Skip to main content

16th C. Angsty French Siblings in History

It's Sunday and let's look at some history I read on French wikipedia, because as far as I can tell it's not on English Wikipedia and might as well put that Comp Lit degree in French lit to use somehow. Today "somehow" will be translating this paragraph about the DRAMATIC AND SAD LIVES of Julien and Marguerite de Ravalet.

so many sad things

Julien de Ravalet was born in France in 1582, and his sister Marguerite in 1586. They were the children of Jean III de Ravalet, lord of Tourlaville. Tourlaville is in northwestern France, and part of Normandy. 

The article is a bit vague, but essentially, Julien and Marguerite were too close for their parents' liking (although the article uses "amour platonique," which totally has the same meaning here as there), so when Julien was 13, they sent him away. A few years later, when, according to the timeline here, Marguerite is 14, they marry her to Jean Lefevre de Haupitois, who's 32 years older.




Apparently the marriage of this 14 year old to a 46 year old wasn't happy (WHAT A SHOCK) and she ran away to find her brother. They were arrested September 8th, 1603 at the request of her gross husband, who accused them of adultery and incest (she's 17 now and her brother's 21). They both denied these charges, but were still executed in the Place de Grève in December 1603.

The Place de Grève is now known as the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, but was used for executions at least as far back as the 1200s.

Place de Grève

Place de l'Hotel de Ville

If you google them, you basically get landed almost immediately on a page about how incest is totes misunderstood and I'M SORRY TO HAVE CLICKED ON IT but info on them is scanty. That page says they were convicted because Marguerite was pregnant after being on the run for a whiiiiiile with her brother, which makes more sense than her husband just having accused them of incest and then having them be convicted, especially since their aristocratic father asked for mercy and it was denied

Look. Nature has shown us incest is not the way to go. Unless you think debilitating diseases are beneficial to the human race. That being said, these two super bum me out, not for that, but because Marguerite's life sounds real damn terrible, and she basically got murdered for that. Yep, I'm calling a state execution murder I'M EDGY LIKE THAT. 

the 17th c. French government

I only found out about these two kids because Netflix said "Would you like to watch Marguerite et Julien, Alice?" and I said "Maybe!" and watched the first 30 seconds and when it said based on real events or whatever, I paused it and did all this research. In the course of that, I found out that the movie was uniVERSALLY panned, so I'm not finishin' it. But now we all know about the sad sad lives of Marguerite and Julien de Ravalet, who were both killed the same year Elizabeth I died and the Stuarts came to reign in England. Just for some context. 

Let's not sleep with our siblings and let's also not marry our 14-year-old kids to people more than 30 years older than they are. There're just a bunch of lessons we can take from this. Essentially, don't do stupid shit, guys.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't

How to Build a Girl Introductory Post, which is full of wonderful things you probably want to read

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop ( Odyssey Books , where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have. I feel like we could get to this point, Emily INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar