title: Colin Thatcher

texts:
<mask> (born August 25, 1938) is a Canadian politician who was convicted for the murder of his ex-wife, JoAnn Wilson. Early life
<mask> was born in Toronto when his father, <mask>, worked for Canada Packers. He moved to Saskatchewan when he father returned home to run the family business. His father subsequently entered politics and became Saskatchewan premier from 1964 to 1971. <mask> began studying agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan. After one year, he transferred to Iowa State University, where he met JoAnn Geiger. In 1962, they married.He graduated from Iowa State with B.S. and M.S. degrees in agriculture and then went to work on his father's ranch in Moose Jaw. Political career
After his father's death in 1971, <mask> cultivated his own interest in politics. In 1975, he won the provincial riding of Thunder Creek as a Liberal, but he defected to the Progressive Conservatives two years later after voter popularity had shifted from the Liberals to the Conservatives. The move was denounced by the Liberals and also privately by his wife. Marital issues
Geiger felt disgraced by <mask>'s behaviour, and their marriage began to disintegrate.<mask> began a number of extramarital relationships, which he made little effort to hide from public scrutiny. When Geiger confronted him with these indiscretions, <mask> is reported to have verbally and physically abused her. <mask>'s dalliances did not adversely affect his popularity as a politician, and in 1978, he was re-elected to the Legislative Assembly. Divorce
His marriage, however, did not fare so well, and in 1980, after nearly a year of legal battling, the couple divorced. Geiger was awarded custody of two of their three children, as well as $820,000 for her share of the marital property; the amount was one of the highest ever awarded by a Canadian divorce court. <mask> formally contested the settlement and ignored its custody terms. At one point, he flew to Geiger's new home in Brampton, Ontario to kidnap the children.Geiger soon married Tony Wilson, but she had to endure almost-constant harassment from her ex-husband. After she was shot and injured the next year by an unidentified assailant, thought to be <mask>, she gave up her claim to custody of Regan, the middle child, and settled for about half of her original court award. Geiger and Wilson believed that <mask> had been behind the shooting, but the Crown never pressed charges. Again, <mask>'s political life was largely unaffected, and he won his third straight term as MLA at the 1982 election. The Saskatchewan Conservatives won a majority government in that election, and <mask> was appointed to the provincial cabinet as Minister of Energy and Mines. However, public criticism and disputes with Premier Grant Devine made <mask> resign from that post the following year. Murder of wife
Four days after <mask>'s resignation, on 21 January 1983, JoAnn was found bludgeoned and shot to death in the garage of her Regina home.Again, rumours abounded that <mask> had been in some way involved, but he was not formally charged until 7 May 1984, after a lengthy police investigation. Evidence of guilt
Four key pieces of evidence eventually led to <mask>'s arrest:

A credit card receipt dated 17 January, four days before the murder, with <mask>'s name and signature on it, was found near the murder scene. Neighbours reported seeing a suspicious car, a black Ford Mustang, parked outside the Wilson residence around the time of the murder. The car's licence plates were illegible because they were covered with mud. When a neighbour tried to wipe off the mud, she could uncover only the numbers "292" before the car pulled away. A car with a matching description and licence plate was subsequently found on <mask>'s property and was traced to the Saskatchewan government's lent vehicles parking lot. The ammunition (.357 Magnum) and the type of gun (Ruger Security-Six) thought to be used in the murder matched those <mask> that had purchased on a trip to Palm Springs, California.Most damningly, a man named Gary Anderson confessed to police that he had been approached by <mask> for help in the murder. He resembled the man whom neighbours had described as sitting in the orange Ford Mustang while it was parked outside the Wilson residence. He also named two other men (Cody Crutcher and Charlie Wilde) as participants with him in the plot. The three men told police that it was Anderson whom neighbours had seen sitting in the Ford Mustang outside the Wilson residence, there was a disguise in the Mustang back seat, and it was <mask> who was wearing the disguise when he had actually committed the murder. Police convinced Anderson to wear a wire and to meet with <mask> to try to elicit a confession or to reveal details of the murder. During the recorded conversation, <mask> made several statements that implied he was involved in the crime. Anderson made several attempts to elicit an incriminating statement, but <mask> did not confess directly.However, <mask> told Anderson repeatedly to deny any direct accusations or indirect allegations. <mask>'s responses and evasiveness, besides other evidence, convinced police that he had been the mastermind. Conviction
<mask> was tried in Saskatoon for the murder of his ex-wife in the autumn of 1984. In addition to the evidence presented, he insisted on testifying so that he could try and explain the recorded conversation between Anderson and him. He was found guilty under the prosecution of Serge Kujawa and was given a sentence of life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. <mask> appealed the verdict, but the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejected the plea in 1986. Subsequent requests to the Supreme Court of Canada and the federal Minister of Justice for a review of his case were also denied.A request for an early parole hearing was rejected in 2000, but the jury of a later hearing in 2003 decided that he was eligible to apply. He did so, and on 31 March 2004, the National Parole Board rejected his bid for early release. Throughout his trial and his appeals, <mask> has steadfastly maintained his innocence, which he admits is probably the reason that he was not paroled until late 2006. Parole
On December 18, 2006, he made his first public appearance since he had been paroled two weeks earlier. He appeared at the Saskatchewan Legislature for a ceremony honouring former premiers of the province. <mask> spoke with the media about the accomplishments of his late father but refused to discuss the murder of his ex-wife. <mask> has written a 440-page book about his case, Final Appeal: Anatomy of a Frame.It was released by ECW Press on September 1, 2009. On April 21, 2010, <mask> agreed to relinquish any profits related to the sale of his book, such as his $5,000 advance from his publisher. <mask> has also instructed the publisher of his book to forward any further royalties from its sale to the Saskatchewan Minister of Finance. In 2011, funds from the sale of the book in the amount of $13,866.44 were turned over to the Ministry of Justice. Biographies
Bird, Heather. Not Above The Law: The Tragic Story of JoAnn Wilson and <mask>. Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited, 1985.Mankiewicz, Francis, director. Love and Hate: The Story of <mask> and JoAnn <mask>. (Television movie.) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1989. This film starred Kenneth Welsh and Kate Nelligan as <mask> and JoAnn <mask>. Siggins, Maggie. A Canadian Tragedy, JoAnn & <mask>: A Story of Love and Hate.Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985. <mask>, <mask>. Backrooms: A Story of Politics. Douglas & McIntyre, 1985. Wilson, Garrett & Lesley Wilson. Deny, Deny, Deny: The Rise and Fall of <mask>. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1986.References

External links
Crime Library article on <mask>
CBC's <mask> Timeline

<mask> returns to Sask. legislative building
CBC News: <mask> writing book about his case

1938 births
Living people
Members of the Executive Council of Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Liberal Party MLAs
Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan MLAs
Politicians from Toronto
Canadian people convicted of murder
People convicted of murder by Canada
Canadian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Canada
People paroled from life sentence
Canadian politicians convicted of crimes
Politicians convicted of murder

masks:
Wilbert Colin Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Ross Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Colin
Thatcher
Colin
Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Thatcher
Colin
Colin Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Colin Thatcher
Colin Thatcher


title: Gary Geddes

type: original

texts:
<mask> (born 9 June 1940 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian poet and writer. Biography
He spent four years of his childhood on the Canadian prairies, but otherwise remained on the west coast until 1963, where he got his bachelor's degree in English and Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. <mask> received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto. He taught English and Creative Writing at Concordia University for twenty years (1978–1998). Then he returned to the west coast, where he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Canadian Culture at Western Washington University (1998–2001). He has also taught English at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and the University of Victoria, as well as serving as a writer-in-residence at Green College (UBC) and the Vancouver Public Library.In 2007 he received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Royal Roads University. <mask> has written and edited over thirty-five books, including seventeen books of poetry, as well as fiction, non-fiction, drama, translation, criticism and anthologies. His work has been translated into five languages. Before embarking on his literary career, he worked as a gillnet fisherman, loaded boxcars at BC Sugar Refinery, stocked shelves at Woodwards, worked as a fishing guide and drove a water-taxi. <mask> is known as one of Canada's best political poets, having been singled out for this honour by literary critic George Woodcock in the late 1960s, whose claim graced the back cover of many of Geddes' books. Geddes has explored human rights issues in places such as Chile during its dictatorship, in Nicaragua during its civil war, and in Palestine and Israel after the Oslo peace accord. He lives on Thetis Island, British Columbia.Literature and the Environment

<mask> is most known for being a political and humanist poet, but his writing is also deeply rooted in place. Although he cannot be defined as an environmental writer or nature writer, early books such as Snakeroot (1973) and more recent work such as Sailing Home: A Journey through Time, Place & Memory (2001) are based around a specific place and explore the human relationship with that environment. Geddes's relationship to the environment seems to be strongly nostalgic: Sailing Home is a memoir of his personal search for a place which may no longer exist, or may have changed beyond recognition, and Snakeroot also involves revisiting a landscape which is no longer home. Geddes approaches the environment with an attitude that ranges from confrontational to appreciative. In the poem "ladder grass" (from Snakeroot) he reveals the appreciative side: "The ladder grass/ at my feet is unique, splendid," and in "snakeroot" he says, "The road to hell is paved." However, these lines co-exist in the book that contains the poem "blood and feathers," which is far more confrontational towards nature, especially in the opening lines "I refuse to be seasonal, stirred/ to a frenzy by a planet’s turning. Let the dead rocks and dying grasses/ speak for themselves, or be dumb."Whether confrontational or appreciative, though, Geddes' responses to the environment seem based in a strong attachment to the places he has lived, and in an undeniable connection between human beings and their surroundings. In 2010 Robert G. May edited a collection of critical studies, <mask>: Essays on His Works (Guernica Editions) which includes contributions by: W. H. New, M. Wynn Thomas, Winnifred M. Bogaards, Shirley McDonald, Lake Sagaris and Robert G. May. Bibliography
Poetry
 Poems (1971)
 Rivers Inlet (1972)
 Snakeroot (1973)
 Letter of the Master of Horse (1973)
 War & other measures (1976)
 The Acid Test (1980)
 The Terracotta Army (1984)
 Changes of State (1986)
 Hong Kong (1987)
 No Easy Exit (1989)
 Light of Burning Towers (1990)
 Girl by the Water (1994)
 The Perfect Cold Warrior (1995)
 Active Trading: Selected Poems 1970-1995 (1996)
 Flying Blind (1998)
 Skaldance (2004)
 Falsework (2007)
 Swimming Ginger (2010)
 What Does A House Want? (2014
 The Resumption of Play (2016)

Fiction
 The Unsettling of the West (1986)

Non-Fiction
 Letters from Managua: Meditations on Politics & Art (1990)
 Sailing Home: A Journey through Time, Place & Memory (2001)
 Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things: An Impossible Journey from Kabul to Chiapas (2005)
 Drink the Bitter Root: A Search for Justice and Healing in Africa (2010, USA 2011)
 Medicine Unbundled: A Journey through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care (2017)

Drama
 Les Maudits Anglais (1984)

Translation
 I Didn't Notice the Mountain Growing Dark (1986), poems of Li Bai and Du Fu, translated with the assistance of George Liang

Criticism
 Conrad's Later Novels (1980)
 Out of the Ordinary: Politics, Poetry & Narrative (2009)
 Bearing Witness (2016)

Anthologies
 70 Canadian Poets (2014)
 20th-Century Poetry & Poetics (1969, 1973, 1985, 1996)
 15 Canadian Poets Times 3 (1971, 1977, 1988, 2001)
 Skookum Wawa: Writings of the Canadian Northwest (1975)
 Divided We Stand (1977)
 The Inner Ear (1983)
 Chinada: Memoirs of the Gang of Seven (1983)
 Vancouver: Soul of A City (1986)
 Compañeros: Writings about Latin America (1990)
 The Art of Short Fiction: An International Anthology (1992; brief edition, 2000)

Awards
 E.J.

masks:
Gary Geddes
Geddes
Geddes
Geddes
Gary Geddes
Gary Ges


title: David Quantick

texts:
<mask> (born 14 May 1961) is an English novelist, comedy writer and critic, who has worked as a journalist and screenwriter. A former staff writer for the music magazine NME, his writing credits have included On the Hour, Blue Jam, TV Burp and Veep; for the latter of these he won an Emmy in 2015. Biography
<mask> was born in Wortley, West Riding of Yorkshire (now South Yorkshire) on 14 May 1961, adopted, and moved at an early age with his family to Plymouth. <mask> went to Woodford Junior School and Plymouth College,  then Exmouth Comprehensive School. <mask> began writing for the music publication NME in 1983, where with Steven Wells he concentrated on comedy writing until 1995. Alongside this, he also contributed material to British comedy shows such as Spitting Image. In 1992, he joined the writing team for the Radio 4 spoof news programme On the Hour, before writing for the television follow-up The Day Today in 1994.He appeared regularly on Collins and Maconie's Hit Parade (Radio 1, 1994–1997), with his Quantick's World slot and on the weekly show, The Treatment on BBC Radio Five Live, which was an hour-long satirical news round-up. In 1995, <mask> presented a pilot show called Now What? to Carlton Television but he series was not picked up for development. He wrote with Chris Morris for Brass Eye in 1996 (broadcast in 1997) and Blue Jam (Radio 1, 1997), as well as the subsequent television version Jam (Channel 4, 2000). He also provided material for Smack the Pony (Channel 4, 1999–2001), Harry Enfield's Brand Spanking New Show (Sky One, 2000) and featured on Radio 4's The 99p Challenge. Working with Jane Bussmann, he co-wrote and performed Bussmann & Quantick Kingsize for BBC Radio 4 in 1998. In 2000, the pair created what Quantick has claimed was the world's first internet sitcom and docusitcom (documentary/sitcom), Junkies, about three heroin addicts.Starring Peter Baynham, Sally Phillips and Peter Serafinowicz, the writing pair claimed the project grew out of their frustration with the commissioning process. They argued the average sitcom cost £200,000 to make and was difficult to finance, so they secured the services of cast and crew on a voluntary basis and made a show for less than £4,000. The site received over a million visits in its first eight months of existence. In 2000, Quantick's biography of The Clash was published, with further books on Beck, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks appearing in 2001. That year he collaborated with Andrew Collins and Stuart Maconie on Lloyd Cole Knew My Father, a live show about working as a music journalist. A performance was later broadcast on Radio 2 as a six-episode series. In 2003 and 2005, Quantick contributed material to sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound, five series of 15 Minute Musical (2004–08) and several series of Parsons and Naylor's Pull-Out Sections.He also made several appearances on Clive Anderson's radio panel show We've Been Here Before in 2003 and 2004. In 2005 he appeared in Channel 4's Come Dine with Me. Between 2003 and 2005 Quantick co-presented a weekly programme One Way Single Parent Family Favourites on London based community arts radio station Resonance FM. In 2006 he wrote and presented series 3 of 'The Blagger's Guide', a six-part comedy series on BBC Radio 2 and appeared as Doctor Dave Radio on Radio 2 comedy programme, Radio Rivron. Between 2001 and 2012 He was also part of the writing team of Harry Hill's TV Burp. Following its final series, Quantick contributed material to The Thick of It, helped write material for the comedian Rob Brydon, and recorded further editions of The Blagger's Guide for Radio 2 until 2014. In September 2012, Quantick published an e-book novel, Sparks, which was positively reviewed by Neil Gaiman and Ben Aaronovitch.He produced a four-episode comedy series 52 First Impressions with <mask> for Radio 4 in 2014 in which he recounted stories about 52 individuals he had encountered in his life/career. He received an Emmy in 2015 for his work on the HBO series Veep. That year he crowd-funded a novel The Mule via the Unbound company which was released on 25 February 2016. He had two writing manuals published with Oberon Books: How To Write Everything in 2015, then How to Be a Writer: Conversations With Writers About Writing the following year. In April 2019 his novel All My Colors came out, described by the author <mask> Barnett as "a blend of Murakami-ish otherworldliness, Stephen King small town horror and Douglas Adams-esque absurdity." Bibliography

Fiction
Sparks (10 September 2012, Kindle ASIN: B0098UTP5E)
That's Because You're a Robot with Shaky Kane (Image Comics, 2014)
The Mule (Unbound, 25 February 2016, )
 Go West (Unbound, 24 January 2019, )
 All My Colors (Titan Books Ltd, 16 April 2019, )
 Night Train (Titan Books Ltd, 29 September 2020, )

Nonfiction
Dress to Kill by Eddie Izzard, <mask>uantick et al. SOTCAA article 'Collins, Maconie and Quantick
Scroll down to Collins and Maconies' Hit Parade clip — Radio Zone
An interview with <mask> on RechargedMagazine.com

1961 births
Comedians from Devon
English male journalists
English radio writers
English television writers
English screenwriters
English male screenwriters
English humorists
English music critics
English biographers
Living people
NME writers
People from Exmouth
People from Wortley, South Yorkshire
People educated at Plymouth College
British male television writers
Male biographers

masks:
David Quantick
Quantick
Quantick
David Quantick
Quantick
David Quantick
David M
David Q
David Quantick


title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine

texts:
Princess Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (; known as Liselotte von der Pfalz, 27 May 1652 – 8 December 1722) was a German member of the House of Wittelsbach and, as <mask> (Duchesse d'Orléans), the second wife of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (younger brother of Louis XIV of France), and mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, France's ruler during the Regency. She gained literary and historical importance primarily through preservation of her correspondence, which is of great cultural and historical value due to her sometimes very blunt descriptions of French court life and is today one of the best-known German-language texts of the Baroque period. Although she had only two surviving children, she not only became the ancestress of the House of Orléans, which came to the French throne with Louis Philippe I, the so-called "Citizen King" from 1830 to 1848, but also became the ancestress of numerous European royal families, so she was also called the "Grandmother of Europe". Through her daughter she was the grandmother of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, the husband of Maria Theresa, and great-grandmother of Joseph II and Leopold II (both Holy Roman Emperors) and Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution. Life

Early years
Elisabeth Charlotte was born on 27 May 1652 in the castle of Heidelberg as the second child and only daughter of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine, and his wife Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel. Named after her paternal grandmother <mask> and her own mother, from a young age she was nicknamed Liselotte, a portmanteau of both her names. An emergency baptism was performed shortly after her birth due to her being very weak and thin.She was raised in the Reformed Protestant faith, the most widespread denomination in the Electoral Palatinate at that time. Liselotte was a lively child who liked to run around and climb trees to nibble on cherries. She sometimes claimed that she would have preferred to be a boy, and referred to herself in her letters as a "wild child" (rauschenplattenknechtgen). The marriage of Liselotte's parents soon turned into a disaster, and Liselotte was frequently witness to acts of domestic violence. In 1657, Elector Charles I Louis separated from his wife Charlotte in order to marry morganatically with Marie Luise von Degenfeld, who thus became Liselotte's stepmother. Liselotte likely perceived her as an intruder, but had good relationships with many of her 13 half-siblings, the Raugrafen. With two of her half-sisters, Louise (1661–1733) and Amalie Elisabeth, called Amelise (1663–1709), she kept a lifelong correspondence.Her half-brother Charles Louis (1658–1688), called Karllutz, was a particular favorite of hers; she also called him "Black Head" (Schwarzkopfel) because of his hair color and was ecstatic when he later visited her (1673) in Paris. His early death in battle deeply saddened her. The most important caregiver in Liselotte's life was her aunt Sophia of the Palatinate, her father's youngest sister, who also lived in Heidelberg Castle with Charles I Louis until her marriage in 1658 with Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In 1659, Liselotte's father sent her to her aunt's court in Hanover in an attempt to separate her from his estranged wife Charlotte. Liselotte later remembered this time as the happiest of her life. Sophia became an important motherly figure for her niece, and remained her most important confidante and correspondent throughout her life. During this time she also underwent a total of three trips to The Hague, where Liselotte met her paternal grandmother <mask>, the "Winter Queen" of Bohemia, who was still living in exile.<mask> wasn't particularly fond of children, but she became very fond of her granddaughter, whom she found similar to her own family, the Stuarts: "She is not like the House of Hesse...she is like ours". Her relatives in The Hague also included the slightly older William of Orange-Nassau, who was her playmate and was later to become King of England. She later also remembered the birth of Sophia's son George Louis, who also became King of England. Liselotte was fluent in French as early as 1661, when a French woman named <mask>, who did not understand German, was appointed as her governess. When Duke Ernest Augustus of Brunswick took office as Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in September 1662, Liselotte moved with Sophia to Iburg Castle. In 1663 Elector Charles I Louis granted Liselotte's mother Charlotte monetary compensation in exchange for her vacating the Heidelberg residence. Immediately afterwards the Elector brought his daughter back to the court in Heidelberg.Liselotte now received a courtly education customary for princely houses at the time, consisting of lessons in French, dancing, playing the spinet, singing, handicrafts and history. In addition, she was regularly read to from the Bible "in two languages, German and French". Her new governess, Maria Ursula Kolb von Wartenberg, called "the Kolbin", instructed her against "any hatred or prejudice against someone because they belong to a different religion". This religious tolerance was quite unusual in its time and stemmed from the relatively relaxed attitude of her father Charles I Louis, who was a Calvinist himself, but had a built in Mannheim a Concordia church (Konkordienkirche), where the followers of the Calvinist (or Reformed), Lutheran and Catholic denominations could celebrate their rituals. Liselotte benefited from this relatively open religious attitude throughout her life; she had learned about the Lutheran denomination at court in Hanover and, decades later, she still knew how to sing Lutheran chorals by heart. Before her marriage, she was required to convert to the Catholic faith for dynastic reasons, though she remained skeptical of dogmatism throughout her life, and was often critical of "the priests", even while attending mass on a daily basis. She remained convinced of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and was critical of the Catholic veneration of the saints.Etienne Polier, her first stable master and steward, became a lifelong confidante, whom she took with her to France after her marriage and who remained in her service for life. Marriage

Liselotte was married in 1671 to the brother of King Louis XIV of France, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, known as "Monsieur", the title given to the eldest brother of the King under the Ancien Régime. As wife of the Duke of Orléans, Liselotte assumed the style of Madame. This political union was conceived by Anna Gonzaga, Liselotte's aunt (as widow of Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern, Charles I Louis' younger brother) and an old friend of the Duke of Orléans; she negotiated the marriage contract, including the terms surrounding Liselotte's required conversion to Catholicism. Anna escorted Liselotte from Heidelberg to Paris. The wedding per procurationem took place on 16 November 1671 at the Cathedral of Saint Stephen in Metz by Bishop Georges d'Aubusson de La Feuillade; in representation of the groom was the Duke of Plessis-Praslin. The day before, she solemnly renounced her old Reformed faith and converted to the Roman Catholic faith.She met her husband, who was 12 years her senior, for the first time on 20 November 1671 in Châlons. Until her husband's death in 1701, she resided in her own apartments in her husband's residences, the Palais Royal in Paris, and the Château de Saint-Cloud. The couple lived mostly at the royal court, where they had to be present for about three-quarters of the year, first in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and, after its completion in 1682, in the Palace of Versailles, where they had two adjacent apartments in the main wing. They also had apartments in the Palace of Fontainebleau, where the court went in autumn for the hunting season. Liselotte (unlike her husband) took part in this tradition with enthusiasm. She often rode with the King through the woods and fields all day long, from morning to night, without being deterred by occasional falls or sunburn. From Fontainebleau, the couple made regular visits to Montargis Castle, which belonged to Monsieur and which, according to their marriage contract, would later fall to <mask> as a widow's seat.Liselotte maintained her own court of 250 people, which cost 250,000 livres annually, while her husband maintained an even larger one. This was the Duke of Orléans' second marriage, his first wife and cousin Henrietta of England died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances in 1670. He brought two daughters into his new marriage, 9-year-old Marie-Louise (with whom Liselotte was able to build a warm, sisterly relationship) and 2-year-old Anne Marie (who had no memory of her birth mother and whom Liselotte loved like her own child). Liselotte and Philippe's marriage was difficult, as he was homosexual and lived quite openly as such. He led a largely independent life, together with and influenced by his long-time lover, the Chevalier de Lorraine. He had many other favorites and numerous affairs with younger men, including Antoine Morel de Volonne (whom Monsieur made Liselotte's Hofmarschall during 1673–1683). Morel had a very poor reputation even by the standards of the time: "He stole, he lied, he swore, was atheist and sodomite and sold boys like horses."Liselotte had no choice but to come to terms with these conditions, and she ultimately became an unusually enlightened woman for her time, albeit in a somewhat resigned way:

Her most important biographer, the historian and Antwerp professor of French baroque literature Dirk Van der Cruysse, judges: "She was providentially placed between two completely dissimilar brothers, of whom the older made up for the fundamental inability of his younger brother through his appreciation and friendship: to love anyone other than herself. She showed her affection to both of them, wholeheartedly and without any ulterior motives, and accepted the overwhelming power of the one as well as the Italian inclinations of the other without complaint, as destined by fate." Philippe fulfilled his marital duties rather reluctantly; he didn't want to be hugged by Liselotte if possible and even scolded her when she accidentally touched him in his sleep. After fathering three children with his new wife, in 1676 he finally ended their sexual relationship, to Liselotte's own relief. At the court of Louis XIV

Liselotte became very close to her brother-in-law Louis XIV. He was "...enchanted by the fact that this was an extremely witty and lovely woman, that she danced well...". He was often quite amused by her open, humorous and refreshingly uncomplicated nature.They often went hunting together—a rather unusual occupation for a noble lady of the time. Her habit of going for long walks was also noticed by the French court and was initially mocked (she even went for a walk in the park at night) but the King was delighted: "The King used to say: il n’y a que Vous qui jouissés des beautés de Versailles (you are the only one who enjoys the beauties of Versailles)". Despite the fact that she was not particularly beautiful (considered an important asset at French court) and was somewhat unconventional in manners, Liselotte made a good impression on the courtiers. Originally they expected a 'rough' and 'uncultivated' foreigner. <mask> Sévigné remarked "What a delight to have a woman again who can't speak French! ", in reference to Queen Maria Theresa, who had never really learned to speak French and was sensitive to the teasing and jokes of the Précieuses. Later, however, the marquise praised Liselotte's "charming directness" and said: "I was amazed at her jokes, not at her lovable jokes, but of her common sense (esprit de bon sens)...I assure you that it cannot be expressed better.She is a very idiosyncratic person, very determined and certainly has taste." Madame de La Fayette was also surprised by and made similar comments about Liselotte's esprit de bon sens. When the Electress Sophia and her daughter visited Liselotte in Paris and Versailles in 1679, she stated: "Liselotte...lives very freely, and with more innocence: her cheerfulness cheers up the King. I have not noticed that her power goes further than making him laugh, nor that she tries to carry it further." In France, Liselotte only had two German relatives, two older aunts, with whom she had regular contact: Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate (a sister of her father and Abbess of Maubuisson since 1664) and Emilie of Hesse-Kassel (a sister of her mother, who had married the Huguenot general Henri Charles de La Trémoille, Prince of Taranto and Talmont). Children

Liselotte and Philippe I of Orléans had three children together:
 Alexandre Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Valois (2 July 1673 – 16 March 1676). Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud and died at the Palais-Royal before his third birthday.His death has been attributed to bloodletting by the Orléans family's doctors; last person to carry the title Duke of Valois. Philippe d'Orléans (2 August 1674 – 2 December 1723). Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud, he was titled Duke of Chartres from birth until becoming Duke of Orléans in 1701; married his first cousin Françoise Marie de Bourbon and had issue; died at the Palace of Versailles; Regent of France and Navarre during the minority of Louis XV of France—the era was known as la Régence. Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans (13 September 1676 – 23 December 1744). Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud and married Leopold, Duke of Lorraine in 1698 and had issue; became the Sovereign Princess of Commercy 1737; she died at Commercy; known as Mademoiselle de Chartres, a title given her at birth; grandmother of Queen Marie Antoinette. Liselotte had a warm relationship with her children. She was devastated by the untimely death of her eldest son Alexandre Louis at the age of two.She mourned him for six months before the birth of her daughter, who apparently helped her over the terrible loss. Her younger son Philippe resembled her in appearance, and also shared her literary, artistic and scientific interests. During his father's lifetime and shortly thereafter, his relationship with his mother was distant under the influence of his father and his favorites, and his mother often criticized his debauchery. Later, however, their relationship improved. Difficulties and tragedies

From around 1680 massive problems arose in the Orléans marriage, as the Chevalier de Lorraine, the Marquis d'Effiat and other favorites of her husband intrigued against Liselotte in order to eliminate her influence on the Duke. Among other things, her enemies conspired to have her confidantes, including her beloved lady-in-waiting Lydie de Théobon-Beuvron and her husband, the Chamberlain Count de Beuvron, dismissed from court. After these departures she was defenseless against the intrigues of the favorites and the arbitrary whims of her husband.To make matters worse, her personal relationship with the King had cooled as his mistress <mask> Maintenon gained influence, leading Louis XIV to be less and less inclined to intervene in Liselotte's quarrels with his brother. Liselotte became isolated, withdrawing more and more into her writing room. Simultaneously, Liselotte was drawn into

masks:
Madame
Elizabeth Stuart
Elizabeth Stuart
Elizabeth
Madame Trelon
Madame
Madame de
Madame de


title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine

texts:
 a larger court scandal through her wardship of Comte of Vermandois, whose mother had left court to become a nun. The young comte had become embroiled in a secret homosexual 'brotherhood' of French nobles and courtiers, which required members to "swear an oath to renounce all women." Several incidents were reported in which women were sadistically tortured, and also was reported that a poor waffle seller was raped, castrated and killed by courtiers. Though the Duke of Orléans didn't belong to this brotherhood himself, many of his favorites did. In June 1682, it became known that the 'brotherhood' included the Prince of la Roche-sur-Yon and the young Comte of Vermandois, among other notable figures at court.Louis XIV punished his own son severely and sent him to war, where he died shortly afterwards at the age of 16. Liselotte later recalled: "The Comte de Vermandois was very good-natured. The poor person loved me as if I were his birth mother...He told me his whole story. He had been horribly seduced." One of his 'seducers' is said to have been the Chevalier de Lorraine—her husband's lover and her avowed enemy. Other problems arose in the following years due to quarrels with <mask> Maintenon, the last important mistress and, from the end of 1683, the secret wife of Louis XIV. Liselotte regarded the marquise with contempt due to her low social rank and her perceived lust for power.She described her in numerous letters with epithets like "the King's old drab", "old whore", "old witch", "Megaera", "Pantocrat" or as "mouse filth mixed with the peppercorns". At the instigation of the increasingly powerful Maintenon, contact between Liselotte and her brother-in-law was restricted to formal occasions, and if the King retired to his private apartments with some chosen relatives after dinner, she was no longer admitted. In 1686, she wrote to her aunt Sophia: "Where the devil can't get there, he sends an old woman, whom we all want to find out, being part of the royal family..." Since Liselotte's correspondence was secretly monitored, the King and the Maintenon were privy to her insults, which further degraded her relationship with the King. In addition, since 1680—after the Affair of the Poisons, in which the previous maîtresse-en-titre Madame de Montespan was involved–Louis XIV, under the influence of the bigoted <mask> Maintenon, underwent a transformation from a philanderer who was primarily interested in his pleasure and not infrequently crept into the apartments of Liselotte's maid of honor, into a man obsessed with morality, piety and religion. In 1685, he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which ended the religious tolerance of the Edict of Nantes and renewed persecution of Protestants, in France known as Huguenots. Many French Protestants emigrated to Holland and Germany, including Liselotte's aunt, Emilie of Hesse-Kassel. The emigrants were supported by the Brandenburg ambassador, Ezekiel Spanheim, to whom Liselotte was very close because he had once been the tutor of both her father and brother.Since Liselotte herself was originally a Protestant and (in contrast to the half-Huguenot Maintenon) had only become a half-hearted Catholic, this became an important part of her problematic situation. She blamed the situation on the influence of <mask> Maintenon, who she regarded as hypocritically bigoted, corrupt and greedy for power:

At the royal court, however, the topic was taboo:

Liselotte, however, also saw the opportunities that the Huguenots brought to Protestant countries after emigrating:

When the Wittelsbach line of Palatinate-Simmern ended in 1685 with the death of Liselotte's brother, Charles II, Elector Palatine, Louis XIV raised a claim to the Electoral Palatinate on behalf of Liselotte, contrary to her marriage contract, and began the Palatinate War of Succession. Heidelberg (including the electoral palace) and Mannheim, were systematically destroyed. The experience was extremely traumatic for Liselotte: the death of her beloved half-brother Karllutz and the devastation of her homeland by her brother-in-law in her own name. This situation inevitably brought her into serious conflict with the King and his inner circle. Her husband Philippe generously distributed the spoils of war that befell him (the so-called Orléans money) to his favorites, in particular to the Chevalier de Lorraine. In 1692, Liselotte learned that her powerlessness extended even to her own children when Louis XIV married her son Philippe, Duke of Chartres, to Françoise Marie de Bourbon, legitimized daughter of the King and his mistress <mask> Montespan.The King's other "bastards from double adultery" also married within the extended royal family, as their status as illegitimate barred them from marrying into foreign courts and even into other noble families in France, yet the King refused to have them marry below their "station". Liselotte and the courtiers viewed this marriage as a mésalliance and a humiliation, and she reacted with indignation and anger. Various chroniclers report that she was no longer in control of her emotions, and burst into tears of desperation in front of the whole court.Saint-Simon writes that she slapped her son in front of the whole court for consenting to the marriage. The wedding took place on 18 February 1692. The King gave his daughter a pension of 50,000 écus and jewelry worth 200,000 écus, and a two million dowry was promised in the marriage contract, which, in the end, was never paid. The marriage was not a happy one, and Philippe would have affairs throughout his entire life. In 1693, Elisabeth Charlotte fell ill with life-threatening pox (smallpox).She defied the instructions of contemporary doctors and managed to survive the disease, but ended up with a pockmarked face. She did not concern herself with this, since she had always considered herself ugly (in excessive exaggeration, as earlier portraits by Mignard and Largillière, among others, prove) and had no interest in make-up. Possibly as a further consequence of the disease, from 1694 onwards she gained so much weight, that it began to interfere with her walks. Even so, she continued to hunt, but only with horses that were big and strong enough to support her weight. The external change in her appearance is clearly documented in the surviving portraits from this period. In September 1700 she complained to her aunt Sophia: "Being a Madame is a great craft, I would have sold it like the batches here in the country, I would have long since carried it for sale". Sophia, who grew up in relatively modest circumstances in exile in Holland, commented on her niece's lamentations in a letter to her (rather poor) half-brother Karllutz:

When Sophia was declared heir to the British throne in the spring of 1701 by the Act of Settlement, Liselotte (who would have had a better claim had she not become Catholic) commented on 15 May in a letter to her half-sister Raugräfin Luise: "I would rather be elector than king in England.The English humor and their parliament are not my business, my aunt is better than me; she will also know how to deal with them better than I would have done". Widowhood

On 9 June 1701, the Duke of Orléans died of a stroke at the Château de Saint-Cloud. Earlier, he had a heated argument with his brother at the Château de Marly about the conduct of his son—who was also Louis XIV's son-in-law. He left only debts, and Liselotte wisely renounced their common property. In his will, which was published publicly in the Mercure galant and the Gazette d’Amsterdam, he did not mention his wife. Liselotte personally burned the love letters he had exchanged with his lovers so that they would not fall into the hands of the notaries: "...in the boxes I locked up all the letters the boys wrote to him, and then spent them unread so that it might not come into contact with others". She wrote to her aunt Sophia: "I must confess that I was much more saddened than I am if Monsieur had not done so böße officien (that is, 'bad services') to the King".Her attitude towards the deceased's mignons was no longer prudish, but rather serene: when she was reported in 1702 that the Earl of Albemarle, lover of the recently deceased King William III of England, almost died of heartache, she remarked dryly: "We have not seen such friends here with my lord...". After her husband's death, Liselotte feared that the King would send her to a convent (as stipulated in her marriage contract), leading her to attempt a reconciliation with <mask> Maintenon. To the King, she explained frankly and freely: "If I hadn't loved you, then I would not have hated <mask> Maintenon so much, precisely because I believed she was robbing me of your favor". <mask> Maintenon confronted Liselotte with secretly-made copies of Liselotte's candid letters to correspondents abroad, which were bursting with abuse against Maintenon, and were read with relish in foreign courts. Liselotte was warned to change her attitude towards <mask> Maintenon, but the peace between the two women was fleeting, and Liselotte was "more tolerated than loved." Except on official occasions, she was rarely admitted to the King's inner circle. She was punished with contempt above all by Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, Monsieur's granddaughter from his first marriage and granddaughter-in-law of Louis XIV, who was a spoiled child, but an outspoken favorite of both the monarch and his mistress.After Monsieur's death, Liselotte lived in his former apartment in Versailles and took part in visits to the court in Marly or Fontainebleau. She was still allowed to take part in the court hunts, in which she and the King no longer rode on horseback, but sat and shot together from a calash. Liselotte avoided the Palais Royal and Saint Cloud until 1715 in order not to be a burden to her son and his wife. She rarely went to her remote widow's residence, Montargis Castle; but she refrained from selling it in case the King should grow tired of her presence at Versailles, which Maintenon endeavored to work towards:

The Régence and Death

Louis XIV died on 1 September 1715 after a reign of 72 years and 110 days; one of the last people he summoned to his deathbed was Liselotte, saying goodbye to her with noble compliments. In his will, the deceased monarch divided the regnal prerogatives among relatives and courtiers, allocating to his legitimized son, Duke of Maine, guardianship of the new monarch, Louis XV, who was just 5 years old. The Parlement of Paris overturned the will's provisions at the request of Liselotte's son, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who, being the only legitimate agnate of the royal family in France, became Regent for the underage sovereign, beginning the time known as the Régence. Liselotte became the first lady of the court; as she had been at least officially once before, between the death of Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria, Dauphine of France (20 April 1690) and the marriage of Marie Adélaïde of Savoy with Louis, Duke of Burgundy (7 December 1697).The court at Versailles dissolved until the new King came of age, as the late Louis XIV had ordered, and Liselotte was soon able to return to her beloved Saint-Cloud, where she spent seven months of the year from then on, with her old ladies-in-waiting keeping her company: the "Marschallin" Louise-Françoise de Clérambault and the German Eleonore von Venningen (by marriage von Rathsamshausen). She didn't like to spend the winter in the Palais Royal (the official residence of her son and his family) because of the bad Parisian air from the smoke from the many chimneys (and "because in the morning you can only smell empty night chairs and chamber pot") and the bad memories of her marriage:

Although she had not made it a habit to interfere in politics, only one month after the Louis XIV's death, Liselotte successfully campaigned for the release of Huguenots who had been sent to the galleys for many years because of their beliefs. 184 people, including many preachers, were released; two years later she managed to release a further 30. Despite her elevation in status, Liselotte did not share in the country's relief after the long rule of Louis XIV; she "was unable to decipher the signs of the times; she saw nothing but the decline and decline of morality, where in reality a new society was born, lively, disrespectful, eager to move and live freely, curious about the joys of the senses and the adventures of the spirit". For example, she strictly refused to receive visitors who were not properly dressed in courtly regalia:

Most of all, Liselotte was worried about the many intrigues and conspiracies against her son. She loathed the foreign minister and later prime minister, Father Guillaume Dubois (cardinal from 1721) and mistrusted the economist and chief financial controller John Law, who caused a currency devaluation and speculative bubble (the so-called Mississippi bubble):

As a clergy advisor, she valued two staunch supporters of the Age of Enlightenment: Archbishop François Fénelon (who fell from grace under Louis XIV) as well as her intermittent confessor Abbé de Saint-Pierre. Etienne de Polier de Bottens, a Huguenot who had followed her from Heidelberg to France, also played a special role as confidante and spiritual advisor.Liselotte, long a marginal figure at court, as the Regent's mother, was suddenly a point of contact for many. However, she by no means appreciated this role change:

Liselotte was interested in opera and theatre and followed their development over decades, and was also able to recite long passages by heart. She was well read, as evidenced by many of her letters, and had a library of more than 3,000 volumes, including all the popular French and German novels and plays of her time (Voltaire dedicated his tragedy Oedipe to her), as well as most of the classical Greek and Latin authors (in German and French translation), Luther Bibles, maps with copperplate engravings, travelogues from all over the world as well as the tomes of natural history, medicine and mathematics. She amassed an extensive coin collection, primarily of antique gold coins (it was not her father who inherited the 12,000 copies her father had inherited in Kassel, but her mother), she owned 30 books on coin science and corresponded with Spanheim and other numismatists. She also bought three of the recently invented microscopes, with which she examined insects and other things. She spent her days at court gatherings, writing letters, reading and researching. In June 1722, she visited Versailles for the last time, when the 12-year-old Louis XV received his 4-year-old bride Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain.Upon seeing the room in which Louis XIV died, she came to tears:

Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, Duchess of Orléans, died on 8 December 1722 at 3:30 a.m. at the Château de Saint-Cloud, aged 70. She was buried in the royal necropolis at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, next to her husband and his first wife. Her son mourned her deeply (only a year later he followed her to the grave), and did not take part in the memorial mass on 18 March 1723. In the funeral sermon she was described as follows:

In his memoirs, Saint-Simon describes her:

Correspondence
Liselotte is said to have written

masks:
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de


title: Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine

texts:
 an estimated 60,000 letters throughout her life, 2/3 in German and 1/3 in French, of which about 5,000 have survived, and about 850 of these are in French. With this, she surpasses the second great letter writer and contemporary witness of her epoch, <mask> Sévigné with her approximately 1,200 letters. The letters deal with all aspects of life. They contain vivid and often satirical descriptions of court life, memories of her childhood and youth in Germany, the latest court gossip from all over Europe, reflections on literature and theatre, and thoughts about God and the world.Liselotte sought relief by writing long letters to her relatives in Germany, and the constant exchange became a cure for her inner melancholy and sadness. The letters were also a way of maintaining her German, the language being an important link to her home and cultural identity. Her German letters were mixed with numerous words and passages in French, especially when she was relaying conversations with Louis XIV, with her husband Philippe or other French members of court. Johannes Kramer describes her letters as "the best studied example of the use of the German language in private letters between members of the high nobility". Liselotte tended to use coarse formulations, which was not uncommon in letters from princely persons of the 16th and 17th centuries, but in Helmuth Kiesel's view she had gone extraordinarily far in this, being psychological in disposition and frivolous in tone. Perhaps her previously reformed faith had contributed to the polemics known to her; in any case, their tone differed greatly from the Précieuses of the Parisian salons of their time, and also from the naturalness of the German bourgeois lettering style of the 18th century, as shaped by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. She liked to draw striking comparisons and often incorporated proverbs or appropriate excerpts from plays.Her favorite saying (and personal motto) is often quoted as: "What cannot be changed, let go as it goes" (Was nicht zu ändern stehet, laß gehen wie es gehet)

Unlike <mask> Sévigné, she did not write for the public, but only as direct communication to her correspondents. This may explain the almost unbridled spontaneity and unrestricted intimacy of her style. The letters often appear to have no pretensions and are subject to spontaneous ideas, whereby they make the reader a living companion (W. L. Holland). Most of the letters are addressed to her aunt Sophia of the Palatinate, Electress of Hanover, whom she wrote twice a week. Sophia's strong personality offered her support in difficult life situations; Liselotte had also shaped the atmosphere of the Hanoverian court with her scientific and literary interest, her religious tolerance and her thoughts on morality and virtue in consideration of human inadequacies. After Sophia's death in 1714 she complains:

Sophia, however, who had been of a cooler and more calculating nature than her emotional niece, had commented on her letters:

Liselotte's half-sister Raugräfin Luise (1661–1733) subsequently became an inadequate replacement for the revered and admired aunt. She had also written regularly to another half-sister, Raugräfin Amalie Elisabeth (Ameliese; 1663–1709).She kept a lifelong contact with her Hanoverian educator Anna Katharina von Offen, the governess of the Electress Sophia's children, and with her husband, the chief stable master Christian Friedrich von Harling. Her weekly [French] letters to her daughter, the Duchess of Lorraine were destroyed in a fire on 4 January 1719 at the Château de Lunéville, the country residence of the Dukes of Lorraine. In later years, the wife of the British heir to the throne and later King George II, Caroline of Ansbach, also became an important correspondent, although they never met. Caroline was an orphan who had become a ward of Electress Sophia's daughter Sophia Charlotte of Hanover and was married by Sophia to her grandson George in 1705. From her, Liselotte learned all the details about the family quarrels at the English court. She also wrote regularly with the sister of George II and granddaughter of the Electress Sophia, the Prussian Queen Sophia Dorothea of Hanover. Numerous letters to other relatives and acquaintances have also been found, including to Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and his librarian Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who had previously been in the service of Sophia and her husband.She knew that the Cabinet noir opened her letters to copy critical passages and translate them; hence, she sometimes even incorporated derisive remarks addressed directly to the government, particularly to her favorite enemy, Foreign Secretary Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquess of Torcy. Her most frank letters are those which she did not send by post, but gave to travellers en route to Germany. In these letters she was able to freely express her frustrations with Monsieur's favorites in the Palais Royal and her hatred for <mask> Maintenon. She describes her stylistic principles in a letter to her half-sister Ameliese:

In her letters, Liselotte also mentioned her dislike for the pompous Baroque style that had become fashionable:

To characterize the nature of her correspondence, she uses the term "chat". The letters usually consisted of 15 to 30 folded sheets of paper with gilt edging, which she inscribed with large, energetic handwriting. Her biographer Dirk Van der Cruysse says: "Had <mask> lived in our time, she would have spent her days on the phone". Her letters provide us with a unique perspective on court life in the Baroque period and a vivid picture of her personality.Her descriptions of other members of court are often less precise, but much more colorful and humorous than those of Marquis de Dangeau, whose court diary and memoirs made him the official chronicler of the reign of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, she wrote without literary ambitions and not for posterity either: "I write as I speak; because I am too natural to think before I write." After answering a letter, she burned the letter she had received herself, and probably assumed that the same thing happened to her letters after being read. Fortunately, just under a tenth escaped this fate. Nature and appearance
Liselotte was described as solid and mannish. She possessed the stamina to hunt all day, refusing to wear the mask that Frenchwomen were accustomed to wearing to protect their skin while outdoors. As a result, her face developed a ruddy and weather-beaten look.She walked rapidly, and most courtiers were unable to keep up, save for the King. She had a "no-nonsense" attitude. Her hearty appetite caused her to gain weight as the years went on, and when describing herself she once commented that she would be as good to eat as a roasted suckling pig. Raised a Protestant, she was not fond of lengthy Latin masses. She remained faithful and was at times outraged by the open infidelity practised by the aristocracy. Her views were frequently the opposite of those prevalent at the French court. She is known by different names and styles in different languages, either by variations of her given names, such as Charlotte Elisabeth, Elisabeth Charlotte and Liselotte von der Pfalz or variations of her titles and territorial designations, such as Electoral Princess, Princess Palatine, of the Palatinate, of the Rhine, "the Palatine", etc.The dynastic titles to which she was entitled were Countess <mask> of the Rhine at Simmern and Duchess of Bavaria. At the royal court of France she was known as the Princess Palatine Elisabeth Charlotte prior to her marriage, and afterwards her official title became "Her Royal Highness, <mask>, Duchess of Orléans," though she was more widely known simply as <mask>, a unique designation she was entitled to as wife of the King's younger brother. Quotes

Legacy
In 1788, some longer excerpts from Liselotte's letters appeared for the first time in a French translation, then a few years later in the German original, under the title Anecdotes from the French Court, especially from the times of Louis XIV and the Duke Regent. During the French Revolution, it was believed that Liselotte was a key witness to the depravity and frivolity of the Ancien Régime. This Chronique scandaleuse became popular in Germany when the editors of the letters succeeded in identifying the author as a moral and honest German princess in the midst of the depraved and frivolous French court life. In her aversion to the French way of life and her enthusiasm for everything German (and especially Palatinate), her published letters followed the pattern of anti-French sentiment in German literature of the 17th century. In 1791, a new, anonymously edited selection of letters appeared under the title "Confessions of Princess Elisabeth Charlotte of Orléans".In this publication, she was portrayed as The good, honest, German woman–without all the pampered and creeping court sensibilities, without all the crookedness and ambiguity of the heart–, representative of the more honest times of earlier centuries, to which the German courts had to return in order to prevent revolution. The Duchess of Orléans thus became a figure of considerable cultural importance in Germany. Friedrich Karl Julius Schütz published a new selection of the letters in 1820, also emphasizing the "strong contrast between the old, truly German simplicity, loyalty, honesty and efficiency...to the glamour, opulence, etiquette and gallantry, such as the unlimited intriguing spirit and the whole, systematically developed frivolity and hypocrisy of this court, for a full half of a century." "In the further course of the 19th century, the letters lost their immediate political relevance, but because of their cultural and historical significance and their German usability, they found equally committed editors and a broad public." Wolfgang Menzel, who in 1843 found a volume of letters published by her half-sister Raugräfin Luise, saw in the Duchess of Orléans the simple German woman and the most open soul in the world, who only had to watch too much moral corruption... understandable that she sometimes expresses herself about it in the crudest words. From then on, the letters were widely used as anti-French propaganda by a growing German nationalist movement. Liselotte was stylized as a martyr of the French court and elevated into a national cult figure, by figures such as Paul Heyse, Theodor Schott and Eduard Bodemann.Fashion
The so-called palatine is named after Liselotte; it is a short cape or turned-down collar trimmed with fur, which women use to protect the cleavage and neck from the cold in winter. Originally, she was mocked by the French court because of her "old" furs that she wore when she arrived from Heidelberg, but since she was very popular with the king in the 1670s, the ladies began to imitate this trend during the unusually cold winter of 1676. The result was a womenswear item valued for centuries. When Liselotte wanted to put on her old fur again in November 1718 to see a performance of Voltaire's Oedipus, to which she was dedicated, she found that it had been eaten by clothes moths. But she took the opportunity to examine the moths under the microscope the next day. Popular culture
 1932: Liselott - Singspiel by Richard Keßler, music by Eduard Künneke, performed in Heidelberg in 2004–2005. 1935: Liselotte von der Pfalz - UFA film, director and screenplay: Carl Froelich, literary source: Rudolf Presber.Liselotte was played by Renate Müller. 1943: Liselotte - Ein Roman aus dem Leben der Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz (Liselotte - A novel from the life of Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz). Alexander Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, A. Weichert Verlag Berlin
 1966: Liselotte von der Pfalz - Director: Kurt Hoffmann. Liselotte was played by Heidelinde Weis
 2014: A Little Chaos - British film, directed by Alan Rickman. Liselotte was played by Paula Paul. 2017–2018: Versailles - BBC series. Liselotte was played by Jessica Clark.Titles and styles
27 May 1652 – 16 November 1671: Her Serene Highness Princess Palatine Elisabeth Charlotte
16 November 1671 – 9 June 1701: Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Orléans
9 June 1701 – 8 December 1722: Her Royal Highness The Dowager Duchess of Orléans
Madame was the prevalent style accorded her from marriage. Ancestry

