Luise of Tuscany Fled Pregnant — Then They Took Her Children

Luise of Tuscany Fled Pregnant — Then They Took Her Children In December 1902, Luise of Tuscany, Crown Princess of Saxony and the future queen, fled her palace in Dresden while pregnant. She left behind five young children. She said the royal family had prepared rooms for her in the Sonnenstein asylum. The court told the world she had left in "an apparently pathological state." Within a few years, the Saxon court and the courts of law had taken every child she had, including the baby she carried out. This is the true story of Archduchess Luise of Austria-Tuscany: a doctor who measured a newborn's face to decide who her father was, a Saxon detective who counted the beds in her Geneva hotel room, police who surrounded a palace to keep a mother out, the tutor who said "she chose me", and the "flower seller" legend that historians have since cleared up. Was she mad, a victim, or both? Chapters 00:00 The palace surrounded 01:34 The baby they measured 03:04 A princess without a country 05:18 Married into Saxony 07:03 Five children in nine years 09:33 The tutor 10:36 Sonnenstein 12:39 The escape 15:36 "Pathological" 17:28 The detective in Geneva 19:14 Divorce and disgrace 22:36 Whose child? 24:34 Locked out of Dresden 28:05 They take the last child 31:40 The claims on trial 36:24 Exile in Brussels 39:31 War and a son's mysterious death 41:09 The flower-seller myth 43:28 The verdict Told your rooms in an asylum were ready, would you have stayed for your children, or run? Tell us in the comments. Dark Crown tells the true stories behind the portraits: the queens, princesses and royal families whose lives ended far from the fairy tale. Subscribe to Dark Crown for new royal history documentaries. Sources: Luise of Tuscany, My Own Story (1911); Sächsische Biografie (Friedrich August III, Georg of Saxony); Swiss National Museum blog (the Habsburg scandal in Switzerland, 2021); Saxon State Archive Dresden, holdings 12568; habsburger.net; Enrico Toselli, Mari d'altesse; exhibition "Luise von Toscana", Pillnitz Palace 2017. #LuiseOfTuscany #RoyalScandal #DarkCrown