Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

[cahn]

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)

Comments

Re: More Algarotti

[selenak]

Well, quite. I knew Lady Mary Wortley Montagu only as a traveller (one of the earliest English female travel describes to the Middle East) and because she supposedly brought the innoculation method (against small pox) from Constantinople to Britain.

BTW, speaking of inocculation, given both Isabella and only a few years later Maria Josepha, Joseph‘s second wife, as well as a child daughter and other relations of MT died of smallpox, she showed her mixture of practicality and ruthlessness the following way after Josepha‘s death:

Dr. Van Swieten (brought by FS to court): There‘s this new method that sounds daring but actually possible and, if working, will immunize your remaining family, including your younger children who are still, well, children.

MT: What‘s the downside?

Dr. Van Swieten: If it doesn‘t work, your children will catch smallpox for sure and possibly die of it.

Clergy: this method is off the devil. Proof: the King of Prussia is for it! Don‘t do it, your highness.

MT: Right. I‘ll be careful.

Clergy: That means you won‘t do it?

MT: No. It means this Dr. Van Swieten will first try the method on these poor orphan boys who will, of course, be financially compensated, whatever happens. If it works, my kids and the rest of the family get inocculated as well, and ditto for the rest of the realm. Start praying for the boys.

Dr. Van Swieten: That would work, but...huh. Not sure what the ethics here are. Thankfully, we‘re living a few centuries before human experimentation becomes a definite crime.

MT: I‘m not volunteering my kids as the first to try this new method on, but I see your reasoning that it needs to be tried. Onwards!

Re: More Algarotti

[mildred_of_midgard]

Haha. Yeah, that's pretty much how it went with Jenner's first cowpox vaccine tests at the end of the century. "Here's some kid from the lower classes; let's see how it goes."

Inoculation

[cahn]

Hee, I love MT being all 18th-C not-particularly-concerned-with-ethics-at-all-but-still-meeting-noblesse-oblige-economically. (Also: not listening to the clergy's argument that it's devilish because the King of Prussia is for it! Obviously she didn't hate him, silly essay/bio writers, she just thought he was a hot mess who kept picking wars with her!)

If I had ultimate power and grew up with 18th Century mores, I'd be totally on the human experimentation bandwagon! Perhaps a good thing no one is trusting me with ultimate power :)

Re: Inoculation

[mildred_of_midgard]

NOBODY should have absolute power, especially me. I would never have invented "human experimentation is wrong" morality on my own. It's for science!