Notes

References
 Dirk Van der Cruysse: Madame sein ist ein ellendes Handwerck. Liselotte von der Pfalz. Eine deutsche Prinzessin am Hof des Sonnenkönigs. (in German) Aus dem Französischen von Inge Leipold. 7th edition, Piper, Munich 2001, . Arlette Lebigre: Liselotte von der Pfalz.Eine Wittelsbacherin am Hofe Ludwigs XIV. (in German). Claassen, Düsseldorf 1988,  (reprint Heyne, Munich 1991). Sigrun Paas (ed. ): Liselotte von der Pfalz. Madame am Hofe des Sonnenkönigs. HVA, Heidelberg 1996,  (catalog for the exhibition in Heidelberg Castle).Gilette Ziegler (ed. ): Der Hof Ludwigs XIV. in Augenzeugenberichten (in German), DTV publisher, 1981, . Eduard Bodemann (ed. ): Briefe der Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover an die Raugräfinnen und Raugrafen zu Pfalz (in German), 1888, Wentworth Press 2018, . Eduard Bodemann (ed. ): Aus den Briefen der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans an die Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover (in German), 1891, hansebooks,
 Helmuth Kiesel: Briefe der Liselotte von der Pfalz (in German), Insel publisher, Leipzig 1981, .Marita A. Panzer: Wittelsbacherinnen. Fürstentöchter einer europäischen Dynastie. Pustet, Regensburg 2012, , pp 108–121. Ilona Christa Scheidle: Schreiben ist meine größte Occupation. Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz, Herzogin von Orléans (1652–1722) (in German). In: Dies. : Heidelbergerinnen, die Geschichte schrieben.Munich 2006, , pp. 27–39. Mareike Böth: Erzählweisen des Selbst. Körper-Praktiken in den Briefen Liselottes von der Pfalz (1652–1722) (in German) (= Selbstzeugnisse der Neuzeit. vol. 24). Böhlau, Köln/Wien/Weimar 2015, .Wilhelm Ludwig Holland: Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans (in German), Stuttgart/Tübingen 1867–1881, Wentworth publisher 2018 (6 volumes)

Further reading
 Life and letters of Charlotte Elisabeth, Princess Palatine and mother of Philipp d'Orléans, régent de France 1652–1722, compiled, translated, and gathered from various published and unpublished, Chapman & Hall, London, 1889. A woman's life in the court of the Sun King: letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, 1652–1722, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orléans, translated by Elborg Forster, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. External links

1652 births
1722 deaths
17th-century German writers
18th-century German writers
17th-century German women writers
18th-century German women writers
Burials at the Basilica of Saint-Denis
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Calvinism
Duchesses of Montpensier
Duchesses of Orléans
Duchesses of Chartres
French duchesses
French princesses
German letter writers
Women letter writers
House of Orléans
House of Palatinate-Simmern
Nobility from Heidelberg
People of the Ancien Régime
People of the Regency of Philippe d'Orléans
Princesses of the Palatinate
17th-century memoirists
18th-century French memoirists
17th-century diarists
18th-century diarists
17th-century letter writers
18th-century letter

masks:
Madame de
Madame de
Madame de
Madame
Palatine
Madame
Madame


title: Ajit Singh of Khetri

texts:
<mask> or <mask>wat dynasty of the Indian princely state of Khetri, Rajasthan between 1870 and 1901. He was born on 16 October 1861 in Alsisar, India. His father was Thakur <mask>, a resident of Alsisar. <mask> was later adopted to Khetri and after the death of <mask>, he became the eighth king of Khetri in 1870. In 1876, he married Rani Champawatiji Sahiba and the couple had one son and two daughters. He died on 18 January 1901 at Sikandra, and was cremated at Mathura. <mask> was a close friend and disciple of Swami Vivekananda.Swami Vivekananda went to Khetri and met <mask> <mask> thrice in his lifetime— in 1891, 1893 and 1897. <mask> <mask> is known for providing financial support to Vivekananda, and encouraging him to speak at the Parliament of the World's Religions at Chicago in 1893. From 1891 <mask> <mask> started sending monthly stipend of  100 to Vivekanada's family in Kolkata. On 1 December 1898 Vivekananda wrote a letter to <mask> <mask> from Belur in which he requested him to make the donation permanent so that even after Vivekananda's death his mother (Bhuvaneswari Devi 1841–1911) gets the financial assistance on a regular basis. The letter archive of Khetri reveals he had frequent communication with the family members of Vivekananda. Biography

Early life and background of a king
<mask> <mask> was born on 16 October 1861 in Alsisar, India. His father was Thakur Chattu <mask>, a resident of Alsisar.<mask>'s mother was the daughter of the Thakur of Nimaj in Jodhpur. Accession to the throne

<mask> <mask> was adopted by Raja Fateh <mask>, seventh king of Khetri. In 1870, after the death of Fateh <mask>, <mask> <mask> acceded to the throne and became the eighth king of Khetri. Though Khetri was small in size, the state was one of the most advanced and progressed states of Rajasthan of that time. <mask> <mask> was a big admirer of arts and music. In 1897 he went to England to attend Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. Marriage and personal life
In 1876 <mask> <mask> married Rani Champawatiji Sahiba, daughter of Thakur <mask> of Auwa.Rani Champawatiji Sahiba died on 16 May 1904. <mask> <mask> and Champawatiji Sahiba had two daughters and one son. Their first daughter, Surya Kumari, was born on 16 September 1882, married Rajadhiraja Sahib Umaid <mask> II Bahadur of Shahpura in 1894. Surya Kumari died on 8 August 1913 at Shahpura. Their second daughter, Chandra Kumari, was born on 17 January 1889. She married Maan <mask> of Pratapgarh in 1903. Their only son, <mask> Sahib, was born in Agra on 26 January 1893.He studied at Mayo College, Ajmer. In 1901, after the death of <mask> <mask>, Jai became the ninth king of Khetri. In 1905, he established Ajit Singh Hospital in memory of his father. He died on 30 March 1910 in Jaipur after suffering from tuberculosis. Death
<mask> <mask> died on 18 January 1901 in Sikandara, and was cremated at Mathura. At the time of death he was 39 years 3 months old. Incidentally, Swami Vivekananda too died at the age of 39.In a letter written to Marhy Hale, on 18 May 1901, Vivekananda informed—
The Raja of Khetri died from a fall a few months ago. So you see things are all gloomy with me just now, and my own health is wretched. Yet I am sure to bob up soon and am waiting for the next turn. In a separate letter written to Mrs. Ole Bull on 26 January 1901, Swami Vivekananda wrote:

I went to see Mrs. Sevier at Mayavati. On my way I learnt of the sudden death of the Raja of Khetri. It appears he was restoring some old architectural monument at Agra, at his own expense, and was up some tower on inspection. Part of the tower came down, and he was instantly killed.Relationship with Swami Vivekananda

Since the first meeting in June 1891 till <mask> <mask>'s death in January 1901, <mask> <mask> remained a very close friend and disciple of Vivekananda. On 22 November 1898 Vivekananda sent a letter to <mask> <mask> in which he described <mask> <mask> as his only friend in life. First meeting with Swami Vivekananda (1891)
After the death of Ramakrishna, in January 1887 Vivekananda (then Narendranath Datta) and eight other disciples of Ramakrishna took their formal monastic vow at Baranagar math. In 1888, Vivekananda left the monastery of Baranagar and started his life as a wandering monk. In June 1891 Vivekananda reached Khetri and there on 4 June 1891 he met <mask> <mask> for the first time. <mask> <mask>'s first meeting with Vivekananda has been described in detail in some later books. According to Mani Shankar Mukherjee's The Monk As Man: The Unknown Life of Swami Vivekananda, on 4 June 1891, <mask> <mask> woke up at 6:30 am.That evening he met Pratap <mask>, king of Jodhpur and spent around half an hour with him. After that, he was informed that a monk has come to see him. <mask> <mask> met the monk. <mask> <mask> found that the monk was proficient in English, Bengali and Sanskrit languages. <mask> <mask> and the monk discussed on a wide range of subjects. Then <mask> <mask> asked the monk to dine with him. After dinner, around 11 pm at the night, the monk left the palace of <mask> <mask>.The monk was Swami Vivekananda and this was the first meeting of <mask> <mask> and Vivekananda. On his first visit to Khetri Vivekananda stayed there from 4 June 1891 to 27 October 1891. During his time as a wandering monk, this was Vivekananda's longest stay at a single place. To protect him from hot wind of Rajasthan, <mask> <mask> suggested that Vivekananda wear a turban and showed him how to wear it in the Rajasthani style. Vivekananda learned the technique very quickly and later invented a few other variations of wearing it. Later in his life, the turban became a part of his common dress. During his stay Vivekananda closely observed the culture and lifestyle of Rajputana and later praised it in his lectures and letters.Second meeting with Swami Vivekananda (1893)

