cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30

In which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)

Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:

The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.

Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.

The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.

You should be! It's an awesome physics-adjacent pun!

Speaking of problematic faves, and replying to Selena's comment in the last post, I totally get Blanning stanning C1! We all have our problematic faves! You just have to distinguish between "this person is my problematic fave" and "this person is a role model for other people." Because they are very, very different, says this fan of Fritz the Not Your Role Model. :P

C1 teaching How to Keep Your Kingdom 101 with C2 as his student reminds me of this Monty Python sketch. ;)

From:

selenak

A musical and funny introduction specifically tailored for you,

cahn: The English Civil War Compilation from Horrible Histories. Only 14 minutes altogether, and the opening song is a hilarious spoof on Westside Story.

Some background on the players on the royal side first, because I know a bit more about their private lives than about Oliver Cromwell's.

Charles I: from now on, C1, to be easier told apart from his son Charles II. C1 starts out as the sickly third child of King James (the gay witch-persecuting one played by Alan Cummings on Doctor Who, whom you saw the clip of) of Scotland and Anne of Denmark. So sickly is little C that no one expects him to make it out of childhood alive, and when James inherits the English Crown from Elizabeth Tudor, little C1 is left behind in Scotland for a year. After which he's still alive and brought to England.

C1's older siblings, by contrast, are strong, healthy and smart: Henry, the Prince of Wales, and Elizabeth, future Winter Queen but right now golden girl at the English Court. Henry dies completely unexpectedly at age 18 while Elizabeth is in the middle of her marriage preparations. Reminder: she's about to marry young Friedrich of the Palatine, with intriguing prospects re: Bohemia but otherwise way below what the daughter of a King usually can expect, so her mother is mocking her as "Goodwife Palsgrave". (SD: not the first mother to take it out on her daughter for agreeing to a below rank marriage.) C1 is twelve and suddenly thrust in the spotlight as the new Prince of Wales. He's shy and developes a life long stammer. But more surprisingly, he goes from being a sickly child to being a healthy teen. What happened? Current theories include his childhood illnesses being caused by rickets and the increase of good food and more outdoors activities making a difference.

Now, Dad James is as openly gay as it is possible to be, and his new dashing young fave is (the Duke of) Buckingham, or as James calls him "Steeney". Buckingham, whom I should call B1 because his son also eventually has a role to play, is that rarity, a generations-hugging fave, as opposed to one who is loathed by his monarch's successor. He's who Hervey, a century later, would have loved to be, since he manages to befriend the young Prince of Wales without losing James' favour. And when James dies, Buckingham continues as C1's favourite and de facto PM. (The title didn't exist yet.) Since C1 throughout his life showed no m/m interest, the current position is that unlike Buckingham and James, they didn't have sex. But they definitely were close, and for the first few years of his reign, C1 clung to Buckingham for emotional support, advice, everything.

Now, during James' last years of life, he'd first planned to marry C1 to a Spanish Infanta, and young C plus Buckingham had in fact made an "incognito" (as in, everyone knew who they were but had to pretend not to) trip through Europe to Spain to nail down the deal. This turned out to be a complete dud (the Infanta wasn't keen at all to marry an English prince, presumably recalling the last Spanish princess who'd done that had been Catherine of Aragon), and only managed to cause a scandal because when C1 and Buckingham passed France en route, Buckingham fell for the young French Queen, Anne of Austria (the one from the Three Musketeers, where this event is highly plot relevant) and romanced her in public, upsetting everyone. On the bright side, James now had an alternate idea whom to marry Charles to - Anne of Austria's sister-in-law, Henrietta Maria, sister to Louis XIII (so more properly I should write her name as Henriette Marie, but the English Civil War fiction all goes with "Henrietta Maria"). This marriage happened, with one of conditions being that Henrietta Maria, as a Daughter of France a Catholic, would be allowed to continue practicising her religion and would not have to convert to the Anglican church.

*cue ominous music*

She was 15, and partly because her young husband C1 was so completely hung up on his bff Buckingham, their first few years of marriage were unhappy. And childless. But then! After a few troublesome years as Charles' fave in which in Buckingham continues to piss off everyone BUT the monarch whose fave he is, gets Charles involved in several failed attempts as flexing his military muscles abroad (this includes the vain attempt to help the Protestants of the besieged La Rochelle, also plot relevant in The Three Musketeers), and finally is assassinated. (In The Three Musketeers, the assassin, one John Felton, was put up to it by the novel's main villainess, Milady de Winter, who in turn acted on behalf of Cardinal Richelieu since he didn't want Buckingham interrupting his ultimately successful conquest of La Rochelle anymore. This, I should point out, is entertaining fiction. But as Nancy Goldstone, the author of the Winter Queen book, puts it, in the England and France constellation of the day, it was C1 plus B1 versus Louis XIII and Richelieu, which meant Buckingham versus Richelieu, which was no contest at all.)

C1 is crushed and deeply mourns. He also takes Buckingham's kid, little B2, in and raises him with his own (to be born soon), which is why C2 and B2 will be incredibly tight as well in future years. However, partly because the C1 & B1 combo has pissed off the British nobility so much, and partly because Buckingham made sure he had no competition in the affection of the monarch, there isn't a friend for C1 to turn to in his grief. But there is a wife! Perhaps it's that she's now older, no longer a gawky teen, or that he's utterly bereft, or both, but C1 and Henrietta Maria now experience their own arranged marriage turning to true love story. They become a genuine love match, never far apart, producing one child after the other. There is no mistress for C1, and male favourite, either. There is only the Queen, who becomes his closest advisor as well.

...The Queen, who is a Catholic. C1 isn't, and won't become one, either, rumors to the contrary, but he does like his high church Anglicanism, and he's no more politically astute without Buckingham than he was with Buckingham. Only now instead of blaming the hated favourite, people start blaming the FRENCH CATHOLIC Queen. Who, in turn, starts to loathe them right back, especially the more hardcore Protestant parliamentarians.

*cue even more ominous music*

Before I get to further developments, some fiction covering this era:

Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers and the sequel, Twenty Years Later, in which our heroes try in vain to save C1 from being beheaded. Some of the latest film versions have altered the plot so much that either Richelieu is scheming for the throne and allied with Buckingham (WTF?), or Buckingham is trying to conquer France (WTF? He was very hubristic, but not THAT much), or there is no English involvement in the plot at all, but if you ever catch the two part Richard Lester movies from the 1960s - The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers - they actually are the most faithful in existence, including the humor.

TV Series: The Devil's Whore: this was an utter let down to me. I liked the main actress, but in its attempt to rectify the over romantisation of the Royalist side and focusing on the parliamentarian side, the series managed to go way over the top with the evil Royals, and it used a plot device that made me roll my eyes so much I'm amazed I still have them; our heroine's first husband is scandalized by her enjoying sex and reviles her for it. Series makers, 17th century Brits were not freaking Victorians! Current theory then was that if a woman had an orgasm, this heightened her chances at conception, and since every noble wanted an heir, you bet the guy would have been thrilled. But no, in order for our heroine to be a rebel discovering her sexuality, we get this anachronistic taboo. Same with people being SHOCKED a noble lady would manage her estate and hold it in a dangerous situation. Again, they were supposed to! And don't get me started on Rapist!Rupert (the start of our heroine's disillusionment with the royals is when the King's nephew tries to rape her, which, well, you can't prove a negative, so it's impossible to say whether Sophie of Hannover's brother Rupert ever raped someone; however, he had a good reputation, and if even his enemies at the height of the propaganda war couldn't find something better to accuse him of than having his poodle as a familiar - complete with insinuation of bestiality -, as opposed to accusing him, half foreigner that he was, of molesting English maidens -, I'd say chances are he wasn't the royal rapist type). Despite good actors being involved, very much anti-recced.

Book: Rebels and Traitors by Lindsey Davis, author of the Falco mysteries. Pro-Parliamentarian side, with fictional characters as the leads, good novel with a terrible (as in badly written) ending. Which is just weird. I linked my overall review. Other than this, it's an entertaining book showing how the Civil War would have felt to the population caught up in it.

Movie: "Oliver" (as in Cromwell), 1970 movie starring Richard Harris as Oliver C. and Alec Guinness as C1. A critic joked it should really be called "Charles and Oliver" since it's as much about C1 as it is about Cromwell. Solidly pro Cromwell, meaning the only Catholics who show up are the Queen and some scheming bishops, certainly no Irish peasants whom Cromwell goes genocidal on after winning the Civil War(s); "the people" are always Protestant people, and Charles is not personally malicious but clueless and due to his arrogance and unwillingness to compromise responsible for his own doom. (Which, fair enough.)

There is also Restoration fiction using the Civil War as background and a first part, but that I'll cover in a separate comment.

