Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Who is that over there?
Speaker 1: A guy who describes himself on Twitter as dispassionate. That
Speaker 1: is our super producer, Mr Max Williams. Give him a hand.
Speaker 1: Uh they call me Ben mainly because that's my name
Speaker 1: here in the US, and uh, Noel. I gotta say
Speaker 1: this one is interesting because I would say you and
Speaker 1: I are pretty, um, pretty compassionate people. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. We're We're a little warm and fussy. We
Speaker 1: maybe a little compassionate, also dispassionate at times, which I
Speaker 1: think could be considered a compliment, which means you don't
Speaker 1: get swept up in the hullabaloo. It's true, and it's true.
Speaker 1: He wants that you gotta keep a level head to
Speaker 1: keep a keep a you know, what is it? Bright
Speaker 1: eyes and bushy tails? No, that's not the what is
Speaker 1: the what's the thing from Friday Night Lights? Bright dark eyes,
Speaker 1: clean hearts? I don't know. I've never seen the show.
Speaker 1: There's explosions in the sky. It's all about explosions in
Speaker 1: the sky. No, we I would say so we're all
Speaker 1: pretty warm and gentle individuals, you know, who would never
Speaker 1: build a massive ice palace and four star of nemeses
Speaker 1: to spend the night in the nude data just to
Speaker 1: like scratch some weird like revenge ith. We'd never do that,
Speaker 1: would we, guys? I mean you get in situations, no,
Speaker 1: you some people just push right, Some people just push it,
Speaker 1: you know, they just insist upon themselves. Uh, no, we're
Speaker 1: we're doing inside jokes this early in the show. This
Speaker 1: is it's true. No, you're You're absolutely correct. And what
Speaker 1: we're exploring today is a story that comes to us
Speaker 1: from the sixteen hundreds. It is the story of passion.
Speaker 1: It is a story of empire, it is a story
Speaker 1: of well, it's a story that almost anyone can connect
Speaker 1: with once you get past the names. Today's story is
Speaker 1: about someone called Avanna the Terrible, and we don't let
Speaker 1: that turn you off, folks. Okay, she was great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: monarchs and royals from back in the day get these
Speaker 1: weird nickname names. You know. I would point out that
Speaker 1: not all of them were that great, Not all of
Speaker 1: the greats were that great. Her real name Anna Ivanovana. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the greats weren't that great, but usually the terribles
Speaker 1: were pretty terrible. I don't think you get a nickname
Speaker 1: like the Terrible unless you've done something pretty ghastly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Anna certainly did do that. But let's but she
Speaker 1: wasn't born that way, as Lady Gaga would say. She
Speaker 1: was born in se presumably a very normal, relatively healthy baby.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's bored into board, into royalty. She was
Speaker 1: born into royalty. But you know, she was a clean
Speaker 1: slate for at least a second daughter of Czar Ivan
Speaker 1: the Fifth, who is often referred to he got a
Speaker 1: good one as Ivan the Ignorant. Yeah. Uh and apparently
Speaker 1: that nickname may have actually been under selling his vast incompetence.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a little John joke, Yeah, for no, he
Speaker 1: did in fact suffer from some form of of a
Speaker 1: mental deficiency. He actually oftentimes would enter some kind of
Speaker 1: like fugue state where he would remain for hours and hours. Um.
Speaker 1: He was only able to walk with the support of
Speaker 1: you know, his staff, who you know, essentially carried him
Speaker 1: around or at least had him had him looped his
Speaker 1: arms over their shoulders. And he was essentially a czar
Speaker 1: and ceremony only um Peter the Great on his uncle
Speaker 1: was the cos are and did most of the actual zaring.
Speaker 1: I love that man, most of the actual a zari, right, like, well,
Speaker 1: my title is not technically tsar, but I do a
Speaker 1: lot of czari. He was a cozar, but since his
Speaker 1: brother was you know, mainly just there to be kind
Speaker 1: of propped up and you know, perform rituals and such,
Speaker 1: he was doing the heavy lifting. So let's h let's
Speaker 1: get to Anna. Her mom is super into tradition, and
Speaker 1: the way that her mom is into tradition is unfortunately
Speaker 1: bad for her daughter. So Anna unfortunately was despite being
Speaker 1: born into the upper class, she wasn't superliterate. People described
Speaker 1: her as an unpleasant person. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: misogyny then as now, and folks wrote about how unattractive
Speaker 1: they thought she was physically, and they wrote about how
Speaker 1: unattractive they thought she was as a person. Apparently she
Speaker 1: was rude, she was morbid. It's the old trope of
Speaker 1: who's going to marry this person? Because everyone had to
Speaker 1: get married back then. In seventeen ten, she married a
Speaker 1: guy in Frederick William the Duke of Corlands and that
Speaker 1: is part of modern day Latvia. And again we have
Speaker 1: to put in the note. I know it's a controversial thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you guys about this. What's the
Speaker 1: deal with people who have like two first names as
Speaker 1: as their whole name. That's a that's like, uh, that's
Speaker 1: the thing, right. People tell you not to trust folks
Speaker 1: with two You've told me that, No, you've said that before.
Speaker 1: I definitely find them a little suss. But it's not
Speaker 1: their fault, you know, it's just sort of the nominal
Speaker 1: terminism kind of situation, like if you're born with two
Speaker 1: first names, you're inevitably going to become some sort of
Speaker 1: conniving monster. But Frederick William, you know, made quite an
Speaker 1: impression on she. Um was was really smitten by the guy.
Speaker 1: She's incredibly excited. All she'd ever wanted was to be married.
Speaker 1: You know, she had a door all of these really
Speaker 1: nasty um insults, you know, she was like literally openly
Speaker 1: people compared her the look of her face to a
Speaker 1: Westphalian ham. This comes up in every source that we've
Speaker 1: we've looked at about this story. I mean, it's obviously
Speaker 1: worth mentioning because it really is you. That's something that
Speaker 1: kind of followed her around, you know. That was like, uh,
Speaker 1: I looked up ham, and I looked up west failure.
Speaker 1: This is a true story. The it's just regular ham.
Speaker 1: I don't but but you're right there, absolutely Westphalian. It's
Speaker 1: it looks like a nice ham on the bone, you
Speaker 1: know it. You know, it's like a really nice, thinly
Speaker 1: sliced ham that looks great. It's fancy. It is fancy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd eat it with like some nice bread and cheese. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that guy, Yeah, I think it was saying
Speaker 1: she looked like a pig, which is very rude. It's very,
Speaker 1: very very rude. She know, she was what you might
Speaker 1: just describe as she She was a little plain looking.
Speaker 1: She didn't dress particularly lavishly, but she's a freaking person anyway.
Speaker 1: So she was definitely treated really poorly, and so she
Speaker 1: was excited to kind of like turn a corner and
Speaker 1: and wed and become you know, a true princess, right uh.
Speaker 1: And she said this of the of the marriage to
Speaker 1: where she goes, I cannot but assure your Highness that
Speaker 1: nothing could delight me more than to hear of your
Speaker 1: declaration of love for me. For my part, I assure
Speaker 1: your Highness that I share your feelings at our next
Speaker 1: happy meeting, to which I look forward eagerly. I shall
Speaker 1: god willing avail myself of the opportunity of expressing them
Speaker 1: to you personally. Oh yeah, yeah, she's shooting her shot, right,
Speaker 1: that's what we call it in the parlance of the day. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it worked out. You're right. The wedding is beautiful. There
Speaker 1: are fireworks at the end of the ceremony, and this
Speaker 1: is of course, this is a royal wedding, so it's
Speaker 1: a it's a huge event. It's like a geopolitical event.
Speaker 1: And then again people made fun of her and this
Speaker 1: is this is really messed up. This is this is
Speaker 1: beyond ridiculous. Yeah. I would say some of the stuff
Speaker 1: in this episode definitely ventures into the realm of cruel
Speaker 1: and unusual. Um, and this is no exception cruel and unusual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well said. So there's this guy we're talking about how
Speaker 1: weird royal nicknames are. There's this Russian czar named Peter
Speaker 1: the Great, and he has this thing with very short
Speaker 1: people with people who are affect it by the condition
Speaker 1: known as dwarf is um. Peter the Great was a
Speaker 1: pretty tall dude. He was a little less than seven
Speaker 1: ft tall, which is wild, and he was obsessed. He
Speaker 1: was obsessed with dwarves. So imagine this guy was like
Speaker 1: the most influential, important dude in the country. He basically
Speaker 1: owns the country. He's six ft seven inches tall. He's
Speaker 1: obsessed with people of very short stature, and he will
Speaker 1: make these folks be like his court jestures. It was
Speaker 1: not a weird thing. Oh, I shouldn't say it wasn't
Speaker 1: a weird thing. Sorry, it is very weird. But it
Speaker 1: was not uncommon for him to do things like have
Speaker 1: one of these folks he had hired as a permanent
Speaker 1: jesterre two leap out of a high naked during a party.
