I was going to ask about Catherine the great. I know the “death by horse” rumours were fabricated but am unsure about the rest of her sexual life. What I will say is that a lot of female rulers have had to put up with these sorts of rumours about their sex lives. The sexual slanders against Elizabeth I in Catholic courts throught Europe(and indeed in London itself) were widespread. Thats not to say every rumour is without merit, but its all too easy to slander a female rulers sex life, especially if that ruler is an adversory.
Edit, yes I heard that about Catherine the Great too Malthus.
Was Charles II debauched, or, just playfully randy?
I don’t think there is any question that she took lots of lovers. Some of the details are certainly after-the-fact exaggerations, but not her appetite for lovers - that’s a well-established and uncontroversial fact.
I sure hope her “erotic cabinet” is real, as that would be hilarious to see!
That child labour had existed for centuries. Previous to the Industrial Revolution children had been required to work long hard hours as rural labour, often in direst poverty and hunger. These conditions however were largely hidden. No-one bothered to write about them, or to campaign for the greater rights of children. It was the Victorian period that brought in such childrens rights.
If you were to say children often lived appallingly during the Victorian era then I would agree, but they also lived appallingly in the pre-Victorian era. That is the nature of existence in most pre and early industrial societies.
Well, i was thinking of things like setting flesh eating war dogs on native children, stuff like that. but that’s par for the course I suppose, and the natives were doing worse stuff. Now, Montezuma - he’s a good candidate.
Now I speak with some authority here, because I’ve read a full biography of Catherine II - and she was indeed a randy tart mounting anything with epaulettes. But she didn’t chew on their flesh or flay them alive so i don’t think she’s what we are looking for here.
Never by the millions until the industrial revolution. Victoria and especially Albert were among the top mouthpieces for mechanization that turned children into slaves. Not virtual slaves. Slaves.
They promoted it and made millions from it. They enslaved, killed and maimed thousands of children — and adults — through their political manoeuvres and investments. Without children, the industrial revolution in the U.K. could not have attained the pinnacles it did. They were the top of the ruling class.
I haven’t read a syllable about Victoria caring in the least, and she could not have been ignorant of the industrial-scale suffering and despair.
Oh agreed - her bedroom behaviour is amusing, but if she enters the lists in this contest, it surely would not be for that - more for good old ‘grinding the serfs to pay for all that fun, glittering debauchery’. Like her endearing habit of handing serfs out as party favours to her lovers.
Best story I ever read about Vlad was when he received a Turban-wearing ambassador and entourage from the Ottoman Turkish Sultan.
Vlad told them that it was a sign of respect in his country to doff your hat in the presence of the lord of the realm. The Turks, who were not going to be ordered around by a minor infidel prince, replied that head covering was a requirement of their religion. Vlad then had the turbans nailed to the Turks’ heads, and sent their corpses back to the Sultan with compliments on their religious obedience.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair. It’s not like Victorian England was unique in that. Most of the other countries that modernized at the same time…France, the US, Germany, Belgium, etc, relied on child labor. And while Queen Victoria was probably fine with it happening, it wasn’t government policy that “you must employ children.” It wasn’t some unique brutality or depravity on her part.
For that matter, it’s an open question as to how much power Queen Victoria actually had over her government’s actions. She certainly had more control over policy than, say, Queen Elizabeth has now, but Britain was still a Parliamentary democracy, albeit a flawed one, and became moreso, partly at her urging, as her reign went on. Unlike most of the examples here, who were pretty much dictators, able to set policy as they wanted (Leopold II, who was a constitutional monarch in Belgium restrained by the Belgian Parliament, had no such restraints in the Congo), Victoria’s culpability for any of the sins of Victorian Britain has to be limited by the fact that she couldn’t set policy on her own behalf, that she was forced to act through an elected Parliament and Prime Ministers (some of whom, like Gladstone, she didn’t like and didn’t politically agree with.)
