cahn | Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

Come join us in this crazy Frederick the Great fandom and learn more about all these crazy associated people, like the star-crossed and heartbreaking romance between Maria Theresia's daughter Maria Christina and her daughter-in-law Isabella, wow.

OK, so, there are FOURTEEN characters nominated:
Anna Karolina Orzelska (Frederician RPF)
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen | Elisabeth Christine Queen of Prussia (Frederician RPF)
Francesco Algarotti (Frederician RPF)
François-Marie Arouet | Voltaire (Frederician RPF)
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great (Frederician RPF)
Hans Hermann Von Katte (Frederician RPF)
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (Frederician RPF)
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf (Frederician RPF)
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith (Frederician RPF)
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (Frederician RPF)
Stanisław August Poniatowski (Frederician RPF)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758) (Frederician RPF)
Yekatarina II Alekseyevna | Catherine the Great of Russia (Frederician RPF)

This means some fourth person kindly nominated Algarotti and -- I think? -- Stanislaw August Poniatowski! YAY! Thank you fourth person! Come be our friend! :D Yuletide is so great!

I am definitely requesting Maria Theresia, Wilhelmine, and Fritz (Put them in a room together. Shake. How big is the explosion?), and thinking about Elisabeth Christine, but maybe not this year.

I am also declaring this post another Frederician post, as the last one was getting out of hand. I think I'll still use that one as the overall index to these, though, to keep all the links in one place.

(seriously, every time I think the wild stories are done there is ANOTHER one)

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Oh, and one more thing about Leopold and marriage: prepare yourself for both farce and tragedy when it comes to the actual wedding. MT had the idea of letting it happen not in Vienna, but in Innsbruck, capital of Tyrolia. This was because it had meaning for the House of Lorraine (Franz Stefan's granddad had been in exile there when Louis XIV had invaded and temporarily occupied Lorraine, and his father had been born there before everyone returned to Lorraine) and for her and Franz (they'd spent part of their honeymoon there). So, romantic, right?

Except that Leopold got a stomach flu and couldn't get rid of it all the way from Vienna to Innsbruck. He spent his wedding literally trying not to shit himself. Everyone disliked the commissioned opera (not by Mozart, don't worry). It started to rain, which drenched the fireworks. It was hell.

And then, once the wedding day was finally over (Imperial weddings took eons), the news arrived that Joseph's first father-in-law, Isabella's father the Duke of Parma, had died. Cue necessity for the Imperial family to get their mourning suits out. So much for the farce part, but it gets worse.

Still the same week, it's now Sunday, everyone prays for Isabella's late Dad at mass. Franz Stefan isn't feeling so well. He couldn't sleep the previous night. MT suggests a bi tof blood letting since she's worried. He declines and says to get one with the (still related to the week long Leopold wedding festivities) shows; he watches a comedy by Goldoni and a Ballet by Gluck, and is on the way upstairs together with Joseph and some courtiers when he has a stroke. Joseph catches him in time and prevents him from falling; they get him on a servant's bed in the antechamber and call doctors and priests. But he's dead not even ten minutes later.

Now bear in mind that for us, a quick death is something enviable. For a Catholic monarch in the 18th century, it's horrible. It means they haven't had time to confess, get shriven, face their maker. This is not a good death. It means purgatory, and might mean hell. Which is why MT, who has heard exclamations and much uproar, naturally is on her way to her husband but kept away from him on Joseph's orders. By no means is she to know Franzl had a stroke and died unprepared. She's lied to that he's just feeling bad again, the doctors are taking care of it. Joseph tells her (some of) the truth later, after he's pressured the priest to say there were some signs of life left when he arrived so he could provide the last unction for Franz Stephan and FS died shriven. So by the time MT gets told by Joseph that her husband is gone, and she can see him, he's been dead for hours.

And MT never, ever, gets over it. Even ten years later, she writes to a confidant: "I spend the years, the months, the weeks, the days in the same stupor, the same bitterness as with the first day, and often I am glad the days that pass are over so I'm one day closer to my ending. (...) I know myself no more, for I live like an animal, without a soul and reason. I forget things. I get up at five, I go to bed late, and I'm not doing anything that truly counts. I do not even think."

These quotes are from a letter written in French to a former lady in waiting. After her death, people found handwritten notes in her prayer book, these in German and with excentric spelling (no capital letters) and a litany of numbers: "emperor franciscus my husband has lived 56 years eight months ten days, has died on August 18th 1765 on half bast ten in the evenig. Has lived 680 months, 2958 weeks, 20778 days, 496992 hours. My happy marriage lasted 29 years, six months, six days, and at the same hour I gave him my hand, also on a Sunday, he was taken from me. In sum 29 years, 335 months, 1540 weeks, 10781 days, 258744 hours."

(This, like Joseph's letter about his daughter, breaks my heart.)

Wow. Yeah. That math is heartbreaking. :-( And the whole story.

Oh. Yes. The months and weeks and days and even hours :((((((

:( Did MT believe that he had been shriven, at least?

Well, on the one hand, Joseph (who didn‘t have his mother‘s respect for the clergy) seems to have put the fear of God in that priest, and MT never said she didn‘t believe it, but...

...on the other hand, she did say that it‘s a comfort to her FS went to mass that day (it being Sunday) and took communion. Which could be read as meaning just that, or could mean she‘s somewhat suspicious of the „there were still life signs“ story but tells herself that there wasn‘t much sinning happening between morning, when FS had communion, and evening, when he died, so he still was in a good spiritual state.

:( I'm glad that she did seem to believe he was in a good spiritual state, either way. I really don't want to imagine her thinking that not only did he die but that she'd never see him again after death because he'd died in a state of sin. :(

Quite. This is as good a place as any to mention that her own death, by contrast, took three days (from the moment everyone admitted she was, in fact, dying), and was public (a lot, though not all of the time, courtiers and clergy were there in addition to her immediate family other than the children who were married abroad). She was wearing one of FSs old dressing gowns, as mentioned, and refused to fall asleep for those three days, saying she would not meet her maker in her sleep when he called her. A lot of coffee was involved. Joseph was present the entire time, too (also drinking a lot of coffee), for all that they'd really fought vehemently and a lot during their years as co-rulers. (And he had not taken her last intervention graciously - other than his immediate embarrassment at her contacting Fritz via Catherine behind his back and offer to step down which she didn't accept, he'd been pissed off to go, visit Catherine, and then write home that Catherine was certainly "the greatest woman of our age" (so there, Mom!).) But now he was there again, when even his sisters left to catch a break in between attending, because they did have an Albee-esque love/hate relationship on his part.

On the evening of the third day, November 29th shortly before 9 pm, she got up from the chair she was insisting to sit on and made a few steps to the Chaiselongue by herself, said "See, what bad weather for such a long journey" to Joseph (it was raining outside), took another three breaths and died.

Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina