(no subject)

[cahn]

This is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post, mildred_of_midgard and selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??

Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days: selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad

Only a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

Comments

Re: Detour: Liselotte von der Pfalz

[selenak]

Versailles: the first two seasons are trashy fun, and I reviewed them here, the third and final one was something of a let down, hence no review, though Liselotte is still great in it. The show isn’t a must, and its nods at history grow fewer and fewer as it progresses, but it does offer pretty costumes, pretty people, same sex relationships given the same amount of narrative detail as het ones and, by the end, a successful OT3, so there’s that.

OTOH, if there’s an audiobook in English for LIselotte’s letters, go for it. They need to be read out loud for maximum enjoyment. (I’m only sorry that those English translations I’ve seen invariably sound more formal than Liselotte does in in German, because the fact she writes informal baroque slang German at the extremely formal court of France is part of the appeal.

Re: Detour: Liselotte von der Pfalz

[cahn]

Ah. Sounds like I got the best part of it from the vid that you linked, then :)

Man, I am totally going to find Liselotte's letters, though! They sound amazing.

Re: Detour: Liselotte von der Pfalz

[selenak]

Yup, and here are some more vids covering the enjoyable aspects of Versailles:

This one about the Louis (XIV)/Philippe (d'Orleans) relationship through three seasons, and this one about the Philippe/Liselotte relationship in s2 (angstier than the OT3 one I linked earlier as it lacks the happy s3 conclusion, but covers more detail).

One of these days, I should create a poll. Would you rather marry into

- the Hohenzollern
- the Habsburg
- the Hannover
- The Bourbon Family?

(Really evil choices.)

Re: Detour: Liselotte von der Pfalz

[cahn]

Ooh, so pretty! I like both, though of course I prefer Liselotte, having enjoyed the letter excerpts so very much :D

Agh! Evil choices indeed.