to feel sorry for Queen Anne?

[64BooLane]

I’m reading something that mentions her in passing quite a bit.

Didn’t know a lot about her but apparently she had 17 - SEVENTEEN - pregnancies, and none of the children lived to grow up. And then she was widowed and became alcoholic, gouty and obese, for which she was widely mocked. Added to all of this, it sounds as if she really didn’t enjoy being Queen and felt a lot of guilt about the end of the Stuarts. Then she died at forty-nine.

I mean, that really just sucks so much that I can’t get it out of my head. I’m not well versed in English history though, so I’m not very clear on her other qualities, such as whether she was astute/intelligent/thoughtful etc.

Should I read more about her? Any MN historians around? Any recommendations for books about that period?

Not Queen Anne, but I highly recommend The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan, a novel about a Victorian woman who had suffered 18 miscarriages in her first marriage.

bridgetreilly funnily enough, I’ve actually read that! Had forgotten about it. I read the whole series a few years ago. I think of it as kind of a “guilty pleasure” genre (I shouldn’t really, it’s the internalised sexism talking) but really enjoyed them.

It must have been really hard for Anne's sister Mary ( I never thought I'd feel sorry for her considering how she and husband King Billy have f*cked up Northern Ireland, along with King James and the whole Battle of the Boyne and Orange marches and all the murder and maiming that followed ) who was childless when her sister had 17 pregnancies.
On the other she mightn't have wanted children.

She wanted children a lot (because that's what you did in the 17th century, because she was trying to secure the dynasty and please her husband, and because she genuinely loved children). It was a huge cause of sadness for her.

Both William and Mary probably had fertility issues. She had a miscarriage early in her marriage and never conceived again--her symptoms after the MC suggest that an infection may have set in which damaged her reproductive system.

William never had any children with his mistress Elizabeth Villiers (and given that she later married someone at age 38 and promptly had three children with the new husband, she clearly had no issues conceiving). William did not remarry after Mary died, so personally I think he knew that he was infertile and didn't want to put himself through the humiliation of a second childless marriage which would have made his issues too obvious to deny any more.

There is a hole built into the overhanging bit of the walls of Stirling Castle where one did one's business - long drop into a cess pit below.

Individual Portaloo sounds like total luxury in comparison. Maybe Queen Anne started the upmarket toiletting trend after having shit (haha) builders half-build her Castle?

@Kokeshi123, your posts on this thread have been so interesting!

I wish the History topic was a little busier. Getting interested in Queen Caroline as well now.

Of course many of her contemporaries suffered the same misfortunes and died much earlier because they did not have the good diet and (for the time) medical attention which went with being royal. And they are forgotten.

@Hygge it wasn’t painted gold but was a brand new seat bought especially for the Queen. It was removed after the Queen left and she is the only one to have sat on it

Andrew, yes; I think someone made a similar observation earlier in the thread.

I know aristocrats and royals get a lot of attention in popular history, but personally I’ve tended to be more interested in social history/obscure lives as far as my own reading goes.

But at the moment I’m finding Anne interesting partly because her royal status means a lot of detail is available, so there’s an opportunity to learn more about her - and about contemporary responses to her situation - than we typically can about the countless “forgotten” folk.

This is the best thing I have read on MN in a long time. History & humour! Never knew a lot about this period in history. Might have to try some of the recommended reading.

I made the same Anne, I computed it as Princess and thought, but Zara & the son.

Interesting reading.

I thought that William and Mary were both gay which was why they didn’t have any children.

(This being the origin of the joke that he was called ‘Orange’ because he was a fruit).

Just read it’s thought he was more likely to be bisexual. Peter Tatchell has apparently been having some ding dongs with the Orange Order about covering it up.

•She should have tried something light and modern, like Debbie.• Anne, despite having a long heritage, was light and modern in the 1940s when Princess Anne was named.

Well exactly. It might have been ‘light and modern’ in the 40s. Probably less so in the 50s when she was born.

The gay rumour followed any member of the Upper Crust of the time who was married, had no children and was of child-bearing or -be getting age. William III had at least one child outside marriage.

The "square coffin" sounds like a coarse eighteenth-century joke about a short fat woman: she could not have been that fat.

My initials are KP (Just saying - I'm pretty much royalty)

My sister had to meet (or meat?) Princess Anne once at her work. She was 2 hours late after an hour and a half my sister gathered up her class of severely behaviourally challenged children and took them back to their unit as they were going stir crazy waiting.

Queen Anne however I know little about, I'd heard about her many pregnancies and of course that she had legs like a table (so we have something else in common as well from raging syphilis)

Can I ask a question that's been on my mind for a while involving historical fertility.......In my favorite historical book one of the characters has a healthy first child but all subsequent children die in childbirth or immediately after. Someone in the back of my mind I recall hearing about this in our era but a google isn't helping. Does anyone know?

Do you think it could be because of rhesus negative blood in the mother uthredwife ?

There was someone on TV ages ago who thought that Queen Anne had some sort of blood disorder related to being Rh-, which meant that her babies didn't survive.

I've also heard the "square coffin" story attributed to Henry VIII.

Thank kurri. That could be it alright. I'm after going on a googling spree and it's seem it can cause anemia in in utero babies as well as still birth. Which makes sense as the babies are described as being born a funny grey colour.

What i was going to say about syphalis befire was i thought the family have a period of 7 or 8 miscarriages , stillborn and babys that die in infancy , but then go on to have healthy children as syphalis goes through the various stages

clanger, the Rh- as a possible explanation was for (Queen) Anne Boleyn. Not Queen Anne regnant. Rh- means that your first pregnancy (In AB’s case Elizabeth I) can be successful. But all subsequent pregnancies fail as they did in ABs case.

Rh- isn’t an explanation for Queen Anne. Her first pregnancy was a stillbirth and she had many more live births after that.

The square coffin isn’t Henry VIII either. He was very tall and also had a lead coffin, which isn’t a square or rectangular shape. His coffin did explode before burial though, blood leaked out and was licked up by dogs.

KurriKurri I think you are thinking of St Johns Smith Square which is known as Queen Anne's Footstool because she founded it and it looks like a footstool upside down.

Two other fun facts. She was the last Sovereign to refuse assent to a Bill - la Reine s'avisera and Queen Victoria refused to agree to her statue outside St Paul's being moved: Move Queen Anne? Certainly not! Why, if I agreed to that one day somebody might want to move me!

Uthread
Is it Henry V111's first wife- Catherine of Aragon ?

Nothing useful to add but, gosh I'm loving this thread!