Because when refreshing my memories via wiki, the following amuses me.
German wiki: even in his life time, there were rumors that Eugene was gay. "Mars without Venus" being the nice form of same, and then there's Liselotte writing about him in a letter: " „incommodiert er sich nicht mit Damen, ein paar schöne Pagen wären besser sein Sach!“ ("He doesn't bother with ladies, a few beautiful pages would be more to his taste") Though it can't be proven 100%.
English wiki: NO PROOF. Liselotte wrote that when Eugene was already busy fighting against her brother-in-law Louis. Clearly, she was slandering a man who was humiliating her brother-in-law on the battlefield, out of offended French patriotism.
selenak: Wiki people, short of coming across Eugene's love letters, or memoirs of a boytoy, I don't see how it could be proven 100%, one way or the other. However, let's be clear about something here:
1.) Liselotte had mixed feelings about Louis and his wars herself, what with him invading her home realm, the Palatinate, using her marriage to his brother as a pretext. She had been devastated by that. Some of her half brothers fought on the other side of those endless wars, including her very favourite brother, Carl-Lutz. Whose death made her very sad indeed. When her Hannover relations (aka her favourite aunt Sophie's husband and brother-in-law) were responsible for a Louis battlefield loss, she was a bit gleeful, even. So I'm really doubtful she'd have felt offended French patriotism and the need to avenge same by slandering Eugene.
2.) Also, Liselotte, with a clain of being married to the gayest noble not just of France but of Europe, and living surrounded by a lot of other gay and bi courtiers of same, presumably had a reasonably good gaydar. If young Eugene before his getaway from France had struck her as gay, I'm inclined to believe her.
3.) Also, Liselotte didn't see gayness per se as something negative. She wrote in December 1705 to her half sister Amelise: „Wo seydt Ihr und Louisse denn gestocken, daß ihr die weldt so wenig kendt? (…) wer alle die haßen woldt, so die junge kerls lieben, würde hier kein 6 menschen lieben können." ("What's gotten into you and Louise that you know so little of the world? (...) If one would hate all those who love young men, one couldn't love six people here. (In Versailles.)") Morever, while she was an inveterate gossip reporter in her letters, I don't think anyone has accused her otherwise of making it up. Doesn't mean the gossip she reports has to be accurate, of course, and naturally her own biases against people get into it - she definitely believed in the old order and superiority of noble bloodlines, for example, and she loathed Madame de Maintenon, louis' mistress and later morganatic wife -, and the fact that Eugene was the son of an Italian adventuresss who only married into the top French nobility because her uncle had been Cardinal Mazarin would have biased her against him. But not likely to have made her invent stories she hadn't heard.
4.) While there are reasons for not marrying other than being gay, it's still worth considering that if you are a penniless refugee without any family connections in a world that lives by those, it's absolutely remarkable not to try to form them by marrying into one of the big families. But escaped-from-France Eugene didn't do that when showing up in the HRE. He really owed his remarkable career (and massive fortune) to his skills.
In conclusion, I wish whoever wrote those passages in the English wiki would meet Johannes Kunisch, who is the German Fritz biographer who made my AP argue for a while that maybe Fritz was just pretending to be gay because Eugene and Turenne had made it fashionable. (I kid you not.)
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Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Bleinheim - Gossipy Sexuality Debate
Date: 2021-05-22 09:32 am (UTC)German wiki: even in his life time, there were rumors that Eugene was gay. "Mars without Venus" being the nice form of same, and then there's Liselotte writing about him in a letter: " „incommodiert er sich nicht mit Damen, ein paar schöne Pagen wären besser sein Sach!“ ("He doesn't bother with ladies, a few beautiful pages would be more to his taste") Though it can't be proven 100%.
English wiki: NO PROOF. Liselotte wrote that when Eugene was already busy fighting against her brother-in-law Louis. Clearly, she was slandering a man who was humiliating her brother-in-law on the battlefield, out of offended French patriotism.
1.) Liselotte had mixed feelings about Louis and his wars herself, what with him invading her home realm, the Palatinate, using her marriage to his brother as a pretext. She had been devastated by that. Some of her half brothers fought on the other side of those endless wars, including her very favourite brother, Carl-Lutz. Whose death made her very sad indeed. When her Hannover relations (aka her favourite aunt Sophie's husband and brother-in-law) were responsible for a Louis battlefield loss, she was a bit gleeful, even. So I'm really doubtful she'd have felt offended French patriotism and the need to avenge same by slandering Eugene.
2.) Also, Liselotte, with a clain of being married to the gayest noble not just of France but of Europe, and living surrounded by a lot of other gay and bi courtiers of same, presumably had a reasonably good gaydar. If young Eugene before his getaway from France had struck her as gay, I'm inclined to believe her.
3.) Also, Liselotte didn't see gayness per se as something negative. She wrote in December 1705 to her half sister Amelise: „Wo seydt Ihr und Louisse denn gestocken, daß ihr die weldt so wenig kendt? (…) wer alle die haßen woldt, so die junge kerls lieben, würde hier kein 6 menschen lieben können." ("What's gotten into you and Louise that you know so little of the world? (...) If one would hate all those who love young men, one couldn't love six people here. (In Versailles.)") Morever, while she was an inveterate gossip reporter in her letters, I don't think anyone has accused her otherwise of making it up. Doesn't mean the gossip she reports has to be accurate, of course, and naturally her own biases against people get into it - she definitely believed in the old order and superiority of noble bloodlines, for example, and she loathed Madame de Maintenon, louis' mistress and later morganatic wife -, and the fact that Eugene was the son of an Italian adventuresss who only married into the top French nobility because her uncle had been Cardinal Mazarin would have biased her against him. But not likely to have made her invent stories she hadn't heard.
4.) While there are reasons for not marrying other than being gay, it's still worth considering that if you are a penniless refugee without any family connections in a world that lives by those, it's absolutely remarkable not to try to form them by marrying into one of the big families. But escaped-from-France Eugene didn't do that when showing up in the HRE. He really owed his remarkable career (and massive fortune) to his skills.
In conclusion, I wish whoever wrote those passages in the English wiki would meet Johannes Kunisch, who is the German Fritz biographer who made my AP argue for a while that maybe Fritz was just pretending to be gay because Eugene and Turenne had made it fashionable. (I kid you not.)