The shortest (and crazy) reign of Spain: from Felipe V’s disease to Queen Nudist

Challenging the sacred rule that a king never abdicates and less returns later, Felipe V hung the crown in early 1724. His head, probably affected by a bipolar disorder, forced him to put earth in between, “to think about death and request my salvation ». He took the radical measure to retire from the world when bulls, hunting, war or sex (it was never the sexadict that the propaganda sings and that fiction suggests, but something pallowed it) they barely calm their cyclical depressions.

In the series, created by Cristóbal Garrido and Adolfo Valuehis role is played by Javier Gutiérrezthat gives a humorous aspect to what was a great tragedy, that of a monarch that began its hidden reign behind the curtains due to extreme shyness and ended up climbing the throne believing a frog. Fiction takes many licenses in search of the hilarity of the drama, but in broad strokes it makes a good portrait of its extravagances, its bad hygienic habits and its imperishable scenic fear. “I would prefer to remain Duke of Anjou than King of Spain,” written the first Bourbon.

Next to the king she appears all the time she, her second wife, Isabel de Farnesio (Leonor Watling). His is one of the great injustices of his time, because the people, as has always happened with powerful women, accused her of using her sexual talents to keep the monarch inert without suspecting the truth. The Italian was intelligent and involved in state affairs, but he did, above all, giving affection to Felipe, who not once or twice released his hand to walk if someone forced him to do something he did not want to do. To drag his wife to a death in life as was the Sierra de Segovia, defined by Farnesio as a “desert” full of “deer and boredom,” he speaks perfectly who was commanding who.

Of Luis I, played by Carlos Scholzthere is little to say, because it did little. The characterization in Movistar’s fiction presents him as a perfect memo, ignorant of what happens in his kingdoms and with fair neurons to hunt, eat and chatter of trivialities. There is no evidence that it was so, or otherwise. Called ‘The loved one’, ‘El Liberal’ or ‘The Silhouette’ Because of his brevity, he agreed to the throne with seventeen years and a discreet existence until then. Courtly rumors pointed out that he was an extremely shy boy, with little health and little affection, isolated by his stepmother Farnesio. Hunting, dance and ball games and the Mallo (similar to current English crescent) occupied the concerns of their life. His reign was a blow, marked by his father’s interferences and his wife’s follies.

But without a doubt the great star of comedy is Luisa Isabel de Orleans (Alicia Armenteros), his wife. The reports on the charms, beauty and good education of the fifth daughter of the regent of France prescribed as soon as he crossed the Pyrenees. Her paternal grandmother recognized that neither she nor her granddaughter had shed a single tear in her farewell: «It cannot be said that it is ugly: it has beautiful eyes, white and fine skin, the nose well formed and the mouth very small. However, despite all this, he is the most unpleasant person I have met in my life; In all its actions, well speak, well eat, well drink, impatient you ».

Exhibitionist, childish, eschatological, repellent … The Spanish nobles attributed the young woman’s behavior to the degenerate life in Versailles and the bad blood of her father, the Duke of Orleans. However, the young personality of the young woman was based on a cruel upbring Limit personality disorderwhich is characterized primarily by emotional instability, polarized and dichotomic thinking and chaotic interpersonal relationships. This translated into drunkenness, tantrums and the systematic oblivion of his underwear.

The series recognizes its serious leaks. But neither does it make him ugly to give him a modern voice, from a feminist perspective and presentist: an empowered woman, advanced to her time and rebel with cause. He does not want to be the doll without dialogue lines that his husband imagines, and that is why he does not collaborate in the reproduction (the marriage had no children) or in the palace formalities. Be that as it may, the outcome is the same in reality as in fiction: Luis I ended fed up with the French and He locked her at the Royal Alcazar. He released her alone when he swore he was going to behave. Whether or not he fulfilled his word, it is difficult to determine, since the events swirled in a few weeks. Luis He got sick with smallpox On August 14, suffering fevers and delusions. He died before August ended, exactly seven and a half months after his reign began, the shortest in Spanish history, if the government “iure uxoris” is not told (for the right of his wife) by Felipe I of Castilla .

Luis’s wife did not separate from her bed at any time, which cost her to also get the disease, which in her case was not deadly. In spite of everything, Felipe and Isabel did not show the slightest clemency towards the young woman. Back to the throne, they packaged it back to France to be able to pretend that this brief nightmare had never taken place. Felipe V reigned until 1746 in what was a long and stormy escalation of his mental illness.

Movistar+ comedy makes a rigor when it comes to portraying Accent and languages that were heard in the Spanish court. It would be absurd to ask fiction to stop in such an anti -annual aspect, but it is still curious that Isabel, who spoke with German, French and Italian fluidity, barely knew how to greet in Spanish. Felipe always preferred to talk with her and her children in French. All this is a good reminder that ‘the brief life’ He doesn’t take herself very seriously; Prioritizing, as appropriate, the laughs to historical fidelity.