Edited Date: 2021-09-09 10:03 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

This is so awesome and you are a jewel :D (I still can't get over how I can just be like "Here, tell me All The Things" and you're like "Okay!") These posts are totally what I was looking for in terms of getting me excited about all these people and how interesting they are <3

(SD: not the first mother to take it out on her daughter for agreeing to a below rank marriage.)

argh why are all the parents in history fandom so awful

presumably recalling the last Spanish princess who'd done that had been Catherine of Aragon

...I can see how that might have soured her on the deal, indeed :P

Buckingham fell for the young French Queen, Anne of Austria (the one from the Three Musketeers, where this event is highly plot relevant) and romanced her in public, upsetting everyone.

omg. this whole writeup is basically telling me I have to read the Three Musketeers (I actually don't know why I haven't read it -- I read Count of Monte Cristo and loved it! -- but I also admittedly had a bit from Count in my fifth grade reading book, the bit where Dantes has the idea to escape from the Chateau d'If, and was shocked to find that it's a relatively small part of the book) :P

in the England and France constellation of the day, it was C1 plus B1 versus Louis XIII and Richelieu, which meant Buckingham versus Richelieu, which was no contest at all.

LOL, ...yeah. Even I know that :D

(I haven't got a chance to watch the Horrible Histories (or other clips) or read the links, I am excited to though, that really sounds tailor-made for me, lol!)

From:

selenak

One thing even C1's worst enemies would not dispute is that he was one of the best art collectors and patrons the British monarchy has ever produced. Van Dyck (whose portraits of Charles and Henrietta Maria became iconic*) was but one of many, (then) living and dead; Rubens, Caravaggio, both Gentileschi (i.e. Artemesia and her father Orazio, who concluded his life as C1's court painter), you name the stellar Baroque painter, C1 bought his paintings. (Whereas he avoided the duds of the era. The man must have had great taste.) If the Royal Collection today is still one of the best, it's largely due to C1.

*Mind you, if you check out my summary of C1's niece Sophie of Hannover's memoirs, you'll find she snarked that when she first saw Henrietta Maria in person, she thought her aunt's teeth stood out lilke cannons from her mouth, very unlike Van Dyck's portrait...

However, like his grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots, he just wasn't good at ruling and very good at making enemies. His various conflicts with parliament weren't just about religion but also, often, money (as in, he wanted it, and parliament in whose power the budget was didn't want to give it to him after the various stunts he pulled). As a rule of thumb, he more often than not managed to be in the wrong, from today's perspective, with a notable (and sensational, which is why I'm telling you about it) exception: the Earl of Strafford, who was basically Charles' right hand man at the point where it gets sensational.

Parliament, attempting to show C1 who's boss: Strafford is a traitor!
C1: WTF?
P: Sure is. We'll impeach him for high treason.
Case against Strafford: *collapses in the House of Lords, where he's tried first*
Lords: Strafford is innocent.
House of Commons: Not the point. We won't even put on another trial. We'll just declare him guilty without one.
C1: *sends kid son future C2 to plead with the parliamentarians to spare Stafford's life, since clearly the guy is just a scapegoat in the tug of war between C1 and Parliament, has only been loyal to his King and never has done anything to deserve the death penalty*
Future C2, 11 years: *does so*
House of Commons: Nah. Off with his head!
Strafford: *gets executed*
C1 and Henrietta Maria: *decide any compromise with the Commons is out of the question now*
Kid C2: *learns a different lesson than the adults and starts to become a cynic about humanity*

Now, one very unusual thing about C1 and his kids was that as opposed to C1, Elizabeth and Henry, all of whom had in royal tradition been raised elsewhere, not with their parents, as children, C1 and Henrietta Maria's children were actually raised with them. Partly due to circumstance, since after C1 had lost London in the Civil War against parliament, he first made Oxford his alternate residence and then was on the move all the time - providing the kids with separate households would have made them easy targets to be captured. But this meant, for example, that future C2 and brother James were with their father all the time as kids and teens in a way few princes were, including on the battlefield, and they never forgot that experience. It explains a lot about both of them, though again, they drew different lessons from it.

Back to more cheerfull stuff.

C2: is the second of his parents' children born, but the first to survive. Henrietta Maria pronounced him ugly from birth, and he agreed - "Oddsfish, I am an ugly fellow", adult C2 would cheerfully declare - but he was witty, charming and as can be proved by the twelve years he'd spend in exile where female company couldn't have been due to royal prerogative or cash, neither of which were available at that time to him, what was later called a chick magnet. (This even worked postumously. Asked about her favourite royal predecessor, Queen Victoria stunned everyone by picking not a bona fide heroic figure like Henry V., the other famous Queen, Elizabeth I, or the very Christian Alfred the Great, but Charles II. Antonia Fraser, his biographer, famously admitted later to have developed a crush on him while writing the book.) He also was an excellent liar (unlike Dad). And deeply fond of the siblings he so unusually grew up with during a Civil War. Which is also the most likely answer to the question as to why C2, who, going by various quotes, could see James was heading towards the same direction as Dad did re ability to keep the kingdom, still kept him as a successor and even fought for him when his parliament wanted to disqualify James after James had come out as a Catholic.

C2's nurse/first governess Christabel in a circumstance that would have delighted Freud returned to his life mid Civil War when C2 was fourteen or fifteen and deflowered him. Supposedly this was Henrietta Maria's idea, just as her sister-in-law Anne of Austria would order a trusted lady-in-waiting to deflower her oldest son, C2's cousin Louis XIV. Micromanaging the future King's loss of virginity was supposed to preclude some ambitious noble family getting their chance there. (I.e. by choosing older, trusted women who couldn't possibly be potential brides and were no virgins.) But yeah, Freud would not have been surprised at all.

One thing C1 managed in the English Civil War which Louis XVI. didn't manage in the French Revolution was getting his wife and kids out of the country in time. Well, most of them. Two - Elizabeth and Henry, named after C1's siblings - were still in the country and in fact with Charles shortly before he died, when he took a tender farewell from them and made little Henry promise he would not allow Parliament to use him against his brother and make him King instead of C2. But the rest - C2, James, Mary, and the youngest, little Henriette Anne (whom C2 would later nickname "Minette") as well as Henrietta Maria were all either in the Netherlands (where Mary had married the current William of Orange and would give birth to the most famous William of Orange, the one later to reign in Britain) or at the French Court (since Henrietta Maria was Louis XIV's aunt). The youngest sister, Minette, was in fact smuggled out of the country disguised as a boy (and nearly gave the game away at Dover by telling the soldiers controlling Lady Dalkeith, the lady-in-waiting in charge of her, "Je ne suis pas Pierre - suis princesse!"). Minette would grow up entirely in France and become the unfortunate first wife of her cousin Philippe d'Orleans (yes, the gay one). More about her and her relationship to her brother C2 here. Mary, as mentioned, married into Dutch royalty. Little Elizabeth died as a teen. Young Henry (Duke of Gloucester) lived long enough together with C2 and James in exile to see C2 called back to Britain and the monarchy restored, but not by much. As mentioned in an earlier comment, his mother, Henrietta Maria, who in her later years became ever more hardcore Catholic (and she hadn't been exactly soft core to begin with), put massive pressure on Henry to convert to Catholicism, and when Henry refused, she cast him out and refused to see him when he was dying of smallpox. He's another "What if?" since if he had survived, he'd been a good alternative to James as King.

As far as Henrietta Maria was concerned, her dead husband C1 had been a martyred saint (in fact, the Anglican Church did later adopt him as such, I'm told, though whether he currently still holds that status I don't know), and had been a Catholic in his heart. Otoh, Elizabeth the soon to die who was 13 when her father was executed wrote an account of hers and Henry's last meeting with him, which went thusly:

He bid us tell my mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same to the last. Withal, he commanded me and my brother to be obedient to her; and bid me send his blessing to the rest of my brothers and sisters, with communications to all his friends. Then, taking my brother Gloucester on his knee, he said, 'Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head.' And Gloucester looking very intently upon him, he said again, 'Heed, my child, what I say: they will cut off my head and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say. Thou must not be a king as long as thy brothers Charles and James do live; for they will cut off your brothers' heads when they can catch them, and cut off thy head too at the last, and therefore I charge you, do not be made a king by them.' At which my brother sighed deeply, and made answer: 'I will be torn in pieces first!' And these words, coming so unexpectedly from so young a child, rejoiced my father exceedingly. And his majesty spoke to him of the welfare of his soul, and to keep his religion, commanding him to fear God, and He would provide for him. Further, he commanded us all to forgive those people, but never to trust them; for they had been most false to him and those that gave them power, and he feared also to their own souls. And he desired me not to grieve for him, for he should die a martyr, and that he doubted not the Lord would settle his throne upon his son, and that we all should be happier than we could have expected to have been if he had lived; with many other things which at present I cannot remember.

As can be seen in the Horrible Histories sketch, C1 did wear two shirts so he would not shiver at his execution (and thus give his enemies the satisfaction of deeming him a coward). Like his grandmother Mary Queen of Scots, he died with undeniable courage and style and after tender farewells from his loved ones, none of which changed the fact he had been a lousy monarch. Could he have avoided this death (other than through escaping the country, that is)? Probably, up to a point. Cromwell et all didn't intend to abolish the monarchy as such until very late in the game, when it was obvious C1, whatever open concession he'd make once captured, would not regard himself bound by them and behind their backs wrote to his loyalists accordingly. But C1, like Grandmother Mary Stuart, was convinced that as a monarch, he could not be judged by any jury, since it was by necessity one of subjects, not equals. He didn't have an equal on the British Isles and thus any judgment by Parliament in his eyes was null and void.

Charles' execution as depicted in various media:

Alec Guinness getting executed in the Cromwell biopic

C1 getting executed in TO KILL A KING (docudrama) - here the voiceover while C1 walks to his death is in fact an authentic speech of his apropos his trial

From:

cahn

with a notable (and sensational, which is why I'm telling you about it) exception

LOL, it's like you know me or something! (although I am always interested in exceptions, because they usually turn out to be at least somewhat interesting even if they're not sensational)

Kid C2: *learns a different lesson than the adults and starts to become a cynic about humanity*

Man. I mean, poor Strafford for sure, but also poor kid.

It explains a lot about both of them, though again, they drew different lessons from it.

What would you say they learned?

"Oddsfish, I am an ugly fellow", adult C2 would cheerfully declare - but he was witty, charming and ... what was later called a chick magnet.

Ha, and this also shows he could laugh at himself, which is definitely attractive :P

but Charles II. Antonia Fraser, his biographer, famously admitted later to have developed a crush on him while writing the book.

I mean. Honestly I have a little crush on him myself after reading your "escape" writeup particularly :D

after James had come out as a Catholic.

Huhhhhh, wow, mom was really hardcore there??

C2's nurse/first governess Christabel in a circumstance that would have delighted Freud returned to his life mid Civil War when C2 was fourteen or fifteen and deflowered him.

LOL Honestly I don't need the scandalous sex bits but I do appreciate that I can always trust you to bring the actual gossipy sensationalism! HA.

(and nearly gave the game away at Dover by telling the soldiers controlling Lady Dalkeith, the lady-in-waiting in charge of her, "Je ne suis pas Pierre - suis princesse!")

okay, that is super cute, the more so because she didn't actually end up giving the game away

And his majesty spoke to him of the welfare of his soul, and to keep his religion, commanding him to fear God, and He would provide for him.

OMG. I can't EVEN about poor Henry, first his dad saying that to him and then his mom putting the thumbscrews on to convert. ARRRRRGH.

Re: The English Civil War: C1 - the Family and the Execution

From:

selenak - Date: 2021-09-10 09:27 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: The English Civil War: C1 - the Family and the Execution

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-09-12 05:24 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

...for a significant part of the plot:

Charles II: The Power and the Passion: British miniseries, which in the US was called "Charles II: The Last King" (meaning the last absolute King, since brother James lost his crown and after the Glorious Revolution, monarchs had their power severely curtailed), but also significantly cut, with some subplots making less to no sense that way, so if you can, get the European version. It has a very good cast - Rufus Sewell as C2, Rupert Graves as B2, Helen McCrory as B2's cousin Barbara Villiers, later Lady Castlemaine, and one of C2's main mistresses, Diana Rigg as old Henrietta Maria, and Ian McDiarmid, Palpatine himself, as a good guy, Edward Hyde, C2's faithful advisor in exile whose Anne daughter James would get pregnant and then refuse to marry upon which brother C2 made him marry her, thus ensuring the existence of future Queens Mary and Anne. The series starts with C2 having a nightmare of his father's execution, and it haunts him through the show, though the series itself starts when C2 is already in exile. On the dvd, there's a good documentary about young C2 in his father's life time, growing up in the Civil War. Also: the series has a lot about the intense yet up and down relationship between C2 and B2, where as in historical reality you conclude the only reason not to slash them is that both were the type to have sex with whomever (willing) they wanted to have, and if they would have wanted to have sex with each other, they would have. But they were childhood friends growing up and going into exile together, and in the first episode, when B2 tells C2 he's had it with exile and has had an offer from the Cromwellians he can't refuse so will return, there is face cradling and touching and "don't do this to me, George" and you hardly see C2 this openly vulnerable with any of his mistresses. They have some more breakups and reconciliatons, when other people who do the kind of things B2 pulls just get banished or dropped.

The King's Touch, by Jude Morgan: novel about C2's oldest and for a long time favourite illegitimate son James aka Jemmy, later Duke of Monmouth. A full third of said novel is set before C2's coronation. I read a biography of Monmouth after I read this novel, and found to my surprise that several elements I had thought the author had invented, such as Jemmy's closeness to Minette, or Jemmy being in the process of reconciling with Dad when C2 dies, were in fact historical elements. This one even has an Oliver Cromwell cameo (Jemmy's mother tries to return to England due to being broke in exile, gets captured, interrogated and sent back to the Netherlands - this another thing I thought was invented, but yes, Cromwell did briefly see her and the kid). Very good with the exile years it is, too, the Restoration's hedonism springing directly in reaction to this (and the years of Puritan rule), and C2's personality in general.

Does not use the Civil War as background except in one significant scene but is a very watchable movie: Stage Beauty, the main characters of which are Ned Kynaston, the last male actor to play Desdemona (and some other female roles) on the English stage, and Margaret Hughes, the first female actress to play said roles, their rivalry and eventuall teaming up. It's a wonderful movie, but don't even try to guess at which date it's supposed to be set, because on the one hand, it's supposed to be shortly after C2's coronation, otoh, C2 is a middle-aged to old man instead of being in his late 20s/early 30s, wheras B2, who is one of Ned's patrons and lovers, is Ned's own age (i.e. young), C2's main mistress in this film is Nell Gwyn - which is a problem not so much because Nelly was his later years mistress but because she was an actress, and since the film is about the introduction of female actors on the English stage and Margaret Hughes as the first one, this is a problem.

All this aside, it's still a great film, and I've linked my review so you know why.

RL Margaret Hughes, btw, would end up as the mistress and life partner of C2's cousin Rupert, son of the Winter Queen, brother to HannoverSophie. Funny thing:

Nancy Goldstone in "The Winter Queen": In his later years, Rupert had a short fling with an actress, M.H., and secretly married a Catholic lady.

Wiki: In his later years, Rupert had a short fling with a Catholic lady and settled down with Margaret Hughes.

Self (who dimly recalls a novel about Peg Hughes where she does end up with Rupert): checks out the dates: they both had daughters from him which Rupert acknowledged, but Ms Hughes' daughter post dates Ms Bard's daughter, and also the actress, not the noble lady, was the one he lived with when he died, so in this case, Goldstone was wrong and wiki was right. Quote from Wiki: .

Towards the end of his life Rupert fell in love with an attractive Drury Lane actress named Peg Hughes. Rupert became involved with her during the late 1660s, leaving his previous mistress, Frances Bard, although Hughes appears to have held out from reciprocating his attentions with the aim of negotiating a suitable settlement. Hughes rapidly received advancement through his patronage; she became a member of the King's Company by 1669, giving her status and immunity from arrest for debt, and was painted four times by Sir Peter Lely, the foremost court artist of the day.

Despite being encouraged to do so, Rupert did not marry Hughes, but acknowledged their daughter, Ruperta (born in 1673 and who later became Mrs Emanuel Howe). Hughes lived an expensive lifestyle during the 1670s, enjoying gambling and jewels; Rupert gave her at least £20,000 worth of jewellery during their relationship, including several items from the Palatinate royal collection. Margaret continued to act even after Ruperta's birth, returning to the stage in 1676 with the prestigious Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre, near the Strand in London. The next year Rupert established Hughes with a "grand building" worth £25,000 that he bought in Hammersmith from Sir Nicholas Crispe. Rupert seems rather to have enjoyed the family lifestyle, commenting that his young daughter "already rules the whole house and sometimes argues with her mother, which makes us all laugh."

Rupert isn't in "Stage Beauty" at all, but that's okay, since it takes place at the start of Margaret Hughes' career.

From:

cahn

Eeeeexcellent, thank you! Now that I have your amazing writeups, I don't need fiction anymore, but as mildred likes to say it certainly does help me to get multiple points of repetition for things to stick in my brain!

TV series are hard for me to watch but I will try -- it's below B5 though because I don't think I can convince E to watch it with me, lol -- but your writeup was fascinating and worth it anyway. Also, this part would have been worth it all on its own:

Also: the series has a lot about the intense yet up and down relationship between C2 and B2, where as in historical reality you conclude the only reason not to slash them is that both were the type to have sex with whomever (willing) they wanted to have, and if they would have wanted to have sex with each other, they would have.

LOL FOREVER

The King's Touch, by Jude Morgan:

This sounds lovely, and out of print; I've ordered a used copy. (lol, I think I could now make an entire shelf of books that's "books because of Selena" -- not even counting the ones mildred has digitized for me :P )

so in this case, Goldstone was wrong and wiki was right.

WHAT. Has this ever happened before?? :P :)

The next year Rupert established Hughes with a "grand building" worth £25,000 that he bought in Hammersmith from Sir Nicholas Crispe. Rupert seems rather to have enjoyed the family lifestyle, commenting that his young daughter "already rules the whole house and sometimes argues with her mother, which makes us all laugh."

Heh. Go Hughes :)

From:

selenak

Primary sources: some of the people involved, and C2 himself, who told diarist Samuel Pepys when returning to Britain on the journey across the channel, and Pepys noted it down in his diary.

So, when Dad C1 got executed, young C2 made one last attempt to retake the kingdom by allying with the Scots. He promptly got defeated by Cromwell at Worcester. (C2 learned lesson of the day: Cromwell is a way better general. If you ever want your kingdom back, it can't happen via conquest. C2 learned that lesson and waited till Cromwell was dead, his son sucked at the Protector job, and popular support for the Bring Back The Monarchy idea was overwhelming.) But back to the days when C2 was a young pub, who got defeated, and whose Dad had just been executed, meaning C2's future life span was less than assured. Also a £1000 reward was announced for information leading to Charles's capture.

C2: has about 60 people with him. (They'll be way less by the end, as a discreet number, this was not)

Lord Derby: So, there's this secret Catholic network. We should use that! I did myself more recently.

Gang of 60: *shows up at White Ladies*

Secret Catholic Pendrell brothers: Sure, we'll help! Anything for the martyr's son. But you need to switch outfits. Would you be okay with disguising yourself as a farm laborer?

C2: Will do, and also, we'll never make it if we remain together. Everyone, I appreciate your loyalty, but we need to split up. I'll go alone, aside from Lord Wilmot.

Lord Wilmot: *is famous for this and for being the father of the most infamous rake of the Restoration, Rochester*

C2 and Wilmot: *get their hair cut, - long hair being a sign of the nobility -, get put in farmer outfits, and get a crash class in how to talk none-posh*

Pendrell brothers: One big problem. As in, a huge problem. You, C2, are a man so tall that unborn FW's heart would beat faster and he'd conscript you immediately. There aren't many people your size in England, which makes you stand out. Also, your feet are accordingly large. And we don't have boots your size. Meanig you have wear shoes which are several sizes too small.

C2: An escaping uncrowned king's gotta do what an escaping uncrowned king's gotta do.

C2: *has bleeding and sore feet very quickly, but manages to keep going for three days before getting somewhere where it was possible to bind them and get other shoes*

In between:

Cromwell's soldiers: *show up in pursuit*

C2: *hiding in the woods*

Rain: *falls, which C2 later concluded was why the hiding worked*

Miller: Provides an old horse, so C2 has no longer to walk

Horse: *stumbles*

Pendrell brother: "No wonder, it bears the weight of three kingdoms on its back!"

(England, Scotland and France, if you're wondering. At this point, the British kings still called themselves "Kings of France". They'd keep doing that until Team Hannover got the crown and finally ditched that claim and the lily from the heralds)

Moseley Hall: C2 gets dry clothes and a meal, but Cromwell's soldiers arrive, so he has to hide in a "priest hole", one of those hiding places for Catholic priests first established when E1 reigned*

C2: *there meets also hiding Father Huddleston; when he finally converts to Catholicism on his deathbed, he will do so with said Father Huddleston as his admininstring priest, though how sincere that final conversion was is debated to this day*

C2: *adopts a new disguise, that of servant William Jackson who works for a lady named Jane Lane, who volunteered to bring him to Bristol*

C2 and Jane, riding on a horse together: *horse loses a shoe*

C2, in his diguise as a servant, takes the horse to a blacksmith:

C2, twelve years later, to Sam Pepys: ""As I was holding my horse's foot, I asked the smith what news. He told me that there was no news that he knew of, since the good news of the beating the rogues of the Scots. I asked him whether there was none of the English taken that joined with the Scots, He answered he did not hear if that rogue, Charles Stuart, were taken; but some of the others, he said, were taken. I told him that if that rogue were taken, he deserved to be hanged more than all the rest, for bringing in the Scots. Upon which he said I spoke like an honest man; and so we parted"

C2 and Jane Lane arrive at Long Marston where they stay at a relation of Jane's.

C2, posing as servant, gets put to work in the Kitchen.

Cook: You, wind up the jack! (Used to roast the meat in the fireplace)

C2: *has never done this before*

Cook: What kind of loser servant are you?

C2: I'm the son of people so poor that we hardly ever eat meat! That's why I've never used a roasting jack before!

Cook: *accepts that story*

Jane Lane and C2: *arrive at Bristol, stay at a family called the Nortons, who aren't told who C2 is*

The Nortons' butler: I'm an ex Royalist Soldier. You're totally C2, aren't you?

C2: I am.

Butler: I won't tell, and I'll check to see whether any ship leaves for France.

Next Ship for France: Won't leave for another month*

Wilmot: Okay, we can't stay here for another month.

C2: The daughter of my former nurse married a guy who lives about 40 miles from here, we could stay at here place.

They're about to leave, when:

Their hostess, Mrs. Norton: *goes into labor*

Mr. Norton: Jane Lane, as a woman, you'll surely stay and help my wife, won't you?

Jane: Err...

Pope the butler, the Jeeves of his time: *forges a letter from Jane's father saying he's seriously ill and she needs to come to him IMMEDIATELY+

Jane, C2 and Wilmot: *leave*

The gang arrives at Trent House, home of the daughter of C2's ex nurse and deflowerer.

Lord of the Manor: Good news! A tenant of mine sails for St. Malo next week! You and Wilmot can pose as merchants hunting down a debtor. But you need to switch women to escape with as cover; my niece Juliana volunteers*

Wilmot's horse: *loses a shoe*

Wilmot: *gets recognized by a Parliamentarian soldier at the blacksmith's*

Escape: is afoot again!

Wilmot and C2: stay overnight at the George Inn, Charmouth

50 Soldiers: Also arrive there.

Luckily for C2: A woman with them (the soldiers, that is) goes into labor

C2 and Wilmot: *make their escape in the commotion before anyone can recognize them (again)*

C2, Wilmot and Juliana: *go to Salisbury next; C2 also visits Stonehenge, because why not*

Wilmot: finds a Captain who agrees to take them to France on his coal boat for 80 pounds

Captain Tatersell, when he sees C2: WTF? That's C2! I want danger money! 200 pounds!

C2: Done.

Coal boat Surprise: Leaves with C2 and Wilmot, arrives safely in France.

Fritz: Some people have all the luck!

ETA: On his return to England in 1660, C2 granted a variety of annuities and gifts to some of the people who had aided him, including the Pendrell brothers and Jane Lane. Thomas Whitgreave and Richard Pendrell received annual pensions of £200, with £100 to be paid to the descendants of Richard Pendrell in perpetuity. The other Pendrell brothers received lesser pensions. Pensions to the Penderels (an alternate spelling of Pendrell) are still being paid to a number of descendants today. (Jane Lane doesn't have still living descendants.)

Edited Date: 2021-09-09 05:05 pm (UTC)

From:

From:

luzula

I am greatly enjoying this whole post, thanks for writing all this up! : D

However:
England, Scotland and France, if you're wondering. At this point, the British kings still called themselves "Kings of France". They'd keep doing that until Team Hannover got the crown and finally ditched that claim and the lily from the heralds

For fic research, I got the British Army Museum to photograph an 18th century captain's commission for me; it's from 1757 and definitely says "George the Second, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France and Ireland..." So it seems they hadn't given up the claim.

(Also it very charmingly calls the captain "our trusty and welbeloved NN". I wish my employment contract said that.)

Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-12 04:55 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War

From:

luzula - Date: 2021-09-12 05:22 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-09-16 05:16 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Mes amies, book trailer for the Nancy Goldstone book about MT and three of her daughters: here. My beta-reading pal

kathyh pointed it out to me, worriedly adding that she didn't know whether I would agree with the Fritz characterisation. Well, wisecracking and doubledealing certainly is true; amoral, otoh, is debatable. :) Oh, and the Isabella/Mimi affair seems to be covered in detail.

(Also I'm not sure about Maria Carolina starting the golden age of Naples, given that, well, there was a FREAKING REVOLUTION long before Napoleon became a problem which was only put down by bloody British intervention courtesy of Nelson and Emma Hamilton. But Maria Carolina certainly was one of the smartest and most energetic of MT's offsprings.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, wisecracking and doubledealing certainly is true; amoral, otoh, is debatable. :)

Hahahahaaaa, this is such an awesome description. I'll concede as far as "amoral"; there was a fair bit of raison d'état and raison de Fritz in his actions. :P But "hopelessly amoral," no. In my view, he was too complex for that.

Also, I wish to point out that MT sometimes benefitted from the doubledealing, like when he abandoned the French to make separate peaces with her. Or as Macaulay put it, "His first object was to rob the Queen of Hungary. His second was that, if possible, nobody should rob her but himself." