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Or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country? Let's get Dirty. Listen to Dirty Rush on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio, and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky, listener discretion advised. Hi, this is Dana Schwartz, I'm so thrilled to be here for a very special episode of Noble Blood, for a conversation with the author Veronica Buckley,
who's written a new book seven sisters, captives and rebels
in revolutionary Europe's first family,
which tells the stories of the daughters of Maria Teresa, the Habsburg Empress of Austria, the Holy Roman Empire. Of course, her most famous daughter is Marie Antoinette.
“I would say to most people, but all seven of the daughters”
that survived to adulthood lived fascinating lives, fascinating tragic, interesting, all of the above. Miss Buckley, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you very much for having me. It's lovely to be here, Dana. So one thing that struck me, right when we start this book,
we get the famous Habsburg catchphrase that sort of summed up their dynasty. Others make war, you happy Austria, Mary. Can you sort of explain what this perspective was, what that catchphrase meant? Yes, well, I mean, in those days, we talk about the 18th century.
Warfare was a sort of normal aspect of Noble People's Lives, the Noble Men, of course, and also a normal aspect for many of the other classes in society, though not automatically. So there are a lot of people, of course, involved in agriculture and so on. So huge numbers of people in Europe were involved in fighting, basically.
And in those days, the head of system, which is called the sort of great power system, which were in a wee bit sort of reverting to it in the moment, where the people who had the most power simply took what they could, and everybody else had to put up with it.
Now the problem is that when you do that, even if you are the most powerful,
you lose a lot of people. You lose a lot of your population. You lose a lot of your agricultural projects. A lot of your trade goes down the tubes and all of that sort of thing. The heaps books, who had once been the most powerful dynasty right across the German-speaking world, and the Spanish and Italian-speaking world, had nice split into two families.
The Spanish heaps books and the German heaps books, even though they were based in Vienna, which is, of course, now in Austria, they regarded themselves as Germans. And they decided that it was costing them too much to keep fighting like this. So they very cleverly decided it was better to simply marry
into other royal families and other prominent families, to gain territory, to gain prominence, to gain political power, that way. And of course, what that meant was, you needed to have big families. Because you needed a lot of princes who could be the rulers, and you needed a lot of princesses who could be effectively bartered
to other people's princes to make these connections work. So you married your girls off in order to ensure peace for a time, of course,
That never lasted very long, but it was better than fighting all the time.
So Maria Teresa, who's just a fascinating figure,
“when her father dies, it takes her eight years,”
the more Austrian succession to actually cement her position on the throne. But once she does, she is a formidable ruler. And like you said, the fills her duty of having children incredibly well. How many total children did she have? She had 16 children, and five of them.
Oh my gosh, yes, absolutely amazingly, and five of them died as either babies or young children. Now, she didn't regard this as problematic to have 16 children.
She regarded it as a very good thing, because her first idea of her personal duty,
as a heapsburg monarch, was to continue the dynasty. And what this meant was, have as many children as possible. Some were more valued, because they were heapsburgs themselves, and would have, they would inherit heapsburg territories. But daughters were also useful, as I said, because they were
could be denestically paired off with other people, to increase territory and influence. And she encouraged her daughters, they have big families too. She said to many of them what civil terms I want to see you producing a baby every year. Your book focuses mainly on the seven daughters who survived to young adulthood.
But one just logistical question I have is, these daughters have so many names. They all have Maria at the beginning of their names. They have long names.
“How did you choose how to refer to them in your book?”
Because I've seen them referred to by different names throughout different points in their life. Obviously, someone like Marie Antoinette, we know by her French name, but that wasn't the name she was given when she was Austrian. So as a historical writer, how did you make the decision of how to refer to these women? Okay, well, this is a nightmare.
And as you say, all of the women have the first name, Maria,
because that's the German version of Mary or Marie, and it's a bit like, as if they were nuns, because you know, all nuns basically had at that time or until recently, the first name, Mary, and then another name afterwards, sister Mary so and so. And they didn't necessarily call themselves Maria, but in the documents, of course, that's how they're referred to.
Now, they at home, they spoke in the family, Maria Teresa's family spoke only German. They spoke a Viennese dialect of German, and of course, they were supposed to learn French, which was the International Diplomatic Language, and constantly lingua franca, the lingua franca, absolutely. And when they're writing to each other,
certainly the older members of the family wrote always in French,
because this was the sort of elegant thing to do. And sometimes they would interspersed their letters with bits and pieces of German or something else, but mostly German. Now, the problem was that this has led a lot of historians to assume that they were known within the family by their French versions of their names. So, Mary and Tuneet, whose name, of course,
was Antonia, Maria Antonia, in French that would be Marie Antoine, but she was not called Antoine, in the family, she was called Antoni, which is the German abbreviation of Antonia. But if you're reading letters written in French, of course, it looks as if they all called her Antoine, which they didn't. So, the way you work it up, well, for example, there was one of the daughters named Yosepha, and brother Yosepha married a woman, whose name was also
Yosepha, so this is obviously complicated. So, in the book I decided to call the sister Yosepha, just Yosepha, because I don't put Marie in all the time, because you'd be driven mad by Marie specifically, but with the wife of Yosepha, I call her Marie and Yosepha. It would increase your word count, the book would be doubled in length. Yes, absolutely. And then you've got a real problem on your hands. So, and there, of course, there was several men in the family, or called
“Ferdinand, or France, or goodness knows what? So, you have to make a distinction, so one is king,”
son, so one is don, son, so, and this is the ways you do it. But it takes a bit of working out,
You have to be always alert when you're working through the the the um sources,
because quite often they're talking about civil names of the family at the same time,
and they know them, they know who they're talking about. You could quite easily confuse them, so you do have to be careful with all these names. It's much easier nowadays.
“And one thing that I also imagine is very confusing is they would reuse names, I believe,”
rate of of children who passed away and infancy. They would use those names again. That's right, that was a standard thing historically, not just among royal families, but at a time when there was a great deal, they're very high incidents of infant and child mortality. A lot of children were named after their deceased elder sibling, a separate example, Carolina, who became the Queen of Naples. Maria Teresia had two daughters before her, who were named Carolina, so she was actually
the third Carolina. Now luckily for me, the two first Carolina's died in infancy, so there wasn't
much in the real, I didn't have to worry, but had their died as older girls, it could have been a little bit confusing. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the spirit daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. After storyteller and unapologetic aquarium visionary, a query is all about
freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements and Aquarius, like our misunderstood, a son, and Venus in Aquarius, in her seventh house, spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has told me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses in different places, but just an embracing of the isnness of it. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates
astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the spirit daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Cones, a ward-winning country music artist, and one of the most authentic voices in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true
to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the words celebrity hate
“those words that you make me uncomfortable. But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or”
the success or the influence, it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are.
The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only
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taking you behind the scenes in our new podcast between us with me Heather Dubrow and me Terry Dubrow. But between us isn't about perfect lighting or curated Instagram grids. It's the unfiltered behind closed doors conversations you wish you could eavesdrop on. Equal parts, smart, funny, and a little bit scandalous. Every week Heather will bring you an unapologetic take on the headlines, the trends, and the cultural moments everyone's texting about. And Terry will deliver insider beauty,
health, and wellness insights you won't find on TikTok. Together we'll tell the stories, spill the secrets, and share the hacks that keep life, marriage, and everything in between feeling fresh and fun. We may live in a gated community, but they're zero gatekeeping here. And plenty of did they just say that moments? Listen to between us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So let's get into some of these girls specifically.
“I want to jump ahead to number, I believe number three of the surviving daughters, Elizabeth,”
because I was fascinated by her story. This is a figure that I frankly did not know much about to put it in very superficial terms. She was still unmarried at 24 briefly engaged to the widowed king of France, who would have been the grand father of the men, her sister Marie and Toneette would marry, but then she was tragically disfigured by smallpox. Can you tell me a little bit about where Elizabeth's life took her? Yes, Elizabeth was the beauty of the family. And she knew
It, and she made a lot of it.
all the guards, men, and any prints who turned up at court and saw. But because she was so beautiful,
“and because for two elder sisters, their fate was more or less organised, she was likely to”
marry about half a dozen different powerful people, the king of Poland, the king of France, the king of
Spain, and other important people. And because of that, nothing could be agreed until she was actually quite old, because if you recall Marie and Toneette was married at 14, so 24 was very old at this point. But the problem was that while all of these things were being arranged, and certain people were eliminated because they were too old, or didn't would rich enough or whatever the problem was, she contracted smallpox. And she was dreadfully disfigured by smallpox, several of her siblings,
actually including Marie and Toneette also had smallpox, but they only had little marks on this skin afterwards, but she was completely disfigured. And after that of course, she had no
“let's call it personal value on the marriage market. She wasn't a beauty anymore. The only thing”
that was going for her was that she was still a hapspid princess, and that was still an important political role. Although by this point she was, she was old, much older than was considered prime marital. Yes, that's true. Compared to the old, she was in her mid-twenties, but that still would have been alright, particularly since the kings of France and Spain were in their 50s by
them. And she was still of an age to be a children and so on, so that was the crucial thing of course.
But you know, in the end, people didn't want to marry, they as men didn't want to marry a grossly disfigured woman. They had options. And she was, she remained unmarried, and when her mother died and her brother, yourself, became the Emperor, he was already the Emperor, he became the ruler, the soul ruler of the Hepspid monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. He couldn't stand her and he drummed her out of town effectively. And he sent her off to the provinces to Innsbruck,
itself, a charming town in the mountains in Austria, where there was a very grand court, very grand palace, recently refurbished, because it had seemed that Marieta Razia herself might want to retire there, because that is where her very beloved husband had died. And Elizabeth became what was called the secular abyss of this foundation for noble ladies. Now this doesn't mean she became a nun. In fact, her mother was very against nuns. She thought that celibate life was
abnormal, and she was opposed to it. She herself had a very lively and happy six life with her husband and was very keen for her children to have the same. Of course, six children. Yes, and she's it's very interesting because they were the only royal couple in Europe at the time, who spent
every night together. Not that Franz Stefan didn't have other ladies, he did, but he always came home
“at night. And it's interesting, Marieta Razia thought this was very important, not just for having”
children, but also because, of course, it gave the couple an opportunity to spend some quiet time together, away from court troubles, away from political things, where they could just talk over normal things. So she was very much against their girls becoming nuns, and Elizabeth, and also the eldest daughter Mariana, who also became a secular abyss, they really had courts of their own. They were princesses, they were treated as princesses, they were the head of their courts. And although
in their courts, their were nuns, they weren't nuns themselves, and most of the noble ladies who lived in them, although they were expected to live, you know, obviously decent Christian lives, they were allowed to go to balls and parties and theatres and things like that, and if they wanted to leave and get married, they were able to do that. So actually Elizabeth could have done that, too, if anybody had turned up. But once she went there to unspoken nobody did turn up, so she remained
there. It doesn't sound like too bad of a life to be completely frank. It wasn't too bad of a life
Because first of all you were spared yearly baby producing, which is not in i...
a lot, a lot of people, of course, a lot of women died in childbirth. And in fact, at that time,
“a lot of women would prepare for childbirth by basically preparing for a funeral.”
Because the chances were that they might not survive. So it wasn't too bad. It was very comfortable. She had a good income. If she wanted to, she could have had quite a lot of political influence, but she wasn't really interested in that. She likes the theatre and so on. So she had, you know, a good time. She was also very nice to the ladies who were in the foundation with her. She wasn't. She didn't expect them to be too particular about their religious duties. She was, of course, a firm
believer, and she observed the normal proprieties, but they didn't have to spend every second hour on
the knees and prayer and so on. She wasn't very harsh like that. And as long as she could afford it, she made sure they were very well fed and had lots of life going on in the court. That's wonderful. I will say one thing that emerges throughout the stories of these daughters is that they were hapsburg, dynastic pieces before they were individuals. Their personal happiness did not seem as important, or I would say frankly, wasn't as important as their roles in the family
“dynasty. And I think that story is very striking with, I believe it's the fourth surviving daughter,”
right in the middle, Amelie, if I'm pronouncing that right. That's right. So I had married a man that she did not choose to marry. Can you speak a little bit about how Amelie's marriage came to be? Yes, Amelie. Well, it was a doubly said story really because she fell in love with a very suitable prince who fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. And it looked as though they were going to marry, but at the end it was decided that he wasn't quite important enough. There were
other people interested in marrying a hapsburg princess and the hapspurgs needed a stronger connection to Northern Italy and they happened to be a Northern Italian prince in Parma who was looking for
“a bride or rather his, the people looking after him were looking for a bride because he was only 15”
and they decided that Amelie would be the person. At first in fact they thought Elizabeth would be
the person, but Elizabeth was quite a bit older than the prince and so they chose Amelie instead. Now this of course broke her heart for two reasons first she lost the prince she loved and second she was forced to marry a man she couldn't stand. This prince was quite a bit younger than she was and really just a boy whereas her the man she loved prince Carl of Tsviburiken. He had been a soldier and he was a handsome man and spoke many languages and all of this kind of thing. So she was
parmed off not only to a man she didn't want but she was an archduptious of hapspurg. And the man she married was only a Duke so she was demoted from archduptious to simple Duchess which is pretty bad considering that two of her youngest sisters were promoted from archduptious to Queen. So she felt it as a very very humiliating step and when she got to Parma she found that her husband
unsurprisingly since she was so young was very much in thought to the real ruler the first minister
of Parma and she found that an extra humiliation. She felt that at least he should be able to stand up and be boss in his own territory as it were. So she caused an enormous amount of difficulty there. Really it caused a lot of trouble to know ultimate effect except that she didn't make herself loved by the people by spending a great deal of money that she didn't really have by giving it in charity and so on. She herself had 15 children and it shows you how strong this
denestic pressure was that after the first four children she and her husband separated they lived in separate palaces and different towns. Nonetheless they had 11 more children together. He would visit her and they would have sex and she would produce a child more this every year. The sad thing is that all those later 11 children died. Yeah so she really although she had 15 children only
Four of them survived to adulthood.
she was always making trouble. She was never allowed to come home. All the others made visits to
“Vienna to their mother and their sisters and their nieces and so on and she was never allowed to do”
that because she was regarded as two troublesome. So she had a very, very sad life and that respectful though. She did have good friends, loyal friends who supported her to the end which is nice to think of and to her two daughters also. The surviving daughters also adopted the end. If I'm correct the only one of the daughters who married for love was their mother's favorite
Marie Christine who I almost want to say we've done an episode of Noble Blood on her very intimate
letters with her sister-in-law Princess Isabella of Parma. But of course after that period she would
“go on to be allowed to marry for love. Can you talk a little bit about her because I just find”
her delightful? Yes. Marie Christine, her brother Joseph, who became the Emperor, he was married to Isabella. Isabella is an interesting case in her and her own right because she was actually lesbian and she was very much in love with Marie Christine her sister-in-law. Marie Christine was not lesbian and didn't return Isabella's passion but she was a good friend of hers and was very fond of her and listened to what she said and took advice from her in terms of art she was a very good artist and so on
and also in the way she managed her mother. Isabella was an absolutely charming and a really quite brilliant woman and she managed to manipulate anybody any body she wanted to and she taught some of these arts of manipulation to Marie Christine which meant that Marie Christine became after Isabella's death Marie Teresa's favorite. Now she was in love quite quickly not immediately but quite quickly with Prince Albert who had absolutely nothing. It was one of 12 children was penniless since father
was a demoted king of Poland all this kind of thing but the thing was that by this time Joseph the eldest son was already married had two little girls and Marie Teresa could afford to allow one of her daughters to marry for love. If Joseph had not had any children by that time Marie Christine
“would have had to marry somebody domestically more important but also it is very clear that by this time”
Marie Teresa who had very recently only a month before lost her dearly beloved husband she saw in Marie Christine and Albert Prince Albert a sort of resurrection of herself and her husband when they were young because they had married for love and so she went against all you know everybody's advice went against the wishes of her late husband and son and allowed the two of them to marry and it was very very actually really grittously unfair giving Marie Christine and Albert
half of all the money and everything that was supposed to be shared out among the 11 of the children. So you can imagine there was quite a bit of annoyance about this quite a bit of jealousy although it wasn't only jealousy but Marie Christine was she liked to play rather the grand lady she was a very grand lady she was herself a beauty she was a gifted linguist and a very elegant woman and she was the light of her husband's life he just worshipped her and so they had a very
what appears to have been judging by their correspondence and so on a very happy marriage and a very unusual marriage for the time and absolutely companion at marriage although they didn't manage to have any children their only child died as a baby Marie Christine had poor profile which is child bed fever which can itself be and was often fatal for the mother and was also in this case
fatal for the daughter and it left Marie Christine infertile so she never had any other children
They did have a very close marriage and later on they adopted one of brother ...
