«Pichoncita de mi corazón», «mona mia», «pipollo mío», «idolo mio», «azucena», «resalada», «gachona», «paloma», «salero de mis ojos». «How pretty you are!», «How delicious!», «I really want to kiss you on the tip of the nose and give you a very tight hug!». “I would like to have wings to fly to meet you.” «My heart makes me pitititi, a sign that I die for tititi». «Dear wife of my entrails…». The list of cloying expressions with which Fernando VII shot by letter to his four wives He presents him as a piece of bread, which was not a hindrance so that he would later be unfaithful and use them, like the rest of his subjects, to his advantage.
The Monarch married for the first time with his cousin Maria Antonia of Naples in October 1802. The link was planned in this context to improve the bad relations between the Spanish Bourbons and Italians when the danger of Napoleon loomed over both. However, the poor physical and mental state of the Spanish heir was seen almost as an offense by the Neapolitan relatives. The first impression of María Antonia was bad, terrible, bordering on syncope:
«I descend from the carriage and see the prince. I thought I fainted. Having seen the portrait of him, in which he was more ugly than handsome, in person he looked like an Adonis; he was disturbed. Do you remember that Saint Theodore [el embajador] he had written that he was good-looking, alert, and friendly. When you are forewarned, you find the lesser evil, but I believed what I was told, I was very astonished to see the opposite.
Fernando, as María Antonia explained to his mother, was an abominable being, thick of body, with a thin voice “that is scary”, “a complete jerk” and a bore who neither read, nor wrote, nor thought, nor let that others did, spending hours in his wife’s room without asking more than nonsense. The first months of the princess in Spain are reflected in her diary as if she were walking on the surface of the sun. “Everything seems wrong to me,” he noted in September 1803, “and if it were not a sin, I would wish for death.” She hated public events, where she didn’t know anyone, treated her maids with contempt, and felt like a prisoner of her mother-in-law María Luisa, who forced her to go out in a carriage every day “even if it rains and you want to stay home.” Her only occupations consisted of drawing, playing the harpsichord and guitar, writing and reading.
A good part of these objections about her husband were due to Fernando’s inexplicable lack of desire to consummate the marriage. She eleven months she needed the Prince of Asturias to decide. Partly due to shyness, immaturity and late development of secondary sexual characteristics (he did not shave for the first time until six months after the wedding); and on the other hand, bigger, because the then prince had to face an unforeseen situation. Fernando suffered from macrogenitosomia, the disease of porn actors, so he had gigantic genitalia that made sexual intercourse difficult. An excessive penis, without instructions for use, which was difficult for him to maneuver in the right direction.
Posthumous portrait of María Isabel as founder of the Prado Museum
After being somewhat gored, María Antonia radically changed her opinion of Spain: «I like this country and the people are to my liking; I am not saying this to pay a compliment to the Spanish, but if I were an individual and they let me choose where to live among all the countries, I would instantly say: in Spain, because its character is to my liking ». In the library of the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, this blonde with an elusive gaze got lost among books and recovered her good humor and taste for clothes and appearance, which she had neglected since her arrival in the country. She visited the Royal Pantheon and she chose in October 1803 the box with which she wanted to be buried, which was a sad sign of things to come. The Neapolitan woman suffered two miscarriages during her marriage and she watched helplessly as the tuberculosis progressed through her body, causing her severe stomach aches and thinning her to the bone. On May 21, 1806, she died under a cloud of rumors that her Queen mother had poisoned her.
Relationships outside of marriage
Until after the War of Independence, as King of Spain, Fernando did not remarry. Isolated from Europe, the easiest thing for the head of the Bourbon dynasty was to go to a similar house like the Portuguese, where his sister was queen consort Charlotte Joaquina. Fernando married his niece María Isabel, a girl with poor health and little influence on politics. The attentive and sweet queen also tried to keep her husband’s throne to the right, but in her case she was content to mitigate her many extramarital affairs.
María Isabel worked in vain to distance the King from the pernicious influence of the clique and carried out a great cultural promotion. She got the San Fernando Academy also gave classes to women and, at least that is traditionally assumed, it was the Portuguese woman who introduced the idea of creating the Prado Museum into Fernando’s head. She died two years after being married in childbirth after giving birth to another girl who died a few months later. It seems that her problems giving birth to her were not the result of her causality either. The historian and physician Manuel Left seen in the body of the young Portuguese, through her portraits, a dorsal kyphoscoliosis, with the consequent lumbar compensation and difficulty in giving birth. The Portuguese woman probably had rickets since childhood and, with it, problems with her bones and muscles.
María Josefa Amalia de Sajonia, portrait by Vicente López Portaña.
After two marriages without issue, the Bourbons resorted as a desperate measure to a Saxon princess, who had given such good results in the past at a fertile level. The King of Saxony, protected by the fallen Napoleon, was a zero to the left in Europe and it was not difficult to convince him to get rid of his niece María Josefa in the spring of 1819. As educated or more than her predecessors in office, the German wife of the sovereign He was fluent in several languages, drew with some skill, and played the piano. From her acid pen came no bland verses about flowers and rainbows, but rather acid political comments attacking the liberal Constitution and even an epistolary novel where she captured what was happening in Spain. His of hers is the most implacable description of her meager gifts as Ferdinand’s ruler:
«His figure is stocky and manly; She is not without light, discernment and discretion, although in public business it seems to me that she does not know how to use it opportunely, and this increases her commitments and my fears. […]. In short, he is excellent as a private man; As a boss, he does not know how to conduct himself for his benefit or for his subjects. Alas, how sorry I am to meet you!”
For María Josefa, a strong woman of character and health but shy and delicate in her public appearances, participating in hand kissing caused hives, the noise of the cannon salutes shrank her soul.
She ended up loving her husband, although she resigned willingly to sex when it was clear that he was not going to give heirs to the King. With the intention of delving into an image of the Queen as a very pious woman, a horrifying story was spread about her wedding night, according to which, when the Monarch entered the room, the Saxon woman was terrified when she saw a male member “thin as a sealing wax bar at the bottom, thick as a fist at the end and as long as a billiard stick.
Whether or not the crazy scene took place matters little, what is certainly certain is that the queen stopped having sexual relations with Fernando. After years and “proven science” trying to stay pregnant she gave up. “There was nothing left to do for me,” María Josefa acknowledged in accordance with what she decided divine providence.
For María Josefa, a strong woman of character and health but shy and delicate in her public appearances, participating in kissing gave her hives, the noise of the cannon salutes made her soul shrink, and popular celebrations such as bullfights made her nauseated. She soon refused to “have the slightest part in this barbarity.” She died unexpectedly after suffering from feverish headaches that at first seemed unimportant. Her condition worsened in the following days, until her death in May due to what her doctors described as “nervous pneumonia.” Fernando was devastated, but he did not give up looking for an heir as soon as he had “the pulse as strong as before”.
The fourth and last was also called María, María Cristina, and in the same way she was related like the others to the Bourbons, in her case as the daughter of Maria Isabel de Bourbon, Ferdinand’s sister who had gone to reign in Two Sicilies. The Spanish King chose this niece of his because, speaking plainly, he indulged himself in marrying an impressive twenty-three-year-old woman, with brown hair, brown eyes, distinguished gestures, and sculptural lines. “Other times they have married me, now I am getting married,” said the monarch. Perhaps for this reason she was also the least educated, which mattered less to her than any article of the Constitution of Cádiz. María Cristina gave the King two daughters, the future Isabel II and Maria Luisa Fernandaas well as a last youth. Fernando behaved like an anxious and giggly teenager with his last wife.