Doomed Queens (33 page)

         d. Elizabeth suspected Mary was measuring for drapes in the throne room.

4. Why was Juana of Castile insane?

         a. The travails of inbreeding.

         b. Her husband made her hot and bothered.

         c. The emotional stress of widowhood.

         d. Her father was conniving and selfish.

5. Which statement is true about Mumtaz Mahal?

         a. Her husband thought she was the bee’s knees.

         b. She was named Mumtaz Mahal by her parents.

         c. She couldn’t get knocked up to save her life.

         d. She designed the Taj Mahal after her death.

ANSWER KEY

1, d: Tammy Wynette wasn’t born until 1942, about four centuries after Henry’s reign. 2, a: Only Jane died directly for her faith though. 3, all of the above except d: The girl had a royally rough time of things. 4, all of the above: She had a maddening life. 5, a: His devotion to Mumtaz went above and beyond the norm.

CHAPTER FIVE

Go Baroque

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children; my blood alone remains; take it, but do not make me suffer long.

Marie Antoinette

T
he beheadings espoused by Henry VIII and cohorts were eventually replaced by a more sinister force: the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau was born in Switzerland in 1712, over a century after Mary Stuart revealed her red chemise to a stunned executioner. He wrote prolifically enough that folks of the era could project whatever they wanted onto his words. The philosopher’s widely read publications included a romantic novel (
Julie, or the New Héloïse
); an autobiography (
Confessions
); and, most troublesome of all for royal necks, philosophical discourses presenting the radical concept that the sovereignty of the state rested on the will of the people. Napoléon allegedly said of Rousseau, “It would have been better for the peace of France if this man had never existed.”

In France, both Robespierre, a leader of the French Revolution, and Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, were swooning to Jean-Jacques—but for different reasons. Marie Antoinette found the philosopher’s romanticization of nature a relief from the artifice of royal life. The queen attempted to embody Rousseauesque ideals by building a play village, the
petit hameau
, where she and her friends could live the rustic life. As for Robespierre, he interpreted Rousseau’s famous words “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains” as an invitation to kill the royals. Up in Denmark, Rousseau’s writings prompted the lover of Queen Caroline Matilda to revamp the government, leading to her dethronement.

This turbulent era was capped by the murder of Marie Antoinette by the peasants she had aped at the
petit hameau
. The queen’s execution elevated the guillotine from personal threat into fashion statement. Upper-crust ladies adorned their earlobes and necks with jewelry sporting tiny guillotines or tied red ribbons around their throats. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, men cropped their hair
à la victime
.

Even though Madame la Guillotine dominated these Grand Guignol–inspiring times, the prosaic reality was that royal women were still just as likely to be felled by suspicious illnesses, defects of inbreeding, imprisonment, or starvation. And, as ever, beware of childbirth.

1673

hough a picture captures a moment in time, the story it tells is often unclear. One example: Velázquez’s painting
Las Meninas
is considered one of the greatest works of Western art. Yet its intentions are still debated four hundred years later. Is it an informal portrait of the Spanish royal family? A snide commentary on court life? Or a meditation on the act of observation? These theories reflect as much about the viewer as they do the artist. Regardless, one truth cannot be denied: The composition of
Las Meninas
centers around an unusually self-possessed five-year-old princess, Margarita Theresa of Spain.

Upon viewing this lustrous, golden portrait of Margarita it is hard to imagine that her future would offer anything but years of privilege and felicity. The reality was quite different. Margarita was never to grow old, never to see her beauty dim—she died at the age of twenty-one. It was a sad ending for the favorite child of Philip IV of Spain; in his letters, the king addressed the princess as “my joy.”

Born in 1651, Margarita Theresa was the first offspring of the king and his second wife, Mariana of Austria; Mariana was Philip’s niece and almost thirty years his junior. Margarita entered the world improbably untouched by the effects of inbreeding, though her future siblings would not be so fortunate. Nonetheless, the princess was promised in marriage while still a child to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, which was an even more incestuous coupling than her parents’. Leopold just happened to be Margarita’s maternal uncle and paternal first cousin. On the plus side, he was only eleven years older than she.

The couple did not meet until their wedding, when Margarita was a mature fifteen-year-old and Leopold a youthful twenty-six. Luckily, the hot flames of regard had been stoked by Velázquez, who had painted several portraits of the Spanish princess besides
Las Meninas
in his capacity as court artist. These paintings had been sent from Madrid to the Holy Roman Emperor’s palace in Vienna, enabling Leopold to observe his future empress from afar as she matured.

Despite the gap in their ages, Margarita and Leopold were very happy together. They shared a love of the arts and appear to have been compatible, an unusual situation for dynastic marriages. Four offspring rapidly followed their union—and led to the empress’s premature end. Of these children, only a daughter named Maria Antonia survived to reach adulthood; the other three died in infancy.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Though a picture tells a story,
it may not reveal the truth.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION