Trolling: LOL. Clearly this Duke of Abrantes was an expert!
But I'm not convinced that it would have paid off so much for the Dutch.
You know, if William had still been on the throne, it would have been a different situation, since he ruled both the Netherlands and Britain in personal union. But I agree, not so much under Anne. Btw, it's ironic that the high point and start of the decline of Dutch fortune are so closely together. By which I mean: the William era was undoubtedly the high point. In his youth, not only were the (United Province) Netherlands free of Spain, but they succesfully held their own against France and beat Britain in the Dutch/British war (v.v. humiliating, this, and it came in a triple row of disasters for England, with the Plague and the Great Fire of London following), and years laster, once Charles II. is dead and James has produced a Catholic son and pissed everyone off enough, Dutchman William even takes over Britain. (And no one but a bunch of Ulster Protestant renembers, a Dutch journalist once snarked.) And then it goes downwards from there.
FW: If only he'd adopted me, it wouldn't have! Brandenburg/Netherlands/Britain Empire for the win!
Which remins me: in Antonia Fraser's book on Louis and the women in his life, "Love and Louis XIV", she mentions that after Marie-Therese died, one of the candidates for a second marriage was Sophie-Charlotte, aka Figuelotte, daughter of Sophie of Hannover. (Before it became clear Louis wouldn't marry a second princess because he already had a morganatic marriage with Madame de Maintenon.) Fraser then footnotes this by informing her readers that SC went on to marry F1, that her son was FW the Soldier King and her grandson was Frederick the Great, and adds it's tempting to speculate what the progeny of a Louis/Figuelotte marriage would have been like: great warriors, she says, for sure.
To which I say:
1.) That's assuming not only that military talent is inheritable but that it came from the Hannover line. Given the military track record of G2 and son Bill the Butcher, where success very much depended on superiority of numbers, and defeat ensued (for Cumberland) when the odds were more even, I'm not so sure. Because on the pre-Hannover marriages Hohenzollern side, we have at least the Great Elector, who did quite well for himself on the battlefield.
2.) Also, France's method of promoting by connections and noble blood would have hindered any potential Louis/SC offspring.
3.) FW's Protestant work ethic was a key trait of his personality and very much factored in his changing Prussia in his image. Not that Louis XIV wasn't a disciplined worker himself, but not many others were, and he sure as hell didn't reproduce this kind of discipline in any of his actual offspring. And without an FW obsessed with work and soldiering (sans actual war), you don't get a Fritz, either.
4.) Not to mention that FW and Fritz both had a chip on their shoulder re: the other European powers and wanting to be recognized as their equal. If you're born into the THE power of Europe, on the top level, you don't develop that kind of ambition. (Well, okay, unless you're Louis XIV, but even he had experienced a key time of powerlessness, to wit, when he was a child King and the nobles were rebelling against his mother and Mazarin and ther was civil war.)
All this said: Louis marrying Sophie Charlotte and producing son(s) (and daughters?) with her certainly could have had some interesting results. Assuming at least one hypothetical son survives the measles/small pox/bleeding wipe out, becomes King instead of no more Louis XV., and has anything like FW's temper, we might even get the French Revolution seventy years earlier.
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Some anecdotes
But I'm not convinced that it would have paid off so much for the Dutch.
You know, if William had still been on the throne, it would have been a different situation, since he ruled both the Netherlands and Britain in personal union. But I agree, not so much under Anne. Btw, it's ironic that the high point and start of the decline of Dutch fortune are so closely together. By which I mean: the William era was undoubtedly the high point. In his youth, not only were the (United Province) Netherlands free of Spain, but they succesfully held their own against France and beat Britain in the Dutch/British war (v.v. humiliating, this, and it came in a triple row of disasters for England, with the Plague and the Great Fire of London following), and years laster, once Charles II. is dead and James has produced a Catholic son and pissed everyone off enough, Dutchman William even takes over Britain. (And no one but a bunch of Ulster Protestant renembers, a Dutch journalist once snarked.) And then it goes downwards from there.
FW: If only he'd adopted me, it wouldn't have! Brandenburg/Netherlands/Britain Empire for the win!
Which remins me: in Antonia Fraser's book on Louis and the women in his life, "Love and Louis XIV", she mentions that after Marie-Therese died, one of the candidates for a second marriage was Sophie-Charlotte, aka Figuelotte, daughter of Sophie of Hannover. (Before it became clear Louis wouldn't marry a second princess because he already had a morganatic marriage with Madame de Maintenon.) Fraser then footnotes this by informing her readers that SC went on to marry F1, that her son was FW the Soldier King and her grandson was Frederick the Great, and adds it's tempting to speculate what the progeny of a Louis/Figuelotte marriage would have been like: great warriors, she says, for sure.
To which I say:
1.) That's assuming not only that military talent is inheritable but that it came from the Hannover line. Given the military track record of G2 and son Bill the Butcher, where success very much depended on superiority of numbers, and defeat ensued (for Cumberland) when the odds were more even, I'm not so sure. Because on the pre-Hannover marriages Hohenzollern side, we have at least the Great Elector, who did quite well for himself on the battlefield.
2.) Also, France's method of promoting by connections and noble blood would have hindered any potential Louis/SC offspring.
3.) FW's Protestant work ethic was a key trait of his personality and very much factored in his changing Prussia in his image. Not that Louis XIV wasn't a disciplined worker himself, but not many others were, and he sure as hell didn't reproduce this kind of discipline in any of his actual offspring. And without an FW obsessed with work and soldiering (sans actual war), you don't get a Fritz, either.
4.) Not to mention that FW and Fritz both had a chip on their shoulder re: the other European powers and wanting to be recognized as their equal. If you're born into the THE power of Europe, on the top level, you don't develop that kind of ambition. (Well, okay, unless you're Louis XIV, but even he had experienced a key time of powerlessness, to wit, when he was a child King and the nobles were rebelling against his mother and Mazarin and ther was civil war.)
All this said: Louis marrying Sophie Charlotte and producing son(s) (and daughters?) with her certainly could have had some interesting results. Assuming at least one hypothetical son survives the measles/small pox/bleeding wipe out, becomes King instead of no more Louis XV., and has anything like FW's temper, we might even get the French Revolution seventy years earlier.
I salute your poetical translation skills. :)