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cahnAll Yuletide requests are out!
Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!
-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)
Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!
-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French
-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...
Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links
Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!
-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)
Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!
-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French
-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...
Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links
Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden
Date: 2019-11-12 09:48 pm (UTC)!!!!!
Welp, you're right. I definitely did not guess where that was going. GUSTAV. WHOA. (Also, kudos to Munck for putting it in writing, omg.)
(The really hilarious thing is that I started writing a Don Carlo fic last year with a premise a little like this
because Philip clearly needs help, and gave it up because it was just too crazy. Clearly I should resurrect it :P )Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden
Date: 2019-11-14 09:43 am (UTC)He even had the chambermaid (aka the one Munck had originally been involved with) and one of Sophia Magdalena's ladies in waiting testify that he, Munck, had been required to touch both the King and the Queen as part of the "instructions", that it had been Gustav's idea and he, Munck, was only servicing the royal couple as had been asked.
(Leopold to Joseph: Aren't you glad Mom didn't marry little Toni to Gustav instead of Louis?
Joseph: Not funny, Poldl.)
Something else the rabbit hole going revealed to me: historians apparently went into contortions re: Gustav's sexuality as much as they did about Fritz. Post-heir getting, this happened:
Gustav's sister-in-law Charlotte in a letter: Guess what, the King proposed to a young man in the park and was turned down.
Historians: Slander! Caused by family feud.
Queen Sophia Magdalena: *finds a naked hot page in Gustav's bed, though minus Gustav*
Traditional historians: Must have been lost for directions and passed out. Says something about the informality of the Gustavian court, clearly. I mean, Gustav did have female crushes as a young man, didn't he? And he's totally straight in the Verdi opera, too!
Also I learned that Ulrike, in true Hohenzollern insulting one's offspring in publich spirit, reacted thusly when first shown the portrait of her future daughter-in-law (at a formal presentation of said portrait to the crown prince, i.e. Gustav):
"Why Gustav, you seem to be in love with her already. She looks stupid."
Charles the scheming ambitious brother after the murder of Gustav (Charles: I had nothing to do with that! That could be proven, anyway) became regent for little Gustav IV Adolf (born nine months after successful "instruction" by Munck); then, when his nephew ascended to the throne upon reaching his majority, conspired with the nobility against him, with the net result being that Gustav IV Adolf was forced to abdicate. Charles then finally became King in his own right, but alas for him...
Napoleon: It's a new age, what can I say.
Charles: *has stroke*
Swedish Parliament: We have a King severely disabled by a stroke and no surviving son. Also we have the Russians on one border and continental Europe ruled by Napoleon on the other. How about the King is made to adopt one of Napoleon's marshals as his heir?
Gustav IV Adolf *in exile*: So, I'm not good enough because I'm possibly the son of a Finnish sex machine, but a French commoner who has "death to kings" tattood on his arm is?
Charles (or rather, the parliament for him): Please greet our new crown prince and future king, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, aka Karl Johan of Sweden!
Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden
Date: 2019-11-15 05:21 pm (UTC)I had no idea that Scandinavia was such a hotbed of... gossipy sensationalism... Although at least from the movie synopsis, it seems to be the case that a large part of the problem was that Struensee went after power, which doesn't seem to have been so much the case here?
He even had the chambermaid (aka the one Munck had originally been involved with) and one of Sophia Magdalena's ladies in waiting testify that he, Munck, had been required to touch both the King and the Queen as part of the "instructions", that it had been Gustav's idea and he, Munck, was only servicing the royal couple as had been asked.
!!This is amazing.
(Leopold to Joseph: Aren't you glad Mom didn't marry little Toni to Gustav instead of Louis?
Joseph: Not funny, Poldl.)
Well... I dunno... at least she would have gotten hands-on tutorials? And it seems like it would be less embarrassing to get instructions from well-known sex machine than from one's older brother, but maybe this is me having twenty-first century squicks :D
Queen Sophia Magdalena: *finds a naked hot page in Gustav's bed, though minus Gustav*
Traditional historians: Must have been lost for directions and passed out.
lol forever. Woooooow. That is some major major contortions there, that is hilarious.
And he's totally straight in the Verdi opera, too!
HAHAHAHA
Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden
Date: 2019-11-17 07:01 pm (UTC)Well, Munck didn't do badly out of it. To quote wiki: He was appointed Master of the Horse (Riksstallmästare), knight and governor of the Royal Order of the Seraphim. He was created Baron (Friherre) Munck af Fulkila on 27 December 1778 (introduced in registry of the nobility in 1788, under nr 309), and finally Count Greve Munck af Fulkila on 4 July 1788 (introduced 16 May 1789 under nr 103). In 1787, Sophia Magdalena deposited a sum of 50.000 riksdaler in an account for Munck, which was generally rumoured to be a "farewell gift".
But still, Struensee became the de facto ruler of Denmark for a while, and his reforms were truly earth shattering for the time:
- abolition of torture
abolition of unfree labor (corvée)
abolition of the censorship of the press
abolition of the practice of preferring nobles for state offices
abolition of noble privileges
abolition of "undeserved" revenues for nobles
abolition of the etiquette rules at the Royal Court
abolition of the Royal Court's aristocracy
abolition of state funding of unproductive manufacturers
abolition of several holidays
introduction of a tax on gambling and luxury horses to fund nursing of foundlings
ban of slave trade in the Danish colonies
rewarding only actual achievements with feudal titles and decorations
criminalization and punishment of bribery
re-organization of the judicial institutions to minimize corruption
introduction of state-owned grain storages to balance out the grain price
assignment of farmland to peasants
re-organization and reduction of the army
university reforms
reform of the state-owned medical institutions
...and then he died a gruesome death for "lese majeste and usurpation of the royal authority". To quote wiki again: First, Struensee's right hand was cut off; next, after two failed attempts, his head was severed, stuck on a pole and presented to 30,000 bystanders; then, after disembowelment, his remains were quartered.
The King himself considered Struensee a great man, even after his death. Written in German on a drawing the king made in 1775, three years after Struensee’s execution, was the following: "Ich hätte gern beide gerettet" ("I would have liked to have saved them both").
BTW, in case you're wondering: a) German because Struensee was German (and the Queen sort of was, being a Hannover and George III's sister), b) normally one would wonder why he didn't save them then, being King, but between being mentally ill and the enraged nobility taking over, Christian does have an excuse. Anyway, with all this in mind as the most recent precedent, is it a surprise Munck was careful?
Re: husband for Marie Antoinette, presumably in this particular matter, she'd prefered the Swedish option, too, but Gustav was a lousy husband in general (what with the favorites and no particular interest in his wife beyond the heir getting), whereas Louis might have been terrible in bed, not to mention phlegmatic in general, but he was the first French King since centuries not to take a mistress or a non-sexual favourite, and emotionally actually was devoted to his wife. Also, note that Gustav's method resulted in immediate scandal, whereas (most) people didn't know about why it took seven years for MA to get pregnant until Joseph's letters in this regard were finally published in the 20th century. I mean, there was gossip and theories involving the fact that post-Joseph's visit, pregnancy finally ensued, obviously, but just what the problem had been was hotly debated.
(One theory favored by future revolutionaries was that MA was an evil nymphomaniac and hence not able to get pregnant, which was completely untrue but was eagerly believed, and when the children finally did come, of course their paternity got disputed.)
Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-18 01:08 pm (UTC)Speaking of disputes about her children, here's a story.
During the Revolution, they were imprisoned along with their parents. Then they were separated from their parents on the grounds that Louis and MA were unfit parents--Louis had to testify to the extremely improbable charge of being sexually molested by MA, just as an excuse for his jailers to separate them. Louis, as the heir to the now defunct crown, was given to some appropriately low-ranked member of society for a good revolutionary upbringing in prison. Then Louis and MA were killed, and the kids continued to be kept very secluded in prison. Louis XVII was 7 years old when this happened.
The accounts of young Louis's treatment by later royalist sources (including his sister, who was separated from him much of the time and is not a reliable eyewitness), describe abuse that far surpasses anything Fritz ever went through. I kind of have to hope accounts have been greatly exaggerated by propaganda. Then he died of illness in prison at age 10.
Or did he? Naturally, people turned up in later years claiming to be him, claiming that he was smuggled out. The strongest piece of evidence was an eyewitness who saw Louis XVII in prison (his doctor, I think?) and said that the boy refused to talk and showed little signs of understanding what was said to him, or any signs of being the same boy as the dauphin. Conspiracy theories ensued, including one where his protectors smuggled him out and substituted an uneducated deaf mute child, who conveniently couldn't write or say anything that might reveal the deception. Then the incredibly sickly deaf mute died, while the real Louis was living in exile.
Today, in the 21st century, there are still people claiming to be descended from one of the 19th century pretenders. (There are still at least two people living today claiming to be descended from Charles Edward Stuart/Bonnie Prince Charlie. Predictably, one who wants to be recognized as king and probably isn't descended, and one who wants nothing to do with royalty and probably is.)
Well, we can argue about textual evidence and probabilities all day and not get anywhere. A DNA test would be awesome! But burying a 10-year old deposed monarch in royal style was not a priority of the French revolutionaries (I say this ironically--they went to a great deal of trouble to make sure it didn't happen). So while we think we might know where he's buried, it's with very low confidence, and a test of a body found there wouldn't prove anything.
But, before he was buried, his heart was removed by a royalist sympathizer and stored in a container. (Preserving and displaying the hearts of monarchs separately was a long-standing tradition.) It passed through many hands, not always recognized for what it was, and disappeared completely at one point and was thought lost forever.
Meanwhile, in the mid 20th century, one family was still trying to prove their claim to the throne via the pretender. (Omg, guys, calm down.) In the 1990s, trying to get them to shut up, someone did a DNA test of the hair and arm bone of that guy (now long dead, of course), hair in some lockets belonging to Maria Theresia, which were thought to be locks of hair of her children, hair thought to belong to Marie Antoinette, and hair from living relatives of MA. They decided he *probably* wasn't Louis XVII, but it was hard to disprove with confidence, because the DNA was so degraded and contaminated because of the passage of time (pretenders also don't get the most pristine burials).
Then, circa 2000, a historian contacted the DNA guy and said, "Hey, I spent my life trying to track down Louis XVII's heart, and I know where to find it!"
Believe it or not, the heart had actually made it, through a very roundabout route, to Saint-Denis. For those of you just joining (or maybe you know this from historical fiction), that's where all the French monarchs were buried. The heart wasn't prominently displayed, nobody knew it was there any more, but there it was, hidden on a bottom shelf behind a crucifix in a glass container.
DNA guy got permission to cut off a small piece for the test, and boom! Perfect match. What we have here is the heart of the Dauphin, meaning the kid who couldn't talk to the doctor but seemed to appreciate the guy being nice to him, was the son of Louis and MA, was the same kid who died at age 10.
Before the DNA test, there was a ceremony to re-inter the remainder of the heart. The presiding priest said, "I do not know whose heart this is, but it is certainly symbolic of children anywhere in the world who have suffered. This represents the suffering of all little children caught up in war and revolution."
Which is very true--even if nine-tenths of what we hear about the sufferings of Louis XVII was propaganda, what we know for certain would be enough to traumatize any young child into not talking.
Of course, the descendants from the pretender are still contesting the results of the test, but they have even fewer people taking them seriously these days.
Older sister Marie-Thérèse, by the way, did not die in prison, and was the only one of MA and Louis's children to make it to adulthood. She spent her life in and out of exile, in sync with the fluctuations between monarchical and republican dominance in France. Wikipedia tells me there was also a dispute about whether a certain shadowy figure known as the "Dark Countess", who never spoke in public, might actually have been Marie-Thérèse. The theory is that MT was too traumatized to live a normal life and had traded places with another woman, allowing her to assume her identity, but DNA tests a few years ago proved that the Dark Countess was not the daughter of Marie Antoinette either. We still don't know who she was, but definitely not Marie-Thérèse. Cool name, though!
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-19 05:54 am (UTC)That is amaaaaazing historical forensics (or detective work, or whatever, what do yo ueven call that??) I love it when historical puzzles are solved by SCIENCE.
But also: :(((((((((
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-19 08:30 am (UTC)But yes, I knew the sad story of the children. The moment where Hèbert brings up the sexual molestation/incest charge at MA's trial, twice, is one of the most famous and infamous at the same time, because of how she defies it. The Moniteur as well as other papers reported on the trial in great detail, so we don't have to rely on people's memories. The first time Hèbert raises the charge, she ignores him and replies to the other accusations. Then:
A jury member: »Citizen President, I ask you to point out to the accused that she has not yet replied to the facts Citizen Hèbert mentioned regarding the events between her and her son."
The President asked the relevant question.
Accused: "If I had not replied, it was because nature revolts against such an accusation made to a mother." Here the accused seemed to be upset in the highest degree. "I call on all mothers who are present in this room."
This caused a mighty commotion among female members of the audience. The President hastily proceeded to the next question.
Bear in mind MA was well and truly hated. She was basically blamed for everything that had gone wrong in France for the last century, and Hèbert, who'd made the accusation, had written pornographic calumnies about her in his journal "Père Duchesne" for years; he hadn't been the only one. There wasn't a depravity she hadn't been accused of at this point, and most were believed by the population at large. Those women had come to her trial to gloat at her downfall, not to support her. And yet.
Stefan Zweig in his MA biography from the 1930s which is titled "Story of an avarage character" points out to the great and tragic paradox of her life; that she - who if the revolution had not happened would have simply been an avarage Ancien Regime princess, no more or less extravagant than the lot of them, neither particularly smart nor stupid, in the last few years of it from 1789 onwards turned into displaying extraordinary strength and spirit. The same woman who couldn't go through a briefing from Mercy (the Austrian ambassador) without a yawning and back in Vienna had been bored by language lessons, who didn't take any of Joseph's admonishments in that memo letter he left her after leaving France seriously, learnt a complicated cyphre system so she could correspond with supporters while under increasing close watch; she, not poor Louis her husband, was the one who negotiated, corresponded etc. with everyone. She showed great courage from the moment Versailles was stormed and the people yelled for her to get out on the balcony alone ("no children, no children", because it was assumed she'd bring them to soften everyone's hearts) onwards, and in her final year of life, when she was subjected to non stop verbal abuse and wasn't even allowed to have a cell without two (male) guards present all the time, she didn't crumble once, and even was able to comfort her sister-in-law Elisabeth who'd been locked up with her.
"When will you grow into your own" (the sentence has also been translated as "when will you become yourself?" her exasparated mother MT had once written to her, and one of the many tragedies of MA's life was hat she did not become this final self even the revolutionaries were forced to have grudging respect for until it was too late.
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-21 05:11 pm (UTC)But yay, this bio is available in English! Not at my library, alas, but my family has been wondering what to get me for Christmas, and I've just put it on my wishlist :D
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-22 12:48 pm (UTC)(His day ended in exile, in Brazil during WWII, where he committed suicide, shortly after finishing his memoirs of his youth in pre-WWI Vienna, Die Welt von Gestern, "The World of Yesterday".)
My own first Zweig work was his Joseph Fouché biography, a great example of how you can write the biography of someone you despise and yet make it absolutely fascinating. Most of the other people he wrote about he liked, including MA,but Fouché, he was both revolted and fascinated by, and it shows.
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-25 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-22 05:06 pm (UTC)Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-25 08:35 pm (UTC)My library doesn't have it in text, though it does have it in videocassette?? which is really weird to me. (This is of course not at all helpful to me, as I don't have a VHS player and even if I did, I have all this stuff queued up to watch!)
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-25 08:39 pm (UTC)Much to my delight, yesterday I also accidentally stumbled across volume 2 of Catt's memoirs online, which I *had not* been able to find despite extensive looking. Funnily enough, I was trying to track down an 18th century place name for somewhere in Poland, and Catt came up. So I have downloaded that and have it on my to-read list, when I can read things again, ugh. (It's kind of horrible to have gone from "can't read physical books" to "can't read books" but at least I'm hopeful that has an easier fix.)
V. H. S???? Wow. Okay, library!
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-29 03:42 am (UTC)Oooooh, Catt's memoirs! I hope you can read it soon too :(
Re: Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-29 03:46 am (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden
Date: 2019-11-19 05:52 am (UTC)Heh, I suppose there would be scandal at that, given that Munck was careful to make public his role in all of this :) Whereas Joseph wasn't going to.... (I'm still amazed, from a prudish 21stC viewpoint, that he wrote a letter about it!)
MA was an evil nymphomaniac and hence not able to get pregnant
I... don't... think sex and pregnancy work the way you think they do, revolutionaries....
Austrian siblings
Date: 2019-11-19 07:53 am (UTC)Well, to his brother, who was going to keep it confidential. He probably needed to vent, since going by reports like the Duc de Croy's he was on his best behavior in public and diplomatic and nice all the time.
Speaking of Joseph, Leopold and Marie Antoinette, the nineteenth century noble who first published both the MT-MA correspondance(censored, not just for sex; MA and MT frankly discuss stuff like having one's period, which was a no go for the 19th century readership) and as a follow up the correspondance between MA and both her imperial brothers, has this to say in his introduction preface:
(Joseph) was despite or because of the large age difference between him and his youngest sister the brother closest to her. It isn‘t a rare situation for young girls to attach themselves to their older brothers with a warmth of feeling which can only be explained by an unique mingling of sisterly love and childish veneration. This emotion grows especially vivid if the father isn‘t alive anymore, and subsequently the oldest brother takes his place as the head of the family. From Antoinette‘s tenth year onwards, this was the case with Joseph. As the oldest male family member and his father‘s successor on the imperial throne, as co-ruler with their mother and finally through his unusual mental superiority the fourteen years older brother was bound to impress his youngest sister, all the more so because his personal amiability, his vivid concern for her and his warm interest in her fate won her complete love and loyalty. She gave him a position in her life near her mothers. Consequently, he had the right not to hold back with his scolding as well if his youngest sister‘s behavior seemed to him to deserve it. This can be seen from her letters to Rosenberg and the confessions they contain.
His concern for Marie Antoinette is even more recognizable in the warnings he left her in written form upon departing Versailles. As serious and terse as some of his admonishments sounded, Marie Antoinette didn‘t let any touchiness influence her conviction that these admonishments sprang from the purest well of fraternal love. Until the end of his days, she showed this brother she loved as much as she venerated him a consistent and unshakeable loyalty.
Much less affectionate was the relationship that existed between the Queen of France and her brother Leopold. The very circumstance that Antoinette was only ten years old when Leopold succeeded his father in governing Tuscany and thus left Vienna, and that she never saw him agan had to influence how it developed. Moreover, she doesn‘t appear to have corresponded with him at all until the moment when he succeeded in the government of the Empire after Joseph‘s death. Leopold's remark that while he had a sister, Austria did not and thus could not be expected to interfere in France could not have encouraged her. Still, it cannot be said that Leopold was lacking sympathy for her fate entirely, which at the very moment when she was starting her correspondance with him was taking its fatal turn. HIs first letter with which he informs her of Joseph‘s death and the letters he writes to her when receiving the unfortunately wrong news that the royal family‘s escape from France bear witness to this.
Re: Austrian siblings
Date: 2019-11-21 05:06 pm (UTC)Awwww, that is a really sweet note about Joseph and MA. (And I don't disagree with it.)
Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden
Date: 2019-11-18 05:24 pm (UTC)Alternatively, "Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction." --Lord Byron, who would know.
Please tell me you know all the good Byron anecdotes,
Byron
Date: 2019-11-18 05:43 pm (UTC)I still hope to be able to see you next Spring, perhaps you & one or two of the children could be spared some time next year for a little tour here or in France with me of a month or two. I think I could make it pleasing to you, & it should be no expense to L. or to yourself. Pray think of this hint. You have no idea how very beautiful great part of this country is—and women and children traverse it with ease and expedition. I would return from any distance at any time to see you, and come to England for you; and when you consider the chances against our—but I won’t relapse into the dismals and anticipate long absences——
The great obstacle would be that you are so admirably yoked—and necessary as a housekeeper—and a letter writer—& a place-hunter to that very helpless gentleman your Cousin, that I suppose the usual self-love of an elderly person would interfere between you & any scheme of recreation or relaxation, for however short a period.
What a fool was I to marry—and you not very wise—my dear—we might have lived so single and so happy—as old maids and bachelors; I shall never find any one like you—nor you (vain as it may seem) like me. We are just formed to pass our lives together, and therefore—we—at least—I—am by a crowd of circumstances removed from the only being who could ever have loved me, or whom I can unmixedly feel attached to.
Had you been a Nun—and I a Monk—that we might have talked through a grate instead of across the sea—no matter—my voice and my heart are
ever thine—
Re: Byron
Date: 2019-11-19 06:23 am (UTC)