Speaker 1: Kind of the way for any fans of Always Sunny
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia that Danny de Vito emerges oiled up and
Speaker 1: naked from a leather couch during the Christmas episode if
Speaker 1: you remember it was it Christmas? I think it was
Speaker 1: the Christmas episode anyway, or sell me into the couch? Yes,
Speaker 1: what sell me into the couch? Into the couch? That
Speaker 1: reminds me of that scene and like I think Ace
Speaker 1: Venture and when nature calls when he sort of births
Speaker 1: himself out of this weird like rubber zebra or something.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an elephant, I can't remember, but it's quite
Speaker 1: disgusting and he's very like covered and like glistening fluids. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so that was That was the kind of stuff this
Speaker 1: dude would pull. He's Peter the Great. He's on his uncle.
Speaker 1: Two days after she gets married to Frederick William. This
Speaker 1: guy does like he does like a my gery of
Speaker 1: of that marriage. He holds it in it's and he's
Speaker 1: like he's baller about it. So, you know how like
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live usually opens with something satirical about the week,
Speaker 1: this guy stage day fake wedding to ridicule his niece, right,
Speaker 1: was it a real wedding? Well, no, it was. So
Speaker 1: if anyone's seen um movies like The Favorite or there's
Speaker 1: a new show on Hulu called The Great about Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great, it's really fantastic. Actually it's about adjacent periods
Speaker 1: in Russian history. Um, it's not entirely historically accurate, but
Speaker 1: it definitely depicts a lot of the bizarre, fetishistic, bacchanalian
Speaker 1: kind of behavior at court, especially when it involved men.
Speaker 1: Lots of weird open sexual stuff, lots of like indoor
Speaker 1: hunting of bears and like duck racing and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's really weird um, you know, and often involved humiliating underlings,
Speaker 1: humiliating lower class uh for you know money, really like
Speaker 1: pay them like a pittance. So they would literally just
Speaker 1: call them out from their homes to to kind of
Speaker 1: parade them around, whether in like you know, weird outfits
Speaker 1: or new they like throw fruit at them, just horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible stuff. And oftentimes they would make use of dwarves
Speaker 1: um in a really cruel again borderline fetishistic way. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what Peter the Great did when he staged
Speaker 1: this wedding as a mockery of Anna's wedding or in
Speaker 1: his wedding um. And there's a quote from Lindsay hughes
Speaker 1: biography of Peter the Great where he says at the feast,
Speaker 1: the dwarfs sat at miniature tables in the center of
Speaker 1: the room, while full sized guests watched them from tables
Speaker 1: at the sides. They roared with laughter as dwarfs, especially
Speaker 1: the older lear ones, whose hunchbacks, huge bellies, and short,
Speaker 1: crooked legs made it difficult for them to dance, fell
Speaker 1: down drunk or engaged in brawls, and that yeah, that's again,
Speaker 1: that's not from us. That is from the biography of
Speaker 1: Peter the Great by Lindsey Hughes. So Hughes is pretty
Speaker 1: clear in assuming this is meant to be a shot
Speaker 1: at Anna. And it's not just that this weird spectacle
Speaker 1: is expressive of his contempt for all of the Russian court,
Speaker 1: and he was known for this. It was he would
Speaker 1: have these mockery's, he would have these spectacles in a
Speaker 1: way that was meant to be for him. And it
Speaker 1: sounds weird to say it, kind of social commentary. And
Speaker 1: courtiers and Russia were own around Europe for a certain stereotype.
