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- BIOGRAPHY
At the age of twenty he married Princess Maria Teresa of Savoie and in 1821 they produced a daughter and a son and heir in 1823. Regarded as somewhat eccentric, he was hardly ever in the Duchies he was supposed to rule. Most of his time was spent on his estate in Saxony, between Dresden and Meissen, while an Englisman, Thomas Ward, was in charge in Lucca and Parma with strict instructions to be autocratic and disallow any rights the inhabitants might request. In 1832 he escaped to Prague to avoid an outbreak of cholera; there he was bored and to entertain himself he knitted socks.
When the citizens of Lucca and Parma heard disturbing rumours about his visits to Protestant church services, he reassured them that whenever he was at Weisstropp, a Protestant village, he honoured the locals and that, had his estate been in a Muslim area, he would have done the same.
In revolution year 1848 he lost his powers in Lucca and Parma as the Austrian army, after suppressing the uprising, saw no reason to restore him. Carlo II did not protest as he had no intention of returning to Italy as he thought he was better occupied elsewhere. Fickle in most aspects of his life, he was, however constant in his pursuing of attractive young men. He was interested in young men, particularly military officers whom he would meet in casinos. When quite old and having lost all his teeth, he had dentures made as he was going to a dinner. Unfortunately the dentures had not been made at all well and, at one stage when he could not open or close his mouth, in a fit of fury took them out and hurled them across the table and into a corner of the room.
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