Afleveringen
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Turns out that selfies aren't really a new phenomenon, and as cameras emerged as a new technology in the 19th century, there was a nearly perfect subject who made the form her own. Meet Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, spy, diplomat, model, courtesan, art director, and one-time mistress of Emperor Napoleon III. It's quite a resume and a heck of a story - a minor noble whose beauty was legendary but whose arrogance and self-importance certainly rubbed the Parisian upper crust the wrong way.
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As a young man, Stanislaw Poniatowski arrived at the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, a Polish noble in the service of an English diplomat. An affair commenced with the future Catherine the Great, whose affection (and malign influence in the politics of Russia's neighbor) resulted in Stanislaw being elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in in 1764.
It was a good news/bad news reign for Stanislaw, who saw his country partitioned not once, not twice, but three times, by the greater powers on his borders. His efforts to modernize and liberalize Poland - including the creation of an American-style constitution in 1791 - were all for naught, as his former lover finally annexed what remained of Poland in 1795. It would be more than a century before Poland re-emerged as a nation, and one which views Stanislaw II August in an understandably mixed way.
Thanks to listener Ray for contributing this banger of a tale.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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This week, Alicia invited Alicia King Anderson Ph.D. to talk all things Persephone and Hades, the Queen and King of the Underworld.
We unpack the myth of this royal couple down below. How does a young girl, Kore, complete the transformation into Persephone? Who is Hades and why is he messing with his niece, Kore? How does the whole snatching of the beautiful maiden go down, and what happens in the Underworld?
It's a story with complicated supernatural family ties, a kidnapping, a mother's grief, famine, a marriage, and - big headline - the introduction of seasons into the human world. And this myth was a foundational piece of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which helped initiates of the cult of Demeter and Persephone abandon their fear of death.
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Explore More with Alicia King Anderson
Alicia King Anderson Ph.D.'s website
Join Alicia's Patreon community, Myth and Fairy Tale Nerds Unite!
Sign up for Alicia's March 22 workshop, The Return of Persephone: Spring Equinox Workshop
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As we roar towards the Ides of March, it just makes sense to spend a little time with Rome's OG, Gaius Julius Caesar. But since it's also Women's History Month, we're taking stock of his life and times through his marriages, both the ones we're sure happened, the one we aren't sure happened - and of course, Cleopatra makes an appearance.
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The Gabor sisters were some of the most iconic cultural figures in the second half of the 20th century, having arrived on our shores from Nazi-occupied Hungary, where they experienced loss and engaged in heroic resistance. Along with their mother, Jolie, sisters Eva, Zsa Zsa, and Magda, stormed the mid-century zeitgeist and lived through extremely complicated family dynamics, as well as complicated romantic entanglements - including, between them all - 23 marriages, 18 divorces, two widowhoods, and two annulments. They were allies and rivals, poly-linguists, artisans, and entrepreneurs. But mostly, they were women possessed of a drive to succeed and an eternal willingness to bend their stories to suit the moment at hand.
This month, Trashy Divorces is proud to present the lives and loves of The Glamorous Gabors, an eight-episode arc bringing these four amazing women into focus in the 21st century. Listen online or wherever you get your podcasts!
The Glamorous Gabors was researched and written by Melanie Shawn, with our deep gratitude.
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Just in time for Women's History Month here in the US, Alicia has a story as old as time - an 8th century Queen of the central English kingdom of Mercia during the Anglo-Saxon period who maybe was the victim of a smear campaign centuries later. Obviously, contemporaneous records of the period are sparse, but what we do think we know is that Queen Cynethryth and her husband King Offa had a contentious relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury in that period. Mercia confiscated some of the Archbishop's lands, and the Archbishop supported an uprising that saw Kent liberate itself from King Offa's rule. Things went far enough south between them that Offa eventually created an entirely new Archdiocese in Lichfield that would presumably be a bit more compliant with his wishes.
And while Offa and Cynethryth would outlive that Archbishop of Canterbury, it seems that the Church would have the final say over Cynethryth's story. Coincidentally, that portrayal became extremely negative right around the time, centuries later, that Empress Matilda was attempting to exert her righteous claim to the English throne after the death of her father, King Henry I.
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Sponsors
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/trashyroyals.
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We're on break this week, so we're delving into Trashy Royals history (see what we did there!) with an encore of one of our earliest episodes, Roman Emperor Nero. While things started out relatively well when he took the reins from Claudius at just age 16, his attention and priorities quickly spiraled to pointless things and private grievance. As one does.
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Back in 1959, a writer named Samson Rebaldi gave an autocrat and despot a real glow-up in the pages of Confidential, a gossip rag of the era. Yemen's second-to-last hereditary ruler, Ahmad bin Yahya - known as "Ahmad the devil" within Yemen - was in Rome at the time, receiving medical treatment for a variety of ailments, and Rebaldi delighted in the news that he had traveled with his multiple wives, dozens of concubines, and maintained a stable of "slave girls" back at home. In Rome, Rebaldi says that doctors limited the ailing dictator to six female visitors a day, though Yahya's age, health problems, and various drug addictions may have made these visits less exciting that Rebaldi believed.
Yahya died in his sleep three years after the piece was published, at the age of 71, and was briefly succeeded by his son, Muhammad al-Badr. The Badr reign came to an end after just a week, when disaffected soldiers launched a coup and declared Yemen a Republic. It is, very tragically, still working on that.
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Last summer, Alicia was finally able to catch SIX The Musical on Broadway, and last weekend, Stacie got to see the US Tour version. A pop spectacular featuring the wives of Henry VIII, the play's back story is every bit as cool and fun as the show itself is. In this episode, we talk SIX The Musical, and we pull a Patreon Royal-Tea Time episode from August where Alicia got into what it's all about.
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This week, join us for a journey 500 years in the making! Off to Derbyshire we go to spend some time at Chatsworth, the ancestral home of the Cavendish family and the Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire through time.
There were many women who claimed the Duchess title, and a few who did not. We explore them all - from Bess of Hardwick, the lady who begins it all, to Georgiana Spencer and Deborah Mitford, the ones who did attain the title, as well as the ones who did not, including Lady Caroline Lamb, Adele Astaire, and Kick Kennedy.
Mary Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1646–1710), wife of the first duke
Rachel Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1674 – 1725), wife of the second duke
Catherine Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1700–1777), wife of the third duke
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806), first wife of the fifth duke
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1759–1824), second wife of the fifth duke
Louisa Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1832–1911), wife of the eighth duke
Evelyn Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1870–1960), wife of the ninth duke
Mary Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1895–1988), wife of the tenth duke
Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1920–2014), wife of the eleventh duke
Amanda Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (born 1944), wife of the twelfth duke
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We regret to inform you that today's legal regime of protecting corpses from desecration is a modern development, and even worse, royals have a rich history of relying on them for all sorts of things. Today we get into the alleged curative powers of corpses, especially among Spain's Hapsburg leaders a few centuries back.
Don Carlos himself, whom we covered last week, is said to have recovered from that serious head wound he received with the help of a local miracle-maker named Diego de Alcala - a Franciscan lay brother who had died some hundred years before.
Apparently the Spanish royals frequently slept beside the corpses of the venerated long dead. For instance, Isidore the Farmer was born around 1070 in Madrid and, over the course of his life, developed a bit of a legend for alleged miracles and feeding the poor. In death, his legend continued to grow, resulting in him being declared a Saint in the Catholic Church in 1619, then having his teeth pulled out to be placed under Charles II of Spain's pillows to aid his many ailments in 1696.
Speaking of Charles IIs, England had one, too, and he also had a penchant for human body parts. In his case though, the medicinal aspect was attained through consuming a tincture made from human skull fragments. And best of all, "The King's Drops" became all the rage across Europe for a century or more, which was certainly one way to put the remains of your ancestors to work for you.
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We've often marveled at the incestuous nature of royal marriages in Europe, but the inbreeding really came to a head in 16th century Spain, when King Philip II married and had a son with his double first cousin, Maria Manuela of Portugal. Carlos, their baby boy, came into the world with significant disadvantages; his legs were different lengths and his spine curved abnormally, causing problems with his gait and posture.
These are issues to be compassionate about, but Carlos's behavior from infancy forward tended toward the violent and sadistic. He injured his wet nurses by biting them, and was known to torture animals and humans alike as a child and adolescent. It's unclear whether his behavioral issues might have been inherited as well; among his four great-grandparents (most people have eight) and six great-great-grandparents (most people have sixteen) was Juana I of Castile, better known to us as Juana the Mad.
While Carlos was clearly unfit to become a monarch, Philip II was in a bit of a bind because he had no other sons, and his wives - he would be married four times in total - kept dying on him. Carlos's mother, Philip's first wife, died from complications from delivering him, Mary I of England died four years into their childless marriage, Elisabeth of Valois - originally betrothed to Carlos - died after nine years of marriage and several daughters, and finally, Anna of Austria was able to produce a living heir before she died after ten years of marriage. In the meantime, Philip found himself going to extreme lengths to protect his kingdom from his son - perhaps even by murdering him.
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One of the more fascinating women of the Tudor era was actually one of the last Plantagenets, Margaret Plantagenet, later Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. Daughter of George, Duke of Clarence (he of Malmsey wine fame), and a niece to both King Edward IV and King Richard III, Margaret and her brother were taken into the care of King Henry VII after Richard's defeat at Bosworth Field. Henry's wife, Elizabeth of York, was Margaret's cousin, and perhaps because of his insecurities about his claim to the throne, Henry preferred to keep the remaining Plantagenets close.
As a consequence, Margaret had a front-row seat to some of the most consequential moments in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, including as a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, who would become a close a friend across the decades. But she also suffered mightily; Henry VII imprisoned and then executed her brother, and after the death of her husband, Hank VII kept her nearly destitute through the confiscation of the Salisbury estate, rightfully her brother's Earldom. When Henry VIII succeeded his father - and Catherine of Aragon made a big return - Margaret was made whole, becoming one of only two women in 16th century England who was a peer in her own right.
Her success as a landowner did not sit well with the increasingly paranoid Henry VIII, who spent her last decade cracking down on her children, and eventually put Margaret into the Tower of London for a couple of years before Henry ordered her executed on the Tower Green on May 27, 1541. A contemporary report has it that she taunted her inexperienced executioner to the last.
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Alicia is leading a Swiftory takeover! To celebrate the launch of her newest podcast, Swiftory, she's taking you into one of its origin stories - the life of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, through a five-song arc of Taylor Swift songs. This one will sate the palate of both Trashy Divorces and Trashy Royals listeners!
Subscribe to Swiftory on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Here are lyrics and live performances for you to enjoy your own musical journey!
Links with lyrics
This Love: Taylor Swift - This Love (Taylor's Version) (Lyric Video)
Long Live: Taylor Swift - Long Live [Lyrics] (Taylor’s Version)
Gold Rush: Taylor Swift - gold rush (Official Lyric Video)
Death By a Thousand Cuts: Taylor Swift - Death By A Thousand Cuts (with LYRICS)
Peter: Taylor Swift - Peter lyrics
Links to live performances
This Love, live from 2015: [Remastered 4K] This Love - Taylor Swift - 1989 World Tour 2015 - EAS Channel
Gold Rush, Live from Philly: gold rush live at the eras tour (surprise song)
DBATC, Tiny Desks: Taylor Swift - Death By A Thousand Cuts (Performance Legendada - Live)
Peter, from Stockholm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZt7nrE6GIo
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Legend has it that at the turn of the 17th century, in a small corner of the then-Kingdom of Hungary, a noblewoman preyed on her peasant tenants, torturing and murdering them for her own sadistic pleasure high up in her castle in the Little Carpathian Mountains. Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Erzsebet Bathori, or Alzbeta Batoriova, in Hungarian and Slovakian, respectively) has been described as history's most prolific female serial killer - her death toll was said to be as high as 650 - until she was finally stopped on the order of the King of Hungary.
But the story is more complicated than the tale that's been passed down. The daughter of an extremely powerful and wealthy family, Elizabeth and her husband had loaned the crown significant sums to keep it afloat during a long war with the Ottoman Empire. She herself was a Calvinist in a time when Lutherans were agitating for greater authority in post-Reformation Europe, and one Lutheran minister in particular seems to have been diligent in spreading rumors of Elizabeth's bad conduct. After Elizabeth became a widow - thus a rich and powerful independent noblewoman who was owed a large sum of money from the King - the rumors intensified significantly. Is this because Elizabeth's murder spree picked up steam, or because, for reasons ranging from sexism and sectarianism to simple power politics and repayment avoidance, it was convenient to destroy Countess Bathory's reputation for all of history?
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It turns out that Royals have been enjoying (?) bizarre deaths a lot more often than we first realized! Among this set's methods of departure from the world: getting a little too cozy with your enemy's severed head, life-extension mercury (don't try this at home!), poorly constructed furniture, laughter, constipation, and, in a bit of a twist, a story about the arguable desecration of Philip the Fair's corpse by his too-loving widow.
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Like the rest of us, the world's royals are mere mortals who meet our universal fate in the end. But for some, that end came about in unusual ways - infected simian bites, the ingestion of liquid gold, genital maggots, a surfeit of lampreys, and the sweetest, perhaps: death by pastry.
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New from Hemlock Creatives: Swiftory, a not-so-typical Taylor Swift podcast, perfect for any Swiftie, literature lover, or history buff.
Hosts Alicia and Melissa explore Taylor Swift’s music as a jumping off point into a wider world of fascinating figures and iconic literature. Join us as we romp through Taylor’s stories, visiting the places, personalities, and – of course – the eras, that her songs evoke.
Coming 12/31/2024, wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe here on Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts.
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And in the concluding episode of the (ongoing) story of Princess Michael of Kent, we watch aghast as the Anglican and Catholic churches battle over the pending nuptials of Prince Michael and his sweet Marie-Christine, and then Alicia tries (and seems to largely fail) to explain to Stacie why British law and custom required Prince Michael of Kent to marry Princess Michael of Kent, and not Baroness Marie-Christine. Seems like Prince Michael's cousin Queen Elizabeth II could have done him - and his fiance - a solid here with some alternative title, but I guess not.
Then, we again watch aghast as Princess Michael of Kent unloads on the deceased Princess Diana (and the then-Prince of Wales, by proxy) and lobs some racist displays in the general direction of Meghan Markle. Why? It's just a matter of tradition, apparently. Yikes, this one is trashy.
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This week we continue our journey into the life and times of Princess Michael of Kent. In this middle episode of her arc, we explore her teenage years, her first marriage and subsequent divorce, and her romance with Prince Michael of Kent. This love affair is assisted by a familiar character, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who manages with charm and royal politics to attain the Queen's permission.
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