Yellow Journalism - Part 01

[sailorkitty]

Coming up: Review/rec of Enemy At The Door, a series set during the occupation of the Channel Islands.

Inbetween, here's a few cobbled-together pieces on two guys at the European courts. They are largely unedited and hastily scribbled while cross-referencing Wikipedia and related sources. Do not take them as gospel.

(Both of these guys are also woefully underrepresented in the world of period drama. This is a shame, both of them had interesting careers that would lend themselves well to court drama and war stories respectively.)

Today I would like to talk about this cutie. He was a Swedish court official who was part of several secret societies and got sort-of adopted into the Royal family.



It was the mid 1700’s. Badin was a young boy. His parents were forced to work really hard, and Badin probably did too(Being slaves and all that). One day, there was a really big fire and mom and dad died. Badin was left on his own. He was sold to a captain, who decided to drag him on a trip to Sweden, where he was sold a court official who figured ’meh need a gift to impress the queen, this little boy should do’ . Badin was dressed in what I assume was the Blue Boy suit from Django, and presented to the queen.

Sweden didn't really have that kind of slavery to the same extent. Sure, there were a few 'moors' at court, but these were more like exotic curios and not really, y'know, Swedish Born and Bred. The queen also had several kids, who naturally had been brought up by private tutors and the like, didn't spend much time around her, were destined for greatness, etc etc.

Badin was ten years old and had travelled far. The queen was, as previously stated, a mother. A mother who was confronted with a sad, tired little boy. Her reaction amounted to 'HE'S ADORABLE!1111 I want to take him home and adopt him and feed him cookies and make sure he's happy’. So Badin was given a new room, tailor-made clothes, and was made an in-official part of the royal family, the youngest and sort of spoiled kid whom the queen was able to dote on in a way not possible for her other children.

The queen had read about all these cool theories by contemporary philosophers Roseau and Linné, and decided to unschool him as an experiment: He was taught the bible and how to read, and then was let to be ’naturally educated’ in a hands-off way which frankly sounds kind of like an indigo child. On the other hand, Badin was also allowed to treat the royal family - Including the children, his foster-siblings/playmates, as he wished. Literally nobody did that, except for the king and queen. As a result, he was cherished and loved by his new family, particularly big brother Gustav III, older than him by 1-2 years and future king of Sweden (and no longer the youngest).

His older siblings, being older siblings, where naturally inclined to teach Badin bad words to say at court (You do not say ’fuck’, ’shit’, or ’piss’ in an 18th century court. Unless you are Badin at eleven.). But oh, little Badin was black and therefore couldn’t be counted on to know any better (He was damn smart). So he never really got punished for it. Else the queen would be furious for someone hurting her precious baby. He was a real Pain In The Ass, too - Witty, and a prankster. Climbed everyone’s chairs, called high-ranking court officials singular ’you’ (Sweden used a plural 'you’ for formal occasions), and nicknamed older brother Gustav ”Gustav the Willen” and older brother Charles ”Mr. Tobacco” (because what are little brothers for if you can’t make them smoke weird stuff?) and these nicknames were used by him at court. Constantly. The court officials were scandalised, but what could they do? The queen thought he was adorable.

Until the day Badin burst into Gustav’s history lesson with two swords in hand, throwing one to Gustav. Of course Gustav would rather be dueling his dear little brother than reading boring history. The history teacher, well aware of how highly his job was valued, grabbed them both and gave them a thorough thrashing. He then told the queen: ”Educate this one, or I quit!”

And so, Badin was educated. He was never ’officially’ a member of the royal family, until 1768. He was baptized in church: The whole royal family (save Charles) stood godparents.

In his adult life, he was first servant to his mother, and later his sister. He also held the position of head steward of the royal castle. His in-official title was something along the lines of ’spymaster general’, because his years of uncontrolled roving in the castle had made him privy to many secret places and plots. He had a chair in parliament, which he seldom used. Gustav tried to give him the title of ’assessor’, which Badin refused with the words ’Have you ever heard of a black assessor?’ It’s possible that he didn’t want to be visibly involved in court life/Swedish Game Of Thrones (Conspiracies, murders, etc - It was a hotbed rife with danger). He wore quite a few titles, but preferred ’landowner’, as he owned two farms near Stockholm.

