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cahnFrederician fandom is the best! 3 stories in main archive and 2 stories in Madness, eeeeeeee and I have only managed to read my own gifts so far (well, I guess Madness isn't open yet either, but even if it had been I wouldn't have managed to have read them) but they are so goooooood
Also, I would like to apologize on behalf of the fandom that none of us apparently managed any Fritz/Voltaire. Some of us, uh, didn't know enough about Voltaire, and we are Taking Steps to attempt to rectify this in the future if anyone requests it, say, next year. Just saying.
I'm making this post because the last one has an insane number of comments, but I still owe SO many comments on the last post and I kiiiinda would like to read and comment on Yuletide stories for the next week as time permits so I almost hope this post doesn't get much action and then we resume in the new year? (Especially since there is a limited amount of discussion we can do on the fics right now!) :D I was thinking of making another post anyway for reveals.
(*) My husband D came up with this :P :)
Also, I would like to apologize on behalf of the fandom that none of us apparently managed any Fritz/Voltaire. Some of us, uh, didn't know enough about Voltaire, and we are Taking Steps to attempt to rectify this in the future if anyone requests it, say, next year. Just saying.
I'm making this post because the last one has an insane number of comments, but I still owe SO many comments on the last post and I kiiiinda would like to read and comment on Yuletide stories for the next week as time permits so I almost hope this post doesn't get much action and then we resume in the new year? (Especially since there is a limited amount of discussion we can do on the fics right now!) :D I was thinking of making another post anyway for reveals.
(*) My husband D came up with this :P :)
Re: Protocol
Date: 2019-12-29 03:29 pm (UTC)Pleschinski in his footnotes says the first time Fritz uses "of Prussia" is in his Histoire de la maison de Brandenburg. He keeps doing it until more and more of Europe gives in and uses it as well, though it's never officially declared by a HRE. (Certainly MT never made a fuss out of in versus von the way Fritz made one about her being the Queen of Hungary.) (Then again, "that evil man in Potsdam/Sanssouci" avoids his title entirely, so.) (Joseph refered to him as the King of Prussia, unsurprisingly.) Also, Grandpa F1 had to concede the "in" instead of "von" to make the Poles happy, and since we all know what happened to Poland in the later part of the Frederician reign...
Teenage Archduchess MT isn't a royal highness at all. Archdukes and Archduchess before they got their own dukedoms (or kingdoms) as adults, like, say, Leopold later got Tuscany, were Durchlaucht, which usually gets rendered as "Serene Highness" in English, and for someone like MT as the older Archduchess and heiress presumptative, Most Serene Highness, "Durchlauchtigste Hoheit".
Adult Archduchess MT once she gets crowned as Queen of Hungary would have been a Royal Highness, of course. Or Majesty. So far, if letters and memoirs are anything to go by, "Majesty" seems to have been used mostly by lower ranking Prussians and Austrians for their respective rulers. Members of the royal/imperial family and princes of the blood when adressing monarchs, otoh, seem to go more with "Euer Gnaden" if they didn't use a family designation like brother/sister/cousin.
(I think Fritz in his post-Neisse meeting letter to Joseph used both "brother" and "your imperial highness" - Kaiserliche Hoheit/altesse imperiale - not royal highness, because Joseph, being a man, never gets to be "The King of Hungary" in Prussian court speak.)
Re: Protocol
Date: 2019-12-30 01:46 am (UTC)I know when Fritz is writing in French to other monarchs (Louis, Peter), he will use "Votre Majesté" and the third person, but of course I have no idea what he would do in person.
And wow, he *did* start using "of Prussia" in the 1740s! I love that he just decided to wear everyone down terrier-style, that's *awesome*. "I am Frederick the Great and I am King of Prussia, deal with it."
Re: Protocol
Date: 2020-01-04 07:01 am (UTC)My favourite illustrating example of how this speech style worked is from Faust, Faust first approaching Gretchen: "Schönes Fräulein, darf ich's wagen/Arm und Geleit Ihr anzutragen?" and Gretchen's neigbhour Marthe talking to her later re: the jewelry "Ach seh Sie doch! Ach schau Sie nur!" That's not the "Sie" and "Ihr" form from second person - which was also used already int his era and in the case of "Sie" still is to this day - but the third person, I.e. "Beautiful Lady, may I dare/ To offer my arm and company to her?" and "But look she there! Just glance she there!" respectively. Faust outranks Gretchen socially as a university professor while Marthe is her elder.
A generation later, teenage Jacob Grimm really bristled about the fact that his teacher would adress him - a student who wasn't a noble and got into the grammar school he attended mostly due to his brains - with "Er" -, as in "Setz Er sich, Grimm" - "sit he down, Grimm". He took that as a put down and a reminder of his lower rank. Heinrich Heine, a bit younger but still the same generation as the brothers Grimm, made fun of Prussians still insisting on using the third person singular as a form of adress when the rest of the Germans had moved on linguistically in his great satiric verse epic Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen.
On a completely different note, with all the talk about health complaints among Prussians and Frenchmen alike, I have to share this bit about MT giving birth to Marie Antoinette, an excerpt from a biography:
Vienna, November 2, 1755.
Her windows wide open, as was her habit, regardless of the rigors of the season, the Empress Maria Theresa worked without respite. She was busy annotating reports, signing decrees, dictating her orders when the first pains suddenly made her wince. The thirty-eight-year-old sovereign, ruler of an empire, was to give birth for the fifteenth time in her life. Nature had reclaimed her rights and the female head of state could do nothing but stoically await her deliverance. But since Maria Theresa hated wasting time, she took advantage of the momentary inconvenience to have a decayed tooth extracted. Once that operation was disposed of, she settled, following German custom, into the low armchair where she would give birth to her child. Word was rushed to her husband, Francis of Lorraine, that the birth was imminent. The Prince was attending the All Souls’ Day mass with his son Joseph at the Augustinian church. After arranging for the young man to be escorted back to his apartment, he ran to his wife’s bedside. It was a difficult labor, but at around seven-thirty in the evening, a perfectly formed infant girl came into the world. On the following day, she was baptized Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. Since all the archduchesses were given the first name of Maria, they were usually addressed by their second name. Maria Theresa would refer to her youngest daughter as Antonia. It was the French who would call her Marie Antoinette.
MT: since I'm going into labor and will be in pain anyway, might as well get that tooth extracted. Tell me again about how women are too weak to rule, boys!
Re: Protocol
Date: 2020-01-04 07:49 am (UTC)One thing you can do in English is have a lower-ranked person address a higher-ranked person in the third person, e.g. "Would His Majesty like more mustard in his coffee?" It will sound formal, but at least to readers of historical fiction like me, familiar enough.
You go, MT! Show those boys!
Re: Protocol
Date: 2019-12-30 03:37 am (UTC)So wikipedia tells me that the literal translation of "Durchlaucht" is "greater than illustrious," is that right? (I can see why it gets translated into English differently, but that is cool.)