Talk:Rallou Karatza

Duplicate
There is another article describing the same subject: Rallou Karatza. These should be merged in one. Regards,--Silenzio76 (talk) 23:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Rallou Karatza was born in 1778, this one in 1799. --Aciram (talk) 23:20, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The birth's year (1778) is a mistake, is the same subject. Regards,--Silenzio76 (talk) 01:07, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Detective work
None of this is intended to be published in the article, but it's an interesting find. The article mentions Kreuchely's claim that John Caradja raped one of his daughters, and had a child from the affair; it also includes Iorga's comment, that this may refer to Rallou. There's reason to doubt that it refers to her at all, because of something else that pops out. The quite stunning fact is that Rallou's sister Roxani had this daughter Eleni, who, we are to believe, was born to her from Michael Soutzos. The sources almost universally claim that Soutzos and Roxani married each other in 1812, and that their first child, a boy, was born in 1813; most sources also date that portrait of Eleni to 1819 or so. This means that, if Eleni was indeed Soutzos' daughter, she was under the age of seven in that portrait -- does anyone seriously believe that? What is more likely is that Eleni, whose actual birth date seems irretrievable, was born before 1812, and that Soutzos was not her biological father; this would also explain why Roxani was married to Soutzos, who was utterly penniless, from a family of political suspects, and widely seen as a cretin.

Nobody will presumably be able to prove that Eleni was simultaneously Caradja's daughter and granddaughter, short of digging up graves; that part may be calumny (however consistent with other accounts of Caradja's debauchery). But it seems rather clear that Eleni was born into some sort of scandal, that was hushed up when Soutzous agreed to step in. And, to take it one step further: without this sordid affair, there would have been no chance that Soutzos could have climbed up to where he did, that the Eterist episode would have played out the same way, that the Phanariote rules would have ended in the same manner. Fascinating. Dahn (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2023 (UTC)