Speaker 1: They were thought to be rude, and they were thought
Speaker 1: to be drunkards. And it is possible that in some
Speaker 1: ways Old Pete may have been making fun of his
Speaker 1: own crew because the folks he forced into this fake
Speaker 1: wedding sketch, I guess you would call it. Uh. He
Speaker 1: made them wear Western clothing as well, and this was
Speaker 1: thought to be possibly a pot shot at the Russian
Speaker 1: courtiers because they were still not considered civilized by the
Speaker 1: French and the British and so, um, this is like
Speaker 1: a pretty rude thing to do. Anybody who is been married,
Speaker 1: anybody who's getting married, anybody who was weirdly enough mentioning
Speaker 1: ridiculous history at their marriage. Thank you. I think we
Speaker 1: end up and mentioned in divorce courts more often, but
Speaker 1: I appreciate the flex. Uh. If you've ever if you've
Speaker 1: ever been married, you can imagine how insulting this would
Speaker 1: be for the literal leader of the country. Two kind
Speaker 1: of out of nowhere, say you look like ham and
Speaker 1: your wedding is dumb, and I think it's funny that
Speaker 1: you're happy, and we didn't mention this. We didn't mention this. No,
Speaker 1: Frederick William had to go to that fake wedding, to
Speaker 1: the mockery wedding. Ha ha ha. He's gonna like smiling
Speaker 1: through grid teeth. Yes, this is delightful. Yes, yes, so clever.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah right, it's like it's like I'm making
Speaker 1: fun of you, which, yeah, I see, that's very clever.
Speaker 1: He's just just like, um, yeah, really really strange, really
Speaker 1: really cruel and uh, something that ultimately sets some things
Speaker 1: in motion and in a lot of ways in terms
Speaker 1: of on a psyche um, you know, is it's almost
Speaker 1: like a carry type situation. You know, Carrie is bullied
Speaker 1: to the point where you know it triggers her psycho
Speaker 1: kinetic fire mind powers and then she just like you know,
Speaker 1: go scorched earth on everybody. That bucket of pigs blood
Speaker 1: at the problem was just a bridge too far. John
Speaker 1: trow Voltata, Yeah, isn't John Travolta and Carrie? Yeah? But
Speaker 1: is he? Is he bad? He's like going to the
Speaker 1: dance with her, isn't he? I don't know. I was
Speaker 1: cutting it up for an episode of Feberal. I'm not
Speaker 1: a great reference on this one. No, it's perfect, No,
Speaker 1: keep it in mix, im, it's all, it's all staying. Okay.
Speaker 1: I think he might be right. I think John Travolta
Speaker 1: maybe is like the nicer of the bullies who like
Speaker 1: sort of tries to stop it. He's definitely in with
Speaker 1: the bad with the rough crew. Though. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's like he's like the guy she has a crushed on,
Speaker 1: that the bad guy. But they go to the dance
Speaker 1: gather and like they're winning, like prom King and Queen,
Speaker 1: and that's when the blood dumps. Okay, Okay, screaming at everybody.
Speaker 1: He's like, why would you do? That's right? Okay, completely, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's keep it all in. Frederick William is our John
Speaker 1: Travolta because he's not, you know, he's maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe feels a little sorry for Carrie Anna, but he
Speaker 1: also doesn't doesn't necessarily despise her in the way that
Speaker 1: everyone else seems to he He doesn't, you know, um,
Speaker 1: I feel the need to to ridicule her. And again,
Speaker 1: it's an arranged marriage, so he has a certain duty.
Speaker 1: But also, like you know, you've seen these arranged marriages
Speaker 1: where the husbands are intensely cruel to their new wives.
Speaker 1: But a lot of this, you know, a person can
Speaker 1: only take so much, including um, our boy Frederick William,
Speaker 1: who was you know, not unlike the stereotype of the
Speaker 1: Russian court, a bit of a lush And he actually
Speaker 1: got into a drinking contest with Peter the Great. And
Speaker 1: again I'm picturing this and knowing where the story ends
Speaker 1: up going, I would not be surprised if Peter the Great,
Speaker 1: having forced this poor guy to go to the mockery
Speaker 1: of his own wedding, probably also goaded him into this
Speaker 1: drinking contest. And pushed him too far, um, trying to
Speaker 1: keep up with Peter the Great Frederick Drake so much
Speaker 1: that he got very, very very sick and died two
Speaker 1: months after the wedding. Yeah, I can't say no to
Speaker 1: the king, right, you know you can't, can't you know
Speaker 1: you can't. And we don't really know how he treated on.
Speaker 1: Uh presumably you know, she had nothing negative to say
Speaker 1: about him, and this like calls her to spiral into
Speaker 1: despair or at the very least, she wanted to remarry
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible. This is very important for her.
Speaker 1: Uh So we we we assumed that he was relatively
Speaker 1: decent to her. That's why I was calling him the
Speaker 1: John Travolta once I figured out, you know what part
Speaker 1: he actually played in Carried No, we did good, We
Speaker 1: did good work with that tangent. And it's yeah, uh
Speaker 1: so you know what we didn't say this part. She
Speaker 1: is seventeen years old at this point, when when when
Speaker 1: her husband dies and she is a widow at seventeen,
Speaker 1: she lives a real black mark. Right and in this
Speaker 1: type of period, right, I mean it would be you
Speaker 1: you'd be almost considered like damaged goods or in some way,
Speaker 1: you know, like other from society for sure. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And she very much wanted to marry again. She wanted
Speaker 1: that she wanted that state of matrimony. So she wrote
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of letters saying the same thing. We
Speaker 1: know this is true. It's on the historical record from
Speaker 1: her correspondence. And she needed the co sign of her uncle,
Speaker 1: Peter the Great, the guy with a terrible sense of humor,
Speaker 1: and he would not green light a one of them. Uh.
Speaker 1: He kept saying, you know, we can, we can freestyle
Speaker 1: on this part, but like I'm sure in some cases
Speaker 1: he had something that he had something to say that
Speaker 1: he thought was funny. You know. He would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that guy's elbows look like you know, they look like
Speaker 1: what's an animal in Russia. I don't really know much
Speaker 1: about Russian bears. He'd be like, is elbows looked like
Speaker 1: bear elbows? Nope, And she would be like, damn, I
Speaker 1: gotta marry someone else now. Anyway, Eventually she she got
Speaker 1: very bitter and uh, in no small way nihilistic. Um.
Speaker 1: The idea that is proposed by most historians is um,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that this guy's if you turned her
Speaker 1: into someone who just didn't like seeing other people happy. Right,
Speaker 1: So Frederick William was John Travolta in the scenario. Then
Speaker 1: Peter the Great is whoever the ringleader bully was, you know,
Speaker 1: carry which I think it was mean girls mainly, and
Speaker 1: then them kind of just like goating their dumb boyfriends
Speaker 1: along for the ride. If I'm not mistaken. The girl
Speaker 1: with the hat, it's the girl with the hat is
Speaker 1: Peter the Great. She's like the ring and all and
Speaker 1: all the other guys are just like, we're allowed for this.
Speaker 1: But exactly so, at this point, Anna is descending into
Speaker 1: full carry the rage territory um, where like you said, Ben,
Speaker 1: she does not want to see happiness in anyone, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to romantic love. And this is this
Speaker 1: is problematic, especially as someone that has or would you
Speaker 1: continue to escalate in her power over others and her
Speaker 1: ability to you know, exercise her will upon people in
Speaker 1: her court. Uh. And that really happens when our boy
Speaker 1: Peter the Great dies as well, um, leaving Anna to rule.
Speaker 1: Anna Ivanovna is now um the well, I guess the
Speaker 1: Empress right of Russia. That so the man would be
Speaker 1: a czar and she was the empress actually the title
Speaker 1: that she had was Duchess of Courland, because if we
Speaker 1: will recall, that was what Frederick Williams title was. Uh,
Speaker 1: So she rolled under that title for twenty years until
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty when she was summoned to the Russian Supreme
Speaker 1: Privy Council. Hold the telephone, that's something people say, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: who knows have we even gotten there yet? Unclear' Gonna
Speaker 1: end this definitely proactive to parter right now, um, and
Speaker 1: then we'll be back uh in just a day or so.
Speaker 1: Right for the stunning and tragic conclusion to the story
Speaker 1: of Vanna the Terrible. Yeah, which again is it an
Speaker 1: unfair name? These answers will be revealed or at least
Speaker 1: speculated upon in Part two of this story. Thanks as
Speaker 1: always one and only Max Williams are super producer. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Casey Pegraham, thanks to Gabe Lousier, Thanks to Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: who you may remember as the Twister. Uh, we're probably
Speaker 1: gonna have him back on at the end of the year.
Speaker 1: He said that he couldn't come on today's episode because
Speaker 1: it was still too soon, which I don't know what
Speaker 1: he means by that. It's okay it's okay. We we
Speaker 1: were a big fan of riddles. Here are radiculous riddles.
Speaker 1: But it's never too soon to hang out with you guys.
Speaker 1: It's always exactly the right time. And looking forward to
Speaker 1: doing it again very soon. I see you next time. Books.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
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