Resuming the trivia from my current reading material.
1) FW and SD are having trouble producing a male heir that survives infancy. Hence all the inspecting of bb!Fritz like he was some kind of backward worm. FW's father, Frederick I, is still alive. Well, if his son and daughter-in-law can't do it, he'll give it the old college try himself! Frederick I marries a third time, hoping for a male heir pretty much right up until his deathbed (bb!Fritz is one year old and sickly when Grandpa Frederick kicks it).
But apparently the third wife had some...mental health problems. Bipolar with psychotic breaks? Total guess on my part based on one paragraph in Wikipedia.
So then this happened:
"On a February night his insane wife, in a fit of religious frenzy and convinced that she was being divorced to be married to the Sultan of Morocco, burst through a glass door into his [her husband's] apartments. Bloody and disheveled, wearing only a white shift, she flung herself on the dozing monarch. Mistaking her for 'the White Lady,' who traditionally appeared just before the death of a Hohenzollern, Frederick lapsed into a coma and shortly died."
Wikipedia gives a somewhat less dramatic rendition of the episode: "One night the queen, dressed only in her white nightclothes and with loose hair, rushed through the gallery which connected her apartments with those of the king, burst through the glass door in to his room and, covered in blood from the wounds afflicted by the broken glass door, attacked the king and screamed reproaches at him. The suddenly awakened king, who suffered from fever, imagined in his confusion that she was the legendary 'White Lady' who would foretell his death, and screamed until his attendants appeared, causing a scene. Sophia Louise was reportedly not aware of what she had done."
Deciding which one to believe is left as an exercise to the reader.
A bit of background on Frederick I: the first king in Prussia (remember, king "in", not king "of" yet, as explained here), patronized the arts, really liked French culture, spent gadzooks of money on his palaces and other luxuries. His son FW, as we all know, was the diametric opposite; Fritz a mixture of the two. Perhaps surprisingly, Fritz was full of vitriol about his grandfather lack of talents as King*, and was much more positive about his abusive father's awesomeness as ruler.
Later generations of historians, as I gather, were all, "Yeah, whatever Old Fritz says! Frederick I sucked!" and only after a while started looking at Frederick's reign on its own merits and not through the lenses of his opinionated-about-everything grandson.
2) From my 18th century military history book, talking about the demographics of the officer class. While it was normal at the time for officers to be primarily nobles, there was a lot of flexibility in places like the German countries about who counted as a noble, and some opportunities to rise in the ranks. Whereas in France: "In the expeditionary corps that went to bring freedom to America in 1780, about 85 per cent of the officers were of the nobility, and among these the leadership was clearly exercised by the 30 per cent whose titles dated from the middle ages. The newcomers who went back only as far as the sixteenth century were at a severe disadvantage, and they were virtually barred from becoming colonels."
France briefly experimented with bourgeois officers, but not for long. One such lieutenant, formerly a merchant, was on leave when he got this incredibly condescending letter from his commanding officer, informing him that he'd been replaced by a noble: "You are well-off and young, and you will not be without an occupation as long as you devote yourself to the kind of life which was followed by your ancestors—it is a perfectly acceptable one when it is pursued honourably. However, by desiring to serve in the army you are out of your sphere; go back to your former condition, and you will be happy. I know, Monsieur, that high birth is the result of chance and that it should not be the object of vainglorious pride. But birth brings privileges and rights which cannot be violated without disturbing the public order."
Okay, guys, good luck with that meritocracy.
This reminds me, btw, of Louis XV getting all huffy about Prussian upstart Frederick daring to write to him as an equal, and cuttingly referring to Fritz as the "Margrave of Brandenburg," which makes me laugh every time I see it. Sorry, dude, you have the ancestors, but Fritz gets it done.
3) Still in Algarotti's early years in the dissertation I'm reading, haven't gotten to the part where he meets Fritz yet. Absolutely fascinating stuff so far, though.
Of possible characterization interest, he's from Padua but hates it there, went to Venice but hated it more, went to Florence and fell in love with it, for two months, then decided the Florentines were "unbearably pretentious" and "pitiful," so he wrote a satire about them. "In it, he depicts them as forever boasting about all the insignificant things they wasted their time learning instead of using their time to learn things that actually matter. Algarotti confided to Francesco Maria Zanotti that he would find Florence insufferable were it not for the presence of so many foreigners."
Then he goes to Rome. "Initially, just as had been the case with Florence, Algarotti was delighted with Rome...After being pressured to eat with two [church]men one day, he reported to Francesco Maria Zanotti that he found the experience so disagreeable that he would even have preferred to dine with ten Florentines, each of whom had ten pieces of news to tell him."
So now he's off to Paris!
And I'm thinking...who does this remind me of? The falling passionately in love with something/someone only to be disillusioned shortly thereafter, the writing off of entire demographics, the satirizing, and of course the specific opinions about Italy.
P.S. If, perchance, you read a Yuletide fic where Algarotti and Fritz meet and immediately hit it off with satires of present-day Italians, you know who wrote that fic. :P
And now we know who turned (or helped turn) Fritz off going to Italy. "Look, sis, I heard it from the horse's mouth! It's terrible there."
4) Algarotti's family: "You NEED to get married. We need the money and alliances."
Algarotti: "Marriage = DEATH."
[Actual quote: "Algarotti was steadfast in his refusal to submit to his family‘s desires, however, telling his brother Bonomo that marriage would be like death for him." He never did get married.]
Random facts
1) FW and SD are having trouble producing a male heir that survives infancy. Hence all the inspecting of bb!Fritz like he was some kind of backward worm. FW's father, Frederick I, is still alive. Well, if his son and daughter-in-law can't do it, he'll give it the old college try himself! Frederick I marries a third time, hoping for a male heir pretty much right up until his deathbed (bb!Fritz is one year old and sickly when Grandpa Frederick kicks it).
But apparently the third wife had some...mental health problems. Bipolar with psychotic breaks? Total guess on my part based on one paragraph in Wikipedia.
So then this happened:
"On a February night his insane wife, in a fit of religious frenzy and convinced that she was being divorced to be married to the Sultan of Morocco, burst through a glass door into his [her husband's] apartments. Bloody and disheveled, wearing only a white shift, she flung herself on the dozing monarch. Mistaking her for 'the White Lady,' who traditionally appeared just before the death of a Hohenzollern, Frederick lapsed into a coma and shortly died."
Wikipedia gives a somewhat less dramatic rendition of the episode: "One night the queen, dressed only in her white nightclothes and with loose hair, rushed through the gallery which connected her apartments with those of the king, burst through the glass door in to his room and, covered in blood from the wounds afflicted by the broken glass door, attacked the king and screamed reproaches at him. The suddenly awakened king, who suffered from fever, imagined in his confusion that she was the legendary 'White Lady' who would foretell his death, and screamed until his attendants appeared, causing a scene. Sophia Louise was reportedly not aware of what she had done."
Deciding which one to believe is left as an exercise to the reader.
A bit of background on Frederick I: the first king in Prussia (remember, king "in", not king "of" yet, as explained here), patronized the arts, really liked French culture, spent gadzooks of money on his palaces and other luxuries. His son FW, as we all know, was the diametric opposite; Fritz a mixture of the two. Perhaps surprisingly, Fritz was full of vitriol about his grandfather lack of talents as King*, and was much more positive about his abusive father's awesomeness as ruler.
Later generations of historians, as I gather, were all, "Yeah, whatever Old Fritz says! Frederick I sucked!" and only after a while started looking at Frederick's reign on its own merits and not through the lenses of his opinionated-about-everything grandson.
2) From my 18th century military history book, talking about the demographics of the officer class. While it was normal at the time for officers to be primarily nobles, there was a lot of flexibility in places like the German countries about who counted as a noble, and some opportunities to rise in the ranks. Whereas in France: "In the expeditionary corps that went to bring freedom to America in 1780, about 85 per cent of the officers were of the nobility, and among these the leadership was clearly exercised by the 30 per cent whose titles dated from the middle ages. The newcomers who went back only as far as the sixteenth century were at a severe disadvantage, and they were virtually barred from becoming colonels."
France briefly experimented with bourgeois officers, but not for long. One such lieutenant, formerly a merchant, was on leave when he got this incredibly condescending letter from his commanding officer, informing him that he'd been replaced by a noble: "You are well-off and young, and you will not be without an occupation as long as you devote yourself to the kind of life which was followed by your ancestors—it is a perfectly acceptable one when it is pursued honourably. However, by desiring to serve in the army you are out of your sphere; go back to your former condition, and you will be happy. I know, Monsieur, that high birth is the result of chance and that it should not be the object of vainglorious pride. But birth brings privileges and rights which cannot be violated without disturbing the public order."
Okay, guys, good luck with that meritocracy.
This reminds me, btw, of Louis XV getting all huffy about Prussian upstart Frederick daring to write to him as an equal, and cuttingly referring to Fritz as the "Margrave of Brandenburg," which makes me laugh every time I see it. Sorry, dude, you have the ancestors, but Fritz gets it done.
3) Still in Algarotti's early years in the dissertation I'm reading, haven't gotten to the part where he meets Fritz yet. Absolutely fascinating stuff so far, though.
Of possible characterization interest, he's from Padua but hates it there, went to Venice but hated it more, went to Florence and fell in love with it, for two months, then decided the Florentines were "unbearably pretentious" and "pitiful," so he wrote a satire about them. "In it, he depicts them as forever boasting about all the insignificant things they wasted their time learning instead of using their time to learn things that actually matter. Algarotti confided to Francesco Maria Zanotti that he would find Florence insufferable were it not for the presence of so many foreigners."
Then he goes to Rome. "Initially, just as had been the case with Florence, Algarotti was delighted with Rome...After being pressured to eat with two [church]men one day, he reported to Francesco Maria Zanotti that he found the experience so disagreeable that he would even have preferred to dine with ten Florentines, each of whom had ten pieces of news to tell him."
So now he's off to Paris!
And I'm thinking...who does this remind me of? The falling passionately in love with something/someone only to be disillusioned shortly thereafter, the writing off of entire demographics, the satirizing, and of course the specific opinions about Italy.
P.S. If, perchance, you read a Yuletide fic where Algarotti and Fritz meet and immediately hit it off with satires of present-day Italians, you know who wrote that fic. :P
And now we know who turned (or helped turn) Fritz off going to Italy. "Look, sis, I heard it from the horse's mouth! It's terrible there."
4) Algarotti's family: "You NEED to get married. We need the money and alliances."
Algarotti: "Marriage = DEATH."
[Actual quote: "Algarotti was steadfast in his refusal to submit to his family‘s desires, however, telling his brother Bonomo that marriage would be like death for him." He never did get married.]