Marie Antoinette’s Mother, Empress Maria Theresa

Vulgar History Podcast

Marie Antoinette’s Mother, Empress Maria Theresa

August 20, 2025

Ann: Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and the time we’re all waiting for is here: We’re in our Marie Antoinette era. Every episode, we’re talking about someone who’s close to Marie Antoinette until we actually start talking about Marie Antoinette. Last week we talked about her favourite painter, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and today we’re talking about her mom. And just to be kind of like those people, you know, those videos on TikTok that are like, “This is my friend, and she builds LEGOs and you have to be nice to her, and she’s going to talk about her LEGOs.” I’ve got a special guest today. It’s Lana Wood Johnson and she’s here to talk about the Holy Roman Empire and Maria Theresa, and you have to be nice to her because this is her favourite thing to talk about. Lana Wood Johnson, welcome. 

Lana: Thank you for having me. 

Ann: Thank you for bringing your enthusiasm on this topic to this episode, because honestly, actually, I want to shout out… I read In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters by Nancy Goldstone. So, I read that book, and I was able to read that book— First of all, it was written in a very approachable way, I recommend the book. But also because Lana was there, and holding me, and explaining things along the way. Like, thank god for you. Thank god you know this history because it’s all new to me and everyone’s called Maria and that can get confusing. 

Lana: The Maria is kind of a placeholder name. 

Ann: Yeah, I came to understand that. So, she is a Habsburg, she’s from that family, and their whole thing, they have a real connection to, like, the Virgin Mary, they’re Catholic, that’s pretty crucial. 

Lana: So crucial. 

Ann: It’s very incredibly crucial, we’ll get to that. Was she religiously tolerant? No. 

Lana: No. [laughs]

Ann: So, everyone in her family, all of her daughters, are called Maria Something, which, Marie Antoinette, when she went to France, she changed it to Marie Antoinette instead of Maria Antonia. But exactly, Maria just means “Female child of a Habsburg.” It’s like here in Canada, in Québec, French Canadians, often, their names are Marie-Something, and you never call them Marie, you call them by the second name. Like, that’s just kind of the convention. So, we’re going to call her Maria Theresa, I presume, because that’s her full name and she needs to be known. 

Lana: She’s a queen. 

Ann: Empress. 

Lana: She’s an Empress. She’s a lot of things. [laughs]

Ann: I wanted to set that up first, actually. So, there’s a portrait I’m going to share, look at the Instagram,@VulgarHistoryPod, today, so everybody can see. It’s a portrait. It was in the book I was reading, it was described as like, “Maria Theresa poses with several of her crowns.” And I said that to you, Lana, and you’re like, “Appropriate.” I’m like, it is! Actually, it’s missing a few. 

Lana: It’s a very reasonable number of crowns considering all of the places she was in charge of. 

Ann: Okay, we’re going to explain who she is and how she became in charge of these things. But I’m just going to read you, this is the first paragraph of her Wikipedia page. 

Maria Theresa was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Slavonia, Mantua, Milan, Moravia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Dalmatia, the Austrian Netherlands, Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia and Gradisca, Austrian Silesia, Tyrol, Styria, and Parma. By marriage, she was the Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and Holy Roman Empress.

Just let that sink in. 

Lana: I don’t know if that “By marriage, Holy Roman Empress” is fair, but we’ll also get into that. 

Ann: We will get to that as well. But just kind of like, if you think of any of the, like, Netflix or Hallmark Christmas movies about fake monarchies, like, all the names of those fake countries. I feel like Genovia could be in this list as well, from The Princess Diaries. Like, they got those all from places she was queen of. 

Lana: They’re all parts of existing countries now, like, they’re all regions now. But the 1800s were big on condensing. 

Ann: We need to get into this… This is, again, it’s like “Everybody, this is my friend talking about her LEGOs, Lana.” Can you explain the country of Germany we know now, and what it was when Maria Theresa was around? Your favourite topic? 

Lana: [laughs] The funny thing about this is when Ann was first starting the podcast, she’d run across a Habsburg and she’d be like, “Augh, Habsburgs! They’re all the same.” And I’m like, “No, they’re not. There’s two branches that hate each other.” She’s like, “No, no, no, they’re all the same.” Like, “Okay, we’ll fix this one day.” And today is my day. I have finally convinced you there are two groups of Habsburgs. 

Ann: This is really important for people to understand. There’s two groups of Habsburgs that are at war. One of them is much more inbred than the other one. So, the one I’m thinking of, the one other people might be thinking of, is the Spanish ones; those are the ones who became so inbred their mouths couldn’t chew food because their faces were so fucked up. That’s the Spanish ones, and these are the other ones. 

Lana: Yeah. The Spanish ones, like they got real deep into the inbreeding because they couldn’t marry the French, because they were always at war with the French, and they couldn’t marry the Austrians because family drama. Which is weird, when everybody’s your family. But the Austrians were traditionally the Holy Roman Emperors. For a little bit there, the Spanish were also the Holy Roman Emperors, but they couldn’t maintain that, and all of their other holdings, so they kind of let it go. Both sides of these families are descended from Juana de Castile. 

Ann: Yeah, Juana La Loca, our girl, she was on this podcast. I think this episode’s coming out in August, so like, FYI, if you’re in Edinburgh, there’s a musical happening as part of the fringe festival called The Queen is Mad or something like that. Everyone should go see it, it looks like it’s really good. I was just like, “Our girl! Our girl’s getting a musical. Hell yeah!” So, if you go back to that, that’s how far back this… 

Lana: That’s how far back the skip goes, the split. 

Ann: The schism.

Lana: The schism. And so, they kind of split all their holdings, and the Spanish and all of that went to one side that ended up being Philip II and all of that. And then, on the other side, was the Holy Roman Emperors and the Austrians, what we know as the Austro-Hungarians, usually. It’s one of those… The Holy Roman Empire goes all the way back to Charlemagne. 

Ann: This is like… Can I just say, I want to quote Mike Myers, Canada’s own, from Saturday Night Live a long time ago, “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Discuss.” So, it’s not… We’ve talked recently on the podcast about ancient Rome. Ancient Rome fell, ended, stopped, and then this guy called Charlemagne was like, “I like them, I’m going to call my place Holy Roman Empire,” but it has nothing to do with the original one, except he was inspired by it. Is that right? 

Lana: Yeah. Well, I mean, he was going to try to claim all of the lands that used to be part of the Roman Empire, and he got the Pope on his side, kind of, sort of, by bullying, I think. [laughs] This is outside of my history. But basically, what happened is, when he died, he had three kids, and his empire was split into parts. One of the parts, the farthest eastern part, is the Holy Roman Empire, and unlike most parts, it’s not a single landmass ruled by a single person through a hereditary thing, as much as it looks like it. It’s actually voted on by all of the member states. So, what is currently Germany, Austria, Poland, and Yugoslavia— Well, no, it’s not Yugoslavia anymore, but what was Yugoslavia. 

Ann: The Slavic Republic or whatever. 

Lana: Yeah, like Germany, Austria, and a lot of the Eastern Bloc countries were variously owned by, ruled, or run by different groups. So, there are duchies and their principalities, and there are kingdoms. So, King Leopold was the king of the kingdom of Bavaria, that was a member of the Holy Roman Empire. The Prussians were kings, there’s archduchies, there’s all of these little bits and pieces, and they were voting members, technically, of the Holy Roman Empire. 

Ann: I want to say when we’re talking about, like, we’re voting in, it’s not just a fair democratic election. It’s like, everyone is told who to vote for, and they vote for that person, and it looks a lot like a hereditary monarchy, but technically, it’s not. 

Lana: Technically… Is this important to the story? Like, this is the only time that the voting is actually important to the story, [laughs] is in this case. 

Ann: Well, that’s because there’s not a man, right? 

Lana: There’s no boy, so we’re talking 1,100 years of history, and now it actually matters that the voting is a voting thing. So, I want to set it up clearly. But it’s also important just because it’s my nerd, and it was my birthday, and that’s why we’re talking about this. 

Ann: Actually, listeners, this is part of my birthday present to Lana, is letting her talk about her favourite thing. Although I do want to say, I was just double-checking, you and I are of a similar age, and the countries we learned on the map in the ‘80s, a lot of them aren’t countries anymore in Eastern Europe. So, Yugoslavia, now, it was called that when we were youths looking at maps, but now it is Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. 

Lana: And so, some of these countries that we didn’t think of as countries are now countries again, and it’s been very complicated because colonization is complicated and ruins lives. 

Ann: The whole thing is complicated, but what we’re talking about, globally, in terms of Maria Theresa and the lands upon which she will rule in the course of this story we’re going to tell, it’s kind of like, Germany eastward, if you’re picturing the map today. Is that kind of correct? 

Lana: Yeah. And it includes parts, like, not even all of Italy, parts of Italy, and those are holdings. 

Ann: Oh god. Okay. No, this came up in— Listeners, if you’re new, you may not know, I wrote a book. It’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s and Crown Queen. And she, at one point, goes on a trip to various parts of what is now Italy, but they are not Italy. She goes to Naples, which is its own thing, which is part of Maria Theresa’s whole domain; she goes to Sardinia. Italy was not Italy… In terms of, like, me and Lana and what countries were on the map when we were growing up, if you’re a person today looking at a map, it’s like Italy, Germany, France. You’re just like, yeah, these are countries I recognize. Back then, no, no. France, yes. But like, Italy was not unified, Germany was not. It was just all these little places, and they’re not contiguous, like, somebody’s in charge of them. It’s like, you have this part of Italy, but not this part of Italy, but this part, but then not this part. It’s… Yeah.

Lana: Well, and even in Germany, so the northern part of Germany had all of these countries, and then there’s the cities that we all know, Hamburg and Berlin and all that stuff. Some of them were owned by the countries, the principalities or whatever it was that they were in, but some of them were completely independent and true democracies. So, Hamburg was run by democratically elected bürgers, the landowners— Obviously, not everybody, you can’t just let anybody vote. [laughs] But the wealthy landowners, members of the guilds, were able to vote for their city council for all intents and purposes. And those people had the equivalent power to the nearby prince of a kingdom. 

Ann: So, it’s like… I know this is a lot listeners, but this is why we’re starting off with all this, because Maria Theresa, don’t worry, we’re going to get into this, and she’s doing really interesting stuff, but it’s against the backdrop of all these little places all run by men, men with their own interests, and she’s just like, “Guess what? I’m in charge now.” So, just think about all the different levels of people that are affected by her eventually becoming in charge. This is important. It’s not just like, “Oh, you’re in charge of England! Great, this is a country, it’s all smushed together, this is one place.” It’s like, “You’re in charge of all these places, some of which, all of which have their own internal leadership as well.” This is important to how successful she is. Spoiler: She’s very successful. 

Lana: And then there’s the other complicating factor, which is the northern part is almost exclusively Lutheran, and the southern part is almost exclusively Catholic, with the eastern part being a little bit Catholic, and a little bit Eastern Orthodox. 

Ann: And it’s crucial, I think, to note that this is a time in history where religions were led to numerous wars. Again, we mentioned she is Catholic. Like, she’s Catholic. She has no time for anyone of any other religion. 

Lana: And we’re used to talking, when we talk about Europe, we’re used to talking about England and France arguing with each other, right? This is one of those situations where her biggest problem is the Ottoman Empire, which is… [laughs] 

Ann: We haven’t talked about that in this podcast for a long time. 

Lana: A whole new player!

Ann: This is, like, scroll back, scroll back through your podcast app. Hurrem Sultan, Suleiman, like, I explained that all there, two to three years ago. So, for describing her area of power, sort of like Germany and kind of eastward from there, with a little bit of Italy, if you go further east, Ottoman Empire. 

Lana: And they’re actively fighting with them. They’re not just like, “Meh.” They’re not friends. [laughs]

Ann: No, it’s like, empire versus empire. And the Ottoman Empire, just to be clear, that’s like, Muslim. So, we’ve got all these different areas with their own religion, with their own leadership, and it’s a pretty…

Lana: And they’re not agreeing. 

Ann: No, no. There’s just constant wars, is what’s going on in the European continent, in the backdrop to this story. [laughs] 

Lana: [laughs] And I finally got Ann to understand it. She will forget it next week, but I finally got her to understand it. 

Ann: For the next hour and a half, I will remember.  

So, Maria Theresa, she’s born into this fractious situation. So, she’s born, 1717. She’s born May 13th, if you’re a horoscope girlie, there you go. Her parents were Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, and her mother is called Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, an area that I know about a lot. Anyway, she was their second child. She had an older brother, Leopold, but he died as a child. So, she was born and was the heir. As so often happens in these stories of European royal births, she was a girl, and everyone’s like, “Oh no!” It just makes it makes things more complicated because it’s a real, like, boys inherit. Like, that straightforward. If it’s not a boy, it’s just like, [groans] “Okay. We can make this work, but it’s going to be complicated.” Her father was the only surviving male member of the House of Habsburg (this version, right?). I’m assuming there’s Habsburg still in Spain. 

Lana: Not as many because we’re talking… Now I can’t remember when he died, but the last little boy, he was the… I want to say he’s another Charles. 

Ann: Well, no. I think that that could be true because I have heard her described as like, the last Habsburg. The other ones just inbred themselves out of existence, I presume. We’re not talking about them, but that’s what I presume happened. They just, they gave birth to too many people who couldn’t chew, and then just, they all starved, and then no one was alive. 

