Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. This episode was a suggestion by Greg, who is a listener but also a friend of the show. If you've been to any of our live shows and you've seen volunteers from headcount dot org they're registering voters or offering election info, those volunteers are there thanks in no small part to Greg. He works with headcount dot org UH and helps get volunteers assigned to different places. He is also just a super fun and lovely person and I love to hang out with him when I'm in New York and I miss him. So when he sent along this suggestion, I immediately wanted to do it, So thank you, Greg. Uh. This is a topic that I suspect is well known in numerous countries in Europe, particularly of course Denmark, where most of it takes place. UH. That happens at a time when it was still Denmark, Norway. We're just going shortened to Denmark for the sake of of convenience. UM. And this one is kind of a wild ride because it has medicine, a mad royal ambition, and an affair with a queen. So heads up that there is also some talk of a sexual nature, and we do talk about mental illness a good bit. So we are covering Denmark's king, Christian the Seventh, who ruled in the eighteenth century, and the physician who finagled a surprising amount of power through his relationship with the king, and that is Johann Friedrich Struncy, who basically ruled the country. But to talk about struancy, we first have to go back several decades to talk about the history of Denmark and give context to how a doctor at this period of time could gain so much power. In fifteen thirty six Denmark underwent a reformation. It made the conversion from Catholic to Protestant, and this one's carried out pretty gradually. Under the new or going to national structure, services were no longer performed in Latin. Instead they were performed in Danish. And in moving away from Catholicism and the papacy, the king of Denmark was considered to be the protector of the church. In this duty, it fell to the king to also select seven bishops. Yeah, this was kind of responsible for running the country. We've talked a lot about how religious organizations and governmental procedure often very linked at this phase of our history. Yes, sometimes essentially the same thing. Yes, So this move away from Catholicism also meant that lands and property in Denmark that had been part of the Catholic Church's holdings were owned by the crown after the Reformation. So this was a very beneficial arrangement for the monarchy and the nobles during this time. The crown didn't just automatically pass down through family lines the way you might think with a monarchy. The king was elected and the merchant last gained more power in this setup, particularly at the local level. They pretty frequently became part of the governance of their local municipalities. But while the nobles and the merchants saw significant improvement in their fortunes through all of this, the lowest classes in Denmark really saw a decline in their quality of life. Yeah, we'll talk more about that whole uh royalty and how the crown passes down in just a sec But initially in this arrangement, Denmark as a power was strengthened, but over time, due to a series of military conflicts that went poorly. That strength ebbed. In fifteen sixty three, King Frederick the Second initiated a war with Sweden which lasted seven years, and when the dust had settled, the objective had not been achieved. Denmark had not taken control of Sweden, and it was in serious debt from trying to do so. Frederick the second successor was his son, Christian the Fourth, and Christian the Fourth made some strides in improving the finances and the power base of his kingdom of Denmark and Norway. As all of this was happening, the Thirty Years War was beginning. We covered this on the episode that we did on the Defenistrations of Prague, and as we mentioned in that episode, it started out mainly a matter of religious conflict, but as the war continued on, the bigger issue of the conflict became the control of Europe, and under Christian the fourth rule, Denmark joined this conflict in progress that an effort to claim some of that control. This really was catastrophic, though loss after loss led the king to ultimately signing a treaty with the Holy Roman Empire in sixteen fifty seven. Denmark once again was in conflict, this time again with Sweden, in a series of attacks and treaties that seemed to get just progressively worse for Denmark. By sixteen fifty nine, all of the country was occupied by Swedish force is with the exception of Copenhagen. That city had only been held thanks to the intervention of Dutch allies. When Frederick the third, the son of Christian the Fourth, signed the Treaty of Copenhagen in sixteen sixty, Denmark seeded large chunks of its kingdom. This left the country in a really precarious situation, both externally and internally. And internally everything changed as a result. So, leading up to sixteen sixty, Denmark's crown had been passed down through this elective monarchy, and normally the person elected was the eldest son of the deceased monarch. But as we said, it wasn't this automatic thing, and this was sort of a way to maintain the balance of power because in accepting the duties, the newly elected monarch would sign a coronation charter and that included stipulations that outlined the monarch's responsibilities and the limitations of their power. Yeah, so instead of just like toda, you now run the country. It's like, well, you can run the country, but we have to have a contract in place first, which I do sort of like in theory. But in the wake of that series of costly wars, the blame fell on the nobility. So the short version of what happened next is that King Frederick the Third's counselors put forth a proposal that would establish a hereditary monarchy and would strip away many of the advantages that the nobility had enjoyed up to that point. This moved the governing structure away from that idea of you elect me and we're entering a contract where we both have responsibilities, to one where the monarch had absolute power. While the monarchy at this point was determined through the bloodline, power elsewhere came from wealth rather than lineage. As various departments were formed to oversee things like war and the treasury, the leaders of those institutions became wealthy landowners, whether they were part of the nobility or not. Additionally, the crown started selling some land to in money to pay off all those war debts, and the landowners who had purchased those parcels gained more power as a consequence, taxes went up to further shore up the government finances. In seventeen sixty six, the monarch who inherited the throne of Denmark was Christian the seventh. His father had been Frederick the Fifth, and when he died and Christian became king, the new ruler was just sixteen. Later that same year, then seventeen year old Christian, because he passed a birthday, married Caroline Matilda of Great Britain that was his cousin. She was just fifteen at the time. She was also incidentally King George the third sister. There's been a lot of discussion of Christian the seventh mental health and the two d and fifty years since he ruled. It's been theorized that he may have had schizophrenia. He had probably been traumatized by a tutor in his formative years. That tutor beat him, among other things, to the point that he never really recovered his mental health afterward. It's also possible that he had porphyria that definitely ran on his mother's English side of the family. It possibly was present in his father's side as well, so there was a lot going on that would have contributed to his overall physical and mental health. Yes, so if you know that King George had some mental health issues, those were because he had porphyria um so we definitely know it was in the bloodline and Christian the seventh. Behavior was marked also by a significant degree of debauchery. He was known to drink heavily. He was a frequent visitor to Copenhagen's Brothels. His demeanor is consistently characterized in the kindest terms as deeply unstable. But the establishment of an absolute monarchy in Denmark had never provided any clauses, and there was no parliament that might have offered a way to unseat a mentally ill monarch. Enter Johan's Truancy, and we're going to talk ab Struancy's early life and how he became part of the king's circle, after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Johann Friedrich Struancy was born on August fifth, seventeen thirty seven in Hala, Prussia now Germany, and he was the third of seven siblings. His father was Adam Struancy, a theologian and a teacher. His mother, Maria Dorothea Carl, was from a well positioned family. Johan's grandfather on his mother's side was a physician who had served as King Christian the sixth personal doctor, as well as the monarch's son and successor, King Frederick the fifth. When Johan was fifteen, he enrolled at the University of Halle, where he studied for a degree as a doctor. He did that for the next five years, graduating in December of seventeen fifty seven. And the remaining years of the seventeen fifties he was employed as the town physician in Altona, Denmark, which is now part of Germany. If you're familiar with the timeline of smallpox vaccination that we've discussed on the show before, he may be thinking that he got his medical credentials during a time when very elation was becoming more widely adopted, and that's correct. He really championed vary elation when he was a young physician. He also worked to generally improve hygienic practices in his community as a means to improve the health of everyone, and as a public doctor, Strudency was called upon to treat all kinds of ailments, including mental illness, and he had some fairly important insights in that aspect of his work. For one, He thought that mental illness should be studied more thoroughly, specifically to look for physical causes. That may not sound pretticarly groundbreaking, but this was a time when often if people were deemed to be mentally ill, they were kind of just locked away, Whereas he was like, can we figure out what the problem actually is? His thinking as a physician was that if you could identify a physical cause, you could potentially treated and thus treat the mental illness. He came to recognize things like head injuries and ingestion of various substances, some of which were used medicinally, were often the cause of what had frequently been written off simply as insanity at the time. During his time as a doctor, he became acquainted with a number of Danish nobles, and it was through these connections that he met and became the traveling doctor to the king. This was a guardian role of sorts for Christian the seventh, and he got that role in seventeen sixty eight. At this point, the monarch was obviously exhibiting instability, and he was supposed to undertake a tour of several European countries as a matter of diplomacy. There was also a hope that that change of scenery might help his mental state. The itinerary included Germany, Holland, England and France, and having a physician such as Struancy on hand who could offer the king care that would enable him to make this everyone at least hoped, and this offered Struancy a case study in his work in some mental illness. Uh. This is also interesting because you'll sometimes read that like, no one was willing to admit that there was something really wrong with the king, and Struancy was kind of the first person going, do you understand there's actually something wrong here? He's not just eccentric. But throughout their travels, Struancy took care of the King and offered him companionship, and over time he became a trusted ally, so much so that when Christian the Seventh returned to Denmark in early seventeen sixty nine, Struancy returned with him and he was appointed the king's personal doctor. Struancy was able to manage the king's shifting moods and his unpredictability in a way that no one else had been able to. So initially, this arrangement was welcomed by pretty much everyone who dealt with Christian the Seventh. But Struancy took this post for all of the opportunity it offered, and then some as you'll hear shortly, but he also was providing both physical and mental care for Christian the Seventh. Struancy noted that the king had delusions, but he also observed that they weren't fixed. There was a lot of variety and shifting among these delusions. The king was often very agitated. Sometimes he would speak in gibberish or laugh at inappropriate times, but the doctor also recognized that trying to stop Christian the seventh from any of these behaviors just seemed to intensify them. There were also periods where the king was lucid and could recognize and understand the nature of the delusions that he had, but he also never disbelieved those delusions. Eventually, there was, with the agreement of the Queen and the king's closest advisers, a seven point plan drawn up to try to cure Christian of his delusions and keep him from various habits that were deemed inappropriate. This plan included things like making Christian the Seventh always feel like everyone was dedicated to his happiness, he was a bit paranoid that otherwise was the case, and treating him in private settings just like anyone else rather than the nation's ruler. There was always someone on hand to play cards or otherwise entertain the king, and he was given written notes on affairs of state, which he preferred to verbal briefings. And while this system did seem to work for a while, eventually it stopped working and Christian became angry at everyone involved. However, Struancy's guests into what was causing Christian the Seventh's delusions and his other issues, I was probably a little shortsighted. He believed that the problem stemmed from the king's frequent masturbation, and his writing about this issue is pretty delicate. He sort of talks around it. He refers to it with phrases like a habit one can guess without naming it. Other accounts from the time helped to form a more certain sense of what was going on, with one of the court counselors referring to the king's quote debauched solitaire. While these accounts of the king's behavior often used to paint the monarch as being really pleasura driven, Struancy just found the whole situation to be a lot more complicated. While the doctor did try to dissuade his royal patient from this habit, that, like his other dissuasion attempts, did not really work, Struancy made the king take cold baths that didn't really help very much either. Struancy did not believe that pleasure actually had anything to do with Christian the sevens proclivities, writing quote, this is what ruins and weekends, not only his body, but also his mind, which is being suppressed by it. And as he experiences depression, apprehension, anxieties, his imagination seeks an external reason and cause him to find everything unpleasant, disgusting and intolerable, and thus the source of the coolness discussed and even hatred that he's so easily engenders towards people who approach him most frequently. I have never observed an inclination towards or a taste for sensual pleasures in the King. The habit that causes his unhappiness does not exert great attraction for him. He indulges it out of boredom and with sang foix. According to his own assurances, things which usually yield pleasure hardly touch him and even displease him. So keep in mind with all this that eighteenth century Europe had some ideas about sex and masturbation, they were not remotely sex positive. It wasn't as though Struancy made this connection between the king's behavior and mental illness in a vacuum. Influential medical texts of the time asserted this connection between mental illness and masturbation as well. There's evidence that Struancy and the other doctors at court were really familiar with those texts. Struency was not entirely alone in caring for the king. His colleagues. Justus von Berger, who was the court physician, was often consulted regarding what the best course of action would be. Yeah, Struency had the most immediate you know, has on care with the king. But he was talking to other doctors about the situation. So, like I said, he's not like the only person who went I think this is the problem. Later, Struancy wrote of the king quote, I became aware of much peculiarity in his mind and character, a great guardedness and even contempt of all those who are around him, and in particular a great deal of dissatisfaction with his situation. He harbored exaggerated ideas about various subjects, which he cherished to such a degree that he would become angry if anyone contradicted him or just expressed some doubt. He hoped to find the means with which he could indulge in all kinds of debauchery without regretting any bad consequences. In brief, he harbored several other thoughts, no less extravagant, which I shall refrain from repeating, in order not to become too diffuse. If I took the effort to demonstrate the fallacy and even absurdity of all this, his Majesty answered me that he was rather convinced of the veracity of these ideas, but that people hid it from him, and that I could enlighten him about them if I wished. He felt that the world was completely different from how it was presented to him, and that he knew secrets and mysteries about which he did not dare talk to me. Being the Royal Doctor was only the first office that the King gave to Struancy. Next he was made reader to Their Majesty's and then honorary member of the State Council. Next he became Maitre de riquets, the Master of Requests, that are, Master of petitions. That was just after the King had dissolved the Council of State. Then he became Cabinet Secretary. This is a significant series of titles for a doctor from another country to have acquired in a very short period of time. He was given all of these titles over about a year. Struency's elevation culminated and being named Privy Cabinet Minister on July fourteenth, seventeen seventy one. But well before that, the doctor had also become romantically involved with Queen Caroline Matilda. The two began their relationship in February seventeen seventy, roughly a year after Struancy arrived at court. Also in seventeen seventy, he made a bold move in a bid for power. Uh he did away, as we said, just a moment ago, with the Council of State and the Governorship of Norway. These were all signed off on by the King. But it was Struancy pulling the strings. He was systematically removing any obstacles that would keep him from doing exactly as he pleased. Caroline Matilda had already provided an heir to Christian the seventh that was their son, Frederick, who would eventually become Frederick the sixth. But when she gave birth to another child in July of seventeen seventy one, that was a daughter named Louise Augusta, it was likely and really assumed by most of the parties that courts, that Johann Struancy was really the father. On the day of Louise Augusta's baptism, Struancy, and being the auspices of the king, granted himself another new title and became Count Construency. He gave the same tile to his friend at court and the King's companion and of old brand. But even before those appointments, he was making decisions that would normally be the work of somebody far far above his station. He was passing laws for the country in line with his progressive ideals. While a lot of these reforms were ultimately good for the country, a lot of them were focused on improving the lives of the peasantry while taking away things like extravagant allowances for nobility. They were of course not welcomed by everyone, and many government officials felt particularly prickly about the King's doctor having managed to wield so much power and in a way that pretty negatively impacted their status. We'll talk about Struency's downfall after we take a quick break for a word from the sponsors that keep stuff he missed in history class going. Andreas Peter Bernstorff, who was a state official at the time all of this was going on, wrote to his uncle about the situation with Christian the seventh and Struancy. He pondered, what there is to be done when quote Huax embassill when one is obliged to obey a fool king. It was clear that Bernstorff was mortified by the power that Struancy had been able to amass, and he referred openly to the Doctor as a criminal. All of that meddling in the government and his relationship with Queen Caroline Matilda offered Struency's detractors the way to unseat him. Rumors started to spread that Struancy was not content with all that he had managed to snatch for himself, and that he was planning to overthrow the king entirely, become the king himself and marry the Queen. There had been another rumor about him even before that, that the Doctor was trying to slowly poison the king, claiming that he was dispensing medicines. As this rumor gained some tractions, Struancy's medical supplies were seized and a commission investigated the situation, but nothing sinister was found. In the last months of seventeen seventy one and into early seventeen seventy two, Struancy's enemies at court really multiplied. On January seventeen, seventeen seventy two, Christian the seventh stepmother the Queen dowager Julianna Maria, fearful that the monarchy and the country were in jeopardy, catalyzed a palace revolution. The night before that there had been a masked ball, and Julianna Maria, along with accomplices, took advantage of the exhausted and likely stupefied state of the king to wake him in the very early morning and force him to sign papers that called for the arrest of both Struancy and Queen Caroline Matilda. Struancy's allies, including Intervald Brand, were also arrested. The queen was taken to crone Or Castle and Helsinger, roughly forty five kilometers away. Incidentally, that is indeed the Kronborg Castle that is the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Two commissions were forms to investigate Struancy's supposed crimes. The members of those commissions were definitely biased. They were all people who disliked him. They had all been impacted by his governmental reformations. Their investigations were expedient, and Struancy was declared guilty of usurpation of the throne and less majest or offenses against the King. And the trial of Struancy included the following condemnation in the opening remarks, the King has been rendered obnoxious in the eyes of the people, and the people have been represented to his majesty as unworthy of their sovereign's affection. No one could approach the King, but those who belonged to the junto of those miscreants, who, under the specious pretense of being the King's friends, were his greatest enemies. Insolence, audacity, and infamy dared to approach the throne and stamped the immaculate luster of the royal house with indelible reproach. The case against Struancy was largely about his being a sneak at an opportunist. The king was described in pretty glowing terms, not as somebody who had any kind of a mental illness, but as somebody who had fallen under the bad and weakening influence of Struancy and his friends. The affair he was having with the Queen was not included in any especially direct way, but it was definitely mentioned as follows quote. The first step he took towards the summit of his ambition is an act so daring and dangerous that horror and indignation seizes every honest mind at the very idea thereof by the seduction of innocence, and by resting from his royal master, the dearest object of his felicity, and while he was imprisoned and awaiting his fate, Struancy wrote a detailed description of the king's health, which was used by his defense in their case. You have heard some excerpts from it already, but he also wrote quote, I have decided to break the silence, convinced that people who will become acquainted with this memoir will only make proper use of it, resulting in true happiness for the king. It is this record that most of the medical scholars who debate the cause of Christian the seventh mental illness used because it is very detailed. Struancy wrote of Christian the seventh disdain for kindness and affection quote. People who were considered with the most contempt and who were treated with indignation, according to him, were the happiest, and impatiently he awaited the moment when he could inspire emotions capable of attracting such treatment for him. This is why he always nurtured a very strong inclination toward indulging all kinds of debauchery and profligacy, roaming the streets, smashing windows, taunting and even murdering the wayfares, visiting the disreputable houses, fighting with the watchman, associating himself with the most notoriously wicked, and carrying out everything that not only the most perverse person can imagine. Duels, combats, and even battles did not appear to him less necessary to obtain his goal, And for some time he imagined that he had engaged in such things at night, and that several times he had killed five, six or more people, but that afterwards he was given opium to lose the memory of it, as he did not yet dare to know about it. So, according to this, Christian even believed that he behaved morally worse than he actually did, and that he was being poisoned to erase his memories of these events. Additionally, this disdain for kindness often caused him to abuse the people who were trying to serve or care for him. Yeah, there's a pretty long discussion that Truancy wrote about how you know, and a servant was perpetually in danger and like if the king stumbled and you reached out your arm to him, you were going to get hit and possibly worse. Um. The king also engaged in a variety of self harming behaviors, according to Struancy, and he believed that he was not born a prince and that he had somehow been swapped to take the role. He fantasized about being dethroned so that he could be free, and he waited for the moment that it was coming, he believed when his body would transform into marble and make him all but invincible. He believed, according to Struancy quote, that there were six people in the world who had been born morally blind, and he viewed things in nature differently, or for whom those were changed to impose on them, and he believed he was one of those six. Struancy struggles a bit in this account to try to make sense of some of the king's delusions. In particular, Christian had decided that there was a special group of people that he called comsat, which just means like that in French. Struancy never really came to understand exactly what these people were. He admits that he didn't understand it, saying, quote, it would be difficult to give a clear idea about it. For largely I understood nothing of it, even though I had very much studied the train of his imagination. It seems that the king believed that these people were shape shifters and that he could identify them, and Christian was ever on the lookout for these people any time he was in a crowd of any size, and he would point them out to Struancy. At the end of his lengthy account of his experiences treating the king and the various things that he suspected might be wrong, Struancy concludes that he had withheld a lot of this information out of respect to the monarch, and because the queen did not want the extent of the king's problems to be known. He concluded his account. With my conscience has obliged me to reveal all that I have just explained. Although I have not even permitted myself to exonerate myself with regard to various accusations in the Commission's interrogation, I wish that it may generate something good for the King and for the state. The facts that I have alleged can be verified by all those with whom the King established familiar ties and by those who approached him. Especially Count Brandt in particular, is acquainted with the details of the extravagances of the King's imagination over the last six months, during which time I have refrained as much as possible from broaching this matter with his majesty. All of this information about the King is from Struancy's perspective, but at the same time, most of these details have also been corroborated by separate accounts that were written by various members of the court over the years. And while this paints a picture of Struancy trying to help a very troubled monarch, it was not enough to save him. Struancy was sentenced to death by beheading, to be followed by being drawn and quartered. This was all carried out publicly. Brandt received the same death sentence and that took play son April seventeen seventy two. By all accounts, this execution was particularly brutal. If you go looking for any pictures, you will see the parts of their bodies after they had been dismembered, were put on display. Uh there's some debate about what happened after that. There are some accounts that will say that their bodies, what was left of them, were displayed for as long as two years until there was nothing but bone left. And there's a lot there are some question marks around exactly where they were buried. Christian the seventh marriage to Caroline Matilda was annulled, and after a bit of back and forth, due to the tension that this whole episode created between Denmark and Britain, she was deported back to her home country. She died in May of seventeen seventy five at the age of twenty three. Over the period of about thirteen months in which Struancy effectively acted as ruler of Denmark, he enacted more than one thousand cabinet ordinances, and many of these were, in historical view, very good policy. Or significant improvements, particularly when it came to human rights. Struancy banned slave trade in Denmark's colonies. He had eliminated the practice of corvey that required peasants to work for free for their landowners for a certain number of days each year. Those were also often brutal. He also allocated land to peasants and overhauled the nation's hospital system, and he reformed criminal law with far less harsh penalties and punishments, so capital punishment kind of went out the door, and on September four of seventeen seventy he enacted the first ordinance in Europe that created freedom of the press. As for Christian the seventh, he continued on as king, but it was his stepmother, Juliana Maria who really ran things. She rolled back most of Struency's laws. In seventeen eighty four, Christian's son, Frederick the sixth became Prince Regent. Christian lived until March of eighteen o eight, and he died of either a heart attack or a stroke, to ending on which source you read. He lived out his final years in confinement with pretty rudimentary and often cruel care by people who didn't really work to alleviate his illness in any way. No, he was just being kind of contained in controlled at the end of his life. And despite the controversial nature of his bid for power to enact reform, Struancy's legacy and particularly his trial and execution, remained controversial in the late eighteen nineties, and extensive analysis of the case was written by Danish judge and Lawson. That examination of the facts available led Lawson to determine that because the king's mental health issues were never expressly mentioned in the court proceedings, the entire argument made in seventeen seventy two that Struancy had taken advantage of the monarch's condition was flawed. In perhaps trying to avoid embarrassment by mentioning the king's ailments and his mental illness issues, it would indicate that any decisions that he signed off on, whether Struancy initiated them or not, and including all of the doctor's promotions, would have been valid, so that judgment of less mass Day was incorrect. As time had gone on, the ideas that Struancy was enacting into law have come to be seen in a pretty positive light. His image has been largely rehabilitated from that of this opportunistic criminal instead becoming an enlightened thinker who kind of overstepped his bounds kind of a law Yeah, that's a mixed bag. Yeah he had some great ideas, but who yeah, who. I really enjoyed researching this, although it was a bit tricky because there aren't a lot of translations of primary sources for that one, and so I had to order some very strange reproductions of translations that were done like of the court case and stuff, uh, you know, in the the early twentieth century or and so I was definitely paging through a lot of um texts that had the um the weird spellings and the the various letters switcheros. But it's ultimately super fun. Do you have some listener mail to take us out? I have two pieces of listener mail. These are both about our Ralph McCary episodes. Before we get to them, I will say, I know not everyone loved the three D nous of those episodes. Don't fret. That's not a permanent change. It was just part of a network wide kind of project we were many of our shows were doing that week. UM, so if you didn't like it, no worries and it's just those episodes. You're good. Uh So I am first going to read an email from our listener, Ann, who writes, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've been a fan of stuff you missed in history class for many years. I started listening at my first data entry job back in twelve, and you've been keeping me company insane through several data entry jobs, a couple of road trips to Dragon Con, and my current job sewing aprons and masks at artifact bags dot com. Check us out. We make nice stuff. I've been wanting to email you for the last year to hopefully provide some cheer with cute dog o picks and Star Wars costumes, but I am a procrastinator. When you did your two partner on Ralph mcquarie, I figured now is as good a time as any to send fan mail. I had heard of mcquarie before, but never realized how extensive his work was, or that his drawings were used as inspiration for Rebels. A friend of mine and I are working on Hara and Asoca costumes from Rebels right now. Actually, anyway, I have probably gone on too long, but keep up the excellent work. You guys are my favorite podcast. Uh, that wasn't very long at all, really, and also you have to send us those pictures because I love me some Hara and Asoca and uh and sent pictures of some Star Wars costumes. There's a great Mandalorian. There is a great Princess Leiah. And there is a dog that she should never bring near me because I'll try to steal it. Uh. It appears to be a shiba Inu, which is a breed that I have in love with. That dog is stinking cute, um adorable, adorable, adorable. We have another another one that comes with fabulous pictures. This is from our listener Ariel or Ariel. I'm sorry if I pronounce it the wrong way. Who rights? Hello, ladies. I've enjoyed the stuff you missed in History Class podcast for years now, and I don't know how, but I sometimes forget how much of a Star Wars fan Holly is until the topic is stumbled upon. I've just listened to your episodes on Ralph mcquarie and his artistic influence on Star Wars. My husband and I grew up on the original trilogy, and, like Holly, remained devoted fans, which is why these episodes inspired me to share photos of our most recent Star Wars themed acquisition. Meet bar Too D two. Barto D two is a custom built bourbon barrel bar that a very good friend who is also quite a renaissance man, made for us. I do secretly hope it makes Holly just a little bit jealous well success, because that thing is amazing. Um, it's really beautiful like it has you know, the front has been cut so that it opens out like a door and reveals the wonderful assortment of spirits within. But moreover, it has like a beautiful blue I'm presuming led inside, and it's painted in this really charming way. Uh Ariel also sent pictures of uh of her creatures, so her hiking partner Nikki, Sir Sid and Lady Ewen, so her her pupper, and cats who pose in the cutest ways I can ever imagine. Thanks for this an amazing podcast that makes a subject I thoroughly hated in school so much more enjoyable. UM, thank you so much for sharing that. I assure you I am the appropriate levels of jealous of your very cool bar. Um. My only concern would be that I would never fit all of my stuff in them. I'm an accumulator. I cannot help it. So thank you for for writing to us, and if you would like to write to us, you can do so at his podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as miss in History and it is very easy to subscribe to the podcast on the I heart radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. 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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. This episode was a suggestion by Greg, who is a listener but also a friend of the show. If you've been to any of our live shows and you've seen volunteers from headcount dot org they're registering voters or offering election info, those volunteers are there thanks in no small part to Greg. He works with headcount dot org UH and helps get volunteers assigned to different places. He is also just a super fun and lovely person and I love to hang out with him when I'm in New York and I miss him. So when he sent along this suggestion, I immediately wanted to do it, So thank you, Greg. Uh. This is a topic that I suspect is well known in numerous countries in Europe, particularly of course Denmark, where most of it takes place. UH. That happens at a time when it was still Denmark, Norway. We're just going shortened to Denmark for the sake of of convenience. UM. And this one is kind of a wild ride because it has medicine, a mad royal ambition, and an affair with a queen. So heads up that there is also some talk of a sexual nature, and we do talk about mental illness a good bit. So we are covering Denmark's king, Christian the Seventh, who ruled in the eighteenth century, and the physician who finagled a surprising amount of power through his relationship with the king, and that is Johann Friedrich Struncy, who basically ruled the country. But to talk about struancy, we first have to go back several decades to talk about the history of Denmark and give context to how a doctor at this period of time could gain so much power. In fifteen thirty six Denmark underwent a reformation. It made the conversion from Catholic to Protestant, and this one's carried out pretty gradually. Under the new or going to national structure, services were no longer performed in Latin. Instead they were performed in Danish. And in moving away from Catholicism and the papacy, the king of Denmark was considered to be the protector of the church. In this duty, it fell to the king to also select seven bishops. Yeah, this was kind of responsible for running the country. We've talked a lot about how religious organizations and governmental procedure often very linked at this phase of our history. Yes, sometimes essentially the same thing. Yes, So this move away from Catholicism also meant that lands and property in Denmark that had been part of the Catholic Church's holdings were owned by the crown after the Reformation. So this was a very beneficial arrangement for the monarchy and the nobles during this time. The crown didn't just automatically pass down through family lines the way you might think with a monarchy. The king was elected and the merchant last gained more power in this setup, particularly at the local level. They pretty frequently became part of the governance of their local municipalities. But while the nobles and the merchants saw significant improvement in their fortunes through all of this, the lowest classes in Denmark really saw a decline in their quality of life. Yeah, we'll talk more about that whole uh royalty and how the crown passes down in just a sec But initially in this arrangement, Denmark as a power was strengthened, but over time, due to a series of military conflicts that went poorly. That strength ebbed. In fifteen sixty three, King Frederick the Second initiated a war with Sweden which lasted seven years, and when the dust had settled, the objective had not been achieved. Denmark had not taken control of Sweden, and it was in serious debt from trying to do so. Frederick the second successor was his son, Christian the Fourth, and Christian the Fourth made some strides in improving the finances and the power base of his kingdom of Denmark and Norway. As all of this was happening, the Thirty Years War was beginning. We covered this on the episode that we did on the Defenistrations of Prague, and as we mentioned in that episode, it started out mainly a matter of religious conflict, but as the war continued on, the bigger issue of the conflict became the control of Europe, and under Christian the fourth rule, Denmark joined this conflict in progress that an effort to claim some of that control. This really was catastrophic, though loss after loss led the king to ultimately signing a treaty with the Holy Roman Empire in sixteen fifty seven. Denmark once again was in conflict, this time again with Sweden, in a series of attacks and treaties that seemed to get just progressively worse for Denmark. By sixteen fifty nine, all of the country was occupied by Swedish force is with the exception of Copenhagen. That city had only been held thanks to the intervention of Dutch allies. When Frederick the third, the son of Christian the Fourth, signed the Treaty of Copenhagen in sixteen sixty, Denmark seeded large chunks of its kingdom. This left the country in a really precarious situation, both externally and internally. And internally everything changed as a result. So, leading up to sixteen sixty, Denmark's crown had been passed down through this elective monarchy, and normally the person elected was the eldest son of the deceased monarch. But as we said, it wasn't this automatic thing, and this was sort of a way to maintain the balance of power because in accepting the duties, the newly elected monarch would sign a coronation charter and that included stipulations that outlined the monarch's responsibilities and the limitations of their power. Yeah, so instead of just like toda, you now run the country. It's like, well, you can run the country, but we have to have a contract in place first, which I do sort of like in theory. But in the wake of that series of costly wars, the blame fell on the nobility. So the short version of what happened next is that King Frederick the Third's counselors put forth a proposal that would establish a hereditary monarchy and would strip away many of the advantages that the nobility had enjoyed up to that point. This moved the governing structure away from that idea of you elect me and we're entering a contract where we both have responsibilities, to one where the monarch had absolute power. While the monarchy at this point was determined through the bloodline, power elsewhere came from wealth rather than lineage. As various departments were formed to oversee things like war and the treasury, the leaders of those institutions became wealthy landowners, whether they were part of the nobility or not. Additionally, the crown started selling some land to in money to pay off all those war debts, and the landowners who had purchased those parcels gained more power as a consequence, taxes went up to further shore up the government finances. In seventeen sixty six, the monarch who inherited the throne of Denmark was Christian the seventh. His father had been Frederick the Fifth, and when he died and Christian became king, the new ruler was just sixteen. Later that same year, then seventeen year old Christian, because he passed a birthday, married Caroline Matilda of Great Britain that was his cousin. She was just fifteen at the time. She was also incidentally King George the third sister. There's been a lot of discussion of Christian the seventh mental health and the two d and fifty years since he ruled. It's been theorized that he may have had schizophrenia. He had probably been traumatized by a tutor in his formative years. That tutor beat him, among other things, to the point that he never really recovered his mental health afterward. It's also possible that he had porphyria that definitely ran on his mother's English side of the family. It possibly was present in his father's side as well, so there was a lot going on that would have contributed to his overall physical and mental health. Yes, so if you know that King George had some mental health issues, those were because he had porphyria um so we definitely know it was in the bloodline and Christian the seventh. Behavior was marked also by a significant degree of debauchery. He was known to drink heavily. He was a frequent visitor to Copenhagen's Brothels. His demeanor is consistently characterized in the kindest terms as deeply unstable. But the establishment of an absolute monarchy in Denmark had never provided any clauses, and there was no parliament that might have offered a way to unseat a mentally ill monarch. Enter Johan's Truancy, and we're going to talk ab Struancy's early life and how he became part of the king's circle, after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Johann Friedrich Struancy was born on August fifth, seventeen thirty seven in Hala, Prussia now Germany, and he was the third of seven siblings. His father was Adam Struancy, a theologian and a teacher. His mother, Maria Dorothea Carl, was from a well positioned family. Johan's grandfather on his mother's side was a physician who had served as King Christian the sixth personal doctor, as well as the monarch's son and successor, King Frederick the fifth. When Johan was fifteen, he enrolled at the University of Halle, where he studied for a degree as a doctor. He did that for the next five years, graduating in December of seventeen fifty seven. And the remaining years of the seventeen fifties he was employed as the town physician in Altona, Denmark, which is now part of Germany. If you're familiar with the timeline of smallpox vaccination that we've discussed on the show before, he may be thinking that he got his medical credentials during a time when very elation was becoming more widely adopted, and that's correct. He really championed vary elation when he was a young physician. He also worked to generally improve hygienic practices in his community as a means to improve the health of everyone, and as a public doctor, Strudency was called upon to treat all kinds of ailments, including mental illness, and he had some fairly important insights in that aspect of his work. For one, He thought that mental illness should be studied more thoroughly, specifically to look for physical causes. That may not sound pretticarly groundbreaking, but this was a time when often if people were deemed to be mentally ill, they were kind of just locked away, Whereas he was like, can we figure out what the problem actually is? His thinking as a physician was that if you could identify a physical cause, you could potentially treated and thus treat the mental illness. He came to recognize things like head injuries and ingestion of various substances, some of which were used medicinally, were often the cause of what had frequently been written off simply as insanity at the time. During his time as a doctor, he became acquainted with a number of Danish nobles, and it was through these connections that he met and became the traveling doctor to the king. This was a guardian role of sorts for Christian the seventh, and he got that role in seventeen sixty eight. At this point, the monarch was obviously exhibiting instability, and he was supposed to undertake a tour of several European countries as a matter of diplomacy. There was also a hope that that change of scenery might help his mental state. The itinerary included Germany, Holland, England and France, and having a physician such as Struancy on hand who could offer the king care that would enable him to make this everyone at least hoped, and this offered Struancy a case study in his work in some mental illness. Uh. This is also interesting because you'll sometimes read that like, no one was willing to admit that there was something really wrong with the king, and Struancy was kind of the first person going, do you understand there's actually something wrong here? He's not just eccentric. But throughout their travels, Struancy took care of the King and offered him companionship, and over time he became a trusted ally, so much so that when Christian the Seventh returned to Denmark in early seventeen sixty nine, Struancy returned with him and he was appointed the king's personal doctor. Struancy was able to manage the king's shifting moods and his unpredictability in a way that no one else had been able to. So initially, this arrangement was welcomed by pretty much everyone who dealt with Christian the Seventh. But Struancy took this post for all of the opportunity it offered, and then some as you'll hear shortly, but he also was providing both physical and mental care for Christian the Seventh. Struancy noted that the king had delusions, but he also observed that they weren't fixed. There was a lot of variety and shifting among these delusions. The king was often very agitated. Sometimes he would speak in gibberish or laugh at inappropriate times, but the doctor also recognized that trying to stop Christian the seventh from any of these behaviors just seemed to intensify them. There were also periods where the king was lucid and could recognize and understand the nature of the delusions that he had, but he also never disbelieved those delusions. Eventually, there was, with the agreement of the Queen and the king's closest advisers, a seven point plan drawn up to try to cure Christian of his delusions and keep him from various habits that were deemed inappropriate. This plan included things like making Christian the Seventh always feel like everyone was dedicated to his happiness, he was a bit paranoid that otherwise was the case, and treating him in private settings just like anyone else rather than the nation's ruler. There was always someone on hand to play cards or otherwise entertain the king, and he was given written notes on affairs of state, which he preferred to verbal briefings. And while this system did seem to work for a while, eventually it stopped working and Christian became angry at everyone involved. However, Struancy's guests into what was causing Christian the Seventh's delusions and his other issues, I was probably a little shortsighted. He believed that the problem stemmed from the king's frequent masturbation, and his writing about this issue is pretty delicate. He sort of talks around it. He refers to it with phrases like a habit one can guess without naming it. Other accounts from the time helped to form a more certain sense of what was going on, with one of the court counselors referring to the king's quote debauched solitaire. While these accounts of the king's behavior often used to paint the monarch as being really pleasura driven, Struancy just found the whole situation to be a lot more complicated. While the doctor did try to dissuade his royal patient from this habit, that, like his other dissuasion attempts, did not really work, Struancy made the king take cold baths that didn't really help very much either. Struancy did not believe that pleasure actually had anything to do with Christian the sevens proclivities, writing quote, this is what ruins and weekends, not only his body, but also his mind, which is being suppressed by it. And as he experiences depression, apprehension, anxieties, his imagination seeks an external reason and cause him to find everything unpleasant, disgusting and intolerable, and thus the source of the coolness discussed and even hatred that he's so easily engenders towards people who approach him most frequently. I have never observed an inclination towards or a taste for sensual pleasures in the King. The habit that causes his unhappiness does not exert great attraction for him. He indulges it out of boredom and with sang foix. According to his own assurances, things which usually yield pleasure hardly touch him and even displease him. So keep in mind with all this that eighteenth century Europe had some ideas about sex and masturbation, they were not remotely sex positive. It wasn't as though Struancy made this connection between the king's behavior and mental illness in a vacuum. Influential medical texts of the time asserted this connection between mental illness and masturbation as well. There's evidence that Struancy and the other doctors at court were really familiar with those texts. Struency was not entirely alone in caring for the king. His colleagues. Justus von Berger, who was the court physician, was often consulted regarding what the best course of action would be. Yeah, Struency had the most immediate you know, has on care with the king. But he was talking to other doctors about the situation. So, like I said, he's not like the only person who went I think this is the problem. Later, Struancy wrote of the king quote, I became aware of much peculiarity in his mind and character, a great guardedness and even contempt of all those who are around him, and in particular a great deal of dissatisfaction with his situation. He harbored exaggerated ideas about various subjects, which he cherished to such a degree that he would become angry if anyone contradicted him or just expressed some doubt. He hoped to find the means with which he could indulge in all kinds of debauchery without regretting any bad consequences. In brief, he harbored several other thoughts, no less extravagant, which I shall refrain from repeating, in order not to become too diffuse. If I took the effort to demonstrate the fallacy and even absurdity of all this, his Majesty answered me that he was rather convinced of the veracity of these ideas, but that people hid it from him, and that I could enlighten him about them if I wished. He felt that the world was completely different from how it was presented to him, and that he knew secrets and mysteries about which he did not dare talk to me. Being the Royal Doctor was only the first office that the King gave to Struancy. Next he was made reader to Their Majesty's and then honorary member of the State Council. Next he became Maitre de riquets, the Master of Requests, that are, Master of petitions. That was just after the King had dissolved the Council of State. Then he became Cabinet Secretary. This is a significant series of titles for a doctor from another country to have acquired in a very short period of time. He was given all of these titles over about a year. Struency's elevation culminated and being named Privy Cabinet Minister on July fourteenth, seventeen seventy one. But well before that, the doctor had also become romantically involved with Queen Caroline Matilda. The two began their relationship in February seventeen seventy, roughly a year after Struancy arrived at court. Also in seventeen seventy, he made a bold move in a bid for power. Uh he did away, as we said, just a moment ago, with the Council of State and the Governorship of Norway. These were all signed off on by the King. But it was Struancy pulling the strings. He was systematically removing any obstacles that would keep him from doing exactly as he pleased. Caroline Matilda had already provided an heir to Christian the seventh that was their son, Frederick, who would eventually become Frederick the sixth. But when she gave birth to another child in July of seventeen seventy one, that was a daughter named Louise Augusta, it was likely and really assumed by most of the parties that courts, that Johann Struancy was really the father. On the day of Louise Augusta's baptism, Struancy, and being the auspices of the king, granted himself another new title and became Count Construency. He gave the same tile to his friend at court and the King's companion and of old brand. But even before those appointments, he was making decisions that would normally be the work of somebody far far above his station. He was passing laws for the country in line with his progressive ideals. While a lot of these reforms were ultimately good for the country, a lot of them were focused on improving the lives of the peasantry while taking away things like extravagant allowances for nobility. They were of course not welcomed by everyone, and many government officials felt particularly prickly about the King's doctor having managed to wield so much power and in a way that pretty negatively impacted their status. We'll talk about Struency's downfall after we take a quick break for a word from the sponsors that keep stuff he missed in history class going. Andreas Peter Bernstorff, who was a state official at the time all of this was going on, wrote to his uncle about the situation with Christian the seventh and Struancy. He pondered, what there is to be done when quote Huax embassill when one is obliged to obey a fool king. It was clear that Bernstorff was mortified by the power that Struancy had been able to amass, and he referred openly to the Doctor as a criminal. All of that meddling in the government and his relationship with Queen Caroline Matilda offered Struency's detractors the way to unseat him. Rumors started to spread that Struancy was not content with all that he had managed to snatch for himself, and that he was planning to overthrow the king entirely, become the king himself and marry the Queen. There had been another rumor about him even before that, that the Doctor was trying to slowly poison the king, claiming that he was dispensing medicines. As this rumor gained some tractions, Struancy's medical supplies were seized and a commission investigated the situation, but nothing sinister was found. In the last months of seventeen seventy one and into early seventeen seventy two, Struancy's enemies at court really multiplied. On January seventeen, seventeen seventy two, Christian the seventh stepmother the Queen dowager Julianna Maria, fearful that the monarchy and the country were in jeopardy, catalyzed a palace revolution. The night before that there had been a masked ball, and Julianna Maria, along with accomplices, took advantage of the exhausted and likely stupefied state of the king to wake him in the very early morning and force him to sign papers that called for the arrest of both Struancy and Queen Caroline Matilda. Struancy's allies, including Intervald Brand, were also arrested. The queen was taken to crone Or Castle and Helsinger, roughly forty five kilometers away. Incidentally, that is indeed the Kronborg Castle that is the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Two commissions were forms to investigate Struancy's supposed crimes. The members of those commissions were definitely biased. They were all people who disliked him. They had all been impacted by his governmental reformations. Their investigations were expedient, and Struancy was declared guilty of usurpation of the throne and less majest or offenses against the King. And the trial of Struancy included the following condemnation in the opening remarks, the King has been rendered obnoxious in the eyes of the people, and the people have been represented to his majesty as unworthy of their sovereign's affection. No one could approach the King, but those who belonged to the junto of those miscreants, who, under the specious pretense of being the King's friends, were his greatest enemies. Insolence, audacity, and infamy dared to approach the throne and stamped the immaculate luster of the royal house with indelible reproach. The case against Struancy was largely about his being a sneak at an opportunist. The king was described in pretty glowing terms, not as somebody who had any kind of a mental illness, but as somebody who had fallen under the bad and weakening influence of Struancy and his friends. The affair he was having with the Queen was not included in any especially direct way, but it was definitely mentioned as follows quote. The first step he took towards the summit of his ambition is an act so daring and dangerous that horror and indignation seizes every honest mind at the very idea thereof by the seduction of innocence, and by resting from his royal master, the dearest object of his felicity, and while he was imprisoned and awaiting his fate, Struancy wrote a detailed description of the king's health, which was used by his defense in their case. You have heard some excerpts from it already, but he also wrote quote, I have decided to break the silence, convinced that people who will become acquainted with this memoir will only make proper use of it, resulting in true happiness for the king. It is this record that most of the medical scholars who debate the cause of Christian the seventh mental illness used because it is very detailed. Struancy wrote of Christian the seventh disdain for kindness and affection quote. People who were considered with the most contempt and who were treated with indignation, according to him, were the happiest, and impatiently he awaited the moment when he could inspire emotions capable of attracting such treatment for him. This is why he always nurtured a very strong inclination toward indulging all kinds of debauchery and profligacy, roaming the streets, smashing windows, taunting and even murdering the wayfares, visiting the disreputable houses, fighting with the watchman, associating himself with the most notoriously wicked, and carrying out everything that not only the most perverse person can imagine. Duels, combats, and even battles did not appear to him less necessary to obtain his goal, And for some time he imagined that he had engaged in such things at night, and that several times he had killed five, six or more people, but that afterwards he was given opium to lose the memory of it, as he did not yet dare to know about it. So, according to this, Christian even believed that he behaved morally worse than he actually did, and that he was being poisoned to erase his memories of these events. Additionally, this disdain for kindness often caused him to abuse the people who were trying to serve or care for him. Yeah, there's a pretty long discussion that Truancy wrote about how you know, and a servant was perpetually in danger and like if the king stumbled and you reached out your arm to him, you were going to get hit and possibly worse. Um. The king also engaged in a variety of self harming behaviors, according to Struancy, and he believed that he was not born a prince and that he had somehow been swapped to take the role. He fantasized about being dethroned so that he could be free, and he waited for the moment that it was coming, he believed when his body would transform into marble and make him all but invincible. He believed, according to Struancy quote, that there were six people in the world who had been born morally blind, and he viewed things in nature differently, or for whom those were changed to impose on them, and he believed he was one of those six. Struancy struggles a bit in this account to try to make sense of some of the king's delusions. In particular, Christian had decided that there was a special group of people that he called comsat, which just means like that in French. Struancy never really came to understand exactly what these people were. He admits that he didn't understand it, saying, quote, it would be difficult to give a clear idea about it. For largely I understood nothing of it, even though I had very much studied the train of his imagination. It seems that the king believed that these people were shape shifters and that he could identify them, and Christian was ever on the lookout for these people any time he was in a crowd of any size, and he would point them out to Struancy. At the end of his lengthy account of his experiences treating the king and the various things that he suspected might be wrong, Struancy concludes that he had withheld a lot of this information out of respect to the monarch, and because the queen did not want the extent of the king's problems to be known. He concluded his account. With my conscience has obliged me to reveal all that I have just explained. Although I have not even permitted myself to exonerate myself with regard to various accusations in the Commission's interrogation, I wish that it may generate something good for the King and for the state. The facts that I have alleged can be verified by all those with whom the King established familiar ties and by those who approached him. Especially Count Brandt in particular, is acquainted with the details of the extravagances of the King's imagination over the last six months, during which time I have refrained as much as possible from broaching this matter with his majesty. All of this information about the King is from Struancy's perspective, but at the same time, most of these details have also been corroborated by separate accounts that were written by various members of the court over the years. And while this paints a picture of Struancy trying to help a very troubled monarch, it was not enough to save him. Struancy was sentenced to death by beheading, to be followed by being drawn and quartered. This was all carried out publicly. Brandt received the same death sentence and that took play son April seventeen seventy two. By all accounts, this execution was particularly brutal. If you go looking for any pictures, you will see the parts of their bodies after they had been dismembered, were put on display. Uh there's some debate about what happened after that. There are some accounts that will say that their bodies, what was left of them, were displayed for as long as two years until there was nothing but bone left. And there's a lot there are some question marks around exactly where they were buried. Christian the seventh marriage to Caroline Matilda was annulled, and after a bit of back and forth, due to the tension that this whole episode created between Denmark and Britain, she was deported back to her home country. She died in May of seventeen seventy five at the age of twenty three. Over the period of about thirteen months in which Struancy effectively acted as ruler of Denmark, he enacted more than one thousand cabinet ordinances, and many of these were, in historical view, very good policy. Or significant improvements, particularly when it came to human rights. Struancy banned slave trade in Denmark's colonies. He had eliminated the practice of corvey that required peasants to work for free for their landowners for a certain number of days each year. Those were also often brutal. He also allocated land to peasants and overhauled the nation's hospital system, and he reformed criminal law with far less harsh penalties and punishments, so capital punishment kind of went out the door, and on September four of seventeen seventy he enacted the first ordinance in Europe that created freedom of the press. As for Christian the seventh, he continued on as king, but it was his stepmother, Juliana Maria who really ran things. She rolled back most of Struency's laws. In seventeen eighty four, Christian's son, Frederick the sixth became Prince Regent. Christian lived until March of eighteen o eight, and he died of either a heart attack or a stroke, to ending on which source you read. He lived out his final years in confinement with pretty rudimentary and often cruel care by people who didn't really work to alleviate his illness in any way. No, he was just being kind of contained in controlled at the end of his life. And despite the controversial nature of his bid for power to enact reform, Struancy's legacy and particularly his trial and execution, remained controversial in the late eighteen nineties, and extensive analysis of the case was written by Danish judge and Lawson. That examination of the facts available led Lawson to determine that because the king's mental health issues were never expressly mentioned in the court proceedings, the entire argument made in seventeen seventy two that Struancy had taken advantage of the monarch's condition was flawed. In perhaps trying to avoid embarrassment by mentioning the king's ailments and his mental illness issues, it would indicate that any decisions that he signed off on, whether Struancy initiated them or not, and including all of the doctor's promotions, would have been valid, so that judgment of less mass Day was incorrect. As time had gone on, the ideas that Struancy was enacting into law have come to be seen in a pretty positive light. His image has been largely rehabilitated from that of this opportunistic criminal instead becoming an enlightened thinker who kind of overstepped his bounds kind of a law Yeah, that's a mixed bag. Yeah he had some great ideas, but who yeah, who. I really enjoyed researching this, although it was a bit tricky because there aren't a lot of translations of primary sources for that one, and so I had to order some very strange reproductions of translations that were done like of the court case and stuff, uh, you know, in the the early twentieth century or and so I was definitely paging through a lot of um texts that had the um the weird spellings and the the various letters switcheros. But it's ultimately super fun. Do you have some listener mail to take us out? I have two pieces of listener mail. These are both about our Ralph McCary episodes. Before we get to them, I will say, I know not everyone loved the three D nous of those episodes. Don't fret. That's not a permanent change. It was just part of a network wide kind of project we were many of our shows were doing that week. UM, so if you didn't like it, no worries and it's just those episodes. You're good. Uh So I am first going to read an email from our listener, Ann, who writes, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've been a fan of stuff you missed in history class for many years. I started listening at my first data entry job back in twelve, and you've been keeping me company insane through several data entry jobs, a couple of road trips to Dragon Con, and my current job sewing aprons and masks at artifact bags dot com. Check us out. We make nice stuff. I've been wanting to email you for the last year to hopefully provide some cheer with cute dog o picks and Star Wars costumes, but I am a procrastinator. When you did your two partner on Ralph mcquarie, I figured now is as good a time as any to send fan mail. I had heard of mcquarie before, but never realized how extensive his work was, or that his drawings were used as inspiration for Rebels. A friend of mine and I are working on Hara and Asoca costumes from Rebels right now. Actually, anyway, I have probably gone on too long, but keep up the excellent work. You guys are my favorite podcast. Uh, that wasn't very long at all, really, and also you have to send us those pictures because I love me some Hara and Asoca and uh and sent pictures of some Star Wars costumes. There's a great Mandalorian. There is a great Princess Leiah. And there is a dog that she should never bring near me because I'll try to steal it. Uh. It appears to be a shiba Inu, which is a breed that I have in love with. That dog is stinking cute, um adorable, adorable, adorable. We have another another one that comes with fabulous pictures. This is from our listener Ariel or Ariel. I'm sorry if I pronounce it the wrong way. Who rights? Hello, ladies. I've enjoyed the stuff you missed in History Class podcast for years now, and I don't know how, but I sometimes forget how much of a Star Wars fan Holly is until the topic is stumbled upon. I've just listened to your episodes on Ralph mcquarie and his artistic influence on Star Wars. My husband and I grew up on the original trilogy, and, like Holly, remained devoted fans, which is why these episodes inspired me to share photos of our most recent Star Wars themed acquisition. Meet bar Too D two. Barto D two is a custom built bourbon barrel bar that a very good friend who is also quite a renaissance man, made for us. I do secretly hope it makes Holly just a little bit jealous well success, because that thing is amazing. Um, it's really beautiful like it has you know, the front has been cut so that it opens out like a door and reveals the wonderful assortment of spirits within. But moreover, it has like a beautiful blue I'm presuming led inside, and it's painted in this really charming way. Uh Ariel also sent pictures of uh of her creatures, so her hiking partner Nikki, Sir Sid and Lady Ewen, so her her pupper, and cats who pose in the cutest ways I can ever imagine. Thanks for this an amazing podcast that makes a subject I thoroughly hated in school so much more enjoyable. UM, thank you so much for sharing that. I assure you I am the appropriate levels of jealous of your very cool bar. Um. My only concern would be that I would never fit all of my stuff in them. I'm an accumulator. I cannot help it. So thank you for for writing to us, and if you would like to write to us, you can do so at his podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as miss in History and it is very easy to subscribe to the podcast on the I heart radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.