Royalty in History

[mojogirl]

When I heard about the Hapsburg jaw, I bought a copy of Carlos the Bewitched. I love reading about inbred European royalty. My favorite thing, I think it was in that book, was it pointed out that royal portraits are made to flatter the subject and that famous portrait of Charles II on the cover was the best they could do...

[Carolinian]

I have a regular Friday online meet up with a friend in London. She told me the ravens in the Tower of London are so bored because of the lack of tourists they are leaving the Tower to forage. "Legend has it the monarchy and the Tower of London will fall if its six resident ravens leave the fortress." Uh oh...

[Carolina]

I don't think the fall of the monarchy would be a bad thing. Fly, ravens! Fly!

[Mouse]

Are there any good books about the Mughal emperors? I read about Jahanara Begum, daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. Sounds like a fascinating figure.

[Ladybug]

We do not have a thread for Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss of Greiz and I didn't want to make one. This seems like the best place for this story.

German Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss of Greiz was arrested this morning suspected of planning a coup d'état in Germany

Axios story

[seat6]

OMG! I heard all about those arrests and assumed it was the German equivalent of January 6 here. (Or an attempt that was thwarted, presumably because their intelligence agencies shared the information with the police). I had no idea that pretenders to the non-existent throne were involved. Germany got rid of their royals in 1918.

[boxofrocks]

NYT has more info on his background. He is estranged from the rest of the family.

“I am afraid that he is now a conspiracy theorist, a confused old man,” Heinrich XIV of Reuss, who speaks for the House of Reuss, told MDR at the time, adding that Heinrich XIII, 71, had broken all ties to the family more than a decade earlier. (Male members of several branches of the family are traditionally all named Heinrich, and the spokesman is not the son of Heinrich XIII.)

The House of Reuss reigned until 1918 in a principality around Gera, in present-day Thuringia, that was incorporated into the German Empire.

[tiggertoo]

Bizarre!

[Auroranorth]

He's basically a raging Nazi whose Nazi buddies somehow thought they could put him on a throne that no longer exists and that he wouldn't have had any rights to anyway. Prince Georg of Prussia is the current pretender to the throne, and he's not related to this creep.

[hellsbells]

This is all another Qanon conspiracy with Russian ties. Glad they were all arrested and stopped. This whackadoodle wouldn't accomplish anything, but the rising right fascist movements around the world are really concerning.