Latest / Beheaded / Paramours and Poison | Madame Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers

Transcript

Paramours and Poison | Madame Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers · Beheaded

0:04
SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to Beheaded.
0:06
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to season seven, episode three.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: I'm Megan Moore.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: And I'm Elizabeth Black.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: We've got some big news for Elizabeth Black tonight.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: We do.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: Going right into it.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: We're just kicking off with this.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I feel like everyone has really gotten to know you over the past six plus years.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: And we've heard about Robbie and your relationship.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh God.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Don't make it sound like a bat kind of thing.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: We know you.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: No, we're like, we're friends with you.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: We know you.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: We're happy for you.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: We're rooting for you.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've tried to make it very uh, I don't know, very, how should I say this?
0:47
SPEAKER_01: I avoid talking about anything that's too personal in my life.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Like I tell you guys about, you know, our travels and my races and things that we do outside of the podcast, but I don't love to talk about like, oh, my relationship.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: For like this and that.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Like when you and I at the end of last season talked about the dating show, you know, and all of that.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: That's probably the most I've ever talked about, like my dating life.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: And like you guys know about Robbie.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: You've heard of him for seasons.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: He's about he's been mentioned throughout the show.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: But you know, it's not like we talk about like, oh, like how we met and things like that.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: But I will share some exciting news, and that is Robbie proposed last weekend.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'm so excited.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: And if you know me at all, like I am not a person who's like, oh my gosh, like big white wedding, like million kids.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, I probably stopped thinking about marriage and kids when I was like 20.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: It's just never really been a priority.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm a serial, like long-term dater, and that's really like me.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm not pursuing marriage, I'm not pursuing children.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: And when I met Robbie, it was just like, oh, this naturally fits and like our lives are being built together.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think he's made it very clear kind of over the years that marriage was something he was interested in.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: I told him, hey, take as much time as you need, because I'm a no-rush here.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: And he surprised me in Denver last weekend.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: I was actually there for my grandma's 90th birthday party.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: He couldn't make it.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing air quotes now.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Couldn't make it make the birthday party.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I was there with just my family and again doing family things.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: And one thing we always do, I think I've mentioned this on the show before.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: But every time that we go to Denver, like we always do dinner and a show.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: So we get dressed up, we go to downtown Denver, we go to a nice dinner, and we see a musical or a symphony or something holiday adjacent.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: And so this year we were like, let's go downtown and go to this big sushi dinner and go see the grin.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: So that was the plan.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: And we go downtown, and who's there waiting for me at Union Station downtown Denver, but Robbie?
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Yay! And at first I was like, oh my God, like you made it to the trip.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, You didn't think I'd miss your grandma's 90th birthday, did you?
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And then I realized, wait, he's saying serious things to me.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: I see a photographer kind of circling, and I realize what's going on.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my God.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: And I like slow, I had gloves on because it's freezing in Denver.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: And I slowly took my left glove off because I was like, I see this, I see what I understand what's happening here.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, got down on one knee.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: The the funniest part was the ring that he had in his little jewelry box is a loner ring because he couldn't figure out what exactly I wanted.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Because again, I'm not a girl that has like Pinterest boards of jewelry and he couldn't go to Megan and be like, what kind of ring does she like?
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't I didn't even know this was happening.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like this is all I'm not offended at all.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: As she as she sips her drink.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: No, but I I literally I was not expecting it.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: But as he got down, he was like, Oh, this is not the ring.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: This is not the ring.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I'm sure there's a story there.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And he had this whole night planned where like his family from New Jersey was there.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: My family, beyond just who was there for the show, showed up.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: So we had like my family, his family.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: We all went to this big din dinner at a big Italian restaurant downtown.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, he also, like after that, had it lined up to where we went out with our friends that live in Denver.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: So then we did all of that.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Like it was this endless night.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: And then at the end, I was like, Well, I guess I go back home with my family.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: He's like, No, like I have a hotel downtown.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Like he he really thought of everything, and I was shocked how detailed he was.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: So proud of him.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: It's very sweet.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: And again, for someone who is not looking really for marriage, I was like, this feels right and this feels fun.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: And I was very excited.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: And I I texted Megan and she and I were on the phone like immediately the next morning.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: It was it was so cool.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: He did such a good job.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, your girl's engaged, she's betrothed.
4:49
SPEAKER_02: Elizabeth is betrothed.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: Well, what was the dowry like?
4:52
SPEAKER_02: What was that situation?
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Huge dowry.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm just kidding.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Sheeps and a hogs, zero dowry.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hmm, well, my dad paid for the Italian dinner, and that's the dowry.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, I know.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: And it's like if you're on YouTube watching this, currently currently no shimmering, glimmering, but it's coming.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: It's in the works.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: It's in the works in eight weeks.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Because what what we did was uh we talked about it throughout the weekend and he showed me some of the designs he was thinking.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Well, this is what I was gonna get you.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, no, not those.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: Thank goodness he went with the loner ring first.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we had to go to back to the jeweler, took back the loner ring, and kind of design what we wanted, and we did it together, which was really fun.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Highly recommend for anyone who's doing this in the future.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's a big deal.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're gonna be aware of it.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: It's quite an investment, and you're gonna have it for the rest of your life.
5:41
SPEAKER_02: So you want to be happy with it.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: So, in about let's see, how many episodes will that be for us?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Four episodes.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Four episodes?
5:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you get to see the rock then.
5:52
SPEAKER_02: But very, very exciting.
5:54
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be like Taylor Swift on all the night late night shows and all the interviews she's been doing, and it literally will like catch the camera and blind everybody.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: And then I thought of you.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: I definitely thought of Megan because I've seen a bunch of posts where girls are like, I can't believe I'm engaged at the same time as Taylor Swift.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm not a huge Swifty, but Megan is, so I was like, I wonder if she'd appreciate that.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: I do, I do.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: As long as you don't have your wedding in Rhode Island on June 13th, 2026, we should be good.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: Well, we don't know yet.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: We gotta figure out what we're gonna do.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: It might be a little bit hard to coordinate if I'm at her wedding and then I have to go to your wedding.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: You're so right.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna do both in the same Saturday?
6:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the cheers, congratulations, thank you.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: We'll do a little cheers.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: Um, very, very excited for you.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: And I and I also learned recently evidently you're supposed to say congratulations to the groom and best wishes for the bride to be because you're not supposed to make it sound like congratulations, you finally like did what you needed to do, or like you're not I always wondered why that was.
6:56
SPEAKER_02: It's because, yeah, it's it's because it's like congratulations sounds like it's like something that you have to check off.
7:03
SPEAKER_02: That is a requirement of womanhood of you created this milestone.
7:08
SPEAKER_02: It's more of a congratulations for the man because he mustered up the courage and all of that to do it.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Like he acted on it.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: And for you, it's just like it's good luck.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Good luck in the future with this man who just planned all this.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: Hope it works out.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: I was just doing uh yeah, I didn't realize that's like uh old school etiquette.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a lot of old school etiquette things, and obviously it's 2025.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: A lot of these things are outdated for now, almost 2026.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to say, you know.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's that's up to each individual person about like, you know, what they want to do that holds up tradition and what they want to do that brands you different going forward.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have heard that one about the best wishes and congratulations.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: You should correct everybody who tells you congratulations.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: Should I just be like a stickler on what it is?
7:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just just be that person.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm 37 years old, never wanted to be married, and all of a sudden I'm like, actually, this is how it's supposed to go.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: You young is let me tell you the real rules of this.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm I'm okay to be that person.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: No, I I'm not.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm totally not a Braidzilla.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: I told Robbie.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: That's what they all say at the beginning.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: What they all say at the beginning.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: I know.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, and like I we've talked about this too, but like Megan got married in Vegas when you were younger.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I was like 23, but yeah.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: So I'm I've told Robbie, I'm like, I'm okay to do a Vegas thing if you I mean, we're in Phoenix, if you want to just like hightail it to Vegas for a weekend.
