1745 Jacobite Rebellion

[hyarrowen]

I found in the book by Daiches (below) that Bonnie Prince Charlie was related, through his mother, to Queen Marie Leczinska of France. I haven't been able to find out the exact relationship. Can anyone help

Comments

[occasionalhope]

I'm not aware of a close relationship between the Sobieskis (the family of Charles Stuart's mother) and the Leczinskis, but there may be one. Does your book not have a source for this? I'm always suspicious of assertions without a proper citation, especially as Daiches was a literary scholar rather than a historian or an expert in Polish.

[hyarrowen]

No indeed, no citation: good point!. Looks as though I'll have to go with "fellow Pole" or "fellow country-woman" instead.

[bwinter]

I just had a quick look at various tables and nope, they weren't related at least five generations back - the 15th century is where ancestry of spouses of then-middle-grade noble families stop being listed. Maria Leszczynska's ancestry looks 100% Polish, and the only way they could be related would be via Jan Sobieski, but his family came from a different part of the Commonwealth than Leszczynska's - much more eastern. I would lean to someone misinterpreting both of them identifying as 100% Polish - poetic descriptions such as "Sarmatian blood" or "Piast dynasty blood" being taken as proof of being directly related.

[bwinter]

Ah. The most reasonable explanation is that someone didn't do the research on how Polish royalty worked post-Jagiellon - elected kings who tended not to be related by blood to one another, though sometimes the son or brother of the old king ended up the one with the most political support. The ones who weren't outright pinched from various foreign dynasties tend to be all identified as "Piast kings" despite not being related. Think President For Life - it's like someone thinking Clinton's related to the Bushes.

[hyarrowen]

No wonder I couldn't find a connection, then, and thank-you for going through the tables! I couldn't find any that helped - it seemed necessary to have some clue before wading in, and I just had none. I can perhaps assume that a Pole and a half-Pole at the French court might well have a fellow-feeling, without calling each other "cousin" or some such.

[belleweather]

In Gaeilge nouns have an actual linguistic gender, so I'm not aware of conventions where certain things like boats are referred to as "she" or "he" for traditional reasons. In Irish it would sound really funny, because everything already has a gender. (There is a 'neuter' gender, but it's archaic and mostly not used.) Most of the words for boat that I can think of are masculine (most Gaeilge nouns are masculine, in general) so I think it would be 'off' for someone who was raised and lived in Scotland and spoke and thought in Gaelic to use 'she' for a boat. That said, if your character had spent time in England or France, where it's the custom, and was speaking in English, it wouldn't likely break anyone out of the story.

[loganberrybunny]

In Irish it would sound really funny, because everything already has a gender.

Tangential of me, but I suppose it's not really that much odder than the forthcoming HMS Prince Charles being referred to as "she".

[belleweather]

Sort of. Except that Gaeilge declines it's nouns, so it's not just the use of the pronoun, but the entire sentence structure that changes depending on whether a noun is feminine or masculine. So it might not sound 'weird' so much as like you've got lousy grammar and a weak grasp of the language?

[dorsetgirl]

Didn't the Royal Navy decree a few years back that ships would no longer be "she"? Personally, I've always felt that sailing ships sound right as "she" but the rest don't for some reason.