The Brutal Life of the “Deformed” Duchess

Comments · 159

• CA

  @CarolStJohn-ev9ry · 10 months ago

  I hope she found some joy when she was a child because the rest of her life was miserable. Poor lady.

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• MU

  @Mustang1683 · 10 months ago

  My daughter was born with congenital scoliosis, which can be much more severe than idiopathic scoliosis and can present with other issues like esophageal deformation, a ventral septal defect, and others. Her spine was curved 40 degrees at birth and got worse until she had surgeries at 3,4, and 5 to correct or remove the deformed vertebrae and fuse the others together. I can’t imagine not having access to modern medicine. Her life would have been horrible.

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• SA

  @saraquill · 10 months ago

  I’ve heard how rough scoliosis is even with modern treatments. It must have been so much worse for Joanna.

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• CL

  @clpar-k2x · 10 months ago

  Princess Eugenie of York had this, luckily she could have  a corrective operation. When she got married she let her scar show above her wedding dress because she said it was part of her and to give hope to those undergoing the same operation.

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• CI

  @circlebeanandthediamondz · 10 months ago

  I did a family tree on the House of Aviz, and I found a lot of intermarriage, it’s just devastating that a lot of Habsburgs suffered a series of conditions

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• VI

  @Vi.C_2585 · 10 months ago (edited)

  Joanna of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, was truly one of those early modern forgotten lives which your channel highlights and educates us about. <br>It seems that the poor lady was born to her role already given to bear the consequences of her families’ parallel and criss-crossed bloodlines, and didn’t even get to end up in any kind of love-match that could have eased her suffering, just another pawn in the strings of female relatives born before and after her lifetime. She may have been royal by name but her treatment in life was barbaric — imagine wearing your body to death over trying to give birth to the right kind of child with the odds already stacked against you, with not even your marital partner to truly turn to.

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• JA

  @jasperhorace7147 · 10 months ago

  Being born into the most powerful dynasty in Europe was no protection for women from the cruelties of their husbands.

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• MO

  @monicacall7532 · 10 months ago

  Almost all of my family members on my dad’s side of the family deal with genetic spinal deformities such as moderate to severe scoliosis, Schuermann’s Kyphosis, spondylolesthesis along with hyper kyphosis and hyper lordosis. &nbsp;I deal with everything except Schuermann’s disease. &nbsp;Growing up I soon discovered that I had quite poor balance no matter how many exercises I did to improve the situation. &nbsp;Balance problems made me often klutzy. &nbsp;All of my doctors told me that my spine was just fine until 15 years ago when the pain caused by these issues plus dealing with an aggressive form of osteoarthritis led me to an orthopedist who finally and correctly diagnosed my spine problems. &nbsp;Unfortunately, by then it was too late to do anything about the various spine issues, so treatment consists of pain management and doing exercises that don’t exacerbate the problem.<br><br>My heart goes out to Eleanora! &nbsp;She must’ve been in constant pain. &nbsp;Pregnancy worsens scoliosis, so having baby after baby would’ve been a brutal assault on her spine. &nbsp;As her main job was to have as many babies as possible and also because her husband didn’t care about her beyond birthing babies for his dynasty it’s possible that Eleanora would have kept her increasing pain and balance problems to herself. &nbsp;However, even if the husband cared about her there was little that could be done about the pain. &nbsp;Thank you for sharing her story. &nbsp;I so appreciate the fact that you feature so many stories about women. &nbsp;Too often they are left out of the historical narrative. &nbsp;The idea that only men’s stories count as important throughout history makes me so mad. &nbsp;Keep up the excellent work with your fascinating work in bringing people from the past to life.👏👏👏👏👏

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• JA

  @JayGideon-7 · 10 months ago

  I also suffered from scoliosis. Falling, at least to some degree, is a constant concern. This disease is most often in children can happen at any time to anybody. I had no sign of it until I was 65 years old. Within a year walking &nbsp;became very difficult. Now, a few years later everything is difficult.

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• KH

  @khanhkhanh1060 · 10 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctAT1EXvwDc&amp;t=943">15:43</a> They should make a drama series about them!

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• FO

  @forrestnelson5069 · 10 months ago

  What a sad unfortunate life for Joanna. Thank you for telling her story.

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• TY

  @tylerbhumphries · 5 months ago

  Poor woman. I have severe scoliosis as well and when I was 14, I was told I could have children but I would be a high risk pregnancy. The doctor even remarked on how it was a shame because I had such wide hips that without the scoliosis, I wouldn’t have any problem delivering. But because of the scoliosis, &nbsp;my rib cage is slightly twisted and lifted and my pelvis has a lateral tilt. I could not imagine going through 8 pregnancies and births. That must have been so painful for her and it was very risky.

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