He really does. Re: dates, the Julian/Gregorian discrepancy wouldn't apply to an event in Catholic Florence anyway, but I have another possible explanation. We know of these events through reports by envoys as well as notifications made by the local administration. Now, Gian Gastone's administration did the minimum work possible, and letters by envoys, who send their reports once or twice per month with accumulated news, can sometimes be phrased ambigously. The famous mystery around the death of Amy Robsart (first if of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth I's fave) has a case in point, since in his report to Philip of Spain the Spanish ambassador includes the Queen telling him Amy was dead and his lead up sentence to this makes it sound at first glance that he's saying Elizabeth told him two days before Amy's actual death or so, until you take into account that he's counting from when he's writing the letter, which was well after Amy's death. Anyway, I could imagine people deriving exact date of Gian Gastone's death from similarly ambiguously phrased reports.
Cosimo's visit to England: one bit that intrigued me about this section is that people, including famous diarist Samuel Pepys, describe him as "handsome" and "jolly". Because on the one hand, British observers aren't his subjects who have to be nice about him. Otoh, even the portraits from Cosimo's younger years don't make him look handsome (and certainly not those of his later years), and these were from painters he paid for the effort. So how come? Is the dazzle of "foreign/Italian prince" really that influential on perception, and if so, what does this say about the realiability of other descriptions?
Then again, as Isabel Grundy pointed out in the Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu biography, the descriptions of Mary's beauty start again a year after she's recovered from small pox, with her facial scars (which she had, according to herself; she'd also lost her eye lashes for good) never mentioned. So are certainly other examples for people who are supposed to be beautiful/handsome, and so they are.
(Except for Eugene, who you'd think would qualify due to his military fame, but all the descriptions I've seen quoted mention he wasn't a looker, even in his youth. Perhaps the difference between him and Cosimo as perceived by observers was that Eugene didn't have a Duchy to rule and people were more honest about male non-monarchs?)
he would be upset by the signed testimonies
Does reincarnated Fritz in your unwritten stories ever come across their existence?
re: Marguerite Louise - in the AU where cousin Louis marries her off to Russia instead and she becomes a Czarina, I'm sure both frightening and interesting things occur...
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Cosimo's visit to England: one bit that intrigued me about this section is that people, including famous diarist Samuel Pepys, describe him as "handsome" and "jolly". Because on the one hand, British observers aren't his subjects who have to be nice about him. Otoh, even the portraits from Cosimo's younger years don't make him look handsome (and certainly not those of his later years), and these were from painters he paid for the effort. So how come? Is the dazzle of "foreign/Italian prince" really that influential on perception, and if so, what does this say about the realiability of other descriptions?
Then again, as Isabel Grundy pointed out in the Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu biography, the descriptions of Mary's beauty start again a year after she's recovered from small pox, with her facial scars (which she had, according to herself; she'd also lost her eye lashes for good) never mentioned. So are certainly other examples for people who are supposed to be beautiful/handsome, and so they are.
(Except for Eugene, who you'd think would qualify due to his military fame, but all the descriptions I've seen quoted mention he wasn't a looker, even in his youth. Perhaps the difference between him and Cosimo as perceived by observers was that Eugene didn't have a Duchy to rule and people were more honest about male non-monarchs?)
he would be upset by the signed testimonies
Does reincarnated Fritz in your unwritten stories ever come across their existence?
re: Marguerite Louise - in the AU where cousin Louis marries her off to Russia instead and she becomes a Czarina, I'm sure both frightening and interesting things occur...