Also, her ability to bring candles from home in "Survived" was predicated upon Sophie's memoirs saying she lived outside the palace and wasn't a lady-in-waiting.
Ah, but wouldn't it make sense for an unmarried young woman to live with her brother and his wife instead of in the palace? Especially if the King has started to make unwanted eyes at her?
Anything he doesn't control is going to end badly for him. And it does get worse with age, because he gets into a bad feedback loop, and the people he used to kinda sorta trust, because he got to know them when he was younger, keep dying off, and trusting new people is Not On.
Otoh: Lucchessini! Now granted, just because people as different as Zimmermann and Lehndorff think Fritz totally opened up to him doesn't have to mean it's true; Lucchessini's published diary doesn't contain any new soul baring reveals, after all, and it's only our guesswork he's the confidant from Fritz' last years who temporarily made Zimmermann doubt his broken penis thesis by telling him Fritz said he had sex shortly before the 7 Years War. But: Lehndorff could be on to something with his theory that Luccessini reminded Fritz of Algarotti, and it is true that Lucchessini was around Fritz constantly through the 80s, and as opposed to several of the other readers managed not to either make enemies or end things badly with Fritz, but went on to make a career in politics (and get a half admiring, half sarcastic remark about his flexible stomach on the table of the powerful from Goethe years later).
Something else worth pointing out is that Fritz was more the norm than the exception when it comes to being a powerful man emotionally unable to encourage and train a successor in time. This is true for non-monarchs as well: as many a historian has said, Bismarck's most fatal mistake was firstly, creating a system which worked with Bismarck as Chancellor, but had absolutely no safety nets if you got the combination of a) an Emperor like Willy, and b) chancellors less able than Bismarck, and secondly, not in his later years to promote and mentor able people who could have followed him. It's the power instinct/corruption, the control issues, the unability of staring your own mortality in the face, of this, and it's really true for more people of power than not.
The one fascinating exception I can think of is Richelieu. Who was as despotic as they come and invented the absolute monarchy a generation before Louis XIV, but who when he met young Giulio Mazzarini thought "Aha!", wooed him away from Italy, mentored him in his service, got him that Cardinal's hat in his (Richelieu's) last year of life and on his deathbead made the also ailing Louis XIII. promise he'd appoint Mazarin to take over from Richelieu, thus ensuring a smooth transition of administration to someone who actually knew what they were doing.
Most other men (and a few women) of power, though, seem to have suffered from that syndrome described in Robert Graves' "I, Claudius", where successive emperors are absolutely on board with appointing someone they know to be worse as their successor because it'll make them look better in the eyes of posterity instead of them being outshone.
The fact that he's inheriting feudal estates from Comte Rottembourg is already something I'm wrestling with: where do Enlightenment values intersect with slightly-less-traumatized-but-still-traumatized control issues and desire to make a profit off the estates?
Well, you can actually make more profit if your peasants don't drop like flies but are in good physical shape and have reason to think you're a good boss. I'd like to point to one Voltaire here, who managed to turn Ferney into a model estate (which also included school for all the children) and profitted handsomely from it.
Re: AW readthrough
Ah, but wouldn't it make sense for an unmarried young woman to live with her brother and his wife instead of in the palace? Especially if the King has started to make unwanted eyes at her?
Anything he doesn't control is going to end badly for him. And it does get worse with age, because he gets into a bad feedback loop, and the people he used to kinda sorta trust, because he got to know them when he was younger, keep dying off, and trusting new people is Not On.
Otoh: Lucchessini! Now granted, just because people as different as Zimmermann and Lehndorff think Fritz totally opened up to him doesn't have to mean it's true; Lucchessini's published diary doesn't contain any new soul baring reveals, after all, and it's only our guesswork he's the confidant from Fritz' last years who temporarily made Zimmermann doubt his broken penis thesis by telling him Fritz said he had sex shortly before the 7 Years War. But: Lehndorff could be on to something with his theory that Luccessini reminded Fritz of Algarotti, and it is true that Lucchessini was around Fritz constantly through the 80s, and as opposed to several of the other readers managed not to either make enemies or end things badly with Fritz, but went on to make a career in politics (and get a half admiring, half sarcastic remark about his flexible stomach on the table of the powerful from Goethe years later).
Something else worth pointing out is that Fritz was more the norm than the exception when it comes to being a powerful man emotionally unable to encourage and train a successor in time. This is true for non-monarchs as well: as many a historian has said, Bismarck's most fatal mistake was firstly, creating a system which worked with Bismarck as Chancellor, but had absolutely no safety nets if you got the combination of a) an Emperor like Willy, and b) chancellors less able than Bismarck, and secondly, not in his later years to promote and mentor able people who could have followed him. It's the power instinct/corruption, the control issues, the unability of staring your own mortality in the face, of this, and it's really true for more people of power than not.
The one fascinating exception I can think of is Richelieu. Who was as despotic as they come and invented the absolute monarchy a generation before Louis XIV, but who when he met young Giulio Mazzarini thought "Aha!", wooed him away from Italy, mentored him in his service, got him that Cardinal's hat in his (Richelieu's) last year of life and on his deathbead made the also ailing Louis XIII. promise he'd appoint Mazarin to take over from Richelieu, thus ensuring a smooth transition of administration to someone who actually knew what they were doing.
Most other men (and a few women) of power, though, seem to have suffered from that syndrome described in Robert Graves' "I, Claudius", where successive emperors are absolutely on board with appointing someone they know to be worse as their successor because it'll make them look better in the eyes of posterity instead of them being outshone.
The fact that he's inheriting feudal estates from Comte Rottembourg is already something I'm wrestling with: where do Enlightenment values intersect with slightly-less-traumatized-but-still-traumatized control issues and desire to make a profit off the estates?
Well, you can actually make more profit if your peasants don't drop like flies but are in good physical shape and have reason to think you're a good boss. I'd like to point to one Voltaire here, who managed to turn Ferney into a model estate (which also included school for all the children) and profitted handsomely from it.