Weird D*ck Energy: King Ferdinand VII & the Four Marias

remember where to look. Han't even has forgotten what a camera even looks like. We've been so long since we've been on camera. Welcome to the Particulous Rommance on video. We're hoping to be putting out some nice clips to this show this year, maybe even full episodes. We'll see what happens. No promises, no promises, We are just experimenting. Yeah, we have a crazy story today that I'm very excited about because it was just full of I mean just full.

It was just full. And what better episode to start our video with. I think our faces will tell a tale of their own as we go through this, because today we're talking about Ferdinand the seventh who was the King of Spain, and he had a big, old weird dick and everyone knew it. Uh. I mean, normally this wouldn't really matter about somebody. It would just be like

a just for fun footnote in his life story. And sizes exactly sure, you know some some people have small ones, some of the big ones, and girthie and so on and so forth, and doesn't really matter. No, But in Ferdinand's case, his dick caused a succession problem and eventually that would change the course of Spanish history when Ferdinand, lacking a male heir, had to allow his daughter to

inherit the throne. So kind of an important dick in history. Surprisingly, So let's hear about Ferdinand the seventh weird dick and the four Maria's who had to deal with it. All right, let's go, hey the French comlution. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. I love. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons are a concrete wall. But if there's a story with the

second clinch, ridiculous rolenance a production of I heart radio. Okay, I want to start with like just a real quick rundown on Ferdinand the seventh um, so we can just enjoy the wife stories and not have to get into all the politics the whole way through. He was heir to the throne of Spain in the early nineteenth century. He forced his father to abdicate to him and reigned for a few months in eighteen o eight, but then was himself forced to abdicate by Napoleon Bonaparte. That that

old hound dog. He imprisoned Ferdinand and his family in France and put his older brother, Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. Okay, so that's like three kings in a month exactly. The Spanish people were just like, okay, who's on the money now, or like, what's going on? I just finished signing my checks, King Ferdinand, and now I gotta switch at the Napoleon. So but by eighteen thirteen, Napoleon had suffered quite a lot of setbacks, and he decided to recognize Ferdinand as

the King of Spain. But Ferdinand realized Spain was a little different than when he had left. Joseph Bonaparte had instituted a liberal constitution and changed the whole situation into kind of a constitutional monarchy instead of a traditional absolute monarchy, and so Ferdinand kind of had to promise the Spanish liberals that he would uphold that constitution as king before they would take him back. So he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure,

thank guys, absolutely whatever you say. Yeah, whole new constitution. Love it. Can't wait to be king under all these new rules you set while I was gone. Exact gives gives, gives me less power, delightful, I'm totally into it. Booms amongst us would not take this deal, so his people called him Ferdinand the Desired, and he came back to Spain with great finds there and popularity and everyone's into ing.

But once he was re established, he said forget about all that and completely restored absolute monarchy, never gave the Spanish people a parliament. They discovered also that he had, according to ABC Espana quote, a tacky and vengeful character, and so after that they started calling him the Felon King. Oh wow, you went from Ferdinand the Desired to the Felon King like kind of fast. Well, he spent his reign doing some pretty terrible things, including bringing back something

I never expected the Spanish inquisition. They have to, you have to. He would also squash liberal revolt. He clamped down on the free press. He jailed a lot of writers and publishers. He even arrested liberal ministers himself, which made the Austrian diplomat Friedrich von Gentz right that he quote had so debased himself that he has become no more than the leading police agent and the prison warden

of his own country. In eighteen twenty, another liberal insurrection forced him to restore the liberal constitution that he had spurned so quickly when he became king. But ironically, Ferdinand turned to France for help, and King Louis the eighteenth sent troops to suppress this revolution, which obviously, of course France had just locked him up. So I mean strange

bedfellows girls. Sigro p Roussier writes in an article on publications dot com that Ferdinand even ordered that only French troops could be his bodyguards because he suspected all the Spanish soldiers of having liberal sympathies. Gills writes quote as a paradox, some were former grunts of Napoleon and had fought him ten years before. Thus, thanks to the help of the French, whom he had hated so much, his

power was firmly established. The last part of his reign is known as the Ominous Decade, when he really brought back absolutism. Spain during his reign lost pretty much all of its territories in South America of course, Mexico we have talked before in our Maxi in Carlotta episode. They won their independence in one. So sorry, Spain, you lost out. Many historians consider him to be shortsighted and despotic, and some articles simply call him the worst King of Spain ever.

But even though he lived through this period of like really intense political turmoil, there's multiple wars going on, from the Peninsular War to the wars in America of eighteen twelve, Bonapartes and Bourbons running all around and conspiring and conspire, chaos, all kinds of stuff happening. It's still his romantic life that really kind of defines Ferdinand. He was married four times. All his wives were named Maria, and all of them

kind of hated him and his weird dick. Oh my god, who's what episode was it before where everyone in Spain had the same name. Yes, it was the Royal mistress Mayhem. Oh my god, Peter of Castile, like Peter in Portugal. Right, they were both Peter the first Yes, and then like both their wives were Isabelle or something. It was like, oh my god, forget them, focus on Ferdinand and his four Maria's for this one. And there's more Maria's than just them. Everyone is named Maria. Got to it. What's

the problem with Maria everyone's name? How do you solve a problem like everyone being named Maria? Okay, all right, we keep talking about this weird dick. So what is the deal with this thing? First of all, it was a very big dick, which today it's not necessarily something people a dislike, but at the time, ancient Greece was still seen as like the pinnacle of humanity, and that meant that big dicks were kind of unappreciated. True intellectual