8:26
SPEAKER_02: I am so okay with that.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to freak anyone out who might be listening to this.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: Oh but you're not against the Taco Bell Chapel idea.
8:35
SPEAKER_02: I want the Taco Bell Chapel.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: I know, and that's why people should be afraid.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: He told me no.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: He told me no.
8:44
unknown: How dare he?
8:45
SPEAKER_01: Robbie, if you're listening to this, first thing is you always listen to your woman.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: I literally, like, because I had mentioned that ever since we met.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I was like, Yeah, you know, if I don't do a big wedding, I think I just want the Taco Bell Cantina wedding chapel in Vegas.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: And I think he thought that was like, ha ha, you're funny.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: Now that it's happening, I'm like, so when are we gonna book the cantina?
9:04
SPEAKER_01: So we need advanced reservations.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, wait, no, we're not gonna do that.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: I was like, but we can, and it's cute and it's funny.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, it's Taco Bell.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna do that.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: But it's funny.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so if you're like so confused, you're like, in Las Vegas, there's a huge Taco Bell.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: It's called the Taco Bell Cantina, and there's a wedding venue.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: And it's funny because it's on the menu, so you can order your tacos and your crunch, your crunch wrap supreme or cheesy gordita crunch, and a wedding can just get added onto your bill.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: As you're at the register, and then they take you in the back and they marry you.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: The back.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: It's like cute.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: Is it upstairs?
9:44
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm sorry.
9:44
SPEAKER_02: They take you upstairs where the lettuce is getting chopped.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: It's cute.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: And like it's obviously very kitschy and dorky, and like it's not supposed to be super serious, but they literally give you like a bouquet of hot sauce packets.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: That is your fantasy.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: I wish Robbie was down for that.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
10:02
SPEAKER_02: We have lots of time to talk about it.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: We've got to share the news.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: So yes.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: Don't expect a quick wedding.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: This is probably gonna be a long engagement, so I'm sure this will come up again.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Everyone's like, oh, where's my invite?
10:12
SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, again, be bridezilla and talk about it every episode, but I thought everyone should know.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: Executionados should know.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm betrothed and I'm excited.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm an older bride, but I'm very not an older bride.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: Compared to like, you know, because I feel like you're generally a young bride.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of an old bride, and that's okay.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: I also think trends have changed a lot.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Back in your day.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Back in my day.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: Megan's younger than me.
10:38
SPEAKER_02: So yes.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: No, I I mean like throughout decades, it's changed it's progressively, I think, more common to get married in your 30s.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: Right.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: At least in regional areas.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: It depends on where you live.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: It depends on region for sure.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: I would say like different like, well, maybe not, but I'm thinking like LA, New York, like bigger cities, they tend to wait a little bit longer.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: I feel like obviously smaller cities, it's a little younger.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I was looking at maps of Europe recently when it came to engagement ages.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think Europe generally gets married far later than the US.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: Like late 30s is standard.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: So I'm very interested.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't think it's that absurd.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: No.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: And um, I was gonna say something else.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Now I forget what I was gonna say.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what you were gonna say.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, I mean it just it matters, it matters on the two people, right?
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like no one should have a checklist.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're young and out there and you're like, oh, I can't wait to get married by the time I'm 25.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Like, no, relax.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Don't set a date.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: Don't set a timeline.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: It depends on who you are, who your person is.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: You might go through a lot of people, might kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, type of thing.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: So keep an open heart, open mind, and don't have a timeline.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Just relax.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, people can sense desperation.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Just relax.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
11:56
SPEAKER_02: And once again, we are a dating show.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: It also talks about beheadings.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not a dating show, beheading show, just I'm going off the rails.
12:05
SPEAKER_02: Well, we had to say something because you almost weren't going to say anything.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, let's let's like flash forward a little bit.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: Let's think about this.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:14
SPEAKER_02: Eventually, you're going to want to be like, I'm getting married tomorrow.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: Because we're going to be podcasting the night before your wedding, probably.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: Probably.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to be like, isn't gonna it's gonna be more awkward the longer you wait to say something.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: Until eventually one day you're just married and they're gonna be like, oh, my husband Robbie.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just gonna be like, Whoa.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: When did that happen?
12:31
SPEAKER_02: At Taco Bell, Vegas, New Year's Eve, be there.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Over romantic cheesy Gordita Crunches.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, well, congratulations.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: Um I I find it funny that we're talking about marriage right now because I feel like our story of the night is kind of the antithesis of a good marriage.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Meant to be.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Who knows?
12:54
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I like that it's a French story.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: I like that it's about a woman, but at the end of the day, it is about being very devious and kind of a bad wife and daughter.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: Kind of just a bad person.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: Bad person in general.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: Um, I would like to preface because we have a French episode.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: I got this lovely shirt that says Pardon my French.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: Love it.
13:14
SPEAKER_02: If you're on YouTube, you can laugh at it and look at it.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: If I have to describe it, it's from Tarjay.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: It just stood out.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: I was I was there today and I knew we were gonna be doing this episode, obviously, tonight, and it just popped out in the clearance section at me.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: I said, That is perfect because we are gonna mess up a lot of words tonight.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get that same shirt.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: I really should be matching.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, you you know French.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't, so Okay, Duolingo French for a few years doesn't qualify me as a French speaker, but I did try and walk Megan through a lot of these pronunciations tonight.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do our very best because we're sick of being idiots for you guys and stumbling through our words.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna really, really try.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: We're growing and see how it goes.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: We're learning.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: So pardon my French in advance.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: Um, let's can you introduce her because I don't know how to say her name, please.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: I sensed you avoiding saying her name.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay, our Madame of the evening, our mistress of the evening is Madame de Bronville.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: Say it, Megan.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: And say it together.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Bronvier.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Do you roll your R a little like Brun?
14:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you really have to.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Brun.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: I just tend to.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: I've been told I sound like a Spanish speaker speaking French.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: So maybe don't take my pronunciation super serious.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: But Bronville is how we're gonna say the name.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: Brunvier.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: It's okay if you roll your R a little because I think it comes out naturally.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: It's just my my natural French speaking skills coming out.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this actually connects to another episode that Megan and I did back in, oh gosh, I think it was season four, I think episode seven.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: I wrote it down.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: It's uh season four, episode seven.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: We had did an episode on someone named the nickname was Novocine, and it was about the affair of the poisons, or at least kind of related to that.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know what the affair of the poisons is, it's okay.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, essentially what this was was a very scandalous time in French history.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: It took place between 1677 and 1682, and it was full of murder, poison, black magic, all the good stuff.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: And this was during the reign of Louis XIV.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: So Louis XVI is the famous Louis who was executed with Marie Antoinette.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: So his grandfather, I believe, might have been great-grandfather because I think they skipped a generation.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: So don't don't uh check the generation skipped was his father.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think his father was.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: I have to double check that because I've looked this up before, and what I thought was true was not.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: So I don't I don't want to I don't want to speculate.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: Don't hold us to that.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but let us know.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: But um, but in terms of the succession of Louis, this is King Louis XIV.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: He's the one that made Versailles kind of what it is.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: He was known as the Sun King.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: He made it very opulent and beautiful at Versailles.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: So he was kind of the start of that chain of reactions of like, okay, now Versailles getting out of hand in terms of how luxurious it is.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: But our Lady of the Evening, she's the one that really started this whole affair of the poisons.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, because of her, this like her story caused the investigation that led to it.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, so she's the catalyst for all of these things that happen in the future.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: So just know that backstory as we get started.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we'll go ahead and jump into her early life.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: So Marie was born Marie-Madeline Marguerite D'Abri, and she was born into French aristocracy in 1630.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: She was the eldest daughter of her family.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: Her father was a civil servant, his name was Antoine Drew D'Abre, and his wife was Marie Olier.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, fun fact about Marie Olier, her mother, she was actually the sister of someone named Jean-Jacques Ollier, and he helped establish the settlement of New Marie, or excuse me, Ville Marie in New France, which later became Montreal.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: So very prominent family.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: If if someone in your family is going over to the New World and establishing cities, you're probably a prominent family.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And uh tons of tons of wealth flowed through this family.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: But French custom doesn't allow anything to go to women when parents die.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: So women don't really say, like, oh, I'm in bore I'm born into this aristocratic family, I'm set, like I'm good for my wealth.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: They still have to marry for advantage.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: So she knows that um Marie, we're gonna call her Marie, I think, for ease of this episode.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: So we don't say her full name.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, but Marie knows that very early.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: So even though she's the eldest, she's not really gonna give be given anything except for her dowry when she marries.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, the good thing though is because she has such a high dowry.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, then the person who is marrying suiting her, the man who gets her is congratulations, who has the biggest bid.
18:04
SPEAKER_02: But hopefully they're of equal wealth.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: But it yeah, to your point though, it's not guaranteed.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, so at age 21, this is now 1651, she marries, and her husband's name is Antoine Goblion de Bronviers.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: That's why it took early life.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: That's why I gave this part to Elizabeth.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: And he's already a baron, but then he becomes uh Marguesse de Bronviers, and he has uh an estate that's worth about 800,000 lire.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: And Marie's dowry is worth about 200,000 lire.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: So together, like there, they have some cash.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: They have a lot of family wealth.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: Again, she's not owed anything from when her parents passed, but she has this big dowry and now they have this big estate.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: And if you're curious where Anton got his uh his family wealth, which is her new husband, his family actually comes from a long line of tapestry workshops and warehouses.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: That's so interesting.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Which is kind of cute.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: I feel like you rarely hear about how people got their wealth in this time.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: It's usually just okay, estates and generational wealth.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: So when you hear that they actually did something, you're like, oh, that's cute.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: You did tapestries, nice.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: It's cute.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: I like it.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, so so her husband's father was also very gracious.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Antoine's father gave the couple this new house, beautiful home, in an aristocratic district of Paris called Marais.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: So everything's going well for them.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, they're they're a young couple, tons of money flowing in, but that still really wasn't enough for Marie.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: They had a few children, two girls and one boy.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: But she had seven children total.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Meaning she only had three children with her husband and four others mysteriously.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: The math isn't mathing.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: The math is not mathing.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: So, like I said, not a good story about uh marriage and fidelity and long-term commitment.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Robbie.
20:03
SPEAKER_02: There was one version that we were watching where it said that they were just in an open relationship where it was very much established between each of them that they were okay with this.
20:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:15
SPEAKER_02: But then other versions made it seem more like it was more devious of her of having affairs outside of the marriage without his approval.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, who knows?
20:26
SPEAKER_02: They are French, so they are French.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, the spotlights on her because she's the woman having children.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Who knows if her husband didn't father other children outside of the marriage?
20:36
SPEAKER_01: We never talk about that.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: I know.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: Not to speculate.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that I know, right?
20:40
SPEAKER_02: You have to be fair and see both sides of it.
20:42
SPEAKER_02: And we just don't have his story and we don't know what was happening, and take that for what it is.
20:47
SPEAKER_02: But it's so true.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: To be a to be a woman and to have four out of wedlocked children, that is it's just that's a lot.
20:56
SPEAKER_02: That's hard.
20:57
SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of time.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: That's like a lot of like just a lot of babies.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like you're not just a man going out on the town and maybe you have children out there you don't know about.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to bear the child, like, you know, for for nine months, like then figure out how the child fits into your family and what story you're gonna tell people of oh now there's a child here.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, at least she was married so that they could try to pass it off as it was they're just his.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: I wonder how different they all looked.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: That'd be funny.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: See a picture, family photo.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, anyway, so uh so she did have a few different affairs, but her biggest and most well-known affair was with somebody who was a cavalry officer.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: He was actually an officer with the husband.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: I think they were kind of friends.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I didn't realize that they knew each other.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: I believe that's how she met him, was through her husband.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: So, like husband's buddy.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: Sneaky.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, but his name was Godin de San Croix.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's funny because we kept saying Croix, like Le Croix.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's spelled like Saint.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: It's Croix, C R O I X.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: It's quoi.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: It's San Qua.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: Like French quoi is like cross.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: And you also use it in ballet.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing a motion here that you can't see unless you're looking at the YouTube, but it's quoi.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Quoi.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: So she was around 29 when this tryst started with Saint Croix.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: So this is now the year 1659.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: And she not only is having this big kind of public affair, which was a faux pas.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're going to have affairs, keep them quiet.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: And she was also slowly separating her finances from her husband.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Huge faux pas in France for women at this time.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: Take this as a lesson as you're setting this up, Elizabeth.
22:43
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: Do not have separate finances.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh, please.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: My goodness.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: My goodness.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Like audacity.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm 37 years old.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: My finances have always been separate.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: But I get it.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: In this time, it's very faux pas for a woman to be like, how can I slowly separate myself from my husband and separate our finances?
23:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, we make jokes, but do you realize that it was?
23:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to actually ask you a question.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to do it how like how Professor Susanna Lipscomb turned it on us.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: She goes, you know, no, I'm going to ask you, what year do you think in America were women allowed to get a mortgage on their own without their husband or their father's approval?
23:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't know the exact year, but I know because of funny enough, because of Barbie's, that it was either late 60s, early 70s.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: I want to say 73 or 74, but it was, yeah, early 70s.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: And that was a big part of like why Barbie was so popular as a children's toy, because Barbie had her own house and her own money, like it says in the movie.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: And Barbie's Dream House.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: She literally had her own home before women could legally own their own homes.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: So her father must have signed off on it because that was the only way that a woman could get her own house and her own name and her own mortgage.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:07
SPEAKER_02: I just like, that's don't give me a I'm not gonna get started on it tonight.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: I can't get on a feminist, I can't get on my feminist pedestal right now.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we won't get on our feminist soapbox.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: Or not soapboxes, but it is not a pedestal.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: That's all of it.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: Um but, anyways, yeah, that just made me think of it.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: So sorry to distract.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: No, that's a very important fact, though.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I feel like we have a little bit of a feminist-driven episode, and I like it.
24:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, let's do it.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, so so now that she's having this very public affair, her father kind of, again, talking about controlling fathers, he kind of comes to rein her in a bit.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: So in 1663, this is probably now four years after the affair is pretty public.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: He actually, because he's very powerful, high-up man in civil service, um, he calls for Saint Croix's arrest.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: So he has him thrown into the Bastille, if you've it's a you know, old prison castle, which we didn't know until we researched this episode.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Megan was like, does the bestile still exist?
25:10
SPEAKER_01: Like when we go to London, we go to see the Tower of London.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: It's not embarrassing.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: I've been to Paris a few times, and I was like, maybe I just has never have never seen it.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: Or if there's like remnants of it.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Right.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: But it was it was destroyed.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it's now a new square where they acknowledge that it was the Bastille.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, I haven't seen that personally, so I don't know what it looks like.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: Listeners, please tell us.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it used to be similar to like Tower of London, this big castle fortress prison.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: So uh LaCroix was thrown into the Bastille for a couple months, not crazy long time.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: I think just shy of two months.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Did you just call him LaCroix?
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Dang it, did I?
25:49
SPEAKER_02: I was trying.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: I'm also drinking a LaCroix, which makes it even better.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: The Lemoncello one.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: So La Croix, whatever, man.
25:57
SPEAKER_02: Saint Saint Saint Croix.
25:59
SPEAKER_02: Saint Croix.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: Saint Croix.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: Because he's, yeah, Saint Dash Croix.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: I kind of want to call him LaCroix now, though.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: Don't do it, Megan.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: I know we were doing so well.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: Okay, sorry to interrupt.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: Keep going.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: You're doing great.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: Actually, you're doing great, honey.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: Actually, Megan, I want to hand it to you in in terms of what did he learn in prison?
26:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh, what did he do when he was doing it?
26:18
SPEAKER_02: He was only there for a little bit under two months.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: But supposedly, he was in prison with an Italian man named Exili, E-X-I-L-I.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, and this Italian man was an expert in poisons.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: He wasn't there for charges, he wasn't there on like any criminal charges to do with poison.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: But oddly enough, the only reason he was there is because he was in servitude to the Queen of Sweden.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: And at the time, France and King Louis the 14th didn't like Sweden and he was suspicious of this man.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there's much more to the story, but um, long story short though, he knew his poisons and supposedly LaCroix, just kidding.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Saint Croix uh learned a lot about poison practice by sharing a cellar was in close proximity to Exili in his, you know, call it like six weeks in prison.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad he learned something.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Right?
27:21
SPEAKER_02: He kept productive.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's also perhaps maybe that was a little bit more fantasized.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: Another very realistic option was there was a man named Christopher Glasser, who was a chemist that he also was in cahoots with.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: So either way, he was gaining knowledge on poison, on alchemy, on chemistry, on what it could do to a person.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: And that kind of became his little pastime while he was in prison, evidently.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, everyone has has to keep busy and keep their mind sharp and focused and pretty productive.
27:57
SPEAKER_02: He had lots of questions, evidently, for Axelion.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: Supposedly, like, let's just say there is someone you want to take out, you know?
28:04
SPEAKER_02: And hypothetically.
28:05
SPEAKER_02: Hypothetically speaking, right?
28:08
SPEAKER_02: If the woman who you have been in a very committed relationship with for like four years now, and her father gets you imprisoned.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: So, hmm.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's lots of time to think.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Starting to connect the dots a bit, right?
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, so once Lacroix is released from prison, immediately he starts an alchemy business.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: So now he has a legal license to own all these different like pieces of equipment, which, yes, they're for alchemy, quote unquote alchemy, but they're also perfect for brewing poisons and crafting poisons.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And with his new knowledge of chemistry and alchemy and poisoning, he starts to pass all of his knowledge off to Marie as well.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: And Marie's a very smart girl.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: She's understanding this.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: We should talk about that for just a moment here.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna interject about her her upbringing.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: And even though, as a noblewoman, she would have been educated in other languages and you know, maybe perhaps a little bit more than just the how to play the lute and dance and whatnot.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, no, Mar Maria, Marie, Maria, Marie was very smart.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: She specifically was very smart in um in chemistry.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: She could read Latin, which meant that she could read like the ingredients of pharmaceuticals.
29:30
SPEAKER_02: Nice.
29:30
SPEAKER_02: And she could uh read medical journals, and she was really interested in it, which was unheard of, even for a noble woman, even for someone in an elite status of hers.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: That was just not something woman, a woman would do.
29:47
SPEAKER_02: She could sit and look pretty and dance and do needlepoint and sing, but not reading medical journals by any means in the 1600s.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of cool.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: And and at the time then, so once Saint Croix quo, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: Say qua qua.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: Once Saint Croix got out of prison, they kind of ended their relationship, but they were still in very close communication.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: I like to believe, I think that they really did have a deep connection and they were probably just lifelong friends, despite all that's happened between them.
30:21
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, but a lot of a lot of um passing of knowledge was happening.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: And we already know that Marie is not excited about the fact that she's the eldest and gets nothing.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, so she has no inheritance, and LaCroix conveniently also has a little bit of depth.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: He did it again.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: Damn it.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: No, I said Le Croix.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: Saint Croix.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I keep oh, I keep calling him La Croix.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: I see what you're saying.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, LaCroix, La Croix, Saint Croix.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: You got in my head, Meg.
30:51
SPEAKER_02: I know, I'm so sorry.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I know.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: We really actually practice these games.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: You know, just say it.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna say anything.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna interrupt.
30:58
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna correct you.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: It's whatever.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Call him whatever you want.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: La, you get it.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Saint Croix.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, so he was also conveniently in debt.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: So both of them needed money, and Marie specifically needed revenge.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: She was upset with her father for throwing Saint Croix into prison in the first place.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: So she starts getting up to some sneaky things on her own.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: She starts actually testing poisons on local hospital patients.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: This is alleged, I will say.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not confirmed, but it was very common for noble women to visit hospitals because to it was kind of one of those things of, hey, here I am, noble woman, bestowing my time and my money and my energy.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Acts of charity.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, doing these acts of charity at these local hospitals.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: And because she's in a hospital, a lot of these folks are gonna die anyway.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: So if they do die, no one's gonna suspect.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just kind of like I think we start to see a lot of her character in these types of actions.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: This hospital, um, we have the name of it.
32:01
SPEAKER_02: It was um du.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: Take it away, Megan.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: D-I-E-U.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: No, that's the name of the hospital.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: No?
32:10
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: Um I didn't write it down.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: It was it was known to be very disorganized in the first place.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: It was actually very close to Notre D Notre Dame and Notre Dame.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: Notre Dame.
32:22
SPEAKER_02: And pardon my French.
32:23
SPEAKER_02: I was very blatant about it on my shirt as I entered into this conversation.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: But um they there was a saying that they were more interested in saving souls than lives because maybe their medical practices wasn't quite the best.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: So they were mostly there.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: And especially being, for instance, was we're still very much Catholic at this time.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: I could envision it was mostly um nuns, probably.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: Less rights type of thing, um, helping them pass along and get to the other side versus having the actual medical means of actually saving people.
32:59
SPEAKER_02: It was more of a nice place to go and lay your head down forever.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, you thought you were in a hospital?
33:05
SPEAKER_01: This is a fancy cathedral, actually less fancy cathedral.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not like the big one next to us.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: Right.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: So it was pretty convenient for her to be able to come in and out as she pleased, uh, have the appearance that she was doing good for the world and was being a charitable woman who just cared about the livelihood of others, of the sick and the needy, and then was testing what the results were of how, like, okay, if I kind of make this concoction and how much do I need?
33:34
SPEAKER_02: How long did it take?
33:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure she's just taking notes on everything.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: And I could imagine her coming in and being like, oh, how did um, how did how's that one person, how are they feeling today?
33:46
SPEAKER_02: And I could imagine the nurse being like, oh, they took like a bad turn for the worse.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: It's like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
33:51
SPEAKER_02: And then when did these symptoms begin?
33:54
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: It's and then yeah, she was putting an entire plan together.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: She's smart.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: It was deceiving.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: Deceiving, but smart.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: Definitely deceiving, definitely smart.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: And again, this next part is also alleged, but it was said too that she experimented a bit on her servants.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: Oof.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: That I have a problem with because they're not dying.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: No, they're not, they're not sick.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: No.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: Which I think, kind of again, going back to her character, I feel like she had no respect for anybody below her class.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: Possibly.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: This is my assumption.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: This is just me talking.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Our perspective is, yeah, she was a little bit of an elitist.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, even having all this money that she had through her dowry, through the estate from her husband still wasn't enough.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: She wanted her own money, her own, I guess, place in society, and I think she was willing to do whatever it took to get there.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: So this I think reflects kind of the ruthlessness that she had and the little care she had for anyone below her, because in her mind, she just deserved everything and she would get it.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: So now we come to the year 1666, and she starts, and this is proven, she starts slowly poisoning her father.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, he like she, you know, she they have a good relationship.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: He was a very loving, doting father, but again, no inheritance for her.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: So in September of that same year, September 10th, 1666, he just quote unquote, I say that a lot this episode because very mysterious circumstances, dies of natural causes.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: And he had gout, so a lot of the doctors were like, oh, there's no need no need to even do an autopsy because he died of natural causes and it's probably exacerbated by gout.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: So she gets off pretty scotch-free from that.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't really have a whole lot of a trail, but it was confirmed, and we'll talk about this later, why we know for sure, that she was slowly poisoning him and kind of ramping up poison levels over time to see when he would finally kick the bucket.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I mean it was said that maybe she wasn't intending to kill him, maybe she was just trying to make him incapacitated so that she could figure out a way to still get her money and keep him alive.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: Either way, she kills him.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Yikes.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: Not only does she kill him, but in her favor, she does get some money.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: Problem is that she burns through it real fast and it wasn't enough for her.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: Kind of kind of greedy.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: A little greedy.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: A little greedy.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: She couldn't even do anything with it when she had it.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: She just burned it.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, of course, the natural course of things is well, she's got two other brothers.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: She's got more siblings who inherited a bunch of money.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: So she has two brothers who are at this time living together, and she's not close to them.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: She doesn't have a relationship like she did with her father, where she could just go over to their homes and call on them and slowly slip things into the kitchens and into their food.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: So she has to figure out a different way to do this.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: So, what she does was she hires a man.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: I believe his name is Jean Hamelin, but they call him La Chausse.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why that's his nickname, um, but that's his nickname, and he works as a footman for both of the brothers.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: So he's now in this estate, day-to-day working for them, and she's instructing him of what to do.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: It's like a movie.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: Literally, it's so there should be a movie on this.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: I'm surprised there's not.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: Maybe there no, actually, I don't think there is.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: Not specifically on this.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe, you know, in some sort of show, there is a reference.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it doesn't take long for both brothers to die.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: So the dad dies in 1666.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Both brothers are dead by 1670.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: At first, they were a little bit suspicious.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: One of the brothers was noticing an odd metallic taste in some of his food.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: So I'm sure at that point he would report back to Marie Madeleine and she would have to kind of make some adjustments to her concoctions and her poisons.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but what really did it was at an Easter feast, the pie, it was the pie, was full of poison.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh, couldn't have been that much though.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: And she was very strategic about it not being incredibly obvious because the pie was served for Easter.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: Of course, we don't know exactly what day Easter was and what what year is this now?
38:20
SPEAKER_02: We're in 1670.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it's about four years after her father passed, right?
38:25
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't until June 17th, 1670, the first brother died.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: And then the other brother died in September of 1670, but it was just close enough to make it very suspicious.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: So now all eyes on them because these are two healthy young men, right?
38:43
SPEAKER_02: Really no obvious reasons why they would just become so quite literally deathly ill and end up dying.
38:51
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so they do have autopsies on them.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: They noticed that the there was some suspicious coloration in their intestine, but they couldn't, they they they still talked it up to natural causes.
39:05
SPEAKER_02: And that was a very intentional thing that Maria Madeline was working on was making sure that it was undetectable reasons of poison.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: That in whatever it was, you know, you don't have the recipe.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: But it was it was supposed to be undetectable.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: So it it ended up, yeah, everyone kind of fell for it.
39:25
SPEAKER_02: Um, the youngest brother, he completely believed that it was all natural causes, had no idea that the footman, La Chasseau.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh close, yeah.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: La Chaseau had it.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: I know.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh now I'm questioning my pronunciation.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: La Chaussey.
39:40
SPEAKER_02: La Chaussey.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: He even gave him a little bit of money after they died.
39:43
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh man, you've been so good in service to us.
39:46
SPEAKER_02: Like, really appreciate you.
39:47
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, you're out of a job because everyone died in this house, but they really liked you.
39:51
SPEAKER_02: And so obviously he they they had no idea that it was him doing it all along through Marie Madeline.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very, very devious plot.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, but everything starts to come to a screeching halt once uh Saint Croix suddenly dies, too.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Naturally.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: Naturally, supposedly.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: Supposedly.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we have no record we don't know.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: No record that he was poisoned.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: But he's still fairly young, and this is still, you know, whatever.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to speculate.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: But no other historians speculate that it was because of her.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: They just said suddenly in 1672, two years after the brothers die, Lequid dies.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: It could have been a poison accident, they thought.
40:35
SPEAKER_02: Potentially.
40:36
SPEAKER_02: But he was doing a lot of it in his laboratory.
40:38
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, maybe he drank the wrong cup.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: Right.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: Or they don't think it was, yeah, they don't think it was her, though.
40:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: Like the fumes here in a laboratory.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: You're touching things, you're touching your face, things blow up, like you're inhaling things.
40:51
SPEAKER_01: Who knows, right?
40:52
SPEAKER_01: It's not that crazy that he died uh of working in his laboratory.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: So the same footman who was working under Marie Madeleine and kind of everybody and very involved at this point, he he goes to the officer, like a uh I have a word for the commissary.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: And he says, Hey, my my previous employer still owe me some money.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, I I heard that you're dealing with the case of Saint Qua Sinqua.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: I hear that you're dealing with his death and his case.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: Um, can you go and check?
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Because I I he owes me some money.
41:27
SPEAKER_02: He goes, Yeah, I know exactly where it is.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: It and he into a T describes his laboratory laboratory.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: And that is the first kind of the red flag because he's like, Why do you know his laboratory so well?
41:38
SPEAKER_02: Why are you in there in an alchemist?
41:40
SPEAKER_02: Why why are you coming in and out of there so frequently?
41:42
SPEAKER_02: Right.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: To the point where La Lachae.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: Lacha said, Neither sachet.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a good way to remind.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm not French, I'm sorry.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: La sachet.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: Um, he he freaks out, like, oh shoot, I think I said too much.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: And he flees.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: Right.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: Conveniently enough, this same officer, he he has been in the laboratory.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: He has been kind of dealing with um the final wrappings of someone passing and figuring out his affairs.
42:11
SPEAKER_02: And he finds a giant chest, a box in his laboratory, right?
42:16
SPEAKER_02: And it's full of letters and very damning evidence that he was in cahoots with Marie Madeleine.
42:24
SPEAKER_02: And in these letters, not enough to be a full outright confession.
42:28
SPEAKER_02: It was not enough to say very verbatim what they were doing.
42:32
SPEAKER_03: Right.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: But there was a lot of talk of, oh, I tried this and this poison.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: And can you, you know, maybe let's like notch it down just a little bit on the frog's breath or whatever it is was in there on the nightshade.
42:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, the nightshade.
42:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, so their correspondence, odd that he saved it.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: That just seems like that would be very well, in that same box were tiny vials of poison as well.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's kind of obvious.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: So it was like it's a smoking gun of like, here's poison, and here's letters talking about the poison with Marie.
43:04
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and even so there's the letters of the correspondence between them, the actual poison itself.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: There's also a written promise in there that was drafted about the time when the father, so right now we're in 1672.
43:21
SPEAKER_02: Right.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: Six years before in 1666.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: Great year to start poisoning people.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Nice six, six, six.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, spooky.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Um around that time when he first started getting ill, there was a promise that Saint Croix was going to be owed a sum of money.
43:42
SPEAKER_02: Doesn't say why, doesn't say what the purpose is, but it all starts lining up.
43:48
SPEAKER_02: And then he starts thinking, okay, and that footman is clearly a part of this because he is he knows the the laboratory and he's been in and out of it, and something fishy is going on.
43:59
SPEAKER_02: And so it's Funny because Marie Madeleine all these years thought that she got away with it.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:05
SPEAKER_02: It's been six years since her father's death.
44:07
SPEAKER_02: It's now been two years since both of her brothers died, all naturally.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: And now all of a sudden they start to think it was foul play.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: And they start to think, I think we need to do a full-on investigation and find out what happened here.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: And once Marie learns about the investigation, she flees.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: They all, yeah, they both, the footman and her, they're out.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: They scatter like cockroaches.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: So I believe Marie goes to first England and then maybe Belgium or the Netherlands.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: So she's thinking maybe, you know, she um she won.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, I did what I needed to do.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: I got some money, and now I fled.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Like everything's kind of tidied into a nice ending.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: And La Chausseur, where did he go?
44:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh he didn't get very far.
44:52
SPEAKER_02: We don't know where he went.
44:53
SPEAKER_02: He did get caught, he got arrested.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: He was interrogated.
44:58
SPEAKER_02: He didn't last very long.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: The jig is up.
45:01
SPEAKER_02: Jig is up.
45:02
SPEAKER_02: He told them everything.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: Everything.
45:06
SPEAKER_02: Chausse! Chause! Um, they interrogated him.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: He confessed.
45:13
SPEAKER_02: He was arrested back in September of 1672.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: They find him guilty.
45:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:19
SPEAKER_02: They torture him after he's already confessed and he's found guilty.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna get on this a little bit more as well, but the torture is part of the sentence, which is unusual.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: It is.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Like you never really hear about that unless it's a big public spectacle.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: But even then, it's more like this is a drawn and quartering, it's all part of one thing.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: It's weird to specify we're gonna torture you first and then execute you.
45:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not uh there's really no purpose of it just to be cruel.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: We've we've covered a lot of executions, and usually it's just like here's a sentence, it's execution.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: Again, the only time it's really drawn out is when it's like a drawn and quartering or something like that.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: Or like Francois Damien's, where it was like a four-hour execution and the torturing was all a part of the spectacle.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's also again, I I I weirdly in my brain don't consider it torture because it's part of the execution.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna die because of it.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: That's you know, yeah, that is just a very slow way to do it.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but these were very separate, like you are going to be tortured and then you're going to be executed.
46:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, he was executed by being broken on the wheel, and this was the 24th of March, 1673.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: So he was in prison for good six months.
46:32
SPEAKER_02: Right.
46:32
SPEAKER_02: And um, I know we've mentioned what it means to be broken on the wheel, but um, for anyone who might be new to the gruesome details details of execution, um, breaking of the wheel is when they would there is a giant wooden wheel on a scaffold.
46:49
SPEAKER_02: Like a wagon wheel.
46:51
SPEAKER_02: Rock me.
46:55
SPEAKER_02: They would tie the prisoner up to it and they would break his limbs until he died and do terrible things and poke him with things.
47:05
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes the executioners, if they felt any type of mercy for the prisoner, they might kill him first and then break and mangle afterwards for the show that disgustingly the whole everybody came to see.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: Like they would wrap limbs around the spokes of the wheel.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: Like it got very contorted and graphic, very, very, very gruesome.
47:27
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it was if they were conscious through the whole thing, yeah, they were cracking bones.
47:35
SPEAKER_02: All of the bones.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they would just sit there and bop, bop, bop, like each of your limbs, each of your fingers, whatever.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: It makes me cringe.
47:43
SPEAKER_02: That makes me, I just like curled for a second.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: The wheel is tough.
47:46
SPEAKER_01: The wheels a bad one.
47:47
SPEAKER_01: We've seen some crazy wheel ones.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Remember the one with the whole family that were on the wheels and they were at different stations?
47:52
SPEAKER_01: The Tavora affair.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Tavera Tavera.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Tavera.
47:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:57
SPEAKER_02: Check that episode out, guys.
47:58
SPEAKER_02: Really, yeah.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: If you want to hear about breaking of the wheel, that's a good one.
48:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh so he he's executed on the same day that he's executed.
48:08
SPEAKER_02: So again, Marie Madeline is she's off.
48:11
SPEAKER_02: She's she went to England, she's in other countries.
48:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
48:14
SPEAKER_02: Actually, it's her sister, Marie Tere, who is funding her flea.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: She's giving her money, which so she's still A, she has a sister who like I got like the sister, literally stood by while her own sister killed her father and her two brothers.
48:30
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, yo, do you need money to help you out?
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Go flee.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: That's a good sister.
48:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, the same day, though, that the footman is executed, they actually condemn Marie Madeleine through um the term is through absentia, which means you basically get condemned at a trial when you're not physically present or there or even could be aware of what's happening.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
48:54
SPEAKER_02: Which is a weird concept.
48:55
SPEAKER_02: It is.
48:56
SPEAKER_02: It's not like they had defense and witnesses.
48:59
SPEAKER_02: All well, they had witnesses, but yeah, it was more of a formality, really.
49:03
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, but she does eventually get caught.
49:06
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:07
SPEAKER_02: In Belgium.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: In I think it was Belgium where they caught her.
49:10
SPEAKER_02: They she was renting a place to stay and they recognized her, which why am I getting like some Flynn Ryder image in my brain where they're they put up the little wanted posters?
49:20
SPEAKER_02: It's not my nose.
49:22
SPEAKER_02: She's like, they just can't get my nose right.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but she, yeah, they do recognize her again.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't know how.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: They must have done had sketchings on the run, most wanted.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've seen pictures of her, and similar to like any woman in this time frame.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Like we've talked about how Marie Antoinette's photos look just like Louis XVI's sister's photos.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: And when I say photos, I mean, you know, painted portraits.
49:44
SPEAKER_01: But it's like women kind of all look the same in that era to me as a modern woman.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Maybe back then they were more nuanced, and you could tell.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: The only other thing I could think of, and we couldn't find the actual reasoning for this, so we're just guessing at this point.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: Because her father was an aristocrat, and maybe she was that well known where people just kind of knew her face.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Could be.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: We have to remember that like towns in general are smaller at this time.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: So but she's all the way in Belgium.
50:16
unknown: Yeah.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
50:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
50:18
SPEAKER_01: We're just speculating.
50:19
SPEAKER_01: Long story short though, they catch her.
50:21
SPEAKER_01: They catch her.
50:21
SPEAKER_01: And then she's taken to Paris, and at that time she's ready for trial.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: And during this time, they also find another incriminating piece of evidence.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: This girl, bless her soul, wrote down everything.
50:37
SPEAKER_01: And she called it literally, it was a document called My Confessions.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she couldn't even put like a code name on it.
50:45
SPEAKER_02: It's just like my diary, my confessions.
50:48
SPEAKER_02: These are all the bad things I've done in my life.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: I feel like you want to get caught at that point.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: So she writes down everything about the murders, which is why we know for a fact that she did kill her father and brothers because she wrote it down.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: And she talks about her affairs as well.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: She's like, Yeah, also, like these children, four of them are not from my husband.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, she's very open about her affairs.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: She's very open about the murders.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: She literally just, it's that's exactly what it is, is her confession.
51:17
SPEAKER_02: And clearly she knows that this isn't going to end well with her because sadly enough, on her way, as she's being um, what's the word when you not extracted?
51:25
SPEAKER_02: There's a word when extradited.
51:27
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
51:27
SPEAKER_02: And extradited back to Paris.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: She several times tries to end her own life.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: She did.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: She was very suicidal.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: So she knows she's not in a good state of mind.
51:39
SPEAKER_02: And somebody who I think doesn't have a lot of hope and they kind of can see the outcome of where this is gonna go is in that state of mind.
51:47
SPEAKER_02: So that on top of the confessions, and you would think at this point, there is so much evidence against her, including her own written hand of saying I did these things.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: She wrote so much that historians kind of doubt if all of it's true because it was so egregious.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, who would sit there and write down all the things that they did?
52:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, I don't know if you just have so many demons you need to get out, so you have to write it, but it's like, what reason do you have?
52:14
SPEAKER_01: So she wrote so much that historians are like, Did she really do all these things?
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Because this seems like a lot, but got a little carried away in her own imagination.
52:23
SPEAKER_02: We don't know.
52:24
SPEAKER_02: Right.
52:24
SPEAKER_02: Oddly enough, though, she gets to her trial, acts dumb.
52:28
SPEAKER_02: Acts completely ignorant.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:31
SPEAKER_02: She's like, What are you talking about?
52:33
SPEAKER_02: Who did what?
52:34
SPEAKER_02: You think I did what?
52:36
SPEAKER_02: Right.
52:36
SPEAKER_02: My father?
52:37
SPEAKER_02: My brothers?
52:38
SPEAKER_02: I can never, I'm just a damsel in distress.
52:41
SPEAKER_02: Like, completely put on this act of acting like she knew nothing of what they were talking about.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: They're like, ma'am, this says my confessions.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: Is this your hand?
52:51
SPEAKER_01: Is this your handwriting?
52:52
SPEAKER_01: It's like, well.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: I think I was playing around with an idea for a new book.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that's always the perfect story.
52:58
SPEAKER_01: If you ever get caught writing and writing anything down, oh, it was for a book.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: It was for a book I was writing.
53:03
SPEAKER_02: And then she starts to kind of shift her blame onto Saint Croix, her ex-lover who has already died at this point.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: So maybe she kind of thinks that's her out.
53:12
SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, let me put all the blame on the guy who already died.
53:15
SPEAKER_02: Also, put the blame on the footman who also has already lost his life over this situation.
53:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Lasha Civ.
53:21
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
53:22
SPEAKER_02: I just call him the footman for obvious reasons.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
53:26
SPEAKER_02: Now she's got another ex-lover who comes up to the stand as a witness.
53:31
SPEAKER_02: His name is Jean-Baptiste Briancroft Corft.
53:36
SPEAKER_02: Never seen his name.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: It's good.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: You did good.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I spelled it right, but a lot of Jean-Baptiste in this time.
53:42
SPEAKER_02: Yes, Jean Valjean's.
53:44
SPEAKER_02: Uh he also is like, yeah, she told me she did all of this stuff.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: Like some pillow talk one evening, he racks her out.
53:53
SPEAKER_02: He goes, almost like she was very proud of it that she took out both her father and both her brothers to get money.
53:59
SPEAKER_02: Right.
54:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then he goes, and she was gonna murder me too.
54:03
SPEAKER_02: So I got out of the relationship.
54:04
SPEAKER_02: Oh, geez.
54:05
SPEAKER_02: So, and then she's just like, Liar! Oh no, she called him a drunk.
54:09
SPEAKER_02: She goes, Don't listen to him.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: He's just an old drunk, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
54:14
SPEAKER_02: So she's still holding on to her innocence, even though multiple people are saying, like, yeah, she was kind of open about it, actually, telling people.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you read this, but was there any word from her husband?
54:26
SPEAKER_01: Like, he husband disappeared.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say he seems to just go dark.
54:29
SPEAKER_01: Like we never hear of anything from the husband after the affair.
54:32
SPEAKER_02: A common trend with many of our execution stories were like the people closest to them.
54:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was missing.
54:40
SPEAKER_02: Like Ann Ask you, what happened to her husband through all that?
54:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like you're like, oh, they're married, they're this, they're that, and then all of a sudden they're just alone in this trial with lovers and whatever, and you're like, and there's no husband, like there's no one questioning him, seeing if he noticed anything to or was he involved.
54:55
SPEAKER_01: Was we I I don't know.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know how separate they were at this point.
54:59
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, she was trying to separate her finances, so were they living apart?
55:03
SPEAKER_01: Like probably, I don't know.
55:06
SPEAKER_02: So she's found guilty.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: She is big surprise.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: Because uh because France is still a Catholic region at this point, she does have a confessor come.
55:18
SPEAKER_02: And the confessor, we owe some credit to because he did the best job of documenting all of her final hours and his his experience and his exchange with her.
55:29
SPEAKER_02: Um she eventually so she is tortured, which is another occurrence again of them already being found guilty.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: And then being part of the sentence being tortured separately and then executed separately.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: So she wasn't necessarily tortured for more information before they were they found her guilty.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: She was already deemed guilty, and they said part of your sentence is that you're going to be something called water cured, which is almost like modern day waterboarding, which I hate that that's kind of even a modern thing.
56:05
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, they they essentially would like hold her down and through a funnel would just pour water into her mouth and nose and everything.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: So she's just being essentially drowned, or like, you know, if you in if you drink that much water in a short amount of time, like everything inside of you starts to feel gross.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Like it's the next one, throw up.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's not it's not fun.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not like, oh here, we're just gonna get hydrated before you get executed.
56:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's not the purpose.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: Very much torture.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was part of what they what they sentenced her with.
56:40
SPEAKER_01: And she also had to make a public apology in Notre Dame.
56:44
SPEAKER_02: She's being tortured.
56:45
SPEAKER_02: She's like, okay, fine, I'm gonna confess.
56:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna confess.
56:49
SPEAKER_02: Okay, maybe I did it.
56:50
SPEAKER_02: I did all those things.
56:52
SPEAKER_02: It didn't make a difference at that point.
56:54
SPEAKER_02: I don't think she realized that that her she was already found guilty, and her this was part of her sentence.
57:00
SPEAKER_02: She already confessed through her confession.
57:02
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, right.
57:03
SPEAKER_02: So she thought that she was helping herself by confessing while the tortures.
57:07
SPEAKER_02: I also think that's a natural reaction.
57:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you think that's what they want.
57:10
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a natural human instinct of like, I will tell you anything you want to hear right now to stop this.
57:15
SPEAKER_02: So but she didn't give them any new information.
57:18
SPEAKER_02: Possibly the one thing that she told them that they weren't aware of is she ended up selling poison that she made to a man who wanted to end his wife, his wife's life, wanted to do away with his wife.
57:31
SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, it was a four-hour torture session.
57:37
SPEAKER_02: Um and she ends up so so we for sure, I mean, again, I think anything said under torture is you can't really it's unreliable.
57:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:46
SPEAKER_02: But be that between the letters and everything, it's pretty clear that she did do it.
57:51
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, as as Elizabeth mentioned, they um she goes to Notre Dame.
57:55
unknown: Yeah.
57:56
SPEAKER_02: Um, she's wearing a white slip now.
57:58
SPEAKER_02: So this is right after the four hours of torture, and she goes to Notre Dame, and then she is taken to the place Place de Grief.
58:08
SPEAKER_02: Place de Graves.
58:09
SPEAKER_02: Place de Greve.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: We've talked about for a few different executions, very famous place where people were publicly executed.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: And when you're taken there, it needs to be a big public spectacle because her trial was a public sensation.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is someone from the nobility with a big scandal going on.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: So people followed the story very closely when it was happening.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: So you could imagine how many people tried to thousands and thousands.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: Get a spot for that execution.
58:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this would have been a really hot topic.
58:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:40
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it is a pretty saucy story.
58:42
SPEAKER_02: She's this scandalous woman, multiple affairs.
58:46
SPEAKER_02: Her ex-lovers are in court as her witnesses.
58:50
SPEAKER_02: She's, you know, independent in the sense where she's separated her finances, gaining more finances by murdering her family.
58:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the story is pretty juicy.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: It's very juicy.
59:02
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I um I think all of that, and she's nobility.
59:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, no, yeah, nobility.
59:10
SPEAKER_02: That'd be all right.
59:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh a courtier.
59:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, I think both, right?
59:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:16
SPEAKER_01: We're not we're Europeans, so in terms of titles and things, it gets blurred.
59:19
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's different, like England versus France, or uh that's true, yeah.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: But she she's a noblewoman, and uh this is now the year 166, excuse me, 1676.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: The day is July 17th, and she's officially taken to Plasté grave.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: And in, you know, like we've talked about in a lot of executions, they kind of wheel her through in like a little wagon.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, she's like Megan said, in her little white slip.
59:43
SPEAKER_01: And once she gets to the executioner's block, they have to shave her head, so they remove all of her hair.
59:49
SPEAKER_02: Which normally that's something done privately in the cell.
59:54
SPEAKER_02: It's more of a preparation, but the fact that they did it public that the executioner did it publicly on the scaffold in front of thousands of people is another act of humiliation.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_02: Very game of thronesy, remember?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_02: Very game of thronesy.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_02: Lots of shame happening.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so first, and this is remember, if you're like, oh, probably the guillotine.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: No, this is before the guillotine was invented.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: So she was beheaded, but it was by a swordsman.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: And after she was beheaded, they burned her, burned her body very publicly.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_02: Really making a statement there.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_02: You know what I thought just came to my mind just now is um I think of Anne Boleyn's execution, how she requested a French swordsman, which so now sorry, a light bulb just went off.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_02: So in France then, they didn't typically be head with an axe, they would be head with a French sword.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_02: That's a good point.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_02: Which very swift.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_02: Also trickier because they can't, um, yeah, when when this is probably very obvious for some who are very familiar with the ambulance execution, so bear with me as I'm just kind of like stating the obvious here.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_02: But when it's an axe, you're kneeling on a block and you're more you can't, you can't fidget as much.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_02: With the sword, you have to kneel and it's stay still.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_02: You and it's instinct, you're not gonna you're gonna want to move or you're gonna want to look at the sword coming at you, which you can't do because then he'll get you in the jaw or the middle of the head.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: Ugh.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_02: So I mean, with Anne Boleyn, they had the strategy of distracting her, being like, boy, give me my sword, and like she looked the other way, and then he did it unexpectedly.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: So I wonder if that's just practice in France and if that's how they had to do it, or if the French are just more disciplined and would sit there.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good point.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I think I said they let her up to the block.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: I guess there wouldn't be a block, it would just be a scaffold.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: It's a weird, it's a weird concept.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: It is interesting.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: And we I I love how every um, I guess, country area of the world has their own way of doing an execution.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_01: Like we kind of talked about this when we had our kickoff episode this season with Berenice in Egypt, and we were like, well, we weren't sure if she was strangled or if it was a beheading because the Romans do beheadings and the Egyptians strangle, and here we are like talking about England versus France.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: It's like in France there's swordsmen, and then in um England there's axemen.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's just so interesting how like the that those differences matter and it depends on the culture and the tradition and the religion and so many things.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_02: And the sword, when I think of the sword, it's a little bit more delicate.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_02: It's also, I feel like, a finer, I hate to say an art.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_02: It's a finer skill.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_02: It's a finer skill of having, I mean, you're not just like clunk in a big axe.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_02: It's a very swift, delicate movement.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_02: Which is very French.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: Very French.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a very French way to go out.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_01: It's funny because uh speaking of my now fiance, because that's a topic of this episode.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, I haven't heard you call Robbie a fiance.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_01: But uh it's also new for us.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was funny because like before I was leaving to Megan's to do this episode tonight, um, he was like, Oh, like who you like who are you talking about tonight?
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of gave him a rundown of the story.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Oh, well, how did she die?
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, she was beheaded and then she was burned.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Oh, okay.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, I guess beheading is the best way to go, right?
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: Like it's quick.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: And then I told him, I was like, Well, yeah, when you have a guillotine or something, it's fast and it's efficient.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: The guillotine was accurate, all right.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: But he didn't realize how many botched executions.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: Oof.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_01: So I was like, Yeah, sometimes you know, they'd get the executioner drunk and they'd have to do a few, a few swings of the axe.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Are you sick?
1:03:36
SPEAKER_02: Or they were new or like the apprentice had to do it, or or they just miss because they were bad at their job.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or nervous or whatever.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: So a lot a lot of ways this can go down.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it sounds like she had a pretty clean execution here.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no stories of it going wrong.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_02: Um, but the aftermath, I mean, Elizabeth alluded to this at the beginning, yeah, but this was just the beginning of an entire scandal that unfolded.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: So we have the like affaire de uh de poissons.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say poisson wrong, I think, because poisson in French is fish.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: It's like it's a the fish, the fish affair?
1:04:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's like it's a very slight difference between poison and fish in French.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_01: So I I think I say it wrong.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_01: I say it probably the affair of the fishes.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: But you get it, you know, if you don't speak French, like affaire de poissons.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_01: Pardon my French.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: Pardon my French.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_01: But um, so this leads to a very it's actually a period of a few years, like I said at the beginning of the episode.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_01: Like I think it the affair of the poisons didn't officially end until 1682.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_01: So all these years after her death, that's like what, six years?
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: There's now more and more things coming out like, wait, who did she sell poison to?
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: Like members of the aristocracy, people in the court of Louis XIV.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_01: So her story leads to a bunch of different stories and executions.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: In total, there were 36 executions that came out from this whole network because again, it turned into like okay, who was given poison?
1:05:11
SPEAKER_01: Who was buying poison?
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: Why did they buy poisons?
1:05:14
SPEAKER_01: Who were they killing?
1:05:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how far how far did this go?
1:05:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then after those 36 were executed, I think another 23 had to be exiled.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: So this turned into almost like I mean, to use the term witch hunt, kind of a witch hunt.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_02: It was a huge panic too, mostly from King Louis XIV, when he was like, Oh my god, everybody in my court is trying to kill each other.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_02: But the poison was seen as a very discreet, almost classy way.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, that's why Marie Madeleine liked it as well, because it wasn't violent, it wasn't stabbing, it wasn't something that was very obvious, it was subtle, it was inconspicuous until the cat got out of the bag.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_02: Um, but they also treated Marie Madeleine as an example for other women in nobility.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_02: You would think that they would maybe use her execution as a set an example for all classes or lower classes to say, like, you know, don't kill and this will happen.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_02: But they specifically used her as an example for the higher class women.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_02: And it's not just because she was a murderer.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_01: It's because she was like a smart murderer.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_01: And because she was trying to separate herself financially from her husband.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_01: So they were like, okay, women, look what happens when you have a mind of your own and you're trying to distance yourself from your husband.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, look at all the bad things you can create in society.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_01: So they used her death as almost like a you better be a good wife and don't be too smart.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_02: Don't learn how to read medical d diaries and pharmaceutical labels and learn Latin because you're gonna get these ideas in your head and want to kill everyone with poison.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_02: Which it's, you know, yes, I was she a great person for a testing out the poison on dying people and her servants.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_02: No, she was not a great person either for offing off her family members, and then, you know, but to have such a violent, terrible, gruesome death, and then to be used as like an anti-feminist feminist example is um, yeah, it's a little heavy.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_01: Prior woman a little bit ahead of her time.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: And she did say, like after all of this, too, um obviously before the execution.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, but she said before she died?
1:07:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, these weren't after death words.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: No, but she said something along the lines of if my father never threw my lover in prison, I wouldn't have had to do any of this.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_02: She's an angry woman.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_02: So one likes a mad woman.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh, please.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_02: It's a shame she went mad.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_02: Is that a Taylor Swift quote?
1:07:48
SPEAKER_02: It's a song called Mad Woman by Taylor Allison Swift.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_01: But um, but again, maybe she was just more of a modern woman and hated the world she was living in in terms of her the rights and the inheritance.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: And again, that's no excuse to kill anyone, especially your family.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: But I think she just grew increasingly frustrated with how little she was able to experience on her own and how how little she was able to have on her own.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_01: So she was like, hey, screw you all.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm going on this giant quest for revenge, and I don't really care how many people die.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_01: So crazy, crazy lady.
1:08:21
SPEAKER_01: Crazy lady.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_01: You respect the philosophy, just not really the, you know, sometimes the ends don't justify the means.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_02: The output wasn't quite right, but um all that said, Elizabeth.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_01: Yes, serious look.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_01: He's giving me a serious look right now.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: Something's happening.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_01: Any final words?
1:08:44
SPEAKER_01: Not tonight.