(credit Wikipedia)
Normally, when I don't have anything important to talk about - well - I never have anything important to talk about - I should instead say - when I don't have anything about my radio show to talk about - I look at pictures I've taken on that day over the past few years & share one or two of them, usually with an anecdote. None of the pictures I've taken on September 26 - not counting the ones I took today, which I haven't looked at - were worthy of a story. So I went to Wikipedia to see if anyone famous or interesting was born today. It turns out there were lots - look here - but it intrigued me that the second name on the "births" list - pre-1600 CE - was a woman named Anne Of Bavaria. It's always fascinating to me that we know the actual birthday of anyone that long ago, but Anne's story - Wikipedia calls her a "German queen consort" - seemed to strike some kind of weird chord in me.
She was royalty, a member of the House Of Wittelsbach, a dynastic German line that existed from the 11th till the 19th century. The current inbred British royals are descended from someone from this house. They've had money & lands for a long time. So yeah, on this day in 1329, little Anne was born. Whatever she did for two decades is unknown, although I'm sure she lived quite well.
When she was nineteen, she married Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. He was about thirteen years older than she was, which may have seemed weirder then than now, & she was his second wife. His first wife had died the year before. From what I can gather, the important thing was getting Chuck an heir. He was from Prague, although Wikipedia says he was the first King Of Bohemia to be Holy Roman Emperor, so I'm not sure if I know enough about Prague & Bohemia in the fourteenth century to suss out what connections there were. I do wonder if Anne & Chuck spoke the same language. Wikipedia tells us her Czech name was Anna Falcká.
She was royalty, a member of the House Of Wittelsbach, a dynastic German line that existed from the 11th till the 19th century. The current inbred British royals are descended from someone from this house. They've had money & lands for a long time. So yeah, on this day in 1329, little Anne was born. Whatever she did for two decades is unknown, although I'm sure she lived quite well.
When she was nineteen, she married Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. He was about thirteen years older than she was, which may have seemed weirder then than now, & she was his second wife. His first wife had died the year before. From what I can gather, the important thing was getting Chuck an heir. He was from Prague, although Wikipedia says he was the first King Of Bohemia to be Holy Roman Emperor, so I'm not sure if I know enough about Prague & Bohemia in the fourteenth century to suss out what connections there were. I do wonder if Anne & Chuck spoke the same language. Wikipedia tells us her Czech name was Anna Falcká.
Anne's life from then on must've been both exhilarating & then sad. She was Queen Of Rome & Queen Of Bohemia. She & Charles had a son, in 1350, whom they named Wenceslaus, probably after the song. (Just kidding. The song didn't exist yet. But he was named after the saint who features in the song.) At last, an heir! But Wenceslaus died just a year later. & then, in 1353, at the age of 23, Anna herself died. A trajectory probably no different from the poorer folk of her day, but certainly she lived better than they did. Here are some facts that are mentioned in this article:
A story has it that she was heartbroken & never recovered after her only child’s death, but according to another version of the events her untimely passing was the result of a fall from a horse.
Oh! Also! A weird postscript courtesy the Wikipedia:
Asteroid 100733 Annafalcká, discovered by Czech astronomer Miloš Tichý at the Kleť Observatory in 1998, was named in her memory.
Isn't it fascinating that she featured prominently enough in someone's memory to name a frickin' celestial body after them?
Isn't it fascinating that she featured prominently enough in someone's memory to name a frickin' celestial body after them?
So anyway - happy birthday to her? You didn't live long, you had no children, but there's an asteroid named after you, so - well done?
No comments:
Post a Comment