the house of Baron von Tucher,who later also complained about Hauser’s exorbitant vanity and lies. Perhaps the sharpest judgment passed on Hauser was the one by Mrs. Biberbach, who commented on his “horrendous mendacity” and “art of dissimulation” and called him “full of vanity and spite”

.

Lord Stanhope

A British nobleman, Lord Stanhope, took an interest in Hauser and gained custody of him late in 1831. He spent a great deal of money attempting to clarify Hauser’s origin. In particular, he paid for two visits to Hungary, as Hauser seemed to remember some Hungarian words. Stanhope later declared that the complete failure of these inquiries led him to doubt Hauser’s credibility. In December 1831, he transferred Hauser to Ansbach, to the care of a schoolmaster named Johann Georg Meyer, and in January 1832, Stanhope left Hauser for good. Stanhope continued to pay for Hauser’s living expenses but never made good on his promise that he would take him to England. After Hauser’s death, Stanhope published a book in which he presented all known evidence against Hauser, taking it as his “duty openly to confess that I had been deceived.” Followers of Hauser suspect Stanhope of ulterior motives and connections to the House of Baden, but academic historiography defends him as a philanthropist, a pious man and a seeker of truth.

Life and death in Ansbach

Schoolmaster Meyer, a strict and pedantic man, disliked Hauser’s many excuses and apparent lies and their relationship was thus rather strained. In late 1832, Hauser was employed as a copyist in the local law office. Still hoping that Stanhope would take him to England, he was very dissatisfied with his situation, which deteriorated further when his patron, Anselm von Feuerbach, died in May 1833. This certainly was a grievous loss to him.^[15] Some authors, however, point out that Feuerbach, by the end of his life, had lost faith in Hauser—writing a note, to be found in his legacy, which read: “Caspar Hauser is a smart scheming codger, a rogue, a good-for-nothing that ought to be killed.”But there is no indication that Feuerbach, already seriously ill, let Hauser feel this change of opinion.

On 9 December 1833, Hauser had a serious argument with Meyer. Lord Stanhope was expected to visit Ansbach at Christmas and Meyer said that he did not know how he would face him.

Fatal stab wound

The note in mirror writing. Photography, contrast enhanced. The original has been missing since 1945.

Five days later, on 14 December 1833, Hauser came home with a deep wound in his left breast. He said that he was lured to the Ansbach Court Garden and that a stranger stabbed him there while giving him a bag. When policeman Herrlein searched the Court Garden, he found a small violet purse containing a pencilled note in “Spiegelschrift” (mirror writing). The message read, in German:

“

Hauser will beable to tell you quite precisely how I look and from where I am. To save Hauser the effort, I want to tell you myself from where I come _ _ . I come from from _ _ _ the Bavarian border _ _ On the river _ _ _ _ _ I will even tell you the name: M. L. Ö.

”

“

Hauser wird es euch ganzgenau erzählen können, wie ich aussehe, und wo her ich bin. Den Hauser die Mühe zu ersparen will ich es euch selber sagen, woher ich komme _ _ Ich komme von von _ _ _ der Baierischen Gränze _ _ Am Fluße _ _ _ _ _ Ich will euch sogar noch den Namen sagen: M. L. Ö.

”

Hauser died of his wound on 17 December 1833.

Inconsistencies in Hauser’s account led the Ansbach court of enquiry to suspect that he stabbed himself and invented a tale about being attacked. The note in the purse that was found in the Court Garden contained one spelling error and one grammatical error, both of which were typical for Hauser, who, on his deathbed, kept muttering incoherencies about “writing with pencil”. Although he was very eager that the purse be found, he did not ask for its contents. The note itself was folded in a specific triangular form, just the way Hauser used to fold his letters, according to Mrs. Meyer. Forensic doctors agreed that the wound could indeed be self-inflicted. Many authors believe that he wounded himself in a bid to revive public interest in his story and to convince Stanhope to fulfil his promise to take him to England, but that he stabbed himself more deeply than planned.

Medical opinions

Hauser’s various accounts of the story of his incarceration include several contradictions.Psychiatrist Karl Leonhard concluded: “If he had been living since childhood under the conditions he describes, he would not have developed beyond the condition of an idiot; indeed he would not have remained alive long. His tale is so full of absurdities that it is astonishing that it was ever believed and is even today still believed by many people.”

Dr. Heidenreich, one of the physicians present at the autopsy, claimed that the brain of Kaspar Hauser was notable for small cortical size and few, non-distinct cortical gyri, indicating to some that he suffered from cortical atrophy or, as G. Hesse argued, from epilepsy.Heidenreich may have been influenced by his phrenological ideas when examining Hauser’s brain. Dr. Albert, who conducted the autopsy and wrote the official report, did not find any anomalies in Hauser’s brain.

Karl Leonhard also rejected the views of both Heidenreich and Hesse. He came to the following conclusion: “Kaspar Hauser was, as other authors already opined, a pathological swindler. In addition to his hysterical make-up he probably had the persistence of a paranoid personality since he was able to play his role so imperturbably. From many reports on his behaviour one can recognise the hysterical as well as the paranoid trend of his personality.”

A 1928 medical study supported the view that Hauser accidentally stabbed himself too deeply, while a 2005 forensic analysis argued that it seems “unlikely that the stab to the chest was inflicted exclusively for the purpose of self-damage, but both a suicidal stab and a homicidal act (assassination) cannot be definitely ruled out.”

Top 5 Marie Antoinette Scandals

When­ Marie Antoinette died under the heavy blow of the guillotine on Oct. 16, 1793, it was a decidedly unglamorous affair. That’s not to say it wasn’t a celebration: Many French revolutionaries were ecstatic to bid the extravagant queen adieu forever. After the blade came down, the executioner brandished Marie Antoinette’s head in a triumphant wave so that the entire crowd could see it.

Yet for the thousands of people gathered to watch the scene, it was a disappointment. They’d wanted to see the 38-year-old woman quake in fear and cower penitently. A well-known 18th-century journalist and revolutionary, Jacques Hébert, wrote in the newspaper Le Père Duchesne that she was “bold and impudent to the very end” [source: Amiel]. Despite the fact that the executioner had cut off all her hair and ordered her to don a threadbare white shift (likely soiled by the time she made it up the steps to the guillotine — she’d been hemorrhaging for days), she maintained her composure.

Marie Antoinette’s death was one of the biggest scandals of her life. Was it good riddance or not? To this day, there are wavering opinions about the young queen. Sympathizers point to the fact that young Antoine, as she was called in her native Austria, was nothing more than a bargaining chip for her mother. When she was only 10 years old, her mother arranged for her to wed Louis Auguste, a carefully orchestrated union that would join the Austrian Hapsburgs and the French Bourbons. But detractors argue that while she had very little say in the conditions of her life, she certainly could have lived her days at court in a fashion more befitting the queen of a nation on the cusp of revolution.

While there’s no point in deliberating her virtue or vices, we can delight in being voyeurs into the opulent court at Versailles, the scene of many Marie Antoinette scandals. We begin with the oft-quoted dismissal of her hungry subjects.

5.’Let Them Eat Cake!’

As famous as she is for hav­ing proclaimed, “Let them eat cake,” when she heard that the­ peasants were starving from the dearth of bread, Marie Antoinette actually never said it. The young queen was known to be quite tender-hearted, in contrast to her less flattering attributes as a spendthrift and wild reveler. There are accounts of her administering aid to a peasant who’d been gored by a wild animal as well as taking in an orphaned boy. Besides accounts like these that attest to her kind and generous nature, there are straightforward facts that disprove her utterance of this scandalous remark.

The expression comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Confessions,” a treatise penned in the late 18th century. There’s a possibility that Rousseau turned the phrase himself; other historians think it may have been uttered by Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa was a noblewoman of Spanish descent who wed Louis XIV [source: Covington].

And the expression isn’t as callous as it may sound. From an economical standpoint, it was a perfectly logical thing to say.

What Rousseau or Maria Theresa actually said — whatever the case may be — is “qu’ils mangent de la brioche.” This doesn’t mean “let them eat cake;” it means “let them eat an egg-based bread” [source: Goldberg]. The type of bread to which the speaker referred is a more luxe loaf than the typical flour-and-water bread of the Parisian pauper. A French law mandated that bakers sell their brioche at the same price as their inexpensive bread if this supply ran out. Later on, the law would be the downfall of the hungry lower classes when bakers responded by baking very short supplies of bread to save themselves from economic ruin.Marie Antoinette had plenty of enemies in Paris, and it was easy to fabricate stories about the queen’s spendthrift habits. Very likely, someone attributed this line to the wrong royal and the tale seemed true enough to stick.Along with Marie Antoinette’s image as a bonbon-eating, costumed and powdered confection of a lady comes her reputation as a lover of fine things. From loaves to carats, we’ll explore another weighty scandal on the next page.

 

4.The Diamond Necklace Affair

Like most good scandals, this one involves a smattering of diamonds, a prostitute and forged correspon­dence. We’ll begin with the diamonds.

Jewelers Böhmer and Bassenge nearly went broke creating a necklace that they presumed King Lo­uis XV would buy for his mistress Madame du Barry. Weighing in at 2,800 carats, the jewelers thought they’d fetch 1.6 million livres for the stunner — that’s roughly equivalent to 100 million U.S. dollars in today’s market. Unfortunately for Böhmer and Bassenge (and Madame du Barry), the king died before he could purchase it. They hoped that the new king, Louis XVI, might agree to buy the necklace for Marie Antoinette. Whatever frivolous reputation she may have acquired later in her reign, Marie Antoinette made a patriotic, sentient decision to discourage Louis from purchasing the necklace. She reasoned that he’d be better off putting the money toward France’s navy[source: Muschamp].

The necklace languished in the jewelers’ possession until a desperate, enterprising woman named Jeanne de Lamotte Valois devised a plot to pull herself out of debt by acquiring the necklace and selling it for parts. The Comtesse de Lamotte appealed to Cardinal de Rohan, who was rather unpopular at court. From 1772 to ’74, he’d served as the French ambassador to Vienna, where he became a quick enemy of Marie Antoinette’s mother — and of Marie Antoinette herself. The comtesse told the cardinal that Marie Antoinette desperately wanted the diamond necklace but that she didn’t want to ask Louis for it. Lamotte slyly suggested that if Cardinal de Rohan could find a way to procure it for Marie Antoinette, his good reputation would be restored at court.

Lamotte had her lover, Rétaux de Villette, write letters in Marie Antoinette’s hand and send them to the cardinal, asking him to buy the necklace [source:Covington].

The comtesse even paid a prostitute who looked like the queen to have a secret tête-à-tête with the cardinal in the Versailles gardens one night. At last, the cardinal wrangled the diamonds from Böhmer and Bassenge on credit. The jewelers presented the necklace to the queen’s footman for delivery — only the footman was Rétaux in disguise. He seized the necklace and headed to London.­

When his first payment was due, Cardinal de Rohan couldn’t cough up the amount. The jewelers demanded money from Marie Antoinette, who had no knowledge of the necklace. By then, the necklace had been sold. A furious Louis had the cardinal arrested; later, he was acquitted of all charges and exiled. The scheming mastermind Lamotte was imprisoned but broke free and took up residence in England. There, she spread propaganda about the queen — though she needn’t have bothered.

Marie Antoinette’s reputation (already hanging tenuously in the balance) was ruined. The scandal confirmed that she was, indeed, “Madame Déficit.” The diamond necklace affair would be one of the final straws before the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette’s death sentence.

But before her head rolled, the good times did. Next, we’ll peek into her boudoir and investigate her affair with a Swedish soldier.­

3.The Deed With the Swede

Marie Antoinette met the Swedish soldier Hans Axe­l von Fersen in January 1774 at a ball in Paris. At the time, she was still the dauphine (not yet the queen), and Fersen’s military career had just begun. Marie Antoinette was instantly attracted to Fersen — like many women before her and many women after her — who was handsome, sol­emn and chivalrous. She invited him to Versailles, and he became known as one of her favorite guests. Fersen returned Marie Antoinette’s affections, but couldn’t offer constancy: His military career blossomed into a diplomatic post and took him to England for several years and then to the American colonies, where he fought with the colonists on behalf of France.

When Louis officially became king, he gave Marie Antoinette Petit Trianon, a three-story “pleasure house” tucked away in the vast grounds of Versailles. The house had been under construction from 1762-68 — it was intended for Madame de Pompadour, a mistress of Louis XV. Marie Antoinette was delighted with her acquisition and expanded its domain to include a rustic farm and town that she called Le Hameau (“the hamlet”). Quaint as the property may have been, it cost Louis 2 million francs to build (nearly 6 million U.S. dollars in 2006) [source: Covington].

She passed her time in these shrouded quarters, and members of the court considered it a great honor to be invited there. In fact, those who weren’t invited to Petit Trianon circulated rumors about the queen’s debauchery and reputed love affair with her close friend the Duchesse de Polignac. Louis never slept over at Petit Trianon, though he did visit to attend theatrical performances in which Marie Antoinette played the parts of Babet and Pierette, provincial dairymaids [source: Fraser].

Fersen was a much more frequent visitor. He had his own apartment directly above Marie Antoinette’s, and judging from the correspondence between the two of them, they had a very intimate relationship. In one series of correspondence, they wrote about the acquisition and arrangement of a stove [source:Covington]. While they were involved, Marie Antoinette still pursued her wifely duty of creating an heir to the throne; there’s really no way to tell if her children were Louis’ or Fersen’s. But Louis accepted the children as his own, and Marie Antoinette and her lover were careful to avoid any unwanted pregnancies.­

When Marie Antoinette and her family were imprisoned at the Tuileries during the first thrust of the French Revolution, Fersen was instrumental in plotting their escape. He borrowed large sums of money and even mortgaged his house to help them flee, and he never did pay it back in full — nor did the escape work. The party was apprehended in the town of Varennes, miles from the Austrian border.

Fersen outlived his lover by nearly 20 years. On June 20, 1810, he was beaten to death by a Stockholm mob for his suspected involvement in the crown prince’s death.

In a letter he wrote to his sister, Fersen explained that he would never marry because the woman he loved was taken. In the next section, we’ll look at the sturdy man who stood between the two lovers.

2.The Brick Wall in the Bedroom

For seven years, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s marriage was unconsummated — and it was all anyone could talk about. Well, that and the brewing revolution.

The couple wed in May 1770, and the ceremony and ensuing celebration had all the trappings of a lavish royal fête. At Versailles, custom permitted the king’s courtiers to accompany the newlyweds to their bedroom, where they reposed on display. It did little to stoke the fires of passion.

Marie Antoinette was frustrated. She was willing and able to sexually receive her husband; as a matter of fact, she lived in a state of anxiety that he would never warm to her and that she’d be sent home to Austria as an utter failure. Her mother, Maria Theresa, reminded her of this danger at every possible juncture in their correspondence. She wrote to Marie Antoinette to “lavish more caresses” on Louis [source: Covington]. What’s more, it was painfully clear to everyone that something was wrong with the couple. It wasn’t just the young couple’s physical gratification at stake: France was waiting for Marie Antoinette to produce an heir to the throne.

News of Louis’ impotence spread from the court of Versailles to the streets of Paris, where pamphlets mocking his powerlessness were distributed. The propaganda planted the seed that if Louis couldn’t perform in the bedroom, he certainly couldn’t perform on the throne. Louis XV watched forlornly as his grandson failed to execute his mission; the reigning king had a rapacious sexual appetite and an insatiable mistress, Madame du Barry.

Louis was doughy, impressionable and more fascinated by locks, languages and hunting than he was by his lovely young wife. Marie Antoinette explained to a friend, “My tastes are not the same as the King’s, who is only interested in hunting and his metal-working” [source: Fraser]. But different tastes or not, Maria Theresa wasn’t going to take the news lying down. She sent her son Joseph to assess the couple’s damage. He called them “two complete blunderers” and surmised that nothing else stood in their way of consummation.

Joseph may not have been entirely correct in his analysis. Louis had been diagnosed with a condition called phimosis in which the foreskin of the penis is tighter than normal and doesn’t loosen upon arousal. This condition made sex very painful. There was an operation available to correct the condition, but Louis was reluctant to go under the knife. Some historians think he finally acquiesced and had the procedure while some say he never did; regardless, the couple finally consummated.

Marie Antoinette and Louis later wrote to Joseph, thanking him for his help. Who knows what suggestive advice he might have whispered in their ears during a walk around the grounds of Versailles?

A siren call even sweeter than her husband’s voice roused Marie Antoinette from her malaise at court.

 

1.The National Wardrobe

When she wa­s a young girl in Austria, Marie Antoinette was r­ather rough-and-tumble. She liked horseback riding and hunting. But at Versailles, her tomboy tendencies were squeezed out of her with each tightening of her corset. Marie Antoinette hated being put on display and having grand ceremonies made out of everyday activities like getting dressed and eating meals.

