All posts tagged: James I

Rate the Dress: Anne of Denmark with horse and hound

Well, I’m off in Hawaii wearing much less elegant clothes than any of the Rate the Dresses. I only have a general idea of how last week’s very purple frock rated based on the comments that came in before I went off. So I’ll update this post later with a final count. Update: the extremely purple 1860s dress came in at 7.2 out of 10, which was very consistent with the majority of the ratings. We’ve seen Anne of Denmark before, showing off her exquisite bosom and throat. This time she’s a little more covered up, befitting an outfit worn to walk the dogs (OK, not really) and possibly ride a horse, or at least stand regally in front of it. The outfit retains the late-Elizabethan ruff, but the transition to 17th century style is apparent. Anne also seems to be transitioning to a more mature style of her own: gone are the pastels, the demure pose, replaced by rich colours and an assertive cocked arm. Is the change in Anne’s style an improvement? Or …

Rate the Dress: Elizabeth of Bohemia pre-bohemia

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week there was no Rate the Dress, as I rated the Oscars instead. I hope you enjoyed that, and thank you for your patience. The week before last I presented a very deco 1920s frock, and quite a few of you were vocally NOT IN FAVOUR of it. The poor thing got compared to a kindergarten uniform, a girl scout uniform, maternity dress, Nancy Drew (and you didn’t think that was a good thing), air hostess on a 1970s children’s show, or just the airplane the air hostess would be in. Maybe overwhelmed by the dislike, many of you quietly gave it rather high ratings, but it wasn’t enough to keep the much-maligned frock from a sad 4.8 out of 10. This week, let’s go back a few centuries, and look at an always contentious ‘child in an adult frock’ Rate the Dress. For a 17th century royal, Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Anne of Denmark and James I of Scotland and England, had a lucky life. She had a idyllic childhood. She wasn’t married …

Keeping it in the family

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve blogged about the royal family of Portugal before, and while researching that post, I came across one of the common problems with European nobility. The thing is, there just weren’t enough of them on speaking terms in each generation, so the ones that were on speaking terms tended to marry each other, leading to a lot of inbreeding. So back to the Portugese royal family. Joseph I of Portugal (6 June 1714 – 24 February 1777) had four daughters, two of whom, Maria I of Portugal (December 17, 1734 — March 20, 1816) and Benedita, Princess of Brazil(25 July 1746 — 18 August 1829), married. Maria, then Crown Princess, married her uncle, Pedro III of Portugal (5 July 1717 — 25 May 1786) on 1760, when she was 25 and he was 43. Nice. It gets worse though. Seventeen years later, Maria’s youngest sister Benedita, then thirty, married her fifteen year old cousin, who was also her nephew, as he was the child of Maria and Pedro. Eeeg. Sadly, but mercifully, and certainly not …