Okay, back to basics, what we were founded on…Marie Antoinette Trivia. Just in case you don’t know, Maria Teresa was Empress of Austria and Queen of Bohemia and Hungary and Marie Antoinette’s iron-fisted mother.
The formidable woman gave birth to sixteen children, waged wars, married her children off as political pawns, Queen of Bohemia and Hungary in her own right she and her husband had to be elected Emperor and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. Maria Teresa also considered Tsarina Catherine the Great a personal rival. Guess every Mr. Pibb needs its Dr. Pepper…
As an Empress, Maria Teresa was all business (all the time) and no level of physical pain stopped her from running her Empire, a quagmire in which she was perpetually entrenched.
On November 2, 1755, her labor pains began and Maria Teresa took to her bedchamber, like any other woman, to wait out the tidal wave of excruciation. Unlike any other woman she took to bed with a large stack of paperwork to pass the time, (Fraser, 3).
According to Evelyne Lever, “since Maria Teresa hated wasting time, she took advantage of the momentary inconvenience to have a decayed tooth extracted” (4). I wonder if either devoir distracted from the contractions…
She gave birth to her daughter at half-past eight in the evening in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. “As soon as was practical, Maria Teresa returned to work, signing papers from her bed,” (Fraser, 3).
They named the baby Archduchess Maria Antonia Josephina Johanna…they would merely call her “Antoine.” The fact that she was born on November 2, All Soul’s Day would prove to be an ill-omen, especially that year.
- Trivia ‘toinette #5: Refusal to Travel sans Make-up Foils Chance at Freedom (tiarasandtrianon.wordpress.com)
A formidable woman to say the least. You found gorgeous pictures as well! She also found time to honor a couple of the women I’ve written about Maria Agnesi and Laura Bassi, mathematician and scientist respectively. I would like her just for that 🙂
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I have the feeling that Empress “Maite” will eventually have an entire series of blog posts dedicated to her…and those might only be in relation to her youngest daughter!
Thanks for noticing my glossy pics…I just scanned that one of the Empress in from one of the biographies I cited!
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