Doomed Queens (34 page)

Diego Velázquez painted
Las Meninas
in 1656. Its title refers to the maids waiting on Margarita Theresa in the oil painting; they include a dwarf, who is hardly taller than the magnificently attired young princess. Velázquez included a self-portrait on the left of the main composition. The baroque painter Luca Giordano praised
Las Meninas
as the “theology of painting.”

1689

he calamitous fertility of Queen Margarita Theresa stands in marked contrast to her younger brother, Carlos II. Though both siblings were born of the same parents, the consequences of inbreeding flowered fully in Carlos. His head and jaw were seriously misshapen, forcing him to subsist on the milk of fourteen wet nurses until he was five years old, when it is assumed he learned how to feed himself. He had to be carried like a baby for much of his childhood and did not walk until nearly grown. Worst of all, his mental faculties were those of an imbecile. Nonetheless, Carlos inherited the throne of Spain at the age of four after the death of his father, Philip IV, in 1665. Though incapable of ruling without his mother’s guidance, he was still expected to procreate—which might have been possible if the king’s equipment hadn’t followed suit with the rest of his sorry self.

Who knows what Louis XIV, France’s famed Sun King, was thinking when he arranged for his lovely, vivacious niece Maria Luisa of Orléans to wed the deformed Carlos—clearly he was considering the political advantages over her personal happiness. Louis presented the match as a fait accompli to the princess, stating he could not have done more for his own daughter. “But you could have done more for your niece!” Maria Luisa allegedly protested.

Maria Luisa. Beautiful but…

In spite of the princess’s lack of enthusiasm, the betrothal moved forward. The negotiations were encouraged by Carlos himself, who decided that he was madly in love after viewing his fiancée’s fetching portrait.

Carlos and Maria Luisa’s 1679 wedding festivities culminated with an auto-da-fé in which over a hundred supposed heretics were either judged or executed, presumably to curry God’s favor for a fruitful union. It did not work—though the marriage was consummated, Maria Luisa’s womb remained resolutely empty. Undeterred, the royal couple continued to petition the heavens for a child. A contemporary wrote that they prayed “with such faith that even the stones would move in order to join them and ask God for the issue they desire.”

Between the pressures of infertility and the oppressive Spanish court, Maria Luisa sank into depression and obesity. Death suddenly overtook her at the age of twenty-seven, after two days of excruciating stomach pain. Most likely she had appendicitis, but some suspected she was poisoned by her mother-in-law, who might have decided that another queen would be more successful at coaxing heirs from her son. Maria Luisa’s last words were, “Your Majesty might have other wives, but no one will love you as I do.”

Carlos was distraught at his queen’s unexpected death—as simple as he was, he really did adore her. Following in the familial footsteps of his great-great-great grandmother Juana of Castile, he insisted on opening the coffin to visit his spouse’s remains. Carlos was not allowed to mourn for long; within six months he was wed to a new bride, who also (surprise, surprise) did not conceive. The king concluded that there could be only one cause for his maladies: witchcraft.

Carlos consulted an exorcist in 1698. His learned judgment? The king was bewitched by an enchanted cup of bedtime chocolate given to him as a boy by his mother. Though the appropriate rites were observed, Carlos’s condition only worsened—after all, exorcisms can’t halt the genetic ravages of inbreeding. The king’s mortal misery came to an end two years later.

Because Carlos was the last of his line, his succession was settled in a manner that must have pleased Maria Luisa’s uncle. The Spanish crown passed to the Sun King’s French grandson, Philippe of Anjou.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

The soil is only as good as the seed.

1704

s the daughter of the tsar, Sophia Alekseyevna was destined for an isolated, barren existence. The tsarevna’s exalted rank forbade her from marrying below herself, so no man could make her a wife and mother. Her status also precluded her from leaving her luxurious private quarters unless she was shielded from onlookers by a curtain of red silk. By all accounts, Sophia should have had a soporific life where only her birth and death earned notice—but she was no ordinary Russian woman. Instead, the tsarevna used her tremendous intelligence and ambition to become the first woman to rule Russia.

Born in 1657, Sophia was the only surviving daughter of Tsar Alexei I by his first wife, Maria. She was also the half sister of Peter the Great, her father’s son by his second wife, Natalya. Sophia had one advantage that most other Russianwomen didn’t: a world-class education. Somehow the tsarevna had convinced her father to let her share lessons with Fyodor, her sickly heir-to-the-throne brother; the educations of her two younger brothers, Ivan and Peter, were ignored, since it was presumed they were too far down the line of succession to ever become tsar.

Peter wearing armor. He needed it.

Sophia’s brilliance won notice. The monk scholar Simeon Polotsky observed that Sophia possessed an “accomplished masculine mind”—high praise indeed. To gain power, Sophia rebelled in small but significant ways within her conscribed world. She attended council meetings, where she was introduced to the boyars, nobles who influenced Russian policy. When Fyodor inherited the throne after their father’s death in 1676, she became her brother’s main confidante.

Fyodor wasn’t long for the world—he died in 1682 at the age of twenty. Ten-year-old Peter was chosen tsar over Ivan since Ivan was an invalid, like Fyodor, and blind to boot. But wily Sophia spread rumors that Peter’s relatives had poisoned Fyodor, inciting the army to violence. Sophia used the opportunity to grab the throne, claiming she’d rule on behalf of both Ivan and Peter until they grew old enough to reign jointly.