Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

[cahn]

...I think we need another one (seriously, you guys, this is THE BEST) and I'd better make it now before I disappear into the wilds of music performance.

(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)

Frederick the Great masterpost

Comments

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hey, if you have access to Thiébault, can you look something up for me? I have a citation from an unreliable source that reads: "Elisabeth [EC] later claimed to have had a miscarriage. See Thiébault, I, 194."

Is she covering for Fritz or was that marriage consummated or can we not tell? Or is this another case where you look up this ridiculous biographer's source and as usual, it does not say what he says it says? (I'm guessing "she got pregnant by someone else" is not one of the options. :P)

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[selenak]

I had read the EC chapter in German which does not feature a miscarriage (or claim of same). Just to be on the safe side, though, I looked up the page you name in the original French edition. It is here. Now my French may not be up to much, but as far as I can tell, there's no mention of a miscarriage there, either. The medical trouble under discussion are EC having ulcers on her foot. The point of the story is showing Fritz being concerned for her. (German equivalent page is here .

Incidentally, that entire chapter is basically: EC and Fritz, the Lightside Version. Thíebault is the source for the "he visited her every year for her birthday and dined with her out of uniform" story. His Fritz is always polite and considerate to her. (Now, given T. didn't come to the court until the mid 1760s, this might actually have been the case as things did get better for her in the last decade of his life.) His EC is an angel of charity, perfectly content with her life, never depressed or rambling. Mind you, the chapter about her mostly is about members of her court - the other chamberlain introduced on the page, Müller, is a chronic gambler, and Thiébault talks about him at length. The justification for this in the EC chapter is to illustrate her kindness as she doesn't fire Müller and provides him with a room and some servants after he's gambled everything away, but it still makes for three pages Müller followed by descriptions of her ladies in waiting and the short Lehndorff paragraph I translated above, and not much EC (beyond emphasizing she's the perfect mild-mannered modest and frugal Queen). (Considering when this was published - meant as reproach to Marie Antoinette, I wonder?)

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[mildred_of_midgard]

Now my French may not be up to much, but as far as I can tell, there's no mention of a miscarriage there, either.

So par for the course, in other words. *nod* Thanks. Every time I go to look one of this guy's sources up, I end up silently yelling at the screen/page, "I don't even speak [German/French] and *I* know that's not what it says!" It's amazing how wrong he can be about so many little things in 1999 or whatever.

Oh, you know, I wonder if he's confusing his Elisabeth-Christine-of-Brunswick-married-to-Hohenzollerns, since FW2's wife did have that miscarriage (which Wikipedia says was an abortion). That would be so unbelievably in character of him.