She need only receive a letter from her mother to remind her of her place. Marie Antoinette was, after all, in a marriage of diplomacy — Maria Theresa couldn’t stand for her daughter to fail Austria. Though she acquired the reputation of a spendthrift, Marie Antoinette wasn’t always so fast and loose with her budget. Her mother rebuked Marie Antoinette for keeping a slovenly appearance, and the letters she wrote to her homesick daughter were full of reminders about wearing clean clothes and grooming her hair [source: Schmidt].

Marie Antoinette doffed her unfashionable togs for the latest in French couture from the house of Rose Bertin. During Louis’ reign, he incurred more than 2,000 million livres in debt by contributing reinforcements to the American Revolution; Marie built up her debt in her closet [source: History Channel]. She had nearly 300 dresses made annually for her various social engagements at the court of Versailles, her private parties at Petit Trianon and for the stage of her jewel-box theater [source: Amiel].

But it wasn’t just dresses that Marie and her couturier fussed over. She had an original hairstyle commissioned — the gravity-defying pouf — and even had an exclusive fragrance made for her by Jean-Louis Fargeon (also her glovemaker). Marie Antoinette’s elixir evoked the gardens and orchards at Petit Trianon, and it was supposedly so strong a scent that it gave her away during her family’s plotted escape from the Tuileries [source: Street].

Her pricy parties and extensive wardrobe earned Marie Antoinette the moniker Madame Déficit. She couldn’t shake the title — not that she tried. Marie Antoinette was far removed from the revolutionary murmurs in Paris. And her ignorance ultimately culminated in her death sentence.

To learn more about Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution, traipse over to the next page.

A Belated Gift

In 1783, a member of the court who was quite fond of the young queen ordered a gold pocket watch for her from the Swiss company Breguet. But Marie Antoinette never received the token of affection: She was executed 34 years before it was completed.

The dark side of the magnificent Versailles

The Château de Versailles, Versailles, France.

We all know the palace of Versailles for the magnificence of its gardens, the exterior, the interior of the building and for the great historical figures who lived there but few historians talk about how  was in reality the palace, the precarious conditions in which it was and how the nobles treated the royal residence.

At Versailles he reigned a truly incredible dirt.
Just read the memoirs of Orace Walpole. Lice and fleas were everywhere.
The big dogs that nobles wore in the palace corridors to protect themselves from pickpockets were doing their needs anywhere and nobody was cleaning them. The fact that the palace was open to all wore short every kind of visitor: many homeless people slept on staircases.
The seggette used them only nobles were wandering the halls … and the little pages of the park with the buckets in which he made a pee … the nobles used to throw a coin into the buckets just filled the tip.
The ladies turned with a golden stick the end of which was fixed a little hand of ivory that was used to scratch his head without compromising the hairstyle: inside those incredible real hair and fake pyramids proliferated a lot of lice.
The ladies began to put inside the hairstyles strips of paper or of blood on saucers and honey so that the lice whose food it instead of one of the skin .

In the park of Versailles, the ladies did the crouching needs where they are.
If you happen to read town chronicles relating to that period will understand the state in which they lived: you could not pass next to the theaters because the waiters were throwing leftover food and the needs of their masters down the windows of retropalchi: everything remained on the outside walls theater and smelled badly,it not bathed because the water brought safe infections.

Sometimes there is deceived a bit from the glitz, but it was a time full of contradictions …

Queen Victoria writes to King Leopold I

After reading Matterhorn’s lovely post about Queen Louise, I recalled reading a letter from Queen Victoria to King Leopold, following Louise’s death. Although Queen Victoria – the doyenne of mourners! – tends to be very over-emotional in all her letters to bereaved people, this letter shows her genuine affection, love and respect for the Queen and for King Leopold and his family:

Osborne House 18th October 1850

My dearest Uncle,
This was the day I always and for so many years wrote to her, to our adored Louise and now I write to you to thank you for that heart-breaking, touching letter of the 16th, which you so very kindly wrote to me.

What a day Tuesday must have been! Welch Einen Gang! and yesterday! My grief was so great again yesterday.

To talk of her is my greatest consolation! Let us all try to imitate her!

My poor, dear Uncle, we so wish to be with you if we can be of any use to you, to go to you for 2 or 3 days quite quietly and alone, to Laeken, without anyone and without any reception, to cry with you and to talk with you of her. It will be a great comfort to us – a silent tribute of love and respect for her – to be able to mingle our tears with yours at her tomb.

And the affection of your two devoted children [the Queen is referring to herself and Prince Albert, King Leopold’s niece and nephew] will perhaps be of some slight balm.

My first impulse was to fly at once to you but perhaps a few weeks’
delay will be better.

It will be a great and melancholy satisfaction to us. Daily you will feel more, my dearest Uncle, the poignancy of your dreadful loss; my heart breaks in thinking of you and the poor, dear children. How beautiful it must be to see that your whole country weeps and mourns with you. For the country and for your children you must try to bear up and feel that in doing so, you are doing all SHE wished.

If only we could be of use to you! If I could do anything for poor, little Charlotte. whom our blessed Louise talked of so often to me.
May I write to you on Fridays as I used to write to her, as well as on Tuesdays? You need not answer me and whenever it bores you to write to me or you have no time, let one of the dear children write to me.
May God bless and protect you ever, my beloved Uncle, is our anxious prayer. Embrace the dear children in the name of one who has almost the love of a mother for them. Ever your devoted Niece and Loving Child,
Victoria R.

Napoleon as a student

Napoleon in Coronation robes c.1812 by Girodet (1767-1824)

The study was not a feature in which Napoleon Bonaparte excelled, which he was definitely brought to the military art.

The future Emperor of the French and master of half the world, he was an indifferent student, and no special skills, poor letterare both materials and life sciences.

In a more mature age, which ended the long political experience, now only and exiled to St. Helena, Napoleon decided to finally learn English, the language of the enemy that he was ashamed of not knowing; a few years ago a private museum bought, to expose them to the public, the writings that the former general worked at that time for practice, all peppered with coarse grammatical errors.

Apparently Napoleon undertook, but he had little success..

Courtship and Marriage in Regency Era

“Courtship” by Felix Friedrich Von Ende

The hunt for a husband in Regency England was a serious business and upper class families invested large sums of money to give their daughters a ‘season’ in London.

An unattached woman had no occupation other than to find a husband but on no account must she signal that this was her goal. It was the single man wanting a wife who must do the work of wooing and winning according to a strict code of conduct. The code protected the woman’s reputation but also prevented the man from becoming ensnared against his will.

The prohibitions put upon the unmarried were many.
Before an engagement, couples could not converse privately or be alone in a room, travel unchaperoned in a carriage, call one another by their Christian names, correspond with or give gifts to one another, dance more than two sets together on any evening or touch intimately – and that included handshakes.
Greeting and leave taking were acknowledged with a slight bow of the head or curtsy.

So in a period when propriety was so strictly policed, how did courtship ever progress?
Ways and means did exist for young men and women to interact and exchange smiles, sighs and becoming blushes.
Private balls and public assemblies were ideal opportunities for couples to come together.
Gloved hands could be held briefly during the dance and while walking to and from a set. Under the watchful supervision of their elders, the young and unattached could stand up with each other, demonstrate their gracefulness, their ability to converse intelligently and their compatibility.
In similar fashion interested partners might become better acquainted on chaperoned walks in the countryside, falling behind the rest of the party if they wished to speak privately.

When a gentleman was certain his feelings were reciprocated, he would ask permission of the lady’s parents to pay his addresses. A suitably private setting for the proposal could then be arranged. Most often he would be answered positively since it was very bad form for a lady to encourage an attachment she could not return. Occasionally an unwelcome proposal might be made despite her lack of encouragement, and then the lady would have to turn her suitor down but always with sensitivity to the man’s feelings.

Once a proposal was accepted and parental consent was obtained, to break off an engagement was considered very grave. An engagement was seen as a contract. A gentleman was strictly forbidden from breaking an engagement once accepted and a lady could only change her mind after careful consideration.

There were strict rules governing marriage. In order to marry legally, a couple needed a license and the reading of the banns. They also required parental consent if either of them were under the age of 21 and the ceremony had to be conducted in a church or chapel by authorised clergy. The only way round this was elopement to Gretna Green in Scotland or if you were extremely wealthy, the purchase of a ‘special license’ issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury which permitted the couple to marry at a location other than a church. Needless to say, either course of action was likely to create intense and often unpleasant gossip.

During the Regency, weddings were mostly private affairs and even fashionable weddings were sparingly attended. They were certainly not the huge affairs that we know today or that became more prevalent during the Victorian era. The bride might sometimes wear white but it was not considered mandatory. A coloured dress did not signify lack of chasteness but was simply a personal preference.

Wedding scene in winter featuring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle as Mr and Mrs Darcy from BBC Adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1995).