He was part of several secret societies: Svea order, the oldest Swedish order, where he held the title of Court Secretary. Par Bricole, a Bacchannalian society based around partying and singing Bellman songs(Basically Animal House), where he started out as Master of Dances, was very appreciated and popular as such, and went on to become vice-governor, the second-highest rank. He was also a Mason.

He was an educated man, despite this rocky start: His library held over 900 volumes in different languages, many of them had notes in the margin, made by his hand. He was very loyal to the royal family, and never revealed a single secret, despite being privy to many.

Today we will be talking about one fine-ass looking gentleman who looked great in a uniform.

I mean, just look at him. Isn’t he cute? Look at those cheekbones.





Abram ‘Gannibal’ Petrovich was born in 1698 to a long military tradition. His father, a prince of Logon, (In modern day Cameroon), died defending his kingdom from the Ottoman empire. One of Ivan’s 19 siblings tried to save him from being carried off on a ship. Alas, she drowned.

Abram stayed in the Ottoman empire as a servant for a year, which was a great step down from prior royal life. Being spoils wasn’t what his father had intended for him. One day, he even got kidnapped by a Russian diplomat. You see, having ‘little black slave boys’ was a great novelty back in the day, and Abram’s skin was just the right colour to make him very amusing to the melatonin-impaired. In 1704, he was sent to the Russian court, and presented to Peter The Great.

Tsar Peter took a liking to him. Abram was clever and pretty good at working out military strategy, so he took the kid home to his family and subsequently his young daughter Elizabeth, who was Abram’s age. The kids got along. Like, really well. Peter scratched his head; Something clearly had to be done about this.

In 1705, Tsar Peter stood godfather while Abram was baptized (and I’m assuming freed since I can find no information on that) a Petrovich(meaning ‘son of Peter’). Abram took the date as his de facto birthday. From then on, Peter brought him along on military campaigns as his valet, where Abram could study strategy in real-time. Eventually, Abram started growing old enough to have his own adventures. Peter, realizing that his bird was about to fly from the nest, sent him to Metz in 1717 to get an education in art, science, and warfare(This was the fanciest university at the place and time). In 1718, Abram, in hopes of making godfather proud, joined the French army to learn engineering. 1720 had him at the French Royal artillery academy. Unfortunately, war was beginning. France and Spain came to a head, so he saw his chance and managed to rise to the rank of captain. He was captured, but released in 1722 at which point he went back to Metz to finish his studies, adopted the surname ‘Gannibal’ after Hannibal’s Russian name, befriended Voltaire.

In 1723, he returned home to Russia, using his advanced training to work as an engineer and later a mathematics tutor to the Tsar’s private gaurd unit.

After Peter’s death in 1725, Prince Menshikov gained power. He found Gannibal’s superior education and foreign birth very suspicious, and exiled him to Siberia in 1727, because we need a Shawshank Redemption plot to round this story out. 1730 saw him pardoned, due to great technical skill. He built a fortress and led several construction projects, as master engineer. In 1741, Elizabeth of Russia took the throne, promoted him to Major General, and Superintendant of Reval. She also gave him a cool estate with hundreds of serfs, to which he retired in 1762.

Gannibal married twice: First to a Greek woman, Evdokia Dioper, in 1731. She was forced to marry, they fought lot, he accused her of cheating. His suspicions were confirmed when the baby came out looking -nothing- like him. He reacted by throwing her into prison for eleven years. (I mean, he was an 18th century guy...)

Meanwhile, he started living with a Swedish lady, Christina Regina Siöberg, a very aristocratic lady descended from Scandinavian nobles. This relationship was a lot happier, and produced a) Ivan Gannibal, an accomplished naval officer who looked amusingly enough like a middle-eastern dude, and eventually became General-In-Chief, second greatest military rank of Russia. Also b) A son named Osip whose daughter was the mother of Alexander Pushkin, one of the great Russian authors. (There are to this day British aristocrats related to this guy.)

(Marriage aside, Tsar Peter's ghost had good reason to be proud of his godson.)