WEBVTT - Historical Mythbusting Spectacular! 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:08.840 and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:16.079 One quick note before we begin. I wrote a book. 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.239 It's a novel called Anatomy, a love story about a 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:24.360 surgeon and a body snatcher in nineteen century Edinburgh. And 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.720 if you like Noble Blood, I have a feeling that 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.760 you're really really going to like it. I'm really proud 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.120 of it, and I'm never proud of anything that I 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:36.720 write anyway. It's available for preorder now, and preorder is 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.199 extremely weird, you know, to buy a book that's not 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.839 going to come out until February, but it's actually really 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.239 important for authors. My publisher is going to look at 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:50.360 those preorder numbers and make their decision based on them 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:52.839 about where to put the book and how many eyeballs 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.200 to put in front of. So if you're at all 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:57.800 interested in the book, it would mean the world to 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.760 me if you checked it out and maybe gave future 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.279 you a surprise gift. If we are ever in the 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:05.520 same city, I promise I will track you down and 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.360 sign it for you. The link to the preorders is 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:17.320 in the bio, and so now into the episode. This 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:22.040 episode is a little bit different. It's our fifty episode 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.360 of Noble Blood, and so rather than focus on just 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:30.720 one story, I'm going to focus on five, five historical 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.800 myths that, for whatever reason, have persisted to this day. 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:39.960 Sometimes I think understanding which lies spread and why can 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:44.080 be just as important as understanding the actual truth. So 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.200 let's dive in. First up, it has to be. First up, 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:54.559 it's most important. Let the meat cake. Everyone has heard 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.120 this story. In fact, when you think about Marie Antoinette, 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:01.160 it's probably the first thing that you think of. The 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:06.520 story goes that starving peasants wearing their dustiest rags, gaunt 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:10.919 with hunger and poverty, come to Versailles, the gilded palace, 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.960 in which Marie Antoinette and her husband feasted on bond 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:18.200 bonds under painted ceilings. Please, one of the peasants say, 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:22.600 his giant eyes turned up hopefully towards the queen. The 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.400 people of France don't have any bread to eat. Marie 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:30.840 Antoinette rolls her eyes and sighs, annoyed that she has 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:35.320 to look at a poor person. Her painted lips curled devilishly, 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:40.959 and she replies, let them eat cake. As far as 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:45.640 setups and punchlines go, there's practically nothing better. It's the 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:49.959 catty bon moo equivalent of Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:54.760 thinking that a banana costs ten dollars. It's little wonder 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.280 that the story caught on and on and on. This 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:03.000 smith Bus thing is a double act. The first myth 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.280 to bust is that, as pedants left to point out, 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:12.240 Marie Antoinette would have actually said la brioche, which pardoning 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:18.480 my awful French pronunciation, means let them eat brioche. Brioche 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.160 refers to an incredibly rich bread made with butter and 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.800 with eggs. It's as good as cake to an eighteenth 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:30.360 century French peasant, and so Marie Antoinette saying let them 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:34.440 eat brioche is basically just a more specific variation on 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:38.760 the same punchline. But the more important correction is that 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:43.040 Marie Antoinette never told peasants to eat cake or brioche, 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:48.560 or croissant or any pastry. Before and during the French Revolution, 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.720 Marie Antoinette became a scapegoat to represent all of the 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:56.640 ills of the second estate, the ruling nobility of France, 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:00.600 the elite upper class, not only would she the most 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:04.800 visible consumer of the French royal family with her expensive 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:10.040 clothes and elaborate hairstyles, but also she was foreign in Austrian, 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:12.840 which meant that people were primed from the beginning to 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:21.839 hate her. The first recorded variation on the quote let 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:26.200 them eat cake story actually comes from a sixteenth century 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:30.640 German story about a noblewoman who wonders aloud why poor 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.920 people who can't afford bread just don't eat the pastry 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.920 cross um. The story came to France two hundred years later, 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:42.919 or at least it was popularized in Rousseau's Confessions, in 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:47.280 which he attributes the quote to an anonymous princess, most 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:51.000 likely just meaning it apocryphal lee. At the time that 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:55.320 Rousseau was writing, Marie Antoinette was nine years old. She 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:59.360 was the younger sister of princesses in Austria, not at 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:01.640 all in line to be married to the Prince of France. 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.800 Yet and Rousseau would not have cared at all what 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:08.880 she was up to. The little preteen princess known as 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:13.560 Maria Antonio was not spouting poetic about the French population 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:20.200 and their lack of brioche consumption. I'm a known defender 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:24.359 of Marie Antoinette, which seems like a strange thing to say, 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:27.800 but I do think it's interesting and important to look 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.719 at Marie Antoinette's life and role as it would have 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:36.640 been established in the framework of eighteenth century French politics. 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.520 She was told and raised to be the queen of 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.040 a country from the age of fourteen. She was married 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.440 to the Dafais France, and her role was not political. 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.119 It wasn't her decision to make what the French people 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.520 were taxed or what the government was spending its money on. 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:59.200 Her role really was to wear clothes by French designers 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:05.080 and spawn sir French hairstylists and throw parties and entertained diplomats. 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.880 She was raised for a very specific role and purpose that, unfortunately, 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.960 by the end of the eighteenth century became obsolete, and 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.160 I would argue for good reason, but in her own 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:22.440 tiny bubble raised her entire life in a elaborate court ritual, 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.640 a tradition. Marie Antoinette, by all accounts, was a kind 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:31.000 and generous person. There are stories of Marie Antoinette stopping 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.600 her carriage because she saw a child on the side 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.800 of the road, and then in effect adopting that child 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:42.680 to pay for their education and comfortable lifestyle. As an individual, 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.520 she was kind and tried to help poor people, but 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:50.640 Marie Antoinette had no education, interest, or really even role 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.160 when it came to helping the poor people of France 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.920 as a whole. It's interesting also that she's painted as 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.800 so out of touch and eliteau, which again she was. 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:06.240 But Marie Antoinette, as an individual, loved this idea of 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.760 painting herself as a farm girl or woman of the people. 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:16.200 At Versailles, she built a tiny village that was meant 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.440 to represent a French farm village, where she would shed 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.720 all of the layers of her court finery, put on 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:29.000 simple linen peasant wear, and in effect play poor person 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:33.040 for an afternoon. She would milk goats and cows and 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:37.160 take fresh eggs from chickens, although of course all of 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:40.520 the fresh eggs that she was taking from chickens would 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:44.480 have been removed prior to Marie Antoine, it coming wiped 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:48.640 down of all the chicken viscera and then replaced underneath 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.920 the chicken. It was basically a disnified version of what 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:57.000 being a peasant was like. Now that I say it, 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:01.280 I recognize how wildly out of touch that seems, but 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.400 there's something almost quaint about it, I find. But of course, 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:08.880 when the French Revolution came, she was the Queen of France, 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:13.960 the female head of this incredibly destructive and archaic institution, 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:23.720 and so that had had to quite literally roll. Rousseau's 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:28.000 writing was incredibly influential to the revolutionaries who would overthrow 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:32.480 Marie Antoinette and the entire French monarchy. So it's more 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:36.720 than likely that they conflated his anecdotal story with their 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:41.839 queen because it's so thematically perfect. But the debunking has 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:46.240 been going on almost ever since. Fifty years after the 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.080 French Revolution, a writer in the French journal leg Whip 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:52.719 said that he could prove that the let Them Eat 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:56.280 Cake rumor about Marie Antoinette was false because he had 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.800 found the quote in a book dated seventeen sixty. But 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.439 that debunking didn't really take nor did the next, nor 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:07.400 did the next. A good story spreads faster than a 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:11.120 boring truth, especially when it's a story that fits our 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.800 preconceived notions about who a person is. Let Them Eat 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:19.599 Cake is perhaps one of the most effective propaganda campaigns 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:22.800 in history, because even more than two hundred years later, 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.360 it's still the most famous thing about a woman who 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:34.880 never said it. Next up the classic rumor that Napoleon 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.960 and Parra of France was short. It's a rumor so 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.880 pervasive that there's even a complex named after it in 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:47.800 which someone adopts a personality of overaggression or domineering behavior 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:52.640 in order to compensate for being short. The rumor about 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:57.760 Napoleon being unnaturally short is a rumor with a seemingly 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:02.200 simple explanation. A according to the French measurement system at 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.400 the time, Napoleon was five to objectively on the shorter 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.679 side for a man, but the metric system hadn't yet 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.880 normalized measurements across Europe, and the French inch at the 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:18.160 time was two point seven centimeters while the Imperial inch 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:22.240 is two point five four centimeters, which means that by 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.080 modern metrics, Napoleon would have stood a little bit above 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.360 five five, or just about average height for a man 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.000 at the time. Another factor that contributed to the idea 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:35.960 that Napoleon was short was that he would have surrounded 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:40.280 himself with his most elite soldiers, who were incredibly tall, 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:46.280 genetically blessed Frenchman. Anyone flanked by two eighteenth century Parisian 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:50.640 shacks would look short by comparison, and the idea of 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:55.800 Napoleon being short took root in British propaganda. The cartoonist 0:10:55.920 --> 0:11:00.760 James Gilray was incredibly influential, especially with his drawings of 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:05.880 the quote maniac Ravings of Little Bony, in which Napoleon 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.960 is depicted as a tantramming toddler in boots half the 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:14.320 size of his body. Another famous Gilray drawing, titled The 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:19.000 plum Putting of Danger, features Napoleon across a dinner table 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.800 from the British Prime Minister William Pitt. While the pair 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:26.320 of men divide up a dessert meant to depict the globe. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:31.200 Pitt is depicted as tall and lanky, with legs that 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:36.560 are practically skeletal. Cartoons are all about contrast, and so Napoleon, 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:43.199 practically hidden beneath the large hat, is tiny. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:49.080 the cartoons infuriated Napoleon. He sent a barrage of letters 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:53.640 across the Channel demanding that the British government censored depictions 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:57.840 of him in their press. Surprise, surprise, the British government 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:03.000 did not heed his request, and that left Napoleon between 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:07.160 a rock and a hard place. Getting angrier about it 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.480 would only make him look like the short, ill tempered 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:18.000 toddler with something to compensate for. The next rumor is 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.200 one that verges a little bit on the pornographic, so 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.920 if you're listening with a younger listener, you might want 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:30.440 to fast forward a little bit. This is the rumor 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.600 about Catherine the Great. Maybe you've heard of it, that 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:39.040 the female Empress of Russia died while having sex with 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:43.480 a horse. Enemies of Catherine the Great long painted her 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:47.000 as a sexual deviant. She did have a number of 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:51.559 sexual relationships after her one ill fated marriage too, Zar 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.040 Peter the Third, although not a number of relationships that 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.840 would have raised eyebrows if she had been a male ruler. 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.040 When Catherine was a teen major, a minor German princess 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.760 who was still named Sophie at the time, she was 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.840 married off to Peter the Third, who was to be 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.760 brief terrible at being a czar. To make a long 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.760 story extremely short, Catherine overthrew her husband with the help 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:20.960 of her lover, Gregory or Love. From there. Catholick's romantic 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:25.720 partners were usually also her political partners. She tended to 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:30.080 be attracted to men like Gregory Patempkin with a military 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:34.360 and political mind who could help her rule the incredibly 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:38.520 vast Empire of Russia. It's a side effect of being 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.720 a woman with power that terrible rumors start to spread eventually, 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:48.760 and Catherine's personality encouraged certain rumors to some degree. There 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:53.680 were the aforementioned partners. Even into her middle and older age, 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:57.600 Catherine continued to take lovers, many of whom were men 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.520 much younger than she was. And it's also believed that 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.920 Catherine kept a small room adjacent to her suite where 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:11.679 she kept pornographic materials and erotica, including furniture carved with 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:16.840 explicit and X rated naked figures. During World War Two, 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:23.160 German soldiers raiding the palace in supposedly found the secret 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.880 rooms and took photos of the furniture, but since then 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:30.080 the furniture was either lost in the chaos of war 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.720 or purposefully removed by the Russian government to protect the 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:40.040 royal family's virtue. But none of that quite explains the 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:45.080 extremeness and specificity of the story that so many of 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.680 us have heard about Catherine the Great, That she was 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:54.280 engaging in beastiality with a horse suspended above her when 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:59.240 the horses harness broke and crushed her to death. I 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:02.720 hate killing a fun rumor as much as the next person, 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.800 but it's not true. Catherine died of a stroke at 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.560 age sixty seven in her bed not having sex with 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:14.440 a horse. Insane as it sounds, though that horse rumor 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:18.280 didn't quite come out of nowhere. At the time, the 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:22.800 notion of quote riding a horse was a common euphemism 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:27.840 for female sexuality, and Catherine, who frequently wore male bridges 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:33.200 and military dress, was also a famed equestrian. An actual equestrian, 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.240 she was incredibly adept at riding a horse, so that's 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:41.280 basically the origin of the rumor that she was more 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:45.400 sexually promiscuous than might have been expected of a woman 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:50.960 in the eighteenth century, and that she was really good 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:57.239 and really interested in riding horses. And rumors, especially colorful rumors, 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:01.880 are hard to kill. Propaganda against the Empress was extremely 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.880 common in her lifetime, both in Russia and abroad. When 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:09.400 Catherine the Great, who was a frequent pen pal of Voltaire, 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:14.160 didn't throw her support behind the French revolutionaries during their revolt, 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.880 they showed their lack of appreciation with a series of 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:24.160 particularly harsh caricatures, although you can't really blame any monarch 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:30.400 for not supporting the group overthrowing and beheading monarchs. And 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:33.280 then when it comes to legacy, it also didn't help 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:36.480 Catherine the Great that the next to inherit the Russian throne, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:41.200 her son Paul the First, hated and resented her. But 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:44.320 I suppose when it comes to legacy for Catherine the 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:48.160 Great it's a mixed bag. We may half believe that 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:53.200 she died in a outrageous act of sexual grotesquery, but 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:57.320 then again we do still refer to her as the Great. 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.800 There are some rumors that aren't really commonly discussed anymore, 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:14.520 but which were at one time wildly popular conspiracy theories, 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:19.440 namely that Elizabeth the First, England's long reigning female monarch, 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.600 the Virgin Queen who ushered in an era of artistic 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:30.119 and domestic prosperity, was actually a man. The popularizer of 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:34.199 this myth was actually the author from Stoker, who you 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:39.199 probably know for his book Dracula. Soaker also wrote a 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:44.320 book published in nine called Famous Impostors, in which he 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:49.119 claimed that Queen Elizabeth was actually replaced by a male 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.399 doppelganger when she was a child, and that it was 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.720 he the doppelganger who was actually ruling during the Great 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:02.080 Elizabethan Age. Stoker had been traveling through the Cotswalds of 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:06.160 England when he found himself in a small village where 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.840 for their May Day celebration they had a small boy 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:14.600 dress up as Elizabeth. When Stoker inquired as to the 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:19.320 origins of the tradition, they told him this story that 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:24.240 when Princess Elizabeth was young, sometime around fifteen forty three 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:27.680 or forty four, she had been sent to that village 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.480 of Bristly in the Cotswalts to avoid the threat of 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.360 plague that was so deadly in the more densely populated city. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:40.720 But while Elizabeth was there on her countryside retreat, she died, 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:48.040 whether of the plague or another unspecified illness. Princess Elizabeth's governess, 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:52.479 knowing that Elizabeth's father, King Henry, was famous for his temper, 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.880 decided that she would hide the Princess's death before King 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.720 Henry came out to the countryside to visit his daughter. 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:04.480 The governess had a small problem. There were no young 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.240 girls in the village who at all resembled the pale 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:12.679 red haired Elizabeth. But there was a young boy, a 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:18.200 little playmate of the deceased Elizabeth, who had surprisingly delicate features, 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.680 who was fair with light eyes and light hair. With 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:27.399 time until the king's visit running short, the governess decided 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.440 to dress the little boy up in Elizabeth's clothing and 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.679 hoped for the best. King Henry, who was either in 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.159 a hurry or not quite sure what his daughter looked like. 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.960 After a few months, apart fully believed the Khan, and 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:47.040 so from that time on, the young country boy became 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.920 the Princess Elizabeth, and the real princess, who had died, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:57.240 was buried anonymously somewhere in a quiet Cotswald's grave. Supposedly 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.760 three hundred years later, the Reallizabeth's body was dug up 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:06.920 accidentally during some building work. The body was conveniently reburied 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:11.320 without anyone doing an actual examination or knowing where it 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:15.920 was buried, but the Cotswald's May Day tradition was born. 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:25.040 There are a couple of factors that might tempt someone 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:29.320 to suspect that maybe Elizabeth was a man, outside of 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.119 just the basic sexism of not wanting to believe a 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:36.880 woman could effectively rule a country. She famously wore thick 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.520 powder makeup, although the real reason was that she wore 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.800 it to cover up smallpox scars and not stubble, and 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:49.720 Elizabeth famously never married or had children. Being a virgin 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:53.880 queen married to England would be a convenient cover if 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.160 she were actually a man who couldn't go to bed 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:02.000 with some random foreign prints. But the most compelling evidence 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:06.600 for some less than enlightened spirits was the power of 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:10.760 her leadership. Her speeches were rousing, she had a temper, 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:15.480 she was controlling, She was an incredible leader. In short, 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:22.080 she was all of the traits stereotypically assigned to male monarchs. 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.960 As I'm sure you can catch on, there is no 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:31.880 truth to the rumors. Elizabeth was examined by a number 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:35.119 of doctors throughout her life, and none of them mentioned 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:39.560 that she had male anatomy at all. And also, at 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:42.440 various points in her life there were nurses and ladies 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.360 who were bribed by suitors or politicians to inform them 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:49.720 as to whether Elizabeth was still having her monthly bleeding. 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:52.240 I eat to let them know if she was still 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.960 of child bearing years all of that is to say 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.200 Elizabeth was absolutely a woman, and the idea of her 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:04.480 secretly being replaced by a male doppelganger by a governess 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:08.000 in a moment of panic is a fun story and 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:11.400 a fun origin to a tradition of a village where 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:15.000 they dress a young boy up in costume, but not 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:22.400 much else. In the vein of impostors and conspiracy theories, 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:26.119 here's a conspiracy theory that some people actually believe to 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:29.880 this day that the son of Marie Antoinette and King 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:34.560 Louis the sixteenth of France, Louis Charles, the Lost Aufhen, 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:40.719 actually survived the French Revolution. The story of Louis Charles 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:44.760 of France is tragic. He was a Prince of Versailles 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:47.880 four years old when his older brother died, which made 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:51.680 him the future Louis the seventeenth of France and heir 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:55.280 to the French throne. But then when he was still 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:59.760 a young boy, the French Revolution imprisoned his family. His 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.359 father was beheaded and his mother was imprisoned, and the 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:08.520 young Louis Charles was brutally tortured with an earshot of 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.200 his mother. He was beaten and also made to drink 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:15.800 wine until he stumbled to make the guards laugh. He 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:18.879 was told that his parents were traitors and that his 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:23.400 mom had sexually abused him. And then, of course, his mother, 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:26.680 Marie Antoinette, who spent her days pressed against the wall 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:29.679 of her jail cell hoping to catch a glimpse of 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:31.960 her son as he was brought back and forth from 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:37.119 his abusive lessons, was also beheaded. When Louis Charles was 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:41.960 ten years old, he too died of tuberculosis or jail 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:50.280 fever in jail in the Temple Prison. Obviously, his death, 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.360 the death of the boy that royalists would have at 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:57.600 the time believed was the then King of France, was 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:02.080 of massive importance to the revolutionary government, and so a doctor, 0:24:02.160 --> 0:24:06.240 Doctor Pelletan, was brought in to do a full autopsy. 0:24:06.880 --> 0:24:09.840 The body of Louis Charles was thrown into a mass 0:24:09.920 --> 0:24:14.080 grave in the Saint Marguerite Cemetery, but Dr Pelletan was 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:19.200 still secretly sympathetic to the royal family, especially after seeing 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:22.560 all of the physical abuse that young Louis Charles had suffered, 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:28.000 and so the doctor kept a small souvenir he kept 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:31.800 the young Prince's heart snuck into his pocket in a 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:36.080 handkerchief and then safe in a jar tucked into his 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:42.840 desk drawer. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, more 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:46.159 than a hundred people would come forward claiming to be 0:24:46.240 --> 0:24:49.879 the lost Prince who had disappeared in jail. After all, 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:53.240 how did anybody know for sure that he was dead? 0:24:54.080 --> 0:24:57.000 And being the lost of fault was a valuable claim 0:24:57.040 --> 0:25:00.919 to make, Especially after the French Revolution settled and the 0:25:01.040 --> 0:25:06.520 possibility of a Bourbon restoration went from possible to then 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:11.919 after Napoleon imminent, the idea of a Bourbon prince impostor 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:16.800 became so ubiquitous that it was a cultural punchline. A 0:25:17.000 --> 0:25:20.959 hobo pretending to be the little boy Dolphin appears in 0:25:21.040 --> 0:25:26.480 Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The real boom in False Dafense 0:25:26.840 --> 0:25:30.760 came when the child's uncle, the man who became known 0:25:30.800 --> 0:25:36.360 as Louis SEV, became king. After Napoleon's fall. There were 0:25:36.480 --> 0:25:40.360 so many impostors that fraudulently claiming to be the King 0:25:40.440 --> 0:25:44.800 of France was illegal. French authorities didn't really pay that 0:25:44.880 --> 0:25:48.199 much attention to enforcing that law, but there were a 0:25:48.240 --> 0:25:52.880 few really prominent cases with so much support behind them 0:25:52.920 --> 0:25:56.320 that the French authorities did ultimately take them to trial. 0:25:57.160 --> 0:26:00.439 One such man was known as Charles de Navar, a 0:26:00.560 --> 0:26:05.040 traveler from New Orleans with facial scars and missing teeth, 0:26:05.320 --> 0:26:08.680 who wrote letters to the king and the Dauphin's lone 0:26:08.680 --> 0:26:13.359 surviving sister. He signed those letters d'aufin with an F. 0:26:17.400 --> 0:26:20.440 The most famous impostor by far was a man who 0:26:20.440 --> 0:26:25.119 went by Carl Wilhelm Nundorff. Nandorff was from Prussia and 0:26:25.200 --> 0:26:27.800 he claimed to be a clockmaker, but he had been 0:26:27.880 --> 0:26:34.040 locked up in Germany for counterfeiting and he couldn't speak French. Nonetheless, 0:26:34.080 --> 0:26:38.760 he persuaded a former Versailles lady maid and private secretary 0:26:38.800 --> 0:26:43.160 that he actually was the lost Little Prince, although it's 0:26:43.160 --> 0:26:45.840 also possible, I think that they were in on the 0:26:45.920 --> 0:26:49.640 scheme and that he was angling for a payout, and 0:26:49.800 --> 0:26:53.479 the Versailles ladies and maids may have thought that they 0:26:53.480 --> 0:26:58.800 would be rewarded for their loyalty. Nandorff's case went to trial, 0:26:59.400 --> 0:27:02.560 he was guilty, and he was banished to England, where 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:07.320 he was eventually arrested for trying to build an elaborate explosive. 0:27:08.160 --> 0:27:12.680 When he did eventually die in Holland in eighteen forty five. 0:27:13.200 --> 0:27:19.480 His gravestone identified him as Louis Charles. His descendants remained 0:27:19.560 --> 0:27:23.080 committed to the Khan the belief that he really was 0:27:23.240 --> 0:27:27.000 the last remaining descendant of the Bourbon monarchy, although in 0:27:28.520 --> 0:27:32.080 scientists ran a DNA test on the lock of Nandorff's 0:27:32.080 --> 0:27:35.600 hair to prove once and for all that he was 0:27:35.960 --> 0:27:41.320 an impostor DNA once again swooping in to ruin the fund. 0:27:42.760 --> 0:27:45.639 DNA would also give us the real answer of what 0:27:45.800 --> 0:27:50.920 happened to the show called Last Defense. That calcified heart 0:27:51.200 --> 0:27:54.119 that the doctor had taken from the autopsy as a 0:27:54.160 --> 0:27:57.840 souvenir would eventually end up in the royal crypt of 0:27:57.880 --> 0:28:04.320 Sindony alongside the mother and father. In two thousand, geneticists 0:28:04.400 --> 0:28:07.879 proved that the heart did in fact belong to the 0:28:08.000 --> 0:28:11.360 dead Louis Charles, the ten year old Prince of France 0:28:11.520 --> 0:28:16.040 who died in prison. To me, stories of the Last 0:28:16.119 --> 0:28:20.000 of Fen escaping are similar to rumors that the young 0:28:20.080 --> 0:28:24.800 Anastasia actually survived the murder of the Romanovs in Katerinburg. 0:28:25.680 --> 0:28:30.760 It's a fairy tale, a romantic, hopeful story, and so 0:28:30.840 --> 0:28:35.439 much easier to swallow than the tragedy of young, pointless 0:28:35.520 --> 0:28:43.360 political death. There's one more historical myth that I have 0:28:43.680 --> 0:28:48.000 that isn't quite related to nobility, but one that I 0:28:48.080 --> 0:28:52.680 can't help debunking, and so if you'll bear with me, 0:28:53.440 --> 0:28:57.040 I'm going to debunk it anyway. Do you know those 0:28:57.200 --> 0:29:01.760 medieval torture devices that you can imagine from cartoons, The 0:29:01.880 --> 0:29:05.400 iron maiden with spikes that would close and go through 0:29:05.440 --> 0:29:09.880 a person's whole body, the rack, the pair of anguish 0:29:10.000 --> 0:29:16.440 stretcher that was supposedly inserted and expanded into someone's bodily orifice, 0:29:16.560 --> 0:29:23.480