January Meme: Sons and Daughters of Chaos

[selenak]

avrelia wanted me to talk about "the most chaotic historical person - whatever that could mean to you". ffutures chimed in with suggesting Julie d'Aubigny while avrelia herself had Lorenzo da Ponte in mind. This immediately told me they were associating something very different with "chaotic" than what instantly had come to my mind.

See, when I heard "chaotic", I unfortunately immediately thought of the twins disasters on both sides of the Atlantic, the Orange Menace and his twin in malicious incompetence who's still British PM. Neither of these are historic (yet), but both epitomize what horrible damage chaos in a governing position can do, especially coupled with poisonous ideology, but even without that, it's bad. (BTW, I'm not saying that order and thus lack of chaos per se is good. See also: Putin. Not chaotic in any definition of the word. Also poisonous in several meanings of the word.)

Because of these contemporary examples, chaotic rulers in the past, on a scale of Anna Ivanovna (most famous anecdote, quoting from wiki: She forced Prince Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn to become her court jester and had him married off to her unattractive Kalmyk maid Avdotya Buzheninova. To celebrate the wedding, the Empress had an ice palace measuring thirty-three feet high and eighty feet long built together with icy beds, steps, chairs, windows and even logs of ice in a fireplace of ice. Prince Golitsyn and his bride were placed in a cage atop an elephant and paraded through the streets to this structure, to spend their wedding night in the ice palace, despite it being an extremely cold night in the dead of winter. Empress Anna told the couple to make love and keep their bodies close if they did not wish to freeze to death. Eventually, the couple survived when the maid traded a pearl necklace for a sheepskin coat from one of the guards. ) to Gian Gastone de' Medici (last of the Medici, spent most of his rule in his bedroom, with and without the ca. 300 male prostitutes entertaining him) were who came to mind next. A rokoko Grand Duke of Tuscany has far less power (and thus less power to do damage) than an all powerful Russian Tsarina, plus Gian Gastone compared with his ultra bigotted father Cosimo actually was an improvement, but neither example makes me feel more positive about chaos allied to power.

However, due to the examples given to me I got the impression what avrelia meant by chaotic person was someone with a highly adventurous live with great ups and downs, rarely if ever governed by the law of probability, the kind you wouldn't dare to invent. In which case, I offer Catharina Margaretha Linck aka Anastasius Agrantinus Rosenstengel as one of the contenders. Not so much because for most of her life, she lived as a man (which included, on and off with several desertions, seven years with the Prussian army), but because she also was a talented con artist who travelled as an evangelical prophet for a while, and switched religions several times (from pietist Protestant to Catholic to Lutheran - all in all, she was baptized four times) in order to supply herself and her wife (she'd married another woman both the Catholic and the Lutheran way) by pretending to be a repentant sinner in need of conversion (which meant up to 50 Reichstaler conversion money in the respective faith communities). What ultimately gave her away were arguments with her mother-in-law. The whole thing ended tragically for her, since the original milder sentence (her judges argued they couldn't condemn her for sodomy since there was no ejaculation) was changed into a death sentence by everyone's least favourite Prussian monarch, Friedrich Wilhelm I., "the Soldier King", Frederick the Great's boyfriend-beheading father. Catharina/Anastasius was also beheaded (better than the alternative, which would have been death by fire, but that's the only good thing which can be said about this sentence), while her wife, qualified as the "seduced" party, was condemned to three years work house and then banishment from Prussia. Now I'm not sure whether I have a "the most" in the chaotic category, however you define it, but in terms of sheer unlikelihood - the 18th century Prussian army was one of the strictest institutions you could belong to, with zero regard for soemone's privacy, and the death penalty for desertion, and yet Catharina/Athanasius manages to remain undetected repeated stints under several identities; similarly, you'd think some of the communities she conned would have heard of that travelling prophet a few years earlier. It ended lethally for her, but she, who had been the product a widow and a passing soldier and had grown up in an orphanage, i.e. had no advantage in life and had started at the bottom of her social order, managed to fox the most powerful and strictest institutions of her society - the army, the church, the law - and for a while live just how she wanted, with whom she wanted, and thus: definitely chaotic, but chaos from below, not above: chaos as freedom.

The other days

Comments

[lilysea]

I found this really interesting, thank you! ^_^

[selenak]

You're welcome!

[mildred_of_midgard]

This reminds me that I've been meaning to tell cahn about Mother Ross. Unfortunately, I'm working this weekend, so Wikipedia links are the best I can do.

[cahn]

That is great and I am now a fan! But I am sad that her husband turned out to be a jerk :P

She was so successful at passing herself off as a man that a prostitute claimed she was the father of her child. Rather than give proof that this was impossible, Cavanagh paid child support to the woman.

I think this is my favorite part!

[selenak]

Wow, what a fascinating woman - and despite the cheating husband, overall she had a far better ending than Rosenstengel!

[yhlee]

Wow, this is super fascinating! I don't generally comment on your history posts but I always find them interesting. :)

[mildred_of_midgard]

I know, right? Selena is too prolific for me to keep up with commenting, but I'm an avid reader!

[liriaen]

The Anna Ivanovna bit made me laugh out loud (well after I found my eyeballs again which had popped out…) - and Linck/Rosenstengel must have been SO gutsy! Admirable, on all counts.

[selenak]

Honestly, I laughed, too, the first time I heard, which is the distance that history give us. It must have been godawful (and life threatening) for the couple in question.

and Linck/Rosenstengel must have been SO gutsy!

I know, right? I so wish she'd gotten away with it for many years more.

[liriaen]

Also, hooray for Gian Gastone! I first noticed him 2013 in that fabulous Medici exhbition in Mannheim's Reiss Engelhorn Museum where they presented they forensic findings of Donatella Lippi, on the Medici's illnesses, afflictions, and various causes of death. And oh man, their messed-up DNA, the deformed bones, etc. - the poor things. I was impressed by many a Medici's stamina, bravery, and sheer willpower; they had more seriously pathologic afflictions than you could shake a stick at, and yet they ploughed on through.

[selenak]

I came across him when reading Last of the Medici by Harold Acton, see also the post here. And good lord, yes, all the inherited illnesses...

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, man. Was that ever made into a book or anything?

[liriaen]

Donatella Lippi has published a lot on the Medici's hereditary illnesses since the inception of the "Medici Project" in Florence in 2004, when they started to investigate the Medici sepulchres with modern medical techniques. Most of it in Italian, some of it in English in journals like The Lancet. The Mannheim exhibition catalogue (publ. 2013) is German only, alas.

(ETA: It's easier to find snazzy artistic photographies of Donatella than texts in English by her, but if you have access to a good uni library you should be set :))

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you! I don't have access to a uni library, but I do more or less read German and am getting better with each passing day, and ima learn Italian properly someday (currently only a smattering good for puzzling out a single paragraph at a time). I've bookmarked this comment, thanks!

(Any progress on your Keith family genealogy?)

[liriaen]

Oh goodie! :D I don't have the exhibition catalogue myself, but I fondly recall the show; they medical records were impressive.

Alas, no progress Keith-wise, but entirely my own fault - since October I've been beset by health problems (hiatus/diaphragm hernia), and that makes me rather monomanic in mood and limited in mental scope. Hope that gets a bit better post-surgery, so I'm not so frazzled.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oof, I hope all goes well with that. Hardly your fault about the genealogy!

[cahn]

Anna Ivanova, OMG. And Linck! I really admire people like that who live on their own terms, I'm such a lawful type I could never do it. (I also rather like the name Anastasius Agrantinus Rosenstengel.)

(her judges argued they couldn't condemn her for sodomy since there was no ejaculation)

That's kind of hilarious, actually. (or would be if it weren't for FW. FW!)

[selenak]

It's an epic name, isn't it? And yes. Trust FW to change a picaresque drama into a tragedy.

[mildred_of_midgard]

(her judges argued they couldn't condemn her for sodomy since there was no ejaculation)

That's kind of hilarious, actually. (or would be if it weren't for FW. FW!)

Because I finally recently read the sodomy essay in German that Selena and Felis read a while back, I can report that the standard way of handling a sodomy case in Germany at the time was for the defendant and/or judges to try to mitigate the punishment based on whether the ejaculation took place inside the body of the receiving individual (person or animal) or not. If a guy pulled out before he ejaculated, he could try for a lighter sentence.

Then FW came along, with his brand of Christianity, and scolded everyone for quibbling about technicalities when this was obviously a SIN, and it didn't depend on when or where or whether ejaculation happened. So he kept upgrading the penalty to death even when his judges want to let them off with imprisonment or whatever.

FW!!

[cahn]

Wooooow. That is even more hilarious.

And arrrrgh FW! These guys are trying!

[mildred_of_midgard]

That reminds me, [Unknown site tag], I keep meaning to ask: do we know if the "seduced party" wife had to watch? It wasn't just Fritz with Katte--FW was fond of "pour encourager les autres" in his exeuctions.

[selenak]

Her wikipedia entry doesn't say. The wife does in the novel I've read, but it is just this, a novel, plus the author already changed the method of death, as she herself points out in the afterword, from beheading to drowning (so that Catharina/Athanasius dies in exactly the same way as Ludwig II., the other gay main character). It should be said that the Prussian death penalty for sodomy was actually burning, see the had-sex-with-animals guy who was thus executed in 1730 where we have the pamphlet about the case), so execution by beheading, especially for a non-noble, was the "best" kind of execution available at the time, which doesn't sound like FW had it personally in for her. Then again, she wouldn't have been killed at all if he hadn't intervened and ranted about legal quibbles about A SIN. So maybe?

[avrelia]

Thank you! When I am thinking of a person as “chaotic” I definitely think more of types like Lorenzo da Ponte, whose life takes strange turns and twists, and fortunes goes up and down, but the person keeps on wrangling it, often to astonishing results. And yes, your example of Catharina/Athanasius here is just perfect. We do often look at the biographies of such people with wonder and understanding that we would have never suspended our disbelieve high enough to accept it in fiction.

I realize that the meaning of chaotic is different for us all, and I am glad you talked what you had in mind when talking about chaotic. Anna Ioannovna is an interesting choice. She is definitely one of more chaotic Russian rulers, a product of chaotic time and chaotic circumstances. Her type of chaos, was mostly born of a happenstance way she got the power, and her having no clue what to do with it except to hold on to it as tightly as possible.

[selenak]

You're welcome - it was a good prompt which really made me think both about the people and the definition.