sons and he became their darling that's at least one comparatively much happier story
“and now to turn our attention towards sort of the most famous tragedy the baby of the family”
and Marie Antonia or Marie Antoinette who I don't think I need to remind our audience was beheaded in the French Revolution but one thing that I did find striking in your book is how her sisters reacted can you speak a little bit to how her family felt after the French Revolution well it's interesting that in the beginnings of the Revolution quite a lot of them were in favor of it they were not hopeless reactionaries they were reformist people but they were really
still let's call it they were of course absolute monarchs they felt that reform should be introduced by the monarch and Marie Antoinette's favorite sister was Karolina who was the Queen of Naples and it is interesting to see that even Karolina at the last stage of Marie Antoinette's imprisonment she had given up hope for her survival and it is interesting to see the letters going backwards and forwards between the different siblings can we get her out no we can't get her out
it will look bad if we try to do something that will make her situation worse if we send in an army they will kill her we'd better not do that can we trade her out what can we do but it seems that even those who loved her most had really given up hope for her life long before she was condemned to death of course she was condemned to defend executed within a 24-hour period
“one other I think interesting thing about this book is is how Karolina as you mentioned the Queen”
of Naples and Sicily reacted after the French Revolution in Naples specifically how she sort of circled the wagon so to speak absolutely and she was not alone in there even lay upholds who was by now the emperor and the heapspig emperor and he had been the most liberal and forward thinking of all of the children really even he had to backtrack and their soul will help this is this is completely out of hand this is not what we meant at all we wanted reform but this is chaos
and of course by then Naplesian was well Bonaparte not yet the emperor Naplesian was on the rampage
throughout Europe and for minting revolution has the revolutionary forces were for minting
revolution everywhere they went and Karolina it is clear from her letters she really believed that she would be beheaded too and in fact there were attempts on her life and there were plans to kill her which were foiled luckily I know that mothers aren't supposed to have favorite children even though obviously Maria Teresa did but in researching and writing this book did you find that you had a favorite of the daughters you know a lot of people have asked me this and it's not
“easy to answer that when I was working on somebody in particular I think of this person's my favorite”
and then this other person's my favorite and this I think possibly you know you feel you really get involved with these people and you're living sort of day to day with them and feeling feeling for them of course as if they were still alive and of course when you're picking up the letters that they themselves wrote and looking at their handwriting shaking perhaps with tears blotting the pages whatever you can't help but be affected I think if I could know more about
any of them it would probably be amally the problem with amally is because she had such terrible handwriting many many many letters that she wrote including letters that she wrote to the king of Spain apparently urging him to intervene to save Maria Internet we're rendered declared illegible
by all the scribes at the courts you know her handwriting was always bad and it just got worse
and worse and worse so that in the end there are countless letters of hers nobody is sure what they actually say not even handwriting experts and so no you know I think maybe with sort of sophisticated
AI systems at some point we'll be able to decipher them but the actual cyphos...
letters in cyphos the actual cyphos are much easier to decipher than amally's normal handwriting added to the fact that her French and her Italian were both terrible and it doesn't help
“so I think if I knew there was one that I if I needed it would like to know a bit more about”
I think it would be amally but I don't know that's likely to happen anytime soon
that's a wonderful answer the book is seven sisters captives and rebels in revolutionary
Europe's first family by Veronica Buckley thank you so much for joining us today this was such a wonderful interview and thank you for this book I learned so so much thanks very much Dana I wish you all the best of your continued work
“Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm & Mild from Aaron Manky”
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston
Hannah's Wick Courtney Sender Amy Hight and Julia Milani the show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kayali and executive producers Aaron Manky Trevor Young and Matt Frederick for more podcasts from iHeart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Hi it's show interesting host of the spirit dotter podcast or we talk about astrology
natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life and today I'm talking with my dear friend
“Crister Williams it can change you in the best way possible dance with the change dance with the”
breakdowns the embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves just so I'm like delusionally proud of my chart listen to the spirit dotter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts Hey I'm Jay Shetty host of the on purpose podcast I'm joined by Luke Cones award winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today the guy that says he's
always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there no
matter what I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children I dread the conversation with my son listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts welcome to dirty rush the truth about sorority life the good the bad and the sisterhood with your host me jia judais Daisy Kent and Jennifer fessler the reality of Greek life has been a mystery for those outside the sorority circles until now is it really a supportive sisterhood
that's simply misunderstood or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country let's get dirty listen to dirty rush on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this isn't iHeart podcast guaranteed human