Swami Vivekananda visited Khetri twice more in his lifetime— in April 1893 and in December 1897. In 1893, Vivekananda stayed in Khetri for three weeks— from 21 April to 10 May. An incident that happened during his second visit, which was later widely analysed, relates to <mask> <mask> organizing a function where a courtesan was to sing. <mask> <mask> invited Vivekananda to attend the performance, but Vivekananda refused the request, explaining that he was a monk and thus could not attend such performances. The dancing girl heard about this comment and at the function she sang a famous song by Sur—
O Lord, look not upon my evil qualities! Thy name, O Lord, is Same-Sightedness. Make us both the same Brahman!The incident was an eye-opener for Vivekananda, and he realized that everything is but the manifestation of God. On 9 May, one day before leaving for Bombay, Vivekananda was asked to visit the women's section of the palace where he blessed <mask>, the newborn son of <mask> <mask>. Assistance and encouragement to join Parliament of World's religions
Vivekananda wished to sail to America to attend the Parliament of the World's Religions as a speaker, which was to be held in Chicago in 1893. When <mask> <mask> learned about this, he encouraged Vivekananda to join the Parliament as a representative of Hinduism and India and provided him financial aid and the tickets for his voyage. It was on <mask> <mask>'s request that Swamiji assumed his monastic name Vivekananda in preference to Sachidananda. In a letter written to Haridas Viharidas Desai in May 1893, Vivekananda wrote—
You may remember that I had from before a desire to go to Chicago. When at Madras, the people there, of their own accord, in conjunction with H.H.of Mysore and Ramnad made every arrangement to send me up. And you may also remember that between H.H. of Khetri and myself there are the closest ties of love. Well, I, as a matter of course, wrote to him that I was going to America. Now the Raja of Khetri thought in his love that I was bound to see him once before I departed, especially as the Lord has given him an heir to the throne and great rejoicings were going on here; and to make sure of my coming he sent his Private Secretary all the way to Madras to fetch me, and of course I was bound to come. On 10 May 1893, Vivekananda left Khetri for Bombay. <mask> <mask> escorted him till Jaipur and Munshi Jagmohahlal, an employee of Khetri, escorted him up to Bombay.<mask> <mask> arranged to send more money to Vivekananda after his arrival at Boston, as American dollars. In America Vivekananda lost his money and when <mask> <mask> learnt of it, he immediately sent  150 more through telegraph service. Initially, Vivekananda had a lower-class ticket for his voyage, but <mask> <mask> had it exchanged for a first class ticket. He also gave him a substantial amount of money for meeting his personal expenses during the journey. Vivekananda wrote a stream of letters to <mask> <mask> from the West, and later from India. <mask> <mask> is known for the financial support he provided to Vivekananda for his social service. On 17 December 1897 at a meeting in Khetri Swamiji noted that whatever little he had done for the uplift of India would not have been possible had he not met the Raja of Khetri.Again, he wrote in a letter to Munshi Jagmohanlal on 11 October 1897, "Certain men are born in certain periods to perform certain actions in combination. <mask> <mask> and myself are two such souls—born to help each other in a big work for the good of mankind.… We are as supplement and complement." Third meeting with Swami Vivekananda (1897)
In 1897 <mask> <mask> sent Vivekananda several letters and invited him to visit Khetri again which Vivekananda accepted. At that time he was staying in Dehradun from where he proceeded to Khetri via Delhi, Alwar and Jaipur. When <mask> <mask> got the news of Vivekananda's arrival, he traveled  from his palace to welcome him. There, Vivekananda was formally welcomed and taken in a procession to Khetri. At Khetri, all employees of the palace showed their respect to Vivekananda by touching his feet and giving him a two rupee coin each.<mask> <mask> gave Vivekananda 3000 coins as a token of respect and love. On 17 December 1897 Vivekananda publicly expressed his gratitude to <mask> <mask>. He said that "it would not have been possible for me to do what little I have done for India but my friendship with Khetri's Maharaja." On 20 December 1897, Vivekananda delivered a lecture in Khetri which was attended by <mask> <mask> and several Europeans. Assistance to Vivekananda's family

From 1891 <mask> <mask> started sending a monthly stipend of  100 to Vivekananda's family in Kolkata. On 1 December 1898 Vivekananda wrote to <mask> <mask> from Belur requesting him to make the donation permanent so that even after Vivekananda's death his mother would continue to get the financial assistance on a regular basis. In that letter Vivekananda wrote—
One thing more will I beg of you – if possible, the 100 Rs.a month for my mother be made permanent, so that even after my death it may regularly reach her. Or even if your Highness ever gets reasons to stop your love and kindness for me, my poor old mother may be provided [for], remembering the love you once had for a poor Sâdhu. <mask> <mask> continued to send the monthly allowance until his death on 18 January 1901. Historians and researchers have estimated the current value of 100 Indian rupees as something between  to . Mani Shankar Mukherjee in his book The Monk As Man: The Unknown Life of Swami Vivekananda commented— "It is, indeed remarkable that a disciple should be so generous towards his teacher's family". <mask> <mask> did not want to publicize this assistance and thoroughly wanted to keep it a secret. Mahendranath Datta, Swami Vivekananda's brother, wrote in his book—
Khetri's Maharaj used to send 100 rupees to Swamiji's mother on a regular basis.The money was sent every month via Sharat Maharaj, Yogen Maharaj and Mr Sandel. He specially requested that this arrangement be not discussed with others. The letters stored at <mask>'s archive show that <mask> <mask> frequently communicated with members of Vivekananda's family from 1892 onwards. On 28 February 1893, Mahendranath Datta, the younger brother of Vivekananda, sent a letter to <mask> in which he expressed his anxiety on not receiving any letter from <mask> <mask> for a long time. In his next letter dated 22 March 1893 Mahendranath told <mask> <mask> the names of the books he recently read. He also informed him that Bhupendranath Datta (the youngest brother of Vivekananda and Mahendranath) was admitted in Metropolitan School, Kolkata, one of the most reputed schools of the city. This shows the frequency of communication between <mask> <mask> and the family members of Vivekananda.Founding of the Ramakrishna Mission at Khetri
In 1958 the Ramakrishna Mission was started at the Palace of Khetri which was donated by <mask> <mask>'s grandson, Bahadur Sardar <mask>. The building has been renamed as Vivekananda Smriti Mandir and houses marble statues of <mask> <mask> and Swami Vivekananda. The room at the topmost storey where Swamiji used to stay and have spiritual discourses with <mask> <mask>, has been converted into a prayer room. Notes

External links

ramakrishna mission&ajit-vivek museum khetri
 Ramakrishna Mission Khetri

1861 births
1901 deaths
Maharajas of Rajasthan
People from Jhunjhunu district
Disciples and friends of Swami Vivekananda

masks:
Ajit Singh
Raja Ajit Singh Bahadurkha
Chattu Singh
Ajit Singh
Fateh Singh
Ajit Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Singh
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Singh
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Devi Singh
Ajit
Singh
Singhji
Singh
Jai Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Jai Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Khetri
Ajit
Singh
Khetri
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Singh
Ajit
Singh
Ajit
Singh


title: Stephan Jenkins

texts:
<mask> (born September 27, 1964) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and the lead singer of the alternative rock band Third Eye Blind. <mask> began his musical career in 1992 as part of the short-lived rap duo Puck and Natty, alongside Detroit rapper Herman Anthony Chunn. Following the breakup of the duo, <mask> and guitarist Kevin Cadogan formed Third Eye Blind in 1993. The band released their eponymous debut studio album in 1997, which went multi-platinum in the United States. Since then, they have released five more albums: Blue (1999), Out of the Vein (2003), Ursa Major (2009), Dopamine (2015), and Screamer (2019). As part of Third Eye Blind, <mask> has received one Billboard Music Award and eight California Music Awards. <mask> made his debut as a solo artist as a feature on Run-DMC's 2001 single "Rock Show".<mask> also released a live album, Live at Amoeba, as a Record Store Day exclusive vinyl in 2016. In 2001, <mask> made his acting debut with a cameo in the film Rock Star. <mask> also appeared in the television series All That (2003) and Punk'd (2005), in addition to pursuing his first lead role in the 2003 thriller Art of Revenge. As a producer, <mask> helmed the production on albums by The Braids, Vanessa Carlton, and Spencer Barnett. Early life

<mask> was born in Indio, California. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Wisconsin where his father was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, after graduating from Northwestern University. They later moved to Palo Alto, California when <mask> was 6.When he was 7 years old, his parents divorced. His mother became an alcoholic. During elementary school, he suffered from dyslexia, causing him to repeat 1st grade. His father, who later got positions at Stanford and then the University of California, Berkeley, would help him with his dyslexia. He attended Henry M. Gunn Senior High School and graduated in 1983 where he rose to the top of his class. <mask> got interested in music early in life. He recalls creating original musical works at the age of five using pots and pans on the floor of his kitchen at home in northern California.In 1987, he graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. in English Literature. <mask> began musical work as a drummer. During high school, he performed with Fast Forward, consisting of <mask> on drums, Nick Dement (guitar), Ben Austin (bass), and Greg Magel (guitar). Though the precocious <mask> was still in high school, the other three were students at neighboring Stanford University. With the breakup of Fast Forward, Austin and Magel departed; <mask> and Dement added new bassist Scott Lockhart and formed the trio Splash. Stanford University student Lawrence Schoeffler made a music video for their song "Suzaie" as part of his graduate portfolio in film production, which was broadcast on MTV Basement Tapes (1983) and won a Bronze Medal at the International Film & TV Festival of New York.Puck and Natty
<mask> then formed Puck and Natty (the name originating with the Shakespeare characters, but also serving as a playful poke at a well-known Bay Area jazz duo, Tuck & Patti), a 'funky rap masta' group, with Detroit rapper Herman Anthony Chunn in 1992. Puck and Natty was short lived; however, their track, "Just Wanna Be Your Friend" landed on a soundtrack album of the hit TV show Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1992. In a 1999 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, <mask> provided a synopsis of the way things went down. "'You want me to do a song for your TV show that I've never seen? No problem,' recalled <mask> & Zen because of a complaint from the jazz duo, Tuck & Patti. Third Eye Blind and mainstream success

<mask> formed Third Eye Blind in 1993 with Kevin Cadogan. They played small gigs around the San Francisco Bay Area for years and were, for the most part, unknown until they were signed in 1996 by Elektra Records. The band's deal with Elektra was later reported as the largest publishing deal ever for a previously-unsigned artist. <mask> has written or co-written every song on the band's five studio albums and one EP. <mask> won two California Music Awards for Best Songwriter. along with bandmate Cadogan; in addition, he was nominated three years in a row as Best Vocalist and won Artist of the Year.Other work

Producing career
<mask> has produced for Third Eye Blind and several music artists. In 1997, he co-produced Third Eye Blind's self-titled debut studio album with Eric Valentine. The duo also helmed production on The Braids' debut studio album, Here We Come (1999). He co-produced follow-up Blue (1999) and Out of the Vein (2003) with Arion Salazar and Third Eye Blind, while acting as the sole producer on Ursa Major (2009), Dopamine (2015), and We Are Drugs (2016). In 2004, <mask> co-wrote four songs for and produced Vanessa Carlton's second studio album, Harmonium. He co-wrote five songs for Carlton's follow-up, Heroes & Thieves (2007), in addition to co-producing the effort with Irv Gotti and Linda Perry. In 2015, <mask> produced Spencer Barnett's extended play, 13 Summers In.In 2020, <mask> co-wrote Blackbear's "I Feel Bad". Acting career
<mask> made his acting debut with a cameo in the film Rock Star (2001) playing Bradley, the lead singer of the fictional band Black Babylon. He has also appeared in the former Nickelodeon series All That, and he appeared on the MTV candid camera show Punk'd when Vanessa Carlton was the subject of one of Ashton Kutcher's practical jokes. He also starred as the lead role in the 2003 independent thriller, Art of Revenge. Personal life
In 1987, <mask> graduated as valedictorian of his class from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in English literature. <mask> was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome preceding the release of Third Eye Blind (1997).<mask> was in a three-year relationship with actress Charlize Theron until October 2001. Some of Third Eye Blind's third album, Out of the Vein, explores the emotions <mask> experienced as a result of their breakup. From 2002 to 2007, <mask> dated Vanessa Carlton. When asked about living as a high-profile musician, he stated "Am I a rock star? Yeah, I guess. I also get to live in North Beach and go to a pub and drink my pint and go to a café and drink my coffee. I carry groceries home on the tank of my motorcycle.I find pleasure in things that are simple. Is that a rock star's life? It is for me." <mask> is a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. He is an advocate for gay rights, stating that he was influenced by queer culture in San Francisco. In 2016, <mask> voiced support for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Discography

Live albums

Guest appearances

References

External links

1964 births
Living people
American male bloggers
American bloggers
American male singer-songwriters
American rock guitarists
American male guitarists
American rock singers
American rock songwriters
Male actors from California
Singer-songwriters from California
Third Eye Blind members
University of California, Berkeley alumni
People from Indio, California
Musicians from San Bernardino, California
People from Palo Alto, California
Guitarists from California
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American male musicians
Gunn High School alumni

masks:
Stephan Douglas Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Stephan
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkinsuck
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins
Jenkins


title: Wong Doc-Fai

texts:
<mask> () is recognized internationally as a master of the Hung Sing branch of Choy Li Fut () kung fu and T'ai chi ch'uan (). He was born in 1948 in the Guangdong () province of China; the Wangshan village of Wushan - Doumen district of Zhuhai City. In April 1960, he immigrated to San Francisco, California with his mother to be reunited with his father. He arrived as a third-generation citizen of the United States of America since both his grandfather and father were already citizens. He sought out his first kung fu teacher - Lau Bun (), the founder of the first Hung Sing Kwoon of Choy Li Fut in America, after encountering taunting and bullying due to language and ethnic difficulties after his arrival. When Lau Bun died in 1967, he started teaching and opened his first school when he was 19 years old. In 1976, he continued his Choy Li Fut training under Hu Yuen Chou () and <mask> ().When Hu Yuen Chou died in 1997, he continued working with <mask>, the current "keeper" of Jiangmen branch of Hung Sing Choy Li Fut, to promote Choy Li Fut world-wide. <mask>-Fai also had extensive training in Yang-style Taijiquan () (Yang-style t'ai chi ch'uan) under the tutelage of Hu Yuen Chou, who studied under Yang Chengfu () (1883–1936) - the grandson of Yang Luchan (), the founder of the Yang-style t'ai chi ch'uan. <mask>-Fai is also a disciple and adopted son of Professor Peng-Si Yu (1902–1983) and Min Ou-Yang, both considered to be among China's greatest Qigong () and Yiquan () teachers. He also has expertise in the practice of Feng Shui (). In 1986, he founded the Plum Blossom International Federation. As of 2016, the Federation has continued to grow and is now represented in nine countries on six continents by over 300 schools in 40 countries with over 20,000 members. Grandmaster Doc-Fai <mask> continues to provide instruction traveling throughout the world conducting seminars.As of 2015, <mask>-Fai has been training in Choy Li Fut Kung Fu for 56 years and teaching martial arts for 47 years. Currently he is considered to be one of the highest ranking Choy Li Fut masters in the world and was just awarded "Grandmaster of the Year" by the FIOGA, Federation International of Grandmasters Association, based in China. Timeline
1948 - Born in Wangshan Village of the Wushan area, Doumen district, Zhuhai City, Guangdong province
1960 - Immigrated to San Francisco, California. 1963 - Began training with Lau Bun who brought Choy Li Fut to the United States and founded the first Hung Sing Kwoon of Choy Li Fut in America. 1967 - Begins teaching students after the death of Lau Bun. 1968 - Opened his first school in San Francisco, California. 1974 to 2003 - Taijiquan instructor at San Francisco City College.1976 - Became the first official disciple of both Great Grandmasters Hu Yuen Chou and <mask>. 1976 to 1997 - Studied in Hong Kong for his senior advanced level martial arts training each year during consecutive summers and winters. 1977 - Became one of the first California state certified acupuncturist and licensed practitioner of Traditional Chinese medicine. 1986 - Founded the Plum Blossom International Federation. 1986-1993 - Became regular columnist for Inside Kung Fu Magazine. 1987 - Promoted to grandmaster of his federation for both Choy Li Fut and Taijiquan (T'ai chi) by Hu Yuen Chou before his retirement. 1987 - Promoted to grandmaster status by his teacher <mask>.Coach for the United States team competing in the Republic of China International Taijiquan Federation's World Championship Push Hands competition. 1987 - The only U.S. team to win at this tournament, placing second only to Taiwan. 1990 - Team again placed second. 2000 - 2011 Resumed his Bi-monthly column with Inside Kung Fu Magazine
2004 - Head Instructor of the Tai Chi Club of the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center in San Francisco. 2004 - Coach to the largest U.S. team of 40 competing in the First World Traditional Wushu Tournament held in Zhengzhou, China. His team wins totalled 72 medals; 20 gold, 38 silver, 14 bronze. 2006 - Accompanied by 50 students, Zhan Jiang City of China, First Traditional Wushu Invitational Competition, the "Hua Jian Garden Cup."His team members took home 63 medals;45 were gold, 12 silver, and 6 bronze. The competition was held in the Xu Wen County Public Square with over 60,000 observing the competition over two nights. 2006 - In April 2006, <mask>-Fai raised the funds for renovating the original residence of Chan Heung (), the founder of Choy Li Fut kung fu in the King Mui Village of China for the Chan family, to set up the house as a museum. 2015 - Inducted into the FIOGA (Federation International Of Grandmaster's Association) Hall of Fame and awarded "Grandmaster of the Year." Plum Blossom International Federation
In 1986, <mask>-Fai established the International Plum Blossom Federation. As of 2016, the federation has over 300 schools in 40 countries worldwide. Federation schools can be found throughout the United States, Canada, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Philippines, and Tahiti.<mask>-Fai has certified instructors from his students down to the fourth generation teaching in his international federation. Awards and recognitions
1986 - Selected as one of the top 50 most influential martial arts personalities in the world by Inside Kung Fu magazine
1991 - Awarded the Kung Fu Artist of the Year by Black Belt magazine. 2003 - Inducted to the Martial Arts History Museum's Martial Arts Hall of Fame. 2003 - Referred to as a National Treasure in a Special Edition of Inside Kung Fu Magazine. 2005 - Picked as one of the Top 18 Greatest Sifus in America by Inside Kung Fu Magazine. 2007 - Selected as Inside Kung Fu Magazine's 2007 Instructor of the Year. 2013 - Certification of 10th Level Duan in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Federation International of Grandmaster Association (FIOGA)

Publications
 Featured on the covers of Martial Arts magazines over 20 times
 Written over 200 articles.Bimonthly columnist for Inside Kung Fu Magazine from 1986–1995 and 2000-2011
Authored featured articles in the following magazines from 1980 through 2003
Inside Kung Fu Magazine
Karate Illustrated magazine
Karate Kung Fu Illustrated magazine
American Karate magazine
Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine
Black Belt Magazine
 Authored several books
Choy Li Fut Kung Fu: The Dynamic Fighting Art Descended From the Monks of the Shaolin Temple by Doc Fai <mask> and Jane Hallander (1985) - History of Choy Li Fut Kung Fu. Description and examples of basics stance, hand techniques and includes basic training forms sets. Shaolin Five Animals by Doc-Fai <mask> (1987) - Historical background of the Shaolin Five Animals and the techniques incorporated within the hand forms. Tai Chi Chuan's Internal Secrets by Doc Fai <mask> and Jane Hallander (1991) - An in depth discussion on advanced Tai Chi techniques. Produced 9 instructional videos

References

Chinese tai chi practitioners
Martial arts school founders
Chinese non-fiction writers
1948 births
Living people
Writers from Zhuhai
Sportspeople from Guangdong
Martial arts writers

masks:
Doc Fai Wong
Wong Gong
Wong Gong
Wong Doc
Wong Doc
Wong
Wong Doc
Wong Gong
Wong Gong
Wong Doc
Wong Doc
Wong Doc
Wong
Wong
Wong