and moral leaders had a nice, polite, small, manageable penises. Polite, that's right, deferential, respectful. I'm not trying to steal the spotlight or get in anyone's way. The brain is important. I'm just down here to do one little job. There's a little perfunctory penis right, okay, but it's not just

the size that makes Ferdinand's dick so unusual. In the words of the famous French historian Prosper Maramy, it was quote as thin as a stick of ceiling wax at its base and thick as a fist at its extremity. Also as long as a billiard cue. So it's like tapers out. I'm seeing like a like an upside down metronome. And also because he says this, it makes me feel like it's kind of like weird mushroom dick. Right when

you the Here's I'm gonna tell you a story. It's the only good thing I ever heard Adam Carolla say. And it was back when on Love Line they made some gross reference to a food in in reference to sex organ or a discharge or something, and Adam Corolla said, stopped that when you make it a food, I have to eat it. And that's how I feel about what you just said. I mean, mushrooms are already gross. Well, who's going to eat the mushrooms off your plate? Next time?

You're gonna be stuck with unbelievably all right, let's get off of this mushroom dick. That's what all the wives said. Now, apparently either the king himself or perhaps one of his wives, developed a special cushion that was made to allow them to have sex more easily. The website The Making of Madrid dot com says it's supported the narrow base quote, leaving only the bulbous tips bobbing around for his poor

mate to straddle evocative. It's evocative. The same website also calls him quote a guy with a massive dick who was a massive chick. This cushion has been described as like thick pads with a perforation in the middle for his dick to come through, like some kind of weird sex donut. Okay, people, you know what, people like all kinds of things people like, and people have to do different people have to do different things in order to

comfortably have sex. And that's very true. And you know what, it's not his fault that he was born with a strange penis. It just seems like something that would be painful to have sex with, possibly possibly possibly and certainly disconcerting if that was your only experience with a penis, and like many of these women to discuss. And again, on top of that, he's a bad person. Yeah, exactly,

like he's kind of super nice. There has been a lot of conversation lately about, you know, if it's body shaming to call someone small dick or say something weird about their penis or something like that, and I think to some degree there is, but also you want to cut that person deep, especially these hyper masculine dudes. Yeah, that are all about their their dick energy. Well, then that's what I'm going to come for, right, It's where

I can hit you weird hurts. Okay. So, now that we have a nice, clear, maybe too clear, a picture of what exactly these four Maria's had to deal with, um, let's find out about them. So Maria number one was Ferdinand's first cousin, Maria Antonia of Naples and Sicily. She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Italy and his Austrian wife Maria Carolina, and she married Ferdinand the seventh and eighteen o two when he was still just the Prince of Asturias and not yet the King of Spain.

He's still prints at this point. They're just trying to get his future worked out, to get married off to your cousin, and he's not even the king yet. I know, right, but they're like, you got one job carry and that's too Mary, cousin, spread your steed amongst a very select people. Keep it in the family, of course, was the motto back then. This family tree is really just a shrub, and you will see that more and more as we

go through. It's like those Banyan trees that are really just the same tree, you know, all growing down into the ground, just one giant organism. That makes sense. It makes sense. That makes it sound cooler than a shrub. Maybe it shouldn't sound cool. That's why I kind of like it, but I get I get ever saying all right. Maria Antonia is described in The Duchess of a Brontese Memoirs as being a little serious, with a majestic air. But when she smiled quote, her whole face lit up sweetly.

But she wasn't excited about her cousinly groom Um. National World News in Spain writes that when she first saw him in person, she was upset by how little he resembled the portrait she'd seen of him, saying, quote, in the picture he looked ugly well compared to the original. It's an adonist out Wow, that's I mean, pretty ice cold. Yeah, that's still true today. I mean you see someone's profile picture and they look a little different in real life.

You can't really complain obviously. Yeah, that's not not just a modern problem. I always wonder that about portraits about royals because I'm like, how hard to be the painter where you're like, I'm supposed to make this look like you, but like also maybe your idealized version of who you think you are and what you think you look like, like a reverse caricature artist. Yes, let me shrink your forehead down. Well, it wasn't just Prince Ferdinand's looks. He

also did not treat Maria with a lot of respect. Also, apparently it took quite a while to introduce her to his weird metronome dick. Maria Antonia's mother, Maria Carolina, was in close contact with her daughter, and she wrote in her diary, quote, my daughter is desperate. Her husband is a complete idiot, not even a physical husband, and moreover, a rowdy who does nothing and doesn't leave his room. A few days later, she bemoans that he quote is a fool who neither hunts nor fishes. He does not

move to the room of his unhappy wife. He cares nothing. He is not even her husband in animal form. Wow, She's like, I don't even care if like, you're not a nice husband, but you won't even have sex with her? Right and how weird? Like imagine the correspondence between Maria Antonia and her mother being like, damn um today, still not fucked. I don't know what it is. So anyway,

love your daughter. And then a year after the wedding, her mother wrote in a letter quote, the husband is not yet a husband and does not seem to have the desire or ability, which worries me greatly. Now this apparently was just a problem that he only had with Maria Antonia because he was well known to enjoy the

company of prostitutes. National World News says that the Marquis of via Urutia wrote that Ferdinand quote did not like to spend time with the ladies of his court, preferring to go out and disguise at night in the company of the Duke of Algon, to engage in some games outside the palace, which Muslims practiced within the harem. The hell does that mean? I don't I was like, I mean some of them just like folded clothes and ship

like the harem is so misunderstood. Sounds a little racist, yeah, exactly. Um, but that's not all that poor Maria Antonia had to deal with because her mother, Maria Carolina, when she wasn't complaining about Ferdinand, was complaining about the French. Maria Carolina had named Maria Antonia for her favorite sister, Marie Antoinette, and we all know what happened to her. After the

French revolted and chopped her head off. Maria Carolina decided she didn't care for the French that was my sister, exactly, got a little piste off, and rumors started to spread that Maria Carolina was encouraging her daughter to poison the Queen of Spain, who was descended from the French, as well as her prime minister and probably lover, Manuel good Doy.

Now these were just rumors and highly unlikely to be true because these Maria's Carolina and her daughter Antonia, they were very devout Catholics, so it's unlikely that they would go, you know, murder regent because God chose the regents and all that stuff. Yeah, and it's not like Spain's ties to France for any greater than anyone else's. So what would be the point of killing the Queen of Spain. But this queen that they were supposedly trying to poison.

Maria Luisa did not like Maria Antonia, who was her daughter in law, so she decided that she would feed these rumors. She would inspect Maria Antonia's papers and belongings to search for evidence. Stuff like that. Just be like, I'm pretty sure we need to keep a close eye on my daughter in law because she and her mother

are trying to poison me. Can't trust her. So this lent credence to the rumors and just kind of made Maria Antonia's life even more uncomfortable, which it must have gotten because eventually Ferdinand did make it to her bed to consummate their marriage. Maria Antonia was pregnant twice, but both ended in miscarriages. In eighteen oh six, Maria Antonia succumbed to tuberculosis and she died at the age of

twenty one. Rumors exploded again, of course, that she had actually been poisoned by her mother in law, The Queen Maria Luisa end her Prime Minister Manuel Goodoy the very people they had been accused of trying to poison. Prime Minister Goodoy was not only having an affair with the queen, but he was like best buds with the current heir to the throne, Ferdinand's little brother, Carlos the Fourth. Maria Carolina, Maria Antonia's real mother, believed these rumors, but there is

no evidence to back them up. And people really did love poisoning rumors back then, so you know, we can probably dismiss that one too. She died of tuberculosis, Yeah, exactly. She she had a very bad disease. So, right, poison is not required, right, right, right. But I think one of the main things to take away from that is that there is Carlos the Fourth who's in line for the throne. If Ferdinand does not produce an air, that's right, right, So if he doesn't have a son, then his little brother,

Carlos is going to end up king. If Ferdinand, you know, should come to the worst, if the worst should happen, or the best, depending on your point of Ferdinand. Yeah, it depends on your opinion of Ferdinand. So Maria Antonio was dead, and this was a problem because Ferdinand, you know, didn't have his own air to carry on the succession, but eventually he was King of Spain and he's like, I want this absolute monarchy, and so that meant it was really important to get working on a baby again.

And that brings us to Maria number two, and we will hear all about her right after this commercial break. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So, Maria number two was Ferdinand's niece, Maria Isabel in fronta of Portugal. Maria Isabel's mother, Carlotta of Spain, was Ferdinand's sister. She had married King John the sixth of Portugal, but they had

a very unhappy marriage. Carlotta made John's life basically hell on earth because she was constantly conspiring against him, either to advance her own interests or to who advanced the interests of her native Spain over Portugal, where she now lived and ruled. She even tried to have John deemed insane and unfit to rule. So just a chaotic household for Maria Isabel to grow up in. But Maria Isabel

was smart. She was a well educated woman. She knew several languages, and she and King Ferdinand married in eighteen sixteen, when she was nineteen years old and he was thirty two. Now. He took less time to get to her bedroom than he had with his first wife, Maria, and she got pregnant pretty quickly, giving birth to a baby girl, but she sadly died only four to five months after being born. Maria Isabel got pregnant again in eighteen eighteen, but this

delivery turned really tragic. The baby was in breach, which means that it was being born bottom first rather than head first, which makes the delivery much riskier. At one point, doctors thought that Maria Isabel had died she wasn't breathing, but her sister Maria Francisca, who was married to Ferdinand's brother Carlos. Again, this tree is a shrub. She kept insisting that her sister was still alive, but Ferdinand and the doctors didn't believe her, and Ferdinand ordered them to

perform a Cesarean section to remove the baby. Halfway through the operation, Maria Isabel woke up screaming from the pain and bleeding profusely. Fernando Gonzalez Doria, in his book Las Arenas wrote, quote, the mother gave such a cry that she was not dead yet as the doctors believed, which made it a dreadful butchery. God, this is this was literally like the House of the Dragon. Yeah, it was this exact story kicked off that show exactly the same. I know, I was like the same. The Game of

Thrones period must have been hot, highly up in Spanish snobility. Sure, George R. Martin traveled forward in time, listened to our show and then went back and wrote Game of Thrones and all of its as Larry material based on these stories that we're telling. You're welcome, George, so very sadly, Maria Isabel died a few hours later in great pain, and it wasn't even worth it, really because the baby also had died before they even were cutting it out, so killed or really for no reason. But she had

used her time as queen very wisely. She was a huge fan of the fine arts, and she started collecting paintings and sculpture to open a national museum, and this museum would become the Prado Museum in Madrid, which is considered to be one of the finest museums in Europe

and basically the only good part of Ferdinand's legacy. But fortunately Maria Isabel's posthumous portrait by Bernardo Lopez Picure clearly names her as the founder of the museum, so she gets all her due credit, even though it's part of his legacy. Right Still, like we almost died that. So now Ferdinand is thirty five years old and he's twice widowed. Still he has no heirs, and that brings us to

Maria number three, Maria josepha Amalia of Saxony. Yes, for once Ferdinand found a bride that was not directly related to him. Hooray, really really accomplished something special there, Ferdinand, you did it. Now. Her father, the crown Prince Maximilian of Saxony, knew that Ferdinand was looking for a fertile, young bride, and he suggests that his younger daughter could

be the answer to his problems. She was sixteen years old, and after her mother died when she was only a few months old, she had been sent to a convent to be raised by nuts. So this girl was naive and shy and very sweet and very very religious. Ferdinand met her and he was quote and thralled by her. So they got married in October of eighteen nineteen. Apparently he just really fell in love with her because she

had such a kind demeanor. But their wedding night was a disaster because, like we said, Maria Josepha was raised in a convent. She had not been told one single youthful thing about sex or reproduction. They don't do sex out at the convent, not so much. And I mean even if they had, who could have prepared her for

a sex pillow, you know, like a weird sex donut. So, you know, at this time is pretty common, of course for your mother or a married sister, or a married sister in law even to kind of have the birds and bees talk with a new bride. She's like, here's how to put a condom on on a banana, but for him, let's use an upside down summer squash. I know, here, I am making it a food. I know, why don't you just you just yelled at me. Well anyway, so yeah,

you know, your mom, your sister, whatever. But of course Maria Joseph didn't have a mother, and her sister in law was be a Francisca who was probably still pretty piste off about her sister getting cut up and just refused to talk to Maria Josepha. She was the one who said, no, she's still alive, exactly right. So she was just kind of like, I'm not I'm not helping

y'all out with ship. Yeah, this family sucks exactly. So poor Maria Josepha was alone in a lot of ways when Ferdinand, lacking any finesse whatsoever, entered her bed chamber completely naked. Now we know what monstrous dick this poor girl was confronted with. So maybe it does not surprise you to learn that she ran screaming from her room

in terror. Oh god, but you could just see like one of the poor palace guards, like just hanging out on a dark holliway at night, you know, and all of a sudden the queen comes birthday robe flying and running down the hall. Okay, of course that really piste off Ferdinand. He did not like that, even though it really feels like it cannot the first time that that's happened. So anyway, he wasn't happy about this. Everybody's like, we

got to fix this. So Maria Francisco, the sister in law, was like fine, and she sat Maria Josepha down and she's like, girl, it is not a sin to fuck your husband. Okay. In fact, that's kind of why you're here, all right, So why don't you just lie back and think of Spain or whatever they were telling these four queens back in the day. Well, Maria Josepha was like, okay, all right, give me another shot. I got this, plumb,

mean coach, I got this. She went back to her bed chamber where Ferdinand was, you know, presumably still just sitting their pants off. This weird dick. They're waiting for her, and they tried again, but this time she was still so terrified that when he approached her with this dick swinging around, she freaked out so hard that she pissed and shipped herself in fear. Oh my god, it's like not funny, But it's not. It's you're a terrible person. I'm sorry, so sorry, because I'm like, I really have

a lot of sympathy. She's only six. Oh my god, it's horrible. Once told her a word and how she has the weirdest penis you can conceive of in front of her, and she's like, the funk am I supposed to do with this? But it is funny to think of this amorous king trying to get it on and she's it's loney tune's logic for sure. Well, obviously this kind of killed the mood. Fernand still really angry, and he just stormed out of the room. And after that she refused to have sex with him for a long time.

She said, quote, what the king wants from me is a mortal sin. Poor girl. It took the Pope himself, Pious the Seventh, to get her to agree. He wrote her a personal letter promising her that it was not against the Christian really jen to have sex with her husband. In fact, it was her duty to provide an air

and secure the succession. So back she went to the bedroom of Ferdinand and they did finally consummate the marriage, although according to author jose and Donio vindal Salis, she quote always trembled with anguish and fear when she went

into his room to have sex. Sad. Yeah. She also apparently made it a requirement that they pray the Rosary first each and every time that they did it, and Vidale Salis wrote quote, in ten years of marriage like this, Ferdinand would have prayed more than he had in his entire damn life. Oh this poor girl. I mean, I don't know if she was like trembling with anguish and fear, just because she clearly was not interested in sex it

sounded terrifying to her. Or if it was like bad, like if he was doing bad things, or if it was uncomfortable, like painful, just to just even if he was as tender as you would wish, just might be one of those things. It's just you're not compatible on that way. Um. I love the pope was like, girl, how many he's like? I can't wait to be pope and dedicate myself to the Bible and God. Actually I spent most of my time convincing royals to have sex

with each other. Well, even despite all of this very bad beginning with their wedding night and how much she made him pray before they had sex and everything else, Ferdinand really seems to have loved her. In his eighteen twenty four memoirs Uh, he wrote that she was quote distinguished no less by the gracefulness of her person than by the elevation of her mind, and appears determined not to take any part in public affairs, which I guess

he appreciated. And yeah, in fact, she mostly withdrew from public life altogether when she died as the result of a fever in May eighty nine. Ferdinand was heartbroken. But Maria Josepha, even though she's swallowed her fears and took the king to bed with her, never did get pregnant in all those ten years they were together. So Ferdinand had to find another bride and fast, because he's now forty five, he's only getting older. And that brings us to Maria number four, and we will tell you all

about her right after these words. Welcome back, everybody. So Ferdinand is thrice widowed now and still has no heirs. He's getting old, and he was also kind of ill at this point in his life. So there was a serious succession crisis well on its way between Ferdinand's brother Carlos and his wife Maria Francisca, who started squaring off with Ferdinand's other brother Francisco to Paula and his wife Luisa Carlotta about which one of the two of them

would eventually take the throne. Is it going to be Stennis or is it going to be uh friendly? Whichat yeah, exactly right? Which brothers coming up to power next? Well, Ferdinand assembled the Council of Castile, which tasked him with remarrying and having a baby this time. Damn it. It was like, I'm putting a whole council together just to

get me laid so I can hopefully have a son. Seriously, like the Pope and everyone else is involved in this guy getting some because he's got no babies at this point. Zero not. I mean, obviously they want a son, but he hadn't even had any surviving daughters at this well, Luisa Carlotta, remember who's the wife of Ferdinand's brother Francisco. To Paula, she suggested Ferdinand's own niece, who was also her sister, Maria Cristina. Of the two sisterlies. It's such

a tangled web of relations. I'm like, can I have we met before? Oh? Yes, I'm your brother's wife and your sister, and I'm also your niece and your aunt. Like it's getting married full shrub family shrubs just can't keep up, all right, It's it's chaos. I mean. Luisa Carlotta herself was married to her uncle ferdinand brother. So Ferdinand is her great uncle, her uncle. Yeah, oh my god, she's married to one uncle. She's trying to help the other one out by marrying him. Off to her sister,

his niece. Just assume they're like, whatever relation you think is between two people, it probably is this niece who was suggested to him. Maria Christina is described by Irish author Marguerite Gardner, the Countess of Blessington, who met her on her grand tour, as being lively and cheerful, with flawless facial features, beautiful teeth, expressive eyes, and a charming smile. Ferdinand was like, all right, good, that works, Let's do this.

Sign me up, Let's make a baby, and only a few months after Maria Josepha died, he married Maria Christina in December of eighteen twenty nine. Apparently, the Spanish liberals like identified with her immediately. They loved her. She was there, uh, lady Gaga there like, yes, we stand ma. She arrived in Spain in a blue cloak, and the liberals immediately made that their official color. She might be the one who created the sex doughnut pillow to enable her to

have sex with him and conceive children. That's right. They're both great stories. In one, Ferdinand consults with his physicians because he's like, look at this, what do I do? And they're like let's figure this out. In another one, Maria Christina is informed of her approaching nuptials with her uncle, and she's heard all about his weird dick, and she decides to undertake a project to make her life a little simpler. Either way, I love it. Now, let's not

forget that Ferdinand the seventh was a bit of a dog. Um. We talked a little earlier about how he preferred prostitutes over his wife's company and took a year to consummate his first marriage, But even his love for Maria Josepha apparently didn't stop him from continuing his outings to brothels and even bringing prostitutes back to the palace, which just

really human aided his wives. Um. The website Seville for real dot com or probably Seville for Real even claims that he quote bragged about the virgins he brought to the palace and collected rags that testified to his deflowering. Gross, which is just gross. Like, even if it's not a bloody rag, sex trophy is just a sucking gross. I mean, any rag around sex is a gross rag. I must say any sex rag gross. Yeah, I don't care what's on it, it's not I don't want it to keep

it away from me. Well, yeah, a good point, an excellent point. Oh so, anyway, this time he's married to Maria Christina, and I don't know, maybe he had his past terrible wedding nights in mind because this one he decided to ruin all by himself. There's not a lot of detail about this or anything, but Fidel Salis wrote that the wedding night was quote unfortunate because of Ferdinand the seventh impatience to satisfy his sensual hunger, and he

likens Maria Christina's experience that night to rape. He He's like, she was raped, Like he just straight up says it um that it was kind of violent and aggressive, and Maria Christina like never forgot how shitty he was to her that night. As much as their relations improved, she

was like, fuck this guy. Unfortunately she did not have to deal with him for too long because in eighteen thirty she had their first child, Isabella the Second, and in eighteen thirty two she gave birth to their second daughter, Maria Luisa Fernanda. At the time, Spain was under Salic law, which was instituted by the French King of Spain Philip the Fifth, and that meant only males could inherit. This was probably a way to keep Spain under French control

with only French airs. It must be noted that Carlos, remember him, Ferdinand's brother who was fighting for, you know, his own succession to the throne. He felt that the right to rule was God given, and so he had refused to give up his rights to Napoleon like his father and brother had. But now that his brother was on the throne, there's no way he would have actually taken up arms against him because he's like, brother, God

picked you. I'm not here to mess with that. Yeah, he didn't have a lot of personal desire for the throne or anything like that. He was just like, it's ordained from above, so if it falls to me, I have to, you know. But Ferdinand decided to ratify his father's pragmatic sanctioned decree in eighteen thirty, and this decree was something his father put into place but was never actually made into law, and this would allow his daughter

to ascend to the throne. Honestly, Ferdinand just wanted an air of his own siring to become the monarch, no matter what gender they were he was. He was like, I don't care boys, girls, anybody can be a regent. I'm an equal opportunity monarch. I don't know, I feel he was just like, it has it has to be exactly. Well. This changed everything for Carlos and his supporters. They were called Carlists, and they felt that this pragmatic sanction was

impractical and illegal. They kept pushing for Carlos's claims to the throne, even though Carlos himself didn't really have an interest in ruling, but his wife, Maria Francisca and her sister Maria Teresa definitely did want him on the throne, so they were the ones who kept egging on the Carlists. That's right. And Maria Francisca actually would pass away in eighteen thirty four, and Carlos would marry her sister, Maria Teresa, which is why she cared so much. She wanted to

be queen. I guess, and I assumed they were cousins or niece and nephews too. Well, that's her sister and oh yeah, so he that's her niece, that's his niece. Yeah, because he was already married to his niece and then she died and he married her sister's niece. Don't be a niece in Spain, I guess, don't be a niece. Then in eight thirty two, Ferdinand was badly injured in a carriage accident. Everyone thought he was going to die

pretty soon. So all of a sudden, the succession crisis became a very real So Queen Maria Christina, Ferdinand's wife, found herself besieged on all sides, like even from her own priest and confessor, to convince the king to repeal the pragmatic sanction. They warned her that the country would be plunged into civil war if she didn't do this again, just like House of the Dragon. Yes, they're like, don't let your I know that We've already set it up

for your daughter to inherit. But everyone's going to hate that, So please just convince your dying husband to repeal that law, so that George George R. Martin fully in the history wipe this whole story. So, you know, Maria Christina not really a governmental person. She didn't really care about that type of ship. So she's here in this and she's like, all right, I guess you know, y'all would know, not me. So she decided to seek the counsel of one of

the king's advisers, a guy named Francisco Calomarde. But turns out Calamarte is not the guy to ask, because let me tell you about him. He was a born liar and flip flopper. He had gotten his position in the Ministry of Law by promising to marry the court physician's ugly niece. Once he got the job, he backtracked on that promise and was forced to go through with it after he was threatened with the galleys. So then he helped lead the mutiny that caused Ferdinand's father to abdicate

in favor of Ferdinand back in eighteen o eight. But then he got banished to Toledo, Spain, not Ohio, after he faked the sale of an American diocese. So I don't know for sure if he faked that they bought it or they faked that they sold it, but either way, he was trying to skim some money somehow, and he got banished to Toledo for being a shady bitch. Then

in eighteen twenty he joined the Liberals. With their support, he became the Secretary of Justice in and then spent eight years running the secret police and ruthlessly prosecuting the liberals. What total little fingers. He's only on his own side, fair weather friend. Exactly, you cannot Yeah, he is full of garbage card more like Calamerde. So the point is this guy cannot be trusted. And at this point he actually wanted to see Carlos on the throne. So he

was a carlist. So when Maria Christina asked him for advice, I guess, not knowing he was a car list, he told her, oh, the Spanish people, they will rally around Carlos and that he is the best bet of staving off the civil war. So Queen Maria Christina went to her husband Ferdinance sick bed and asked him to repeal the sanction and issue a decree making her the regent with his brother Carlos as her chief adviser. But Carlos

is actually the one who refused this proposal. He felt that it was his divine right to rule, and that was it. I don't want this, I don't want this advisor job. Yeah, and it seems like too he was just like, no one gives me the right to rule. I already have it, you know, so he just was

very stuck on that kind of dogmatic. Well, Calamarde comes back in again and he tells her, you know, no, that's dire consequences if you can't convince the king to reinstate saleic law, and you've got to convince him not to let your own daughter be the heir so that we don't go into a civil war. But then it seemed that King Ferdinand had died, and so immediately Calamarde steps up publicly and says, well, actually the pragmatic sanction

was repealed, so Isabella cannot inherit the throne. And then Calamarte was the first one to greet Carlos as the new king of Spain. Maria Christina was completely deserted by all of her courtiers. Man, it just went for it. But oops, CALAMARTI book, because Ferdinand wasn't dead yet, he like popped up like a daisy. It's just literally spoiler alerts for the entire first season of House of the Dragon. I swear to God, beat for beat. It kind of yeah,

you're you're so right. Uh yeah. So that the word about that kind of went around and people are like, okay, I guess Carlos is not king and we don't know what's going on yet. And the Council of Castile who did not want Carlos in charge, they were liberals. They wanted a constitutional monarchy instead of an absolute monarchy. Carlos would have done an absolute monarchy because of his dogmatic conviction that God gives you the right to rule and

do whatever you want with everybody. So they're like, we don't want this guy. They decide, you know what, we need a stronger hand at the wheel than than old Maria Christina. You know, she's sweet, but she's kind of letting herself get all walked over. Meanwhile, her sister, Louisa Carlotta, was very famous for her determine ation and her very strong personality. So the Council of Castile sent for Louisa Carlotta.

They were like, come help us out with this. And when Louisa Carlotta heard about all these shenanigans, she rode NonStop from Andalucia to the palace, marched right up to Maria Christina and scolded her for having a lack of spine. How could you let that push you around? And then she said, let me talk to his motherfucker Calimarte right quick.

And legend has it that she actually grabbed the document prohibiting women from inheriting the throne and tried to throw it into the fire, and when Calamarte tried to grab it back, she slapped him in the face, and he allegedly responded, quote, madam white, hands don't offend which and he guesses it's like, you know, pure ladies hands. I think it's lady's hands. I think it's like, you know, what is that the fair foe is like when you

have a a woman, right, yeah, it's like you're she's feminine. Yes, okay, So he's like, you hit like a girl and it don't hurt. He's like, you can slap me all you want, but you're just a woman. It means nothing. Yeah, alright, Well, anyway, this whole incident and the slap and everything is definitely considered an urban legend rather than fact. You know, if this happened, only the two of them could tell us that it went down. But whether she ever laid hands

on him or not, Louisa Carlotta handled business. She got the pragmatic sanction reinstated and got Calamarte banished to his estates in Aragon, where he was supposed to be arrested, but that sneaky bitch escaped it to lose, and then he died there in two at the age of sixty nine. Not nice, No, I kind of wish he'd gotten, you know, bayonetted and left her dead the road somewhere. But he's like a cockroach, you know. He lived, made it through well.

Ferdinand recovered enough to ensure that his daughter Isabella the Second inherited the throne, and he also gave his wife Maria Christina full regency powers. Luisa Carlotta stayed around to kind of help out. She was more active in the government than Maria Christina was. She met with more officials than she did. She was just doing a lot more work. Again, she was the go getter. And then Ferdinand the Seven died on September twenty nine of eighteen thirty three, for

real this time. Right then, the three year old Isabella the Second was named queen and her mother, Maria Christina was named regent obviously because you know, the queen was three years old. But then only a couple of days later, on October one, Carlos Ferdinand's brother declared himself king. He was like, I'm not listening to all these ladies. It's me. I'm king. We already decided this fact is fact, ladies

getting no divine rights. So you've got all the Carlos son one side, but then you've got Isabella the Second and Maria Christina's supporters, who were called Isabellino's and they all confronted each other, and the first Carlist War began, and it's considered by some to be the largest and most deadly civil war of the time. And this decided whether or not Spain would be a traditional monarchy like the Carlists wanted, or a constitutional monarchy like the Liberals wanted.

So the Carlist Wars are raging, you know, throughout Isabella the second childhood. Meanwhile, Maria Christina had fallen in love while she was still married to Ferdinand. She had met a sergeant in the Royal Guard named Augustine Fernando Munio's and he was two years younger than her. He was handsome, well bred kind. He apparently attracted her attention by either stopping her runaway horses or merely picking up her handkerchief. Oh either way, a delightful meet. Yes, exactly right. It

in to a podcast like hours. Well, whatever it was that he did for her, or however they met, they fell in love, and only three months after Ferdinand died, she and Augustine got married in a secret ceremony. It was important to keep this a secret because if she got married, she couldn't be regent anymore. Um, and she knew that, you know, nobody at court would like it.

You know, She's like, this isn't gonna be a popular move of mine, um, because it's a organic or very unequal marriage between a royal and a not royal person. So a lot of people at court knew that they were having an affair and they were like, fine, whatever gets rockstock girl, you know what I mean. But they didn't know about the marriage, that it was a legal marriage. Well, eventually the news got out and the scandal was intense.

Maria Christina instantly became deeply unpopular everywhere. Ministers and military leaders alike. We're like begging her to step aside, and in eighteen forty she did. She right, now, it's her regency and she and Augustine basically were exiled to France. They stopped on their way in Naples to get a papal dispensation for their marriage, and then in her place as regents, they put the most popular is Abellino, which was General Beldamero Espartero. Okay, he was very loyal to

Isabelle and it was a good choice. He's the region now, Okay, Okay, Hey, I don't think we stopped in Naples to get a papal dispensation for our marriage, so I feel like we should go back to We should go back to Naples. YEA, be right there Naples. Has the pope even cared about

our marriage once? Well? When Isabella in the second officially assumed the throne at the ripe old age of thirteen in eighteen forty four, she granted her mother permission to have a public marriage ceremony, and she made her stepdad, the Duke of Rian Saris. Maria Christina and Augustin had

seven children together between eighteen thirty four. In eighteen forty three, Augustin became highly decorated in both Spain and France, and he got a lot of savvy business investments and that let them live pretty comfortably for the rest of their lives. It's cool dude. Honestly, it's a good second husband. Yeah. Yeah, she did out just like, let me get this handsome sergeant had to handle himself. Also, they had seven kids.

This suggested me off his fernand was definitely the problem and not the ladies, because isn't that so often the case? And then we I feel like science recently determined that men have more to do with the gender gender child, So it's typically you know, it wasn't like Henry the eighth. I know how many times you have to try before you realize it's you, buddy, me Hi and the problem. It's me only the Swifties have been around for King Henry,

King Henry and the two problems. Well, even though her mom turned out okay in her marriage, Isabella was not so lucky. When she was sixteen, her minister's prevailed on her to marry her double first cousin. They were like, you know what, we're sick of people marrying their cousins. And everyone's like, oh thank god. They're like, you've now you've got to marry her double first cousin. What does

that even mean? He's your cousin through two different lineages. Yea, because it was Luisa Carlotta's son Francisco to Aziz, the Duke of Cadiz. Isabella was apparently disgusted by him. She told one of her friends, quote, what shall I tell you about a man whom I saw wearing more lace than I was on our wedding night? Girl? So the rumor is that Francisco was either gay or impotent. So

maybe Isabella the second was a little homophobic. A blog called Eurohistory Journal describes Isabella as a man eater with a voracious sexual appetite who would have preferred Francisco's younger brother. This manly swashbuckler to the feminine Francisco that she ended up having a marry like, can I at least pick the double first cousins and I having I'm marry? But they said, no, you get this one. Isabella was pregnant twelve times during their marriage, although only five lived to

grow up. Each one of them probably actually had a different father because she had a ton of lovers throughout her reign, but Francisco recognized them all as his children. But he also blackmailed Isabella throughout her life to pay him for his silence. So a bunch of terrible people here just insane. It probably felt pretty chill even to her, because you just come in and be like, hey, I bought a horse or something, and she's like, damn it,

we don't have the money for that ship. And he's like, oh, did you want me to tell people like that your heir has got nothing to do with me? Or do you want to buy the horse? And she's like, I'm sorry, but this is exactly what happened in House of the Dragons. I know, I know, except that she was really understanding of his a little bit, but then he got a little he took advantage of it. No, he did. It's true. I just mean it's unlike Queen Isabella. She wasn't like

this guy was too much late. No no, no, yeah, yeah, she was like I actually like the show that came out, so she had to be It's so true. Yeah, she had to be more more chill about that, or else you wouldn't like her. Well. Isabella became somewhat unpopular over the years of her reign with her very public affairs. People found her court to be corrupted and she's constantly

these dudes around and stuff. She even survived an assassination attempt when a guy tried to stab her and he couldn't get through the elaborate embroidery and boning on her course, and he's like, white, hang on, hold still, I'm just going to try and go under the side here. Maybe I'll go. She's like, no, no, You've got to go up through the stitching. So sorry, you can't between. It takes like three maids to get me in this. There's

no chance. I picture like just sticking out like a work in a stake or something, and she's like, what were you trying to do? Eventually, the Glorious Revolution in eighteen sixty eight deposed Isabella after thirty five years on the throne, so quite she it was her being unpopular, and like a lot of other things, you know how

revolutions go, got a lot of reasons for them. So she and Francisco, her husband, had to hot footed to France, where they ended up living with her mother, Maria Christina and her stepdad until they got their own place in Paris on the Rue de Rivoli. She also renounced her rights to the throne in favor of her son Alfonso. Isabella and Francisco separated amicably in eighteen seventy and became friends. So maybe, like Lucy and Desi, they just shouldn't have

been married. They could have done great if they weren't married. Um Augustine died in eighteen seventy three, Maria Christina in eighteen seventy eight, and Isabella in nineteen o four, and her great great great grandson, Philippe the Six is the current monarch of Spain. Wow, so that family really just kept failing up. They kept failing up, and Ferdinand got what he wanted. His bloodline is still exactly And I

don't know anything about Philip the Six. He might be great, but just in terms of just like they were the worst, but they kept being the rulers right well, and then you look at other like you look at it and you're like, they're all the worst, Like whoever wanted to take over? Also sucks because if you want to be king or a queen, you know you're probably a bad person. I mean, are you willing to be a very bad villain to someone at some point in your life? Yeah?

You got to do bad things? Very true, all right, very true. So that's the story of Ferdinand's weird dick and how it changed Spanish history. Hopefully the this Dick's twists and turns and weird names. Uh, you know, we're easy enough to follow. Next time we do a Spanish royal story, we're renaming everyone. It's gonna be like, this is Desmond, and that's Bob, and that's Joanna and that's Phyllis,

so we can separate them a little bit. Dandy Bee, Yeah, I'll be like, that's Ginger, and that's scary, and that's spicy. Spicy spice. Spicy spice. Harder than that. I knew spice was involved, but I couldn't reverse spe It's the last part. It's the second word, spicy spice. Who was spicy spice? There must have been one. It's like the fifth beetle. You know, there was a step seventh or sixth, So there was a sixth secret spice girl named spicy Spice.

I'm telling you she was back there and your dreams. She was back there in my dreams. The spice girls. You know, there was a time when the spice girls were frequenters of my dreams. I'm sure. I'm so sure. Which was your favorite spice girl? Honestly my favorites, but you know who guess who my favorite spice girl was. Yeah,

obviously I knew it. Yeah, of course you did, because you know me, and you know, at the end of the day, I just want to rich, tall, model looking, cold, icy person, right to be kind of mean to you, mean to me. Yeah, it's the dream for you. I am not tall, short sweetheart. It's I'm gonna say that as a net. You know, when you look at the full whole of everything, it's probably better that I didn't marry posh spice. Okay, I agree with that. Yeah, I think I agree with that. Yeah, I think I think

it's likely that I made a better choice. Well, you didn't ask, but Scary was my favorite. I was going to ask. I just wanted to make sure we were done with my thing first. Scary. Of course, Scary was your favorite. I would have guessed that too. The coolest. Yeah, yeah, you're super cool. She was a little scary. I could see it. An intimidating woman. Yes, I don't know how this ended with Spice girls either. We were all on a Game of Thrones and now suddenly we're talking about

spice girls. But whatever, this is the kind of exciting bouncing around the topics do you come to expect from Ridiculous moments. Nobody expects the Spice Girls inquisition. Yeah you could. You could book end it. I brought it back, brought us back. If you're still with us, we'd love to hear from you about your your take on this whole story, this chaos, this amazing weird Martinian I'm coining that phrase. Uh, kind of royal story of weird dicks and backstabbings and

scheming a little bit of everything. Again, it was just like every story of every wife. I was like today, there's so much drama, because so fun. I will all enjoyed it as much as we did to research and record. This episode was about this guy in his crazy life. So please do reach out to us. We love hearing from you as always. Our email address is ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right. You can find us

on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli, and I'm at Danamite Boom and the show is at ridic Romance and don't forget to find us on TikTok at Ridiculous Romance as well, where you can see cool videos like this of us moving around. Person. Thanks for tuning in. Everybody. We'll catch you all with the next one. Thanks for spending time with us, We love you. Bye, so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends name's Uncle's in this

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