WreathOfLaurels
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Why are royal women such easy political scapegoats in times of crisis? Whenever there is a revolution, a coup, an economic crisis, a foreign invasion, and monarchies are involved, why do the women always get the blame?
Karina Urbach says of this in Go Betweens for Hitler
and from Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette (the poster girl for this phenomenon)
The above are just two examples. What does anyone else on the forum think?
NB: These targets aren't always female (Prince Albert copped a lot of flak back in the day - not all of it deserved, and it also explains the treatment of the DoE and to a letter extent Prince Henrik). Nor is this confined to monarchies (Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair to name two modern examples along with the "dictators wife" stereotype).
Karina Urbach says of this in Go Betweens for Hitler
...The aristocratic peer group often made wives responsible for the 'bad' decisions their husbands had taken during the war...in the case of Russia the Tsarina was posthumously made responsible for the downfall of the Romanovs while ...Queen Marie of Romania was accused of 'manipulating' her husband Ferdinand into war...[the above] were portrayed in the manner of Lady Macbeth, employing rather dubious methods for the survival of their house. Blaming the wives was a convenient way of exculpating the husbands. As in chess, sacrificing the queen was needed to save the king...[these men] could still be portrayed as following the aristocratic code of honor. This tactic was rather misogynist, but it also reveals [that] queen consorts were perceived as serious players. In many cases this was a correct analysis. They could gain power, even if it was only behind the scenes.
(p 62)
and from Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette (the poster girl for this phenomenon)
Given that there is evidently a great primitive urge to blame one individual when things go wrong, what better scapegoat to discover for a monarchy in crisis than a foreign princess? There she is, a subversive alien, in the bed of the head of state, her blood corrupting the dynasty...one only has to think of Henrietta Maria, French Catholic wife of Charles I in the years leading up to the English Civil War or, going forward to the nineteenth century, of the daughter of Queen Victoria, married to the Crown Prince of Germany[sic], who was pilloried as 'the Englishwoman'. [This allowed] many of the population free to continue to reverence the king himself. [It was observed following the execution of Louis XVI that] many Parisians felt a kind of grief when the king was executed 'such as for the untimely death of a beloved parent'.
(p 548 paperback edition)The above are just two examples. What does anyone else on the forum think?
NB: These targets aren't always female (Prince Albert copped a lot of flak back in the day - not all of it deserved, and it also explains the treatment of the DoE and to a letter extent Prince Henrik). Nor is this confined to monarchies (Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair to name two modern examples along with the "dictators wife" stereotype).