Lana: They didn’t do a lot of good things for their genetic history, no. 

Ann: No. But again, I will note in terms of like, yes, did the book that I read by Nancy Goldstone open with a family tree? Did I skim past it because it was confusing? Yes. But I will note that Maria Theresa’s parents were not siblings. 

Lana: They were not. 

Ann: Her father was Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor, and her mother was from Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Different places. So, she had some genetic advantages there. I’m sure they were related in some way. Again, I did not look at the family tree. 

Lana: Not exceedingly, though. 

Ann: Not too much. Not as much as other people. So yeah, it says here, and so I will say, this is also from my kind of guideline here. I also looked at the essay on her from Women and World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia entry by William L. Chu III. He says, “Her father was the only surviving male member of the House of Habsburg.” So okay, like, literally the only one. So, he wanted a son because otherwise, like, the dynasty will be extinct, and he had a daughter instead. 

Lana: Because dynasties can’t surpass a woman. So, technically, she is the last Habsburg, except for all the ones that come after her. [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah. But dynasties are male— Like anyway, so because she was born, we’re going to get into this, like the family dynamics of it all. So, he had this daughter. He had a brother, or there’s… She has cousins who are also girls. And so, those girls had been the next heir, but then she was born, and now she outranks them. So, at her baptism, she was carried ahead of her cousins. And Lana, do you want to explain the Pragmatic Sanction? 

Lana: [laughs] Oh god. 

Ann: Capital P, capital S… I can explain if you don’t want to. 

Lana: Please do, because it’s been a while. 

Ann: Okay. So, what this is, is her dad, Charles, the Holy Roman emperor, was just like, “Okay, I’m the last Habsburg. My son is dead or dying. What happens if I have a daughter? What will happen to this whole dynasty?” And so, he made this thing, wrote this thing, called the Pragmatic Sanction, which effectively says, it proclaimed a complex female succession. So, if there’s no male heir, he’s like, “then the person who will inherit will be my direct progeny. Like, any daughter I have will take over.” Effectively, it’s more complicated than this, but it’s also not. He basically just wrote this document being like, it’s pragmatic. So, he’s just saying like, “Instead of getting to some weird, crazy thing like the British did, going through your family tree and crossing off all Catholics, if I die without a son, make my daughter inherit from me.” That’s what it says. It also declared all Habsburg lands, “Indivisible and inseparable.” You know what? And good for him, because honestly, Henry VIII did not do this. He was like, “It might so happen that there’s not a boy, and I don’t want all the civil wars that might happen, so I’m just going to pre-emptively write this document saying, ‘If I die, my daughter takes over all the Habsburg lands.” 

So, he wrote this, but it’s like, who’s going to agree to it? And how do you get them to agree to it? So, he, like Lana just explained, the complex web of places that are the Holy Roman Empire, and through different kinds of persuasion, bribery, various things, he got the Habsburg estates and the families of European monarchs to agree to this, at least while he was alive. Literally bribing people to agree to this. 

Lana: Yeah, he was going around bribing. I don’t remember the names of anything because it has been a while, but I do remember he went around and he, like, convinced as many people as he could, it’s like, “No, you have to vote for her. You have to vote for her, even if it’s a girl.” 

Ann: This is important, right, right. This is to remind everybody and myself, the reason why he had to convince people, it’s not just to accept her as the empress, but it’s, like, vote her in. Because when it’s not a succession like it is for a king, just his oldest child takes over, these people have to vote for her. So, he’s like rustling up the votes before he’s even dead, years in advance. He doesn’t even have a daughter yet, but he’s like, “But if I do, will you vote for her? How much land do I have to give you to vote for her?” Because that’s what he bribed people with. 

Lana: And he had all the power, so everybody’s like, “Yeah, of course we’ll vote for her. Obviously.” 

Ann: Everybody says, shifty eyes, shifty eyes. 

So, less than a year after her birth, another baby was born. Guess what? Another girl. Maria Anna, who is called, I think, Mary Ann, then another one, Maria Amalia. So, you just picture every time a baby is born, everyone’s just like, “Noooo!” But luckily, the Pragmatic Solution— Or the Pragmatic Sanction was in existence. But can you imagine, like, he has a daughter, he’s like, “Okay, this is fine. Maybe it’ll be a son.” Then another girl, and a third girl. You see that today in some families, my own included, where you see, like, there’s a family and they have two children of one gender and then they have a third, and you’re like, you know, they’re trying for the other gender, and then they don’t get it. And I’m the youngest of three daughters, thank you. Anyway, so three girls, she has two younger sisters. 

In terms of what she looked like, just because I’m always interested. So, she looks… We’re going to talk about Marie Antoinette in a few weeks… Big blue eyes. Everyone in this family, first name Maria, has big, big, big blue eyes, blonde hair. Well, it says “Fair hair with a slight tinge of red,” so like, she’s a strawberry blonde. “A wide mouth and a notably strong body,” which will become evident when you see how many childbirths she survives. She’s hearty, she’s a hearty person. 

Lana: They’re not tiny little wispy things, not even a little bit. 

Ann: No. 

Lana: They’re strong stock. That’s why they survived. 

Ann: Honestly, yeah. That’s why the girls survive and the boys don’t, because these girls are just, like, brick houses of people. They’re just like Ilona Maher, but like, olden times, just muscle is how I picture her. And that’s how she looks in a portrait, so I’m picturing her correctly. 

Oh, yeah! Here, this essay notes, “Unlike many other members of the House of Habsburg, neither Maria Theresa’s parents nor her grandparents were closely related to each other.” 

Lana: She had 16 distinct great-grandparents. 

Ann: And when we’re talking about, like, she’s a healthy person, it’s like, that’s part of why. Diversity in genetic material. 

Lana: They’re all strong German stock, but they’re… Yeah. 

Ann: So, she is this little girl with her big eyes, this little, strong girl. So, she was a serious and reserved child. I get that. Who she is as an adult… She enjoyed archery. Her father prevented her from horse riding just because it was seen as… 

Lana: Too many bad experiences. [laughs]

Ann: I guess. It’s funny because later on, in terms of, like, the Habsburgs, you get Sisi, who is famously a horse girl. So, it’s like, all those genes were just suppressed until Sisi could express them all. 

Lana: Well, she was Bavarian. 

Ann: Oh. She was not genetically…

Lana: She wasn’t genetically— She brought that in, and she’s like, “I don’t care if I break my neck. It’d be better than this.” 

Ann: So, she also liked singing, they had a lot of opera productions happening. Her education was overseen by, repeat guest stars on this podcast, the Jesuits [Lana laughs], which becomes a thing later on in her story. 

Lana: Oh, Jesuits. 

Ann: But here’s what I’m going to say. The Jesuits, who we’ve seen in other episodes doing a lot of, like, missionary work; they go to Japan, they go into the African continent. They’re travelling, that’s what they did. 

Lana: They were colonizers. Let’s just call them what they are. 

Ann: They are. But I’m going to say what they were not good at was teaching her anything because… [both laugh] She was not educated well. She was a girl, and it’s funny because there is the Pragmatic Sanction. So, it’s like, technically, he had bribed all these people, and she will inherit from him, probably. But she was not being raised to be the Empress. So, I guess they were thinking whoever she marries, like, he’ll be the emperor and she’ll just be the wife. But she was not educated to the extent that the heir to the Holy Roman Empire perhaps should have been. 

Lana: Correct. 

Ann: I’m going to quote from this essay again and say that “Her spelling and punctuation were unconventional.” 

Lana: Well, she’s a girl. She doesn’t have to learn how to write. She’s never going to accomplish anything, it’s fine! She’ll marry well, it’ll be great. 

Ann: So, it’s just kind of like, she’s cute, she’s pretty. She’s good at archery, she can dance. She liked drawing, painting, music and dancing. So, she’s being trained up to be a queen consort; she’s being trained up to be, like, an excellent hostess, person overseeing parties, like that sort of stuff. Her father never discussed affairs of state with her, even though he had spent the last decades of his life securing her as his heir. He never prepared her. So, that’s a choice he made.

Lana: Patriarchy! [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah! So, the first choice for her husband was Leopold Clement of Lorraine. Can you talk about Lorraine for a second? Because that has a connection to Mary, Queen of Scots. 

Lana: Lorraine, as you may remember, it’s a duchy that’s kind of on the border of France and what is now Germany. And if you’re into modern history, Alsace-Lorraine was one of the first areas that was invaded by the Nazis. So, it’s one of those disputed lands that could go either way. It’s also where one of the cadet branches of the Dukes de Lorraine, the Lorraines, was the de Guises. 

Ann: Who we recall from Mary, Queen of Scots, those were her uncles and her mom. But like, her uncles, the de Guise bros. 

Lana: Yes. So, that’s the kind of family that she’s marrying into, but far removed, no longer quite so shady and controlling, but still just as Catholic. 

Ann: Cannot emphasize, like overemphasize, the importance that being Catholic has to this woman’s life. 

Okay. So, she was going to be betrothed to Leopold Clement of Lorraine, but he died of smallpox. I’m going to say smallpox is a major supporting character in this whole story. 

Lana: Oh, smallpox. 

Ann: And also, Marie Antoinette’s story, this whole century of world history. Smallpox is really having a moment here. But you know what else was? Inoculation. 

Lana: Smallpox changed the world, and I have several books from my demography era or my demography studies that discuss it. So, it is a key player. 

Ann: Yeah, it’s kind of like, you know, John Green has this book, Everything is Tuberculosis. I think there could be a book that’s just like, All of History is Smallpox. 

Lana: Until there wasn’t. Until we eradicated it, because that’s what vaccines do. 

Ann: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. This is a pro-vaccine podcast. If you’re a new listener, just know that. 

So, anyway, he died of smallpox before they could meet. But he had a younger brother called Francis, who was invited to Vienna, and guess what? He was cute. He was charming. He was lovely. She fell in love with him. They’re both children, or he’s a teenager and she’s a child. He comes to live in Vienna as kind of like, you’re probably going to get engaged to each other, so just grow up in Vienna. Why not?

Lana: Be here. It’ll be fine. 

Ann: She had such a crush on him, which I mentioned because not all the marriages of royal people in this era were husbands that women wanted. But she had such a crush on him, and she was really happy to marry him. 

So, he ascended the throne of Lorraine when, I guess, his dad died. They got married in Vienna. This is again, I have to quote this guy. What’s his name? Benjamin? William L. Chu III, he’s got a way with words sometimes in this essay. “Maria Theresa’s love for her husband was strong and possessive. She was very jealous of her husband, and his infidelity was the greatest problem of their marriage.” We haven’t done an episode about Queen Victoria yet… dot, dot, dot. [Lana laughs] But Maria Theresa’s love of Francis is giving me Queen Victoria. She just, like, there’s nothing she likes more than fucking this man. She’s in love with him to an obsessive degree. That’s the vibe. As evidenced by how many children they have. 

Lana: Yes, like, he wasn’t a great human being. He wasn’t even a strong human being. He was just… He was kind of selfish and self-centred. 

Ann: He was just kind of there, and I wonder if part of it is, like, she met him when she was, I don’t know, I’m going to say like, 6 or 8 years old, and he was 13. And she’s like, “Oh my god, he’s amazing. When I grow up, I want to marry him,” and then she gets to marry him. So, I think it’s like, that was imprinted on her so early, just like “This is the hottest guy in the world.” And then she gets to marry him, and it’s like, “Meh, okay.” 

Lana: It’s almost like she licked him, so she bought him. And he’s not special; he’s not interesting, he’s not good at ruling. He also is not being raised to rule despite patriarchy. 

Ann: Nobody is! [both chuckle] Charles is just kind of like, “When I die, peace out. Figure it out yourself.” 

Lana: There’s no support system here. 

Ann: Yeah. So, I want to mention he was not popular because (and this is important for later on when we get to Marie Antoinette) he was French, and so the people in Vienna in Austria hated him because of xenophobia. They thought that he was a cowardly French spy. 

Lana: But he wasn’t French! He was from Lorraine. [laughs] 

Ann: The haters didn’t care about these distinctions, Lana. 

Lana: Exactly. 

Ann: They just like hating. 

Lana: He wasn’t anything. He was just a little bit nothing. So, everybody in Germany hated him. No one in France liked him. No one liked him. 

Ann: Except for Maria Theresa… obsessively. 

Lana: Except for Maria Theresa, who licked him, so she bought him. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah. It’s kind of like, what is it called? The sunk cost fallacy. It’s like, “Well, I bought this, so I might as well just keep it.” 

Lana: This is the only one I’m ever going to have, so I might as well just get as much use out of him as I can. 

Ann: Well, and the thing with her, too, again, like the Catholic-ness of it all. She was very pious in her religion, and it’s very much just, like, you have to be loyal to the husband; she would never dare consider straying or anything, even though, as I mentioned, he had various mistresses. 

Lana: She was also very busy. 

Ann: We’re going to get to what she’s busy doing. 

Lana: She’s not sitting around doodling her thumbs, going, “Well, I wish I could sleep around.” 

Ann: When would she fit that in? 

Lana: [laughs] There’s no time! 

Ann: She can’t fit that in. No. 

Okay, so here’s what’s up, and I don’t know how much you know about this, and we can get into it or not. But October 20, 1740, her father, Charles, died of mushrooms. 

Lana: As one does. It’s easy to do back then. 

Ann: I, Claudius, yeah. He just ate the wrong mushroom and died. It’s just like, you know what? If you’re living in 1740, just don’t eat any mushrooms. 

Lana: Stop eating mushrooms. Just be careful if you go harvest it, like, go finding mushrooms in the woods, just be very, very careful. Make sure you have experts with you. Mushrooms will kill you.

Ann: It’s just such a like… I don’t know, it’s not like the death of the emperor. It’s just like, “And he ate some bad mushrooms and died.” Like, that’s it. Even if he had smallpox, it’s like, “Well, that happens.” 

Lana: Was he poisoned? No, I mean, he was, but he wasn’t like, killed. 

Ann: Not on purpose. He was poisoned, yes. But by the mushrooms, not by a person. 

Lana: He wasn’t actively poisoned. He had mushroom poisoning. [laughs] 

Ann: So, he, like I, Claudius, dies of mushrooms. Anyway. So, the shit hits the fan as we’ve been setting you all up to imagine. Like, what you’ve got is she’s, like, 18 years old, I think. She’s got this husband. Neither of them knows anything about how to be in charge, but he has bribed all these places to vote her in as the next Holy Roman Emperor. So, it says here— Wait, there’s a quote from her later on. She wrote, “No one, I believe, will disagree that it would be hard to find an example in history of a crowned head of state succeeding to the throne under more difficult circumstances than I.” Like, she inherited this disaster. 

Lana: A very extensive disaster. 

Ann: Like, incomprehensibly large disaster. There is a severe fiscal crisis going on; the realm, such as it was, like all these realms, were basically defenceless, with only half of the army in any state resembling combat preparedness. Maria Theresa herself wrote later, “As for the state in which I found the army, I cannot begin to describe it.” 

Lana: Before Napoleon, there weren’t really standing— Well, there was one guy, he wants to make a standing army, we’ll get to him later. But standing armies weren’t a thing, especially in Germany. It would have caused too much strife and too much danger. Germany was kind of the place you had wars on top of. It wasn’t a place that, like, defended itself. 

Ann: Well, as you’ve been describing, there’s a lot of wars happening, all over the place, constantly. 

Lana: So, what you would do is during the summer, once all the crops were in the ground, during the summer, you’d just hire all the farm boys and take them, put them into some kind of shape, march them wherever you went to, throw them at the other guy’s farm boys. Then it gets to fall, and they all go back, and they do their harvesting. Winter, everybody stays hunkered down because it’s freaking cold. And then you go back, and you do it all over again in the summer. So, there was a season for war. But even for that, you have to have leadership that knows what they’re doing, and it knows what year it is. It really, really helps. [laughs]

Ann: Let’s talk about her advisors. 

Lana: [laughs] It really, really helps if your army’s leadership does not have dementia. 

Ann: Okay, so the Habsburg domains were being managed by… The average age is 71, is who’s in charge of this. 

Lana: [laughs] And that’s all of her advisors. 

Ann: All of her advisors are kind of like, “Well, I remember in the 1600s…” It’s like, “Okay, Boomer… Okay, the generation above Boomer.” 

Lana: [laughs] Silent generation. 

Ann: Yeah. So, she was unprepared to take over, and everything was a disaster. She didn’t know enough about anything politically because she’d never been told it. She was unaware that these ministers were not helpful. But her father had advised her to “Retain the counsellors and defer to your husband,” because they know better. And she’s like, “Okay, that was wrong,” and she would later regret that decision. But she didn’t know what else to do. 

Lana: Did you include my favourite footnote of all time in your notes? 

Ann: I didn’t. What is that? 

Lana: Okay, I’m going to find it. 

Ann: I’m going to read you a quote from her about this time as well. So, this is about her remembering when she took over. 

I found myself without money, without credit, without army, without experience and knowledge of my own, and finally, also without any counsel, because each one of them at first wanted to wait and see how things would develop.

Lana: The patience of the elderly. So, Ann sent this to me, and I just died laughing so much. It’s from a footnote, probably from… 

Ann: The Nancy Goldstone book. She has some really funny footnotes. 

Lana: Yes! Oh my god, this footnote killed me. 

Consider that when Elizabeth I ascended the throne, she had the invaluable William Cecil to guide her. Queen Victoria had the advice of the equally skillful Lord Melbourne. Elizabeth II had the indomitable Winston Churchill. By contrast, Maria Theresa had the 18th-century equivalent of the regulars at Wednesday Night Bingo at the senior center. 

[laughs] And my response to Ann was, “Well, at least none of Maria Theresa’s advisors ever committed genocide.” [laughs] 

Ann: There’s a silver lining and everything. But just so you could set up, like, she’s there, 18 years old, doesn’t know what she’s doing because no one ever told her. And then she’s like, “Well, I guess I’ll trust these guys because they’re old and therefore they must be smart?” No, they’re just old. They’re just old. 

Lana: I mean, they’re patient because they can be. Like, when you’re that old and you’re that experienced, it’s like, “Well, everything’s survivable.” It’s like, no, it was survivable because someone, somewhere was making a decision. And someone has to start making decisions, or this is going to get real bad. 

Ann: So, this is where, what I appreciate about Maria Theresa in this era is she ascends into this role where just everyone around her is actively useless, and she, you know, other people, other women in similar situations, maybe your workplace friends, would just be like, “Wow, this is just fucked up.” And she’s just like, “Well, someone has to take charge, and that person will be me!” She has instincts. She doesn’t have the, like, learning, she doesn’t have the experience, but she just has good instincts. She’s like, “Someone has to take charge. No one else is going to do it. Great. Guess it’s me.” And she does. 

Lana: Yeah, she just steps up. 

Ann: She steps up. So, she’s just like, “Okay, great. First order of business, get myself voted in.” Because technically, according to laws or something, until the Pragmatic Sanction, a woman could not be elected Holy Roman Emperor. So, she was like, “Okay, well then we’ll just get my husband to be the emperor and I’ll just kind of be in charge.” 

Lana: She’s just like, “Okay, so nobody’s going to vote for a woman. I got this dude here. He’s mine. I licked him.” [laughs] 

Ann: [laughs] Here’s the thing. So, in terms of like, there’s the Pragmatic Sanction is the name of this thing that her father did, but she’s also pragmatic. She’s not like, “I’m going to teach them that feminism is important.” She’s like, “They’re not going to vote for women. Great. Who is a man I can choose? My husband. Great.” Like she pivots. When we get to the, like, not Schemieness… Do we call that schemieness? Just kind of being able to pivot intelligently, like, her instincts are spot on in the situation. She knows what to do. 

Lana: I feel like, once again, I have brought you to a woman who is completely badass and has done things, and yet, she does not do the things that are Ann things. She’s just so, like, pragmatic is the right word for her. 

Ann: Yeah. At the end of this episode, listeners, if you’ve never listened before, we always score people in various categories. One of them is Scandaliciousness. I love a woman who’s just like a messy bitch, just murdering people, you know, doing a can-can, whatever. I love that. But Lana likes a bitch who’s like, what’s her name, from China? You love her. 

Lana: Cixi, I love me some Cixi. 

Ann: Cixi, yeah. This is giving Cixi vibes. It’s just a woman who’s like, “Everyone else is an asshole. Well, I’ll take charge, and I’m amazing.” This is your person. This is your type of preferred person. 

Lana: I just like… Cixi was “I just want to stay home and paint. Just let me retire. I am the queen mother, I shouldn’t be doing things.” Maria Theresa is like, “You all want a man. You don’t have one. You’ve got me. So, let’s do this.” [laughs]

Ann: “Let’s just make this work.” Yeah, I feel like Maria Theresa is somebody in that context, in that sense, where I find admirable, and that’s what I want to be like as a person, you know? I like reading about messy bitches, but I want to be a person who’s, like, the most competent person, and that’s who she is. 

So, she’s like, “Great, you’re not going to vote me in? Great. So, let’s get my husband. Oh, he doesn’t have enough land or rank? Well, I’ll fix that.” So, she made Francis co-ruler of the Austrian and Bohemian lands, which took some finessing. Hungary enters the chat. You know what? Because I was remembering Hungary from the Empress, not Cixi, but Sisi, the Empress Sisi episode.

Lana: Another one of my favourites. 

Ann: When Hungary enters the chat, I’m just excited because they’re always a good time. So, it took a while to convince them to accept him as co-ruler, because they asserted— Because this is like Austria-Hungary, right? 

Lana: Yes. 

Ann: So, they asserted, like, the sovereignty of Hungary could not be shared. But eventually, she convinced them because she’s just, like, she gets shit done. 

Lana: Well, the alternative was kind of awful. 

Ann: What is the alternative?

Lana: The alternative is Frederick. [laughs] 

Ann: We’ll get to him. Oh my gosh.

Lana: Yet another messy, gay bitch.

Ann: Frederick is like, what if Ludwig from the mad castles of Ludwig, but what it’s like his doppelganger from the mirror dimension where everyone’s evil. Frederick is like evil Ludwig; he’s just kind of like… Instead of building fairy tale castles, he’s like, annexing territories and just being gay. 

Lana: He was so mean. And my parallel was he was James I if there if James I didn’t have any witches to play with. 

Ann: Yeah, if he didn’t have witches to play with and instead just— Oh my god, Frederick. We will get to him. Nancy Goldstone explains his whole deal really well in her book. At first, I felt bad for him, and then I hated him!

Lana: You start out feeling bad, and then you realize, “No, he’s just a dick.” 

Ann: Yeah, but he did have a hard time. Anyway, Frederick… So, that’s kind of the looming threat in the background of this, but I’ll explain him when he comes on the scene. 

Lana: Basically, the Lutherans are always a threat. 

Ann: Well, kind of everyone… This is a great transition, Lana, because next we’re going to talk about her stance on religious matters. 

Lana: There’s Catholics or there’s nothing. That’s her stance. 

Ann: Exactly. She was intolerant towards anyone who was not a Catholic, and she, to put it politely, tended to infringe on the rights of Lutherans and Calvinists, and particularly of Jews. So, to be clear, she was so anti-Semitic that people of her era were like, “Girl, calm down. This is a bit too anti-Semitic for us in the Catholic regions of Western Europe in the mid-1700s. This is too much for us.” So, it’s not just like, “Oh, she was of her time.” Oh no, she was incredibly anti-Semitic. This essay describes her as “Probably the most anti-Jewish monarch of her time.” Not of all time. That would be Isabella of Castile, but of her time. 

Lana: Also an ancestor. 

Ann: You know what? She inherited that strain in her DNA. “She inherited the traditional prejudices of her ancestors and added new ones.” 

Lana: It was bad.

Ann: Anyway, 1744. I really want to make sure that we don’t skip over this part of her whole deal, because this is an important part of her whole deal. And for a while, I was thinking, like, why haven’t I heard about this woman and how she was a successful monarch in her time when I’ve heard of, you know, Elizabeth I or whatever? And it’s like, was it because she was so anti-Semitic? I’m like, no, because Elizabeth I also did genocides, Victoria also did genocides. All the women monarchs all did genocides. But it’s just Maria Theresa, we don’t know about her because she was an English and Victoria didn’t celebrate her. 

Anyway, so one of the things she did, in 1744 she proposed the expulsion of around 10,000 Jews from Prague, and then she expanded that to all Jews in Bohemia and the major cities of Moravia. But eventually, her extremely old ministers were like, “Girl, calm down.” 

Lana: “No, you can’t do this. It goes bad every time.” 

Ann: Like, no! So, the expulsion happened in Prague but was retracted four years later due to economic considerations and pressures from other countries, including Great Britain. So, that was one of her things that she was up to. She also… I don’t know. Later on, things kind of changed between her and what she’s doing about Jewish people, but that’s because she gets a new co-monarch, and we’ll talk about that later. So, war!

Lana: [laughs] Oh, no. Ann’s least favourite subject. 

Ann: We’re going to breeze through this as much as we can. We want to focus on her and what she’s up to. Yeah, there were parts of like… I love Nancy Goldstone’s book, but there were some parts I really had to skim read because I’m just like, “[groans] I can’t. I can’t. I don’t know where these countries are. I don’t know if they are countries like. Argh! Kill me.” But this is where… 

Okay. Immediately after her accession, a number of European sovereigns who had recognized her as the heir broke their promises.” Like Lana said, you know, when her dad is going around being like, “Will you vote for my daughter?” They’re all like, “Oh yeah! Sure. Thanks, of course.” But then he died of mushrooms, and they’re like, “Never mind.” So, enter her for the rest of her life, number one enemy, Frederick II of Prussia. 

Lana: Also, not better about Jewish people, by the way. Like, there are no friends here because Prussia was a bad place. 

Ann: Explain Frederick’s deal. 

Lana: Okay, so Frederick, also known as Frederick the Great, was… 

Ann: He called himself that. That was not given to him. 

Lana: He called himself that and made everyone call him that. [laughs]

Ann: He claimed that, just to be clear. 

Lana: He inherited the Prussian Empire, the Prussian lands that I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure it’s a kingdom. They’re the northeastern part of modern Germany, the whole northern part of Poland, all the way into the Baltic states. And they were German, like, German. So, they were Germans running northern Poland, they were Germans running the Baltic states, and they were running them much like the Russians at the time, which is a very serfdom-focused area. So, they were basically slaveholders, and outside of the Austro-Hungarian, the Habsburgs, they were the largest landowners and the most wealthy. So, he was making a play. Like, Frederick looked at the girl down in Austria and was going to make a play. But these are, like, when you think of all of the negative stereotypes of Germans and Poland and all of that stuff, that was all happening, but as, like, Lord rulers being the worst people ever. So, there’s their own kind of genocide happening up in Prussia, but because they have these serfs that they own, and they have these leaders that are very militaristic, they have more of a standing army. They have more ability to raise an army than Maria Theresa does. So, he thinks he can make a play. 

Ann: And Frederick, as I recall—I don’t know if this is in my notes, but as I recall, because I remember this from the Nancy Goldstone book. So, he was a little boy who loved… He was a little gay boy. He loved flowers and music, and nice things. And his dad—who’s probably also (Nancy Goldstone proposes) a gay person who was forced to not live his truth—his dad was just like, the worst sort of parent to a gay kid, just kind of forcing him to try to be a completely different kind of person. And so, Frederick kind of started pretending like he was that but he had this like male favourite who was his bestie/lover, and then his dad found out, and then he killed that guy in front of him, and then was going to kill Frederick, but then some people were like, “Maybe don’t kill him,” and the dad was like, “Okay, fine.” The trauma of this made Frederick turn into this, like, “I will be…” Like, Frederick the Great was Adolf Hitler’s great hero because he was militaristic, ruthless, just despicable. But it’s kind of like, he became that out of… It’s sort of like, you know, “Frederick Begins.” 

Lana: He had his trauma. 

Ann: You know like, the first Star Wars movie, where it’s like “Oh, look, little Anakin. He’s cute.” Like, “Oh no. Now he’s Darth Vader.” Frederick has a similar thing where it’s like, “Oh, this little gay boy…. Oh no! He’s Adolf Hitler’s icon.” And he was horrible as a person. 

Lana: He had this army, these special, super elite royal guards, and they were all, like, six-foot-tall, blonde guys, really built and stacked. And he always had them around him, always had them around him. And then he forced them to marry six-foot-tall blonde ladies so that they could breed super soldiers for him. 

Ann: He invented eugenics! 

Lana: Well, I don’t know about that, but he went real deep into it. [laughs] 

Ann: He inspired what Hitler did later about like, “I want to have the tall, blonde. That’s the perfect Aryan person.” Like, there were people Frederick was breeding like farm animals. He’s like “Tall lady, tall man. Fuck each other. Have children to be my next super hot guards.” 

Lana: Yes, trauma starts a lot of terrible things, but also, how you respond to your trauma tells you who a person is. There’s a lot of terrible things happening to a lot of terrible people. Very few of them try to breed super soldiers as a result. So, [laughs] he made his choices. 

Ann: He’s, like, literally a villain from a comic book, Frederick the Great. He’s just absolutely a villain, and he’s just like, “Oh, I’m going to take over these places because this young, short woman…” 

Lana: “Short, busty woman that has some red in her hair. How dare she?” 

Ann: “Don’t care for that.” So anyway, so he just like threatened, he’s like, “Hey, you 18-year-old empress…” 

Lana: “Let’s go.” 

Ann: Okay. So, there’s a part of her kingdom, or her lands, her holdings, called Silesia, which comes up a lot…

Lana: It’s in Poland. 

Ann: … and that’s because— Okay, thank you. I didn’t know where it was now. But it’s a mineral-rich province. They both want this land because it’s just really fertile land that is valuable.

Lana: And it borders on his land. 

Ann: Yeah. So, he’s like, “Give me this land, young woman.” And she decided to fight for it. And so, this became the First Silesian War. She referred to him always, not by his name, but as “That evil man” or as “The monster.” She was correct; this is how he should be. And he’s like, “No, call me Frederick the Great or I’ll kill you.” And everyone’s like, [nervously] “Okay.” 

Lana: “You’ve got to catch me first!” 

Ann: I love that she calls him “That evil man,” it’s like, not not true, Maria Theresa. 

Anyway. So, they’re going to war. Contrary to all expectations of him, she got support from Hungary. Hungary… I’m just happy when they show up and support these girls. They’re there for Sisi, they’re there for Maria Theresa. But the thing about Hungary, and I love this, so you know, she’s the Holy Roman Empress, she has all these lands. But to be specifically queen of Hungary, like there’s a specific coronation ceremony that is held in what is now Bratislava, back then it was called Pressburg. And it’s sort of like the Olympics of coronations; you have to perform certain skills to show “I can be your monarch. Look, I can do dressage.” 

Lana: You can’t just walk in and put a crown on your head, you’ve got to do some you got to do some tricks first. 

Ann: But remember, her dad wouldn’t let her ride a horse, right?

Lana: Correct.

Ann: But part of the skill is literally dressage. She had to learn equestrian skills to do the ceremony. So, she spent months practicing, learning, getting good at them. But, you know, she was athletic to begin with; she could dance, she was doing archery, and she’s just determined, and she will do it. 

Anyway, so she learned the skills. There are gorgeous portraits done of her on the horse at the ceremony, looking badass and amazing. There are people who consider her gender to be an obstacle to becoming the monarch, so she assumed the masculine title. So, she was archduke and king rather than queen of Hungary. And Hungary is just like, “Fuck yeah! Look at her, she’s on a horse. You get our respect.” That’s why Sisi liked it there, and they liked her! Hungary just respects horse skills. So, meanwhile, God damn it. You know, I love… I love telling the story. 

Lana: Jump scare. [laughs]

Ann: [sighs] George II is now in the story. That is the… I’m just having a nice time reading a story, and then it overlaps with what I had to research for my book. I loved doing my book, I loved researching my book, but I really had to learn some stuff that I have been avoiding learning my whole life, and one of those things was the Electorate of Hanover. 

Lana: It just means he’s a voting guy. 

Ann: Right. Okay, so what it is, is that… So, George I, and George II, and George III and IV, they were the kings of England, but they were also the Electorate of Hanover because that was when Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs in Britain, she died without any surviving children. And they’re like, “Who can inherit? Let’s go down the family tree and cross off all the Catholics. Who’s left? This guy, George I, this German guy, the Electorate of Hanover.” So, he was the first king of both, and then George II was the next. So anyway, Hanover is a place that is in this area. 

Lana: It’s in the Holy Roman Empire. 

Ann: It’s in the Holy Roman Empire, but he’s also the king of England, so there’s a connection there, and that complicates things for him, for George II. So, Maria Theresa needed troops to ally against Frederick because George II declared the Electorate of Hanover neutral. And, you know, there’s no real neutrality in the face of invading armies. Like, that was him siding with Frederick, basically, I think. So, this is where she’s like, “Okay, got to turn to my guys in Hungary. Get on my horse…” So, this is where I was like, “Oh, I love her. Except for the anti-Semitism.” 

Lana: Anti-everybody else.

Ann: She was anti-everybody else, but she was pro doing what she needed to do to save her country. So, she went to the Hungarian whatever, meeting place, it’s called the Diet? 

Lana: The [phonetic] Deet. 

Ann: The [ph.] Deet, which is like the parliament, I guess. Anyway, so she shows up, she’s wearing the Holy Crown of Hungary. She starts off addressing them in Latin, and then she just gives this moving speech. Like, if this is in a movie, there’s the slow background music, then the more intense background music. And she’s just like, you know, “We’re calling upon your help. The valour of the Hungarians.” People were kind of like, oh my gosh, somebody cried, “You’d better apply to Satan than the Hungarians for help,” so they’re not on board in the first place. But she kept talking. By now, she’s had a child; she’s probably had a few children by now. She fucked her husband as much as she can and has a child every other year. 

Lana: She was a good Catholic girl. She had as many children as she could possibly manage. 

Ann: And because of her hearty good genes, she survived them all, despite the time period she’s in and being at war constantly. Anyway, so her oldest son is called Joseph, and we’ll get to him later. He’s a baby at this point, and so she brings out the baby in front of the parliament. And dramatically, she’s like, “Look at this baby, your future king! Will you defend this baby?” 

Lana: She’s like, “I’m taking care of my children, and I am leading this country. Screw all of you.” [laughs]

Ann: “I’m the mother of the country.” And then she’s like, “Maybe you don’t respect me as a woman, but what about this future man?” So, Hungarians were just like, “Oh my god, we love drama. We love a speech!” And they declared they would die for her, and they did, some of them. So, they sent 22,000 people and 14,000 horses to help her out. 

This is where, you know, just to mention her success in this situation, like, so much of it is just knowing what will convince people. Part of it is like, I assume she’s learning. She’s reading some old books and like, how to be a leader. But she just has these inherent skills and knowledge of how to persuade people, even just, like, learning, knowing how important the horseback riding was, knowing that bringing out her son would help. Like, she has these instincts that are so good, and I don’t know if those can be taught, because they weren’t taught, because she wasn’t taught anything. 

Lana: And it’s not necessarily breeding because we saw what happened to the Spanish side of the family. 

Ann: Yeah, she just has these, like, PR-based skills. Okay, so more war stuff happens. A lot of what’s happening is just like some of the other places were being like, “Do we want a lady empress? Mmm…” So, in Bohemia, which is a place, [chuckles] it’s not just the style you get if you go to Anthropologie to shop. 

Lana: I can’t remember… I think Bohemia is in what’s now the Czech Republic, but it might be in Slovakia. It used to be in Czechoslovakia, but that’s not a thing anymore. 

Ann: Where is Bohemia today? Like, it’s a word you only ever hear lately about fashion. It’s now part of… Bohemia is for much of the Czech Republic. 

Lana: See, I remember things. 

Ann: You know your stuff. So, the Bohemians were like, “We would prefer this other guy to be sovereign and not you.” And the other guy is Charles Albert, the Elector of Bavaria. 

Lana: Ancestor to Ludwig. 

Ann: Oh! Okay. I love Ludwig. So, Maria Theresa got word that this is what they’re saying in Bohemia. And then this guy, Charles Albert, captured Prague, declared himself king of Bohemia… Dude, that’s not how it works now that Maria Theresa is on the scene. Anyway, so she was in Hungary at the time among her horses and her pals. She wept upon learning of the loss. 

So, what happens here is Charles Albert was then elected Holy Roman Emperor, which made him the only non-Habsburg to be in that position since 1440. So, he has usurped this title, and Maria Theresa is just like, “Fuck that, we’re going to get this crown back.” So, she caught her enemies unprepared by insisting on a winter campaign. So, you know, Lana, how you’re saying, like, the farm boys will be called out, it’s like “We do war this time of year, not this time of year.” She’s just like, “What if we do war all times of year? Surprise winter war!” 

Lana: Surprise winter war. Everybody’s at home reading their books. 

Ann: Yeah, yeah, the army’s not ready. So, the same day that he was elected emperor, Austrian troops captured Munich, the capital of Bavaria. So, because of this, presumably, she was then crowned queen of Bohemia. And then Frederick, like, again, I can’t emphasize Frederick is going to not go away at all for this whole story. So, then he invaded Bohemia. Eventually, Charles, that guy from Bavaria, he died, so that’s not an issue anymore. 

Lana: Not that long later. It wasn’t dozens of years, it was, like, three years. 

Ann: It was literally three years. Yeah, he was elected Roman Emperor in January 1742, he died in January 1745. Literally three years. 

So, at this point, her husband, remember him? He was then elected Holy Roman Emperor, and then, she is, by virtue of being his wife, empress again. 

Lana: She’s like, “If you’re not going to vote for me, we’re all voting for Francis now, and I have the votes because I have taken them back.” 

Ann: So, the war keeps going on, and so much of this is just, like, war between areas that I don’t know where they are, [Lana laughs] because they’re all names I’ve never heard before. Silesia, hugely important. But as you said, like, that’s because that’s the border between the two. 

Lana: Yeah, it’s what’s now, like, southern Poland. 

Ann: Yeah. So, there’s fighting northern Italy, the Austrian Netherlands, but she retained the core Habsburg domains of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. France conquered the Austrian Netherlands. But at this point, it’s Louis XV, returned them to Maria Theresa. And so, at this point, finally, finally, everyone is just like basically the Pragmatic Sanction has happened. 

Lana: Holy Roman emperor, got it. 

Ann: Like, it could have been more wars, but she led very capably throughout, I haven’t mentioned this, but like constant pregnancies. 

Lana: Constant! [laughs]

Ann: She’s either pregnant or getting pregnant. Like, she’s having a child every… I want to say, it’s not nine months. Let’s say 10 months. But this is not slowing her down or stopping her, which is interesting. And I don’t recall reading about someone who did that simultaneously. 

Lana: Yeah, usually you do one or the other. You don’t do both. 

Ann: Yeah, like Isabella of Castile went to war once or twice when she was pregnant, but she didn’t have 15 children. Queen Victoria had this many children, but all she did was fuck her husband. So, she wasn’t going to war also. 

Lana: She wasn’t going to lead, she was a woman! Who would do that? 

Ann: And then Queen Charlotte, like, all she did was have babies. 

Lana: Definitely never going to lead. 

Ann: Adopt zebras… No! 

Lana: Yeah, too many dogs to breed. [laughs] The two people I hate the most in all of history. Well, that’s not true. But up there. Very, very up there. 

Ann: Victoria and Charlotte? 

Lana: Victoria and Charlotte. [laughs] 

Ann: But I think Maria Theresa comes to show that, like, just because a queen has 15 children doesn’t mean you’re going to hate her. 

Lana: I mean, you can still commit genocide while being pregnant. It’s fine. 

Ann: Yeah. So, Maria Theresa… So, throughout this period, like she’s going to war, doing all this war, going to Hungary, being amazing in her speeches, having children, and she’s also learning how to be the empress. Part of that, for her, unlike some other prior Holy Roman emperors, is learning about the political diversity of her land. Who am I ruling over? Maybe if I understand them, they won’t leave me. It’s kind of like Cleopatra did that as well; she was the first Ptolemy pharaoh in Egypt to, like, learn the Egyptian language. Like, “Hmm, maybe if I learn about my people, they won’t hate me.” 

Lana: It also helps to understand that, yes, she got her husband elected, but he was a puppet emperor. She was truly in charge because he was too busy screwing her and anyone else he could find. He did not care about being in charge of anything. 

Ann: He was just kind of there. He was the trophy husband, really. So, her ultimate goal, eventually, is to defeat Frederick and to regain Silesia. And just to get everything going, like, now that she’s out of this war, these two wars, actually, she is just like, “Let’s do a big restructuring of everything.” The now 76-year-old advisors are like, “Hmm? What? But it’s worked so well for 100 years.” 

Lana: This whole fiscal irresponsibility was now at an end. [laughs] She was going to deal with that problem. 

Ann: Exactly. So, this guy, Count Frederich Wilhelm Haugwitz, came on board, and he is largely credited for the administrative transformations. So, part of this is like moving from a feudal-type system into, like, a “modern” type system. So, this involved comprehensive changes, like opening schools. 

Lana: The concept of kindergarten, like, a lot of our public education system comes from the German system. A lot of North American concepts come from the German system, and the German system comes from the Holy Roman Empire. 

Ann: So, she’s looking at educational reform, both for children, but also, she wanted to get… Like, she saw these, you know, the bingo guys around her, and she’s like, “It would be great to have some trained diplomats instead of these guys. So, let’s open a school to teach people how to be politicians.” So, they opened a civil servant academy and a diplomatic school to help train people to be helpful to her. She’s like, “No one’s helpful to me? Great. Let’s train people to be helpful to me, and eventually, they will be.” She also increased funding and improved training for the army, which they were going to need because Frederick was unrelenting in the way of all comic book villains. 

So, I mentioned Hanover before, like Hanover and Britain are like hand in hand, like it’s the same person is in charge of both of them. And Britain’s whole thing is like, “We hate France.” And that was so that was their main thing to the point that Maria Theresa was like, “Okay, I’m going to stop asking you for help because all you care about is France.” 

Lana: “Unless it involves France, we’re not going to bother.” [chuckles] And eventually, it involves France. 

Ann: Right. So, she gives up the alliance with Britain, and she’s like, “What if we side with France?” So, like, this is kind of the new matchup. This is the new team. And this is interesting, just the way that Nancy Goldstone explained this in her book. So, Maria Theresa is trying to get Louis XV to agree to this plan and stuff, and at that point, the best way to convince him of anything for anyone was to go to his mistress at that time, Madame de Pompadour. So, it was Maria Theresa via Madame de Pompadour, and then I feel like Catherine the Great was over in Russia, and so it’s these three ladies just kind of running the game. And I like that as a moment for women getting stuff done.

Lana: They’re not good people, but they’re women getting stuff done. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah, I want to be clear. I’m not saying they’re good people doing good things, but I’m just like, in this situation where women often don’t have any political power, like, these three figured it out. And, you know, a little cameo from Madame de Pompadour. 

Lana: Sometimes villainy doesn’t need to be a guy. It’s okay. 

Ann: Well, and when you’ve got Frederick there, it’s like, does anyone else reach that? It’s like, if he’s there, can you call anyone else the villain when he’s there? 

Lana: It’s sad. It is really sad how terrible all of these monarchs… Like, the fact that the age of revolutions is coming is just like, yeah, no, that makes sense. I see it now. 

Ann: Actually, that’s a great point. That’s a great point, Lana, because every episode leading up to this has been talking about various revolutions in parts of the world. This is why. 

Lana: They’re terrible people doing terrible things, being improperly set up for leadership. Most of them can’t balance a cheque book, let alone lead a nation. 

Ann: They’re all constantly in debt.

Lana: Yeah, they’re running everything on land rents and food rents, and they’re not… 

Ann: They’re not paying any taxes. The rich, like the nobles in any of these places, none of them are paying taxes. It’s just the poor people paying taxes. 

Lana: Right. And they’re only getting their money… They’re not earning money, they’re not investing money. They’re just taking money from the poor people who live on lands that they’ve owned for thousands of years. So, they’re not contributing, they’re not they’re not protecting people. They’re starting wars because people are trying to take away their toys. And it just gets to be so ridiculous. 

Ann: It reminds me of ancient Greece, not actual ancient Greece, but like, in the myths, where it’s like the gods are just toying with the people. These royals are behaving like they’re gods, but they’re not, and the people that they’re fucking over are eventually going to, like, team up against them. 

Lana: It’s funny to me that I can always, like… Catherine de’ Medici, also not a good person, but you can admire somebody that just is like, “I’m going to get things done with you or through you,” and Maria Theresa is absolutely one of those who is like, “I’m going to get things done.” And she doesn’t make life better for people, but she’s going to accomplish things, and she does at least get them fiscally stable at some point. 

Ann: Well, and the thing with this sort of story, again, I hope on this podcast and in my research as well, it’s like, I never want to be like “This person’s a hero, this person’s a villain,” except for Frederick…

Lana: [laughs] He’s definitely a villain. 

Ann: John Knox, and a few other people. But in this sort of situation, it’s just kind of like, here’s the lot in life that she was given. Like, she was going to be… You know, her father set her up to be the empress, and she was unprepared. So, it’s like she could have just been like, “Okay, I don’t want to be the empress. I’ll just go have babies. Bye.” But she’s like, “No, I’m up to this challenge.” Like, within the context that she’s in, she’s doing what she feels like she needs to do. 

Lana: She’s doing above and beyond. 

Ann: Yeah, she’s doing what a lot of other people would have done in this situation, not that it’s a good situation… 

Lana: Any of her ancestors. 

Ann: Exactly. Any of her ancestors and most of her children, frankly.

Lana: They just got handed… They all get handed, like, these strong economies, all of these… Everything to keep them just happy, fat and happy, their whole lives. And she’s handed the same thing, but it’s breaking. And she’s like, “Okay. Well then, I guess I’ve got to fix it.” 

Ann: And she does fix it, asterisk, for as long as she’s alive. 

Lana: [laughs] And then Napoleon. 

Ann: Why does every… I’m so mad. [Lana laughs] I was so mad when I was reading the book that’s like her and her daughters. So, I was reading about her, and then it’s like Marie Antoinette and her other daughters. And suddenly, I’m like, why is Napoleon in this book? Noooo! But everything… 

Lana: Because everything changed. Everything changed. Like Charlemagne, everything changed. 

Ann: Okay. So basically, she’s in France. You know, all of her crowns and France are all together. They’re like, “Let’s attack Prussia. Russia is going to help as well.” But then Frederick heard about it, and he did a pre-emptive strike. But that made him look bad, right? Because Han shot first situation. So, Frederick does this pre-emptive strike, and so that makes Prussia look like the aggressor. And so, everybody teamed up against them. Russia, France, Austria, Saxony, Sweden, and a number of German principalities converge. So, Prussia’s only ally was Britain at this point. And so, a third war starts. 

Lana: But this is the first world war. The first true world war. And in America, we were taught about it as the French and Indian War. 

Ann: Oh. 

Lana: Because here are the colonies. It was the colonists against the Native Americans and the French. 

Ann: Yeah. This is kind of what’s… In terms of American history, Canadian history, so much of it is, like, England versus France, because those were kind of the powers. But this is like, no, there’s other countries and they all are powerful. 

Lana: It all started here. 

Ann: It’s a long, overarching thing. It’s like one of my history classes I took in university, I remember this always. My professor at the time, I forget his name, but I could look it up, but he just said he’s like, I think future historians will look at the First World War and the Second World War, not as two things, but as the world wars of the 20th century, because one led directly to the other. Like, it was all one thing, and this is kind of the same sort of stuff. This is all one thing. It’s not just like the third Silesian War. It’s like, this is just continuing the first Silesian War. 

Lana: This is Frederick and Maria Theresa duking it out for who’s going to be in charge of the Holy Roman Empire. Eventually, his heirs will just say, “Screw it, we’re going to make Germany a thing.” But they have to get through Napoleon first. 

Ann: But Napoleon’s not on the scene. Frederick is the only gross man, villain conquering at the moment. 

Lana: The only terrible guy we’ve got right now. 

Ann: Remember her, like, actually helpful admin assistant, Kaunitz, he was sent to Versailles as an ambassador to ensure that the French were on side. Meanwhile, Frederick secures a treaty with the British. So, it’s just, I don’t know, I feel like maybe the first graduating class of her diplomacy school has finished because now she’s got people to send places. So, now we’ve got, it’s like, so the Treaty of Versailles. 

Lana: The first one, because we’ve got to get a bunch of those in throughout history. 

Ann: This is literally called the First Treaty of Versailles. That’s an agreement between France and Maria Theresa. So, after this agreement, France was, on paper, officially on their side against Prussia, and this is going to lead to, guess what? The marriage of, in the future, Maria Theresa’s daughter, Marie Antoinette, to France, to a French prince. 

Anyway, so there’s like, more wars. Wars are happening; people are seeding places, people are promising other places to other people. Silesia is still her main thing she wants. Oh, when I said before, it was Catherine the Great. It was not Catherine the Great, it was Empress Elisabeth who was the third woman in that woman, woman, woman thing. We talked about her in the podcast before. I know that because Empress Elisabeth just died, and then her heir did not want to support Maria Theresa anymore. 

In the meantime—and this is where we’ve been talking previously in this podcast season about France and what they’re up to with their colonies—France was losing badly in America and India, and so they had they weren’t able to support her as much. So, like, the colonization stuff is taking up a lot of people’s soldiers and a lot of people’s money. 

Lana: But not the Holy Roman Empire and not Maria Theresa. 

Ann: Because she’s not doing that shit. Yeah, there’s not Holy Roman Empire colonies. 

Lana: Because given…

Ann: She’s busy. She’s busy! 

Lana: Even Prussia, a little bit, had colonies in the north and the Baltic. Like, technically, they had uprisings they had to quell internally as well. So, she’s the only one that’s just sitting there going, “I mean, I got to fight the Ottomans every once in a while. But we’ve been doing that forever.” 

Ann: She’s also focusing so much on domestic reforms, just like, figuring out the economy, opening schools, getting her army ready. It’s like, that’s what she’s focusing on, and nobody else is. And then, her husband Francis died. Does anything change? Not really, except her outfits, because like Queen Victoria later, she always wore black after. 

Lana: Well, and now she has to deal with Joseph instead of Francis, but… 

Ann: Remember in Hungary, she held up the little baby, and she’s like, “Look at this baby, won’t you support me?” And they’re all like, “We’ll die for you and your baby.” He’s now an adult named Joseph, who is her co-regent. It’s kind of like in ancient Egypt times, right? It’s like you have to have a man; you can’t just have a woman, it has to be a man and a woman. So, they become like, co-rulers.  

Lana: And everyone’s like, “Okay, so now you’re going to step down.” And she’s like, “No, I’m not. Why would I do that? [Ann laughs] Have you seen this kid?” 

Ann: “I’m just getting going, guys.” 

Lana: “I didn’t raise him.” 

Ann: Oh, gosh. Okay, so Joseph. He was born in 1741. He becomes… This is like, I don’t know, 1763, so he’s like 22 years old. 1763, we’ve talked about this time period-ish on the podcast before. Everyone’s all about Rousseau and the Enlightenment, and Joseph is that. He is the new generation. One of the things I want to mention, Lana, I’m sure you know this, but maybe other people don’t. So, one of the reforms that he implemented, he was just like, “Everyone should be treated the same.” This is not what he implemented. But his philosophy was like, “We should…” 

Lana: He would say that, but he wouldn’t do it. 

Ann: What he did do is he was like, “There shouldn’t be different kinds of funerals for different kinds of people. Everyone should be buried the same, because we all turn to ash in the end”. And so, it was during this time when no one could have fancy funerals, and that’s when Mozart died in the Holy Roman Empire, and that’s why no one knows where his grave even is, because everyone was just being dumped into piles at that point, because that was Joseph’s thing. 

Lana: His “everybody is equal” stuff only went as far as things that did not inconvenience him in any way, shape, or form. 

Ann: Absolutely. 

Lana: And when we watched Amadeus, he was played by known horrible human being, Jeffrey Jones. And you don’t get cast, you don’t get Jeffrey Jones cast as you, unless you are also a known horrible human being. [laughs]

Ann: Jeffrey Jones, perhaps best known, if not for being a convicted pedophile, but also, he’s like the… Who is he in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? 

Lana: He’s the principal. 

Ann: Yeah. So, that’s who I pictured the whole time when I was reading this book. He’s awful, but she’s still, she’s been empress for so long, like, she’s got a lot of control and power. It’s not like he came in and took over. 

Lana: No, she did not step down because her son came along. 

Ann: So, I want to just sidebar talking about her children. So, she gave birth to 16 children over 19 years. As I said, every nine months she had a child. Of these 16 births, 13 survive infancy and 10 survive into adulthood. 

Lana: Which is good numbers for that era, the smallpox era. 

Ann: And considering that she’s like… And then also, well, it’s interesting. Later on, she would tell her daughters, “When you’re pregnant, don’t go horseback riding. Keep yourself safe.” It’s like she was running off on war campaigns this whole time, literally on force. Like literally on a horse. It’s like she leads an army and then gives birth. She was not… But we’ll see this a lot in the Marie Antoinette episode. Maria Theresa doesn’t… She gives advice that’s very different from her own lived experience. Like, she trains her daughters and tells them like, “Oh, you have to be docile and, like, let your husband be in charge.” Like, girl, whaaaat? You’re telling other people this? 

Lana: She’s like, “If you can, if that’s your lot in life, let them do things. But if they’re stupid, well, you’re going to have to do it yourself.” 

Ann: So, she had three daughters, and then Joseph was a son. So, that was kind of like in terms of her and getting people to support her as the empress, because this is like very early in her life. So, until she had a son, everyone’s just kind of like, “Oh, should we have her be empress?” But then she had a son, and it’s like, okay. Yeah, so one of her children, her favourite daughter, Maria Christina, AKA Mimi, was born on her 25th birthday, four days before one of the army defeats. So, she’s just, like, at war, being empress, having children. So, five more children were born during the war. And then, the way that her children kind of… So, war and childbearing were carried on simultaneously, as per what I’m looking at. So, then she had more children during the peace, during peace times. 

Lana: She just didn’t stop. 

Ann: There’s sort of a break. So, it’s a bit like Queen Elizabeth II, where she had like Charles and Anne, and then there’s kind of a break, and then she had Edward and Andrew. So, it’s kind of like family number one, family number two. Not on purpose, but Maria Theresa’s children turn out like that because some of the middle kids died of smallpox. And so, there’s a break. So, she kind of had family number one, family number two. Like, when Maria Antoinette was born, her oldest sibling was like 20. So, big, wide Duggar-like spread of ages of children. 

Smallpox, we mentioned before, so smallpox. People got it; some of them survived, some did not. Her second son, Charles, died age 15 of smallpox, then her 12-year-old daughter, Maria Johanna, died of smallpox. Joseph’s first wife, Isabella of Parma, died of smallpox. His second wife also died of smallpox. And Maria Theresa, she wanted to embrace this daughter-in-law before she died, and then she caught smallpox from her, and it seemed for a while like she was going to die. That would have changed a lot of things, actually. She was even given last rites, like, she was on death’s door. 

Lana: Smallpox is one of those diseases, like you can survive it, but you don’t survive unchanged. 

Ann: No, and she didn’t. 

Lana: It led to a lot of blindness, physical deformities, and physical symptoms. Like, it’s a chronic illness, basically. 

Ann: Yeah, and from the point where she survived smallpox, like, Maria Theresa had various health issues. I mean, I think anyone who gave birth 15 times would have some health issues, but she also had smallpox-related things. 

And then this is like, what a saga. She’s a Catholic person; she felt guilty about a lot of things, perhaps, but she felt really badly about this. So, when the daughter-in-law died of smallpox, Maria Theresa went to pay her respects, and she brought her daughter, Maria Josepha, with her. But the tomb was not properly sealed, and then her daughter, Maria Josepha, caught smallpox from… She didn’t want to visit the crypt of her dead sister-in-law, but Maria Theresa was like, “No, you have to.” And then she died, the daughter died, and this had a whole cascading effect on which daughter married who, and that is part of why Marie Antoinette ended up marrying the Dauphin of France, but we’ll talk about that later. 

Anyway. So, because of all of these smallpox deaths around her, she decided to sponsor trials of inoculation. We’ve talked a bit about Mary Wortley Montagu was coming, like, she was talking about inoculation in England, and then over in France, there was inoculation going on. Like, I remember Thomas Jefferson was there, and he was into inoculation. People in the American Revolution were into inoculation. So, Maria Theresa is like an early-ish adopter to this. And she insisted on members of her family getting inoculated. 

Lana: And this was when we were still inoculating people… The cure was to be exposed to cowpox. 

Ann: Yeah, this is variolation, not vaccination. So, you just like, scratch a person and put a little cowpox on them. 

Lana: With a disease that’s close enough… So, you get sick, but you don’t get dying sick. Because once you have smallpox, you don’t get it again, unless you get measles, and then the fun starts for everything. But once you get smallpox, you don’t get smallpox again. So, cowpox was close enough to it that you could just get cowpox and then you wouldn’t get smallpox. 

Ann: Exactly, it’s sort of like cowpox in humans. Like, it’s terrible for cows, but in humans, it’s not as deadly, but it’s related enough to smallpox. 

So, 1770, as part of this whole, like, her lands, like in France, we have this deal. This is why Marie Antoinette married Louis, Dauphin of France, to sort of like, cement this relationship between the two countries, which was a big deal at the time. Now, Maria Theresa, she had all these children, she was busy with wars and things. And I think it’s important for people to know that she was also really shitty to her children. 

Lana: She wasn’t a mother. [laughs] She was a queen. She was an empress first and a mother eventually. 

Ann: And I think that was standard for most. That wasn’t strange for the time period, where it’s like even Downton Abbey and stuff, you see very rich people would send their children off to boarding school, whatever. Like, you weren’t with your children every day. You’d see them a bit, but they would have wet nurses, they’d have governesses. But she took this up a notch. Like, she married her daughters off to different places to cement alliances in places and wrote them a letter, like, every week, telling them what to do. And she had spies on the scene to write back to her to tell her what her daughters were up to. She didn’t trust the daughters to report on their own.

Lana: She’s like the opposite of Charlotte. Charlotte expected her daughters to stay close to her and never do anything. Maria Theresa expected her daughters to be doing things and to be good at it. 

Ann: Yeah. Even though she hadn’t trained them to be good at being a diplomat, they weren’t set to diplomat school, but she wanted them to do what she herself would have done if she was in their situation. 

Lana: Well, she was never trained, so she reproduced her own trauma of, “Well, I figured it out. Why aren’t you?” 

Ann: So, she had different reasons to be mean to various of her children, except for her favourite daughter, her favourite daughter, Mimi, Maria Christina, who was the only one allowed to marry the person who she chose for herself, but they did not have any children. But because she didn’t have any children, then Mimi was able to hang out with her mother all the time. So, she hated all of her children, except for that one. 

Lana: Which was her pet. 

Ann: Which is kind of Queen Charlotte-esque, which was her favourite one, yeah. So, she wanted to have as many grandchildren as possible, and she had a rule that the firstborn daughter to all of her children had to be called Maria Theresa, which is why there are an incredible amount of people called Maria Theresa…

Lana: Such an incredible number. 

Ann: … in the early 1800s. So, she had about two dozen grandchildren by the time that she died. Most of whom are called Maria Theresa, as well. 

Lana: That she wasn’t any nicer to just because they were her grandchildren. 

Ann: No, no, they were named after her, and she’s like, “Good. This makes me look good.”

Lana: “Done, I never have to speak to them again.” 

Ann: So, when we’re talking… This is pivoting back to when her husband died, and she was devastated because she was obsessed with him, she licked him once. So, not only does she only wear black for the rest of her life, but she painted her rooms black and had her hair all cut off. You know, she makes a dramatic statement. 

Lana: She actually did mourn her husband. Unlike Victoria, that’s like, “Yeah, I’m mourning my husband. I don’t have another one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maria Theresa’s like, “Nope, I’m done now. I don’t have to have any more kids. I don’t have to have any more husbands.” 

Ann: What Lana is alluding to, is to the recent book, Victoria’s Secret by Fern Riddell, which is talking about how Queen Victoria, she was known to have had a very close companionship with this Scottish, like, equerry or something after Albert died. But Fern Riddell found some records that Queen Victoria actually secretly married him. 

Lana: Which is like pretty obvious that she was… The little nympho was screwing him, but… [laughs] 

Ann: Queen Victoria was literally a nymphomaniac. She couldn’t go that long without fucking, like being fucked. Like she… That’s her whole thing. We’ll talk about that maybe in a later episode. 

Lana: Maria Theresa’s like, “No. Now, I get to rule my country.” 

Ann: Maria Theresa’s, exactly. It’s just so emo to, like, paint all her rooms black. 

Lana: “I’m going to be sad about it, but I’m going to keep doing my job.” 

Ann: “I’m going to be sad, and you’re going to know I’m sad.” 

So, she kept being like Empress, doing Empress stuff, but she just didn’t go to, like, the theatre and stuff, because she was depressed, obviously! They’d been together for decades. So, he died on August 18, 1765, and so every year she would spend the whole month of August alone in her room, as well as the 18th of every month. 

Lana: She just wanted a vacation. [laughs] Just a day off. “I’m going to do it when the day my husband died.” 

Ann: But losing him, and also the after effects of having survived… Like, she was given last rites. Her smallpox situation, like, could not have been worse, except for dying. But anyway, so she wrote after he died, “I hardly know myself now, for I have become like an animal with no true life or reasoning power.” Although she was still, she could still do the job. 

Lana: She was depressed. 

Ann: And I think we all know people like this. There’s people who can be high-functioning depressed. Like, she was excelling at her work and also incredibly depressed. 

Lana: Sometimes when you have chronic illness and depression, being extraordinary at it, like, whatever it is you throw yourself at, is the depression, because then you don’t have to think about your life. You just keep doing, you keep throwing yourself at the new, bigger problem, and then you don’t have to address the fact that you’re in constant pain or whatever. 

Ann: And I was just thinking also, like, she was pregnant or giving birth or postpartum for 19 years. Like, I think she’s got some mental health stuff from constant childbirth as well, that could be exacerbating or adding to what’s going on with her now. 

Lana: She’s just one of those people that just never stopped. Like, she could not stop whatever she threw herself at. 

Ann: Exactly. Well, I think she was just constantly having babies. And then, to suddenly stop having babies, that would probably affect you in some way, too, if you just got used to that. 

Lana: Like, I don’t think her life was great. I don’t think she enjoyed what she was doing. I think she just didn’t know how to live any other life. 

Ann: Well, and there was no other life for her to live. Like, she was still so single-handedly keeping things running. 

Lana: I’d imagine, like, she would just be one of those extraordinarily intense people, and you just either help her or you get out of her way. There are no other options. 

Ann: She’s the sort of person, it’s like somebody who you’re working with. It’s like, “Why haven’t they retired? Isn’t she 65?” But it’s like, she knows if she retires, she will die. 

Lana: She’ll just be done.

Ann: Like, she needs to be doing work. And it’s like the opposite of Cixi. Cixi just wanted to retire and paint and do whatever. Maria Theresa is just like, “This is the only thing keeping me alive.” 

Lana: “All I know. Don’t know my children. I don’t particularly like them.” [laughs]

Ann: “But I’m obsessed with telling them what to do constantly.” 

Anyway, so she and her son, Joseph, are co-rulers. 

Lana: On paper, on paper. 

Ann: On paper. Here’s what… I’ll read a quote from this essay. “Despite Joseph’s intellect, Maria Theresa’s force of personality often made Joseph cower.” She was in charge and terrifying. It’s interesting, we see in Marie Antoinette’s story, like, she had a lifelong terror of older women. 

Lana: [laughs] It’s like, just because you are a mother, it doesn’t mean you’re a good mother. 

Ann: Yeah, no. She just gave birth to 15 traumatized people who then traumatized their own children. So, Maria Theresa though, she wrote about her son, Joseph. “We never see each other except at dinner. His temper gets worse every day. Please burn this letter. I just try to avoid public scandal.” [Lana laughs] So, Joseph was a messy drama queen as well. He often threatened to resign, but he never did. 

Lana: Would probably have to give up money if he did that. 

Ann: Maria Theresa believed that when she recovered from smallpox, it was a sign from God that God wanted her to reign until she died. [chuckles] That is why you survived, I guess, sure. But also, it was in his best interest that she remained there because when things went badly, he could blame her, and he avoided taking on any responsibility himself. 

Lana: He was a trust fund baby, and that’s all he wanted. I feel like if he was born in the modern era, he’d be talking about Ayn Rand. Like, he was one of those guys that, like, “Oh yes, I’ve read the modern philosophy. We’re so equal now.” It’s like, yes, you say that from your yacht club, dude. [laughs]

Ann: In that way, he is like his father’s son of just being, like, a useless person. 

Okay, and then eventually, she started realizing like, she’s not the force in Europe that she used to be. So, Joseph worked together with this guy, Kaunitz, to arrange the first partition of Poland. Maria Theresa didn’t want to do this because this would hurt the Polish people. But eventually, she realized that even though she was disagreeing, they were still going to do it, so then she was just like, “Okay, I guess do it then.” Her vote was not as important. 

Lana: Yeah, they didn’t own nearly as much of Poland as Russia and Prussia did. 

Ann: And then speaking of, guess who’s back on the scene? It’s Frederick. 

Lana: Not dead yet. [laughs]

Ann: Not dead for, spoiler, a long time. So, 1777, the Elector of Bavaria died without leaving any children. So, everybody was just like, “Ooh, let’s take over his territories.” Joseph was one of the people who wanted to do that, and so was Frederick. 

So, the War of Bavarian Succession happened. Maria Theresa, again, didn’t want to go to occupy Bavaria. Later, she went over Joseph’s head to make peace proposals to Frederick. But she’s just not in charge like she used to be. She had all those old man advisors, and they were so out of the loop, they didn’t know what was going on; she’s kind of become that now. She’s kind of superfluous. Which is what happens when you stay in a job too long. That’s why people should retire when you’re able to. Wish I could! Okay, so war stuff… I’m going to have to… 

Lana: It’s not interesting. They just keep fighting each other. And it’s not like they’re fighting for big stakes either; they’re just fighting for what will eventually become the remnants after Napoleon. Like, all of the pieces that need to be picked up after Napoleon finally gets sent off. 

Ann: So, this is like, we’re in the last decade of her reign/life. We’ve got the partition of Poland happened, then there’s the Bavarian Wars of Succession, and then Frederick is on the scene. Bohemia, Bavaria. Another winter war happens. Oh, here we go. You speak some German, right? 

Lana: Yes. 

Ann: Okay, so this war, the war in invading Bohemia, it soon degenerated into a winter standoff highlighted by soldiers scrounging for potatoes in the frozen ground, earning it the German nickname… 

Lana: Kartoffelkrieg. 

Ann: Which means? 

Lana: Potato war! The Kartoffelkrieg. 

Ann: [chuckles] The potato war. Just trying to get potatoes out of the frozen ground. 

Lana: This is why you don’t fight in winter. [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah, like it worked for her that one time and maybe some other times, but not this time. 

Lana: Frederick was better at building a standing army. Like, he was a dickhead, and we hate him, but he saw what she did, and he’s like, “Okay, I can do that. I mean, I’ve got to wait for my super soldiers to be born,” but he had more money, he had a more war-like nation that he could build a standing army because they kind of needed it to keep their serfs in line anyway. She was building a modern army. He was building a very feudal system. 

Ann: And she was also focusing on stuff like schooling and the economy. And Frederick was just like army building, breeding warriors. That’s all he was up to. 

Lana: He was taking everything from his land and putting it into getting more land. She was actually trying to develop resources that she already had, which included the human resources. 

Ann: So, this leads us all up to Maria Theresa. And this is, if this was a movie, quite a turn, where she secretly meets with Frederick for this peace treaty, like, going behind Joseph’s back, ending the conflict. So, this prevented Frederick from taking over more of her territory. Like, she was doing this for her people. Like, as much as she’s a bad mom, anti-Semitic, like all of these… control freak, all of these things, she took her role as, like, mother of the nation or whatever, very seriously. Like she did this peace because she knew that this was in the best interest of her subjects. 

So, we’re getting into her final days. That was kind of like her last hurrah was this peace treaty, and I loved that her last hurrah was like pissing off Joseph as well because he’s…

Lana: Insufferable. [laughs]

Ann: He deserves being pissed off, and he was bad at being the emperor as well. Maybe we’ll talk about it later. 

Lana: He was a terrible emperor on his own. 

Ann: Augh! You know, the one thing he did that was good was he explained to Marie Antoinette how to get pregnant. 

Lana: That worked out so well for her. 

Ann: Well, she did get pregnant, Lana. 

Lana: That was her problem was the pregnancy. If her mother had taught her fiscal reform, that might’ve been more useful. [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah, as far as she knew, that was a problem. Anyway, we’ll talk about that in subsequent episodes. 

So, some more information about her health, like we were talking about before, like the smallpox. So, she got smallpox in 1767 and then she died 1780. So, that’s like, 13 years later. Ever since the smallpox, she had shortness of breath, fatigue, cough, distress (I think just mental health things), and insomnia. She later developed edema. So just, like, everything is kind of mounting. Everything is combining to just be, like, she’s got more and more health symptoms. 

Lana: She probably had lung disease as a result of the smallpox because if the smallpox gets in your lungs, it’s awful. 

Ann: God, smallpox in your lungs, yikes! Okay, that’s like, in another future episode, we’re going to hear about somebody with tuberculosis of the spine. 

Lana: Oof, oof! No, thank you. 

Ann: So, when you get a disease in your inside parts, not just on your outside skin, yikes. 

Anyway, so she fell ill on November 24th, but I think she’s been ill a long time, but just, she was probably not able to get out of bed that day. After, as you’re explaining, like, powering through because keeping busy makes her not have to think about anything else. Two days later, she asked for the last rites, and two days later from that, she told her doctor, “I’m going to die.” And then she died on November 29th, surrounded by her remaining children. Not sure which ones those are. She had two older daughters. One of them had health problems and was forced to become an abbess of a nunnery. And then she had another daughter who was beautiful, but then got smallpox and then was not beautiful anymore, so she was also forced to become the abbess of a nunnery. So, maybe just those two. 

Lana: I wonder how many letters they got about being in charge of an abbey. 

Ann: Oh man, Lana, guess what? Zero, because you know why? They stayed living with her. 

Lana: [laughs] She got Post-Its. 

Ann: They were the abbess of abbeys… [laughs] Just a whiteboard. 

Lana: The passive-aggressive Post-Its. 

Ann: They were the abbesses of abbeys, but they were both like, “We don’t want to leave you,” and she’s like, “Okay, you can just be a nun, but live here with me, everything unchanged.” 

Lana: Remote management.

Ann: And then when Joseph took over, like after Maria Theresa dies, he made them go to the nunnery, because he’s a dick to his sisters.

Lana: Well, they’re technically in charge. [laughs]

Ann: Fair. I mean, fair. 

Lana: It’s like, if you’re going to be in charge of a nunnery, go to the nunnery. [laughs]

Ann: So, she died. She’s buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna next to her husband in a coffin she had inscribed during her lifetime. 

Lana: Because she couldn’t even let somebody else inscribe her own coffin. [laughs] She had to be in charge of that too. 

Ann: No, she was going to inscribe— Oh, you know what? Of course, she did. Why would you leave that to chance? So, when Frederick the Great heard that she died, he said, “She had honoured her throne and her sex, and although they had fought against each other in three wars, he never considered her his enemy.” That is what it means. He’s not saying like, “Wow, I respect her.” He’s saying like, “Well, she did good for a woman.” 

Lana: “She was fine for a lady, with her lady parts.” 

Ann: So, with her death, the House of Habsburg died out and was replaced by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. 

Lana: Genetically the same. But God forbid you recognize that. 

Ann: So, in terms of her legacy, like, what had she wrought? Definitely, if someone else had been in this role, things would have gone differently, I think, because she personally did a lot of stuff. Like, she reformed the whole empire into a modern state that kind of elevated its international standing, she centralized and modernized institutions. After her, other rulers of Austria were more modern and less sort of, like, serfdom-based. And like we’re talking about, she invested money into the actual people actually living there, domestic stuff like schools and welfare, and caring about the people instead of just, like, what Frederick was doing, building armies. So, that had positive effects to subsequent generations of people who had access to education and were maybe a bit better taken care of. 

Let’s see. A number of streets and squares were named after her. I feel like she chose them, painted the signs herself. Anyway, so in Vienna in 1888, so that’s a hundred years after she died, a large bronze monument was built in her honour at Maria-Theresien-Platz. 

Lana: Theresien-Platz. 

Ann: Theresien-Platz. And then, there’s also the Maria Theresa Garden Square, is constructed in her memory in 2013. There’s a city that used to be called Subotica, doesn’t matter because it was renamed Maria-Theresiapolis. 

Lana: That’s just how it works. 

Ann: Which I like. Also, because it kind of looks like Mia Thermopolis, which is The Princess Diaries. In 1890, an asteroid was named after her. A crystal chandelier style with Bohemian crystal glass was named in her honour, it’s known as the Marie Therese chandelier. If you go to the Hofburg Palace, there is the Maria Theresa Room, which contains a large portrait of her, depicting her in her Hungarian coronation dress. I’m not sure if that’s on the horse or not, but there’s a pretty badass portrait of her in the Hungarian coronation. 

Lana: I think it’s the one on the horse. 

Ann: On the horse. Yeah, it’s a great portrait. Anyway, “All oaths of allegiance ceremonies of a newly elected government of Austria are conducted in this room with the signing taking place underneath her portrait.” So, in that way, her ghost is still in charge as she would have wanted to be. 

Lana: She’s watching over them, and she will write them a sternly worded letter if they fail. 

Ann: She will, yeah. 

Lana: So, I also like this. In terms of Hungary, in the Sándor Palace in Budapest, there is the Maria Theresa Room, which is the… So, Sándor Palace is the official residence of the president of Hungary. And in the palace, there’s the Maria Theresa Room, which has a portrait of her dressed for her coronation, alongside a portrait of her husband, Francis, on the other side. She probably insisted on that. Anyway, this room is used for official state receptions. 

And that is Maria Theresa, who is, at this point, probably best known as the mother of Marie Antoinette. But as we’ve discussed, she had a lot of interesting things to talk about her as well. Now, we need to, Lana, get into scoring, and this will be interesting. 

Lana: She’s not going to be high. [laughs] 

Ann: If you’re new to the podcast, we just kind of wrap stories up and just… There’s other podcasts—and no tea, no shade at all—this is what actually inspired me. There’s other podcasts like Rex Factor that score monarchs and people on different sorts of things, and it really rewards people who are, like… It’s funny. She would do well on Rex Factor, which is the podcast where they talk about monarchs. But in my show, I wanted to reward people for their lesser… for other qualities that are often, like, feminine-coded qualities, where it’s just like, we don’t often talk about people who are able to lead wars. She’s somebody who did. And then, I’ll see where that lands on our Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale. So, the first category is Scandaliciousness. How scandalous was she seen by people? I would say she herself would have seen herself not as scandalous. I think some people would be like, “A woman in charge? Herman, my pills!” you know? 

Lana: I think that’s the only thing she had going for her, is like, “A woman in charge.” A woman not failing at this job. How dare she? And pregnant? 

Ann: Yeah. “Shouldn’t she be at home, you know, knitting?” So, I feel like that could be like a 1. 

Lana: I was going to give her a -5, so a 1 is great. 

Ann: You can’t give negative on the scale. We could give her a 0. 

Lana: No, I think a 1 is appropriate. 

Ann: Yeah, because the Scandaliciousness, it’s like, we’re talking about people in their context, how scandalous… Like, we’ve talked about people who did, like, bananas, scandalous things, like ancient Roman people, where it’s like, yeah, but everyone was stabbing people, so in that context, that’s not scandalous. 

Lana: They had orgies for funsies. Like, that is not a culture of scandal on the same scale. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah, to get like a high score in Scandaliciousness in ancient Rome would be, like, pretty difficult to do. Caligula, maybe. But for her, yeah, I think 1, because there were people who were just, like, “A woman in charge and pregnant and raising armies and doing things!”

Lana: I mean, she’s a contemporary of Madame du Pompadour. She didn’t have… Even in her own time, she wasn’t even remotely scandalicious. 

Ann: No, no. She fell in love with Francis when she was, like, 5 years old, was loyal to him until the day he died, spent the rest of her life mourning him. She’s not scandalous, and I respect that, and that’s what she’s like. 

Lana: Exactly, exactly. 

Ann: Okay, but this is where we get to Schemieness. This is a high score. 

Lana: This is her area. This is her wheelhouse. 

Ann: Because if we talk about, like, in the grand context of schemieness, on the one hand, she’s got schemes where she’s just like, “Oh, you don’t want a woman as Roman empress? What if my husband is the emperor? Oh, he doesn’t have enough land? What if we give him land?” But then also like, schemieness, often we don’t see women on the show who have the ability to go to war and stuff, but she made a lot of decisions, and a lot of these were effective decisions that were good for her subjects and good for her country. The schemes of like, “Oh, we don’t have any good diplomats, let’s open a school and train them.” Like, she was constantly… Her schemes were effective. 

Lana: Yeah, she was a long-term player too. She didn’t be like, “Oh, well, I’m just going to solve this problem for today.” It’s like, “No, I’m going to build schools. I’m going to teach people how to run armies. I can’t deal with this nonsense anymore.” 

Ann: Well, and even super early in her reign, where it was just sort of tentative that she could even be in charge, she’s like, “Okay, I need Hungary to support me.” And then it’s like, “Well, the only way to do that is to go there and do this thing, but I don’t know how to ride a horse. Okay, I’ll learn horseback riding.” It’s like, “Oh, that’s not enough. What if I bring my baby?” She’s always kind of like, thinking. I will say she also had a scheme to kick all the Jews out of the empire, so that scheme didn’t happen. I’m not saying all her schemes were good, I’m just saying, like, was she a schemey person? And I think she was never not scheming. 

Lana: Yeah, the situation in Prague, there’s a lot of really interesting books about the awful things she did to Prague during that time. If you’re interested in that era of history from the other side, there’s some very interesting— I haven’t read them in a long time, so I don’t have them off the top of my head, but go looking for them because the undoing of that was a fun thing to read about. 

Ann: But in terms of her and schemes, like, she was scheming up until the day she… Like, she got her own gravestone written on. 

Lana: She did not leave anything to anyone else. 

Ann: She was micromanaging her own death. She was like, “Excuse me, I would like the last rites now, thank you. 

Lana: “I will be dead any minute. Please give them to me this moment… Okay, it’s going to be two more days, but you know, it’s good to be ahead.” 

Ann: And the letters she sent to her children, like, micromanaging all of their lives. Like, I’m comfortable, Lana, with a 10. 

Lana: I’m happy with a 10. I’m happy with her having something in her favour. [laughs]

Ann: I can’t think of any schemes she did not at least attempt to do. She was never not scheming, except as a kid, but that’s because she wasn’t allowed to. So, her Significance. This is interesting because, like both of us said, I think someone else in the same role might not have made the same choices she did; they wouldn’t have had the same long-term effects. Frederick maybe would have taken over more, and what would be the effect of that? But then also just her having these 15 children and who they were and the fact that she married Marie Antoinette, the Dauphin of France, like, affected the trajectory of a lot of things. So, I feel like her Significance is high, but she’s not well-known. 

Lana: She impacted a lot. She started a war in the colonies, the United States. United States and Canada… Quebec exists because of her. Because she’s like, “Oh, Britain, you’re not going to be friends with me anymore? All right, I’m going to go be friends with France. And now, Canada has Quebec.” 

Ann: Like, the international repercussions of her are pretty major. But then, and you know, it’s like, this room in this palace in Hungary. But in terms of like, I’m a Canadian, you’re an American, this podcast being listened to by a lot of people, I think most people don’t know about her. So, she’s not significant like in a Cleopatra way, in a Marie Antoinette way. So, it’s like, she was a person of significance, but is she remembered? And Significance kind of measures both things. So, I don’t know. I don’t know what that is numerically. I was trying to think of somebody else who is similar to see what we did for Significance of somebody else, but I don’t know who else is similar. 

Lana: I would say a 5, just because she had far-lasting consequences, but then Napoleon happened. And I think if Napoleon hadn’t happened, I think we would know more about her. But Napoleon did happen, and then who gives a shit about what happened in the 1700s of the Holy Roman Empire? It’s not a thing anymore. 

Ann: That’s true. She was so significant at the time, and then, like, revolutions followed by Napoleon followed by like… Yeah. So, like, the significance she had was kind of undone. I like a 5 because she was very significant in her era at her time. I think things might have gone very differently, but then Napoleon still would have stomped all over everything, probably. [Lana laughs] Or would he have if she hadn’t married Marie Antoinette to the Dauphin? 

Lana: Right. Like, if there hadn’t been the Seven Years’ War, and she hadn’t married off Marie Antoinette, would there have been Napoleon, would Napoleon have had room? But also… 

Ann: If she hadn’t taken that one daughter to see the dead body of the other person, that daughter wouldn’t have died, and a different daughter would have married the Dauphin. 

Lana: She may have caused Napoleon, but also, I don’t think that train was ever going off that track. I don’t care who it was. Literally, Marie Antoinette shows up and is like, “What do you mean you’re fiscally irresponsible? My mother fixed that in, like, five years. I don’t understand this problem that you’re having.” 

Ann: No, it’s true. Some things are just canon events, yeah. 

The final category is the Sexism Bonus. How much did sexism get in her way? I think at first, it did, but like some other people in the show, she found ways to wiggle around that and work within it. So, it kind of didn’t get in her way. 

Lana: I think she bulldozed sexism. Like, I think it tried. 

Ann: What else could she have done that she didn’t do? 

Lana: I think sexism tried and failed against her. 

Ann: I think, you know, it’s like sexism, until she became the empress, and then she’s just like, “Get out of my way, sexism. I wasn’t educated; I’m going to self-educate myself. You didn’t teach me how to ride a horse; I’m going to learn how to ride a horse.” 

Lana: “You expect me to step aside for my son? Forget that. You think we’re so smart.” [laughs]

Ann: When they’re like, “Well, you can’t be a woman and be Holy Roman Emperor.” She’s like, “What if my husband…” Like, she, honestly, this category is there for people where sexism got in their way. And I don’t think it… It didn’t not. 

Lana: She wouldn’t let it. 

Ann: But she wouldn’t let it. And she had people around her who supported that, I think, because she was terrifying. But like, the old bingo men weren’t like, “[grumbles] You can’t be in charge.” They’re just like, “Oh, someone’s in charge, great. Can we keep playing golf? Great.” Like, for Sexism Bonus, like, definitely a low number. 

Lana: Yeah, I am okay with her not getting a bonus there because she’s like, “I don’t deserve one.” 

Ann: I’m going to give her a 1 in Sexism because it got in her way to the extent that she had to spend her time convincing people to let her be the heir. And if she had been a boy, or if there hadn’t been the patriarchy, she could have just taken over with less war… Probably some war, but probably less war. So, she had a bit of extra war she had to do, so that’s one point. 

Lana: But I don’t know if anything would have stopped Frederick. Honestly, I think he’s also a cannon event. 

Ann: Kind of like from Frederick to Napoleon, it’s just like, yeah, history. Okay, so this gives her a 17. 

Lana: She’s not the lowest because Charlotte exists. 

Ann: She’s not the lowest. She is the third lowest. 

Lana: Alongside which of my favourites? 

Ann: Okay, so the lowest is Queen Charlotte has a one. And then Madame du Barry has a 15. And then Maria Theresa is up here with a 17. 

Lana: And Sisi is just a little bit above her. 

Ann: Yeah, so kind of, it’s like great gowns. It’s interesting, the people at the bottom of this are very much just like great gowns, beautiful gowns. Maria Theresa is the most effective leader to be here, but she wasn’t scandalous at all. 

Lana: “I was too busy being an effective leader to do anything interesting, I’m sorry.” 

Ann: Well, it’s similar to Empress Elizabeth of Russia, she’s got a 23, so she’s a bit up, but she did a coup and took over and had a lover. So, she got some scandal points that Maria Theresa didn’t get. But I think the two of them, they worked together on that one thing, and similar just kind of like women who are just like “Everyone else here is an asshole, I’m going to take over, here we go.” They had that in common. So, they’re in the same neighbourhood, but just Maria Theresa, truly, no scandal at all. 

Lana: Her husband would have had tons. Her son, also up there. But her? No, she didn’t have time for that. She was too busy making life. 

Ann: She was too, yeah, she was just, yeah… It’s such an interesting story, and thank you for having the patience for me to take a year and a half to work my way up to it. 

Lana: You were so hesitant. It was, “Oh well, she’s not interesting.” I’m like, “Uhhh, give her a chance, please.” 

Ann: For myself, and the way that this podcast season was structured, I had to learn so much stuff to be able to appreciate her story. I had to learn about the American Revolution and the French connection to the American Revolution, and there was a lot of background stuff, that I needed to know before I could make sense of all of this, and I finally can. So, I was finally in a place where I could appreciate it. 

Lana: Yeah, understanding that the age of revolutions is hard because there’s so many overlapping interconnected pieces, and I’m glad you put so much effort into it. 

Ann: Well, and thank you for inspiring this whole season in the first place, Lana. 

Lana: She’s like, “I’m not going to do a Habsburg.” I was like, “I think you’re going to do a Habsburg.” [laughs]

Ann: Well, I think what I’ve learned is that my aversion— I don’t know. I just started finding Habsburgs, and they all have the same name, and it was all this sort of, like, not-Germany area, and I’m just like, I can’t handle this. I can’t read about this. Who are these…? I can’t, it was just, it was too much. It was too overwhelming, but I just have to take it in bite-sized pieces, and then I can do it. 

Lana: Like the Austrian Habsburgs, I’m also not a fan of the Spanish Habsburgs, so I do not judge you for that at all, but I’m glad you finally understood that there are two different groups. 

Ann: That was a major thing for me as well, but also, even just in terms of reading about this, and then getting ready for the Maria Antoinette episodes, even French history of this period, I was just like, they’re all called Louis, I can’t handle it. But I’m like, no, they all have little names. They all have little nicknames. 

Lana: Everybody gives themselves a little nickname. 

Ann: They all go by their titles, so it’s just like, “Oh, that guy. Oh, that guy.” So, the way that this extremely long podcast season was shaped mirrored my own personal education of myself to the point where I feel competent to be able to join you for this episode, and in a few weeks to do the Maria Antoinette episode as well. I wouldn’t have been able to just jump into that, there’s too much. But understanding Maria Theresa as well as I do now is going to really help explain the Maria Antoinette episode, especially when her mother just keeps writing her letters, like, “Did you have your period? Was it late? Why is your period late?” It’s just like, chill out! Oh my god. 

Lana: “These are not my big problems right now, mother.” [laughs]

Ann: They called it, “Did you get a visit from the generale?” That’s what they called having a period. 

Lana: Which is ironic considering Napoleon. [laughs]

Ann: Was the generale…? Unfortunately, yes, the generale did visit me this month. “Are you expecting a visit from the generale?” Oh my god! She demanded all of her daughters had to write to her every month about if they got the period or not. 

Lana: She was a good Catholic mother. 

Ann: This was this woman. I mean, was she? [laughs]

Lana: [laughs] No, she was a terrible mother. 

Ann: But she felt she was a good Catholic, and that was her whole job. 

Anyway, Lana, thank you so much for joining us today for this episode, and if people want to hear more of me and Lana talking with our other friend, Allison Epstein, Vulgarpiece Theatre is a podcast video on Patreon, and it’s back up and running after a lengthy hiatus, and we’re going to be talking about Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette next month. Did you know who plays Maria Theresa in that movie, Lana? 

Lana: No. 

Ann: It’s the singer Marianne Faithfull, who you may not know is descended from the Austrian Habsburgs. 

Lana: What? No, I did not know that. 

Ann: Yeah, her mother is like, Baroness to something-something German. 

Lana: Fancy. That’ll be very exciting. That sounds very Sofia Coppola of her. 

Ann: I know, so they got, like, an actual Habsburg. 

Lana: They found one. 

Ann: To come in and play her. I know, and I think physically she’s… What we know about Maria Theresa, it will be interesting. I haven’t rewatched it yet, but I think it’ll be interesting to see how we feel about her portrayal. Anyway, Lana, thank you so much for this lengthy conversation. A delight as always. 

Lana: Thank you for letting me explain the Holy Roman Empire. 

Ann: Happy birthday. 

Lana: Thank you. 

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We mentioned in the episode, but just to remind everybody that I do have a Patreon that you can join if you’re a fan of this podcast and you want to get some more content. So, if you join the Patreon for free, which is a thing you could do, then you just get kind of updates from me about my book that I have coming out, Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Carolina Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen. As I get more information about that book, I post information there. But also, just information and news and links, and there’s a chat you can join and stuff. And then, if you join for $1 or more a month, you get early, ad-free access to episodes of this podcast. If you want to listen to it without the ad breaks, that’s the way you can do it for $1 a month. 

If you join for $6 a month, then you get bonus episodes, such as episodes of Vulgarpiece Theatre, which is where Lana Wood Johnson, today’s guest, as well as our friend Allison Epstein, and I talk about costume dramas. We recently just did an episode about a movie called The Madness of King George from 1994, which is about George III and his wife, Queen Charlotte. Coming in September, we’re going to be having an episode of Vulgarpiece Theatre about Sofia Coppola’s 2006 movie, Marie Antoinette, which I’m really excited to do. You can listen to that on the Patreon, or if you just want to, you can get a free trial, like, for seven days. 

Also, if you want to get a year free trial of my Patreon, well, what you can do is pre-order a copy of my book. So, it’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen, and when you pre-order the book, which means you just go to your local bookstore or your local bookstore’s website or, like, any online website that sells books in Canada and the US, and you pre-order it, then just take a screen capture of your receipt or a picture of your receipt and send it to me. And then, you can choose some treats, some rewards I’m offering for people who pre-order the book. One of those things is you can get a year-long membership to my Patreon at that $6 a month level, but for free, you can also get a free membership to my Substack of “Vulgar History A La Carte,” where every two weeks I write essays about women from history, and some of those are for paid members only. And then, also another treat you can get when you pre-order my book is a digital paper doll of Caroline of Brunswick wearing some of her iconic looks. 

Anyway, you can get information about my book by going to RebelOfTheRegency.com. There’s links there to buy copies as well as a link to a form to submit your receipt. Also, I want to say, if you are a bookseller, librarian, book reviewer, journalist, or anyone with an account on NetGalley, which is a place where you can get advanced copies of books, you can now request my book from NetGalley. So, get on that, journalists, librarians, booksellers and other book-reviewing-type people, like you can be among the first to read the book, and that’s really exciting as well. I hope to have information soon about, you know, audio audiobook, there will hopefully be one and also about when and where people outside of North America will be able to pre-order the book. So, stay tuned for more information about that. Again, you can get all the information about this book at RebelOfTheRegency.com. 

I also want to let you know that the first-ever Vulgar History live podcast recording is coming up. It’s going to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, my hometown, at the Trident Cafe, 7:00 PM on Wednesday, September 3rd. There’s no need to sign up or register; it’s free. You can truly just show up, hang out with my friends and family members, who I’ve made promise that they’ll be there. I won’t be arriving on a horse like Maria Theresa, but we’ll have a good time nonetheless. I will be sharing a story there from Canadian history, and I’ll be recording it for a later episode that everybody can hear, so if you miss it, don’t worry about that. You’ll be able to hear that story later. Again, it’s going to be a live Vulgar History podcast recording at Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the Trident Cafe, 7:00 PM on Wednesday, September 3rd. 

Finally, we’re in the Marie Antoinette era. We’ve all been working towards this, and I’m really excited to be at this point, to feel, like I said in the episode, I finally feel ready to be having this conversation. I feel like I understand it enough that I can tell the stories to you. Next week, we’re getting ever closer to Marie Antoinette herself. We’re going to be talking about one of her besties with a very special returning guest that a lot of you have been hoping will come back on the podcast, and I’m really excited for you to hear that next week. But we’re getting, we’re just circling ever closer to the story of Marie Antoinette. And I can’t wait to share that story with you next time. So, until next week, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster, that’s me! Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as one dollar a month at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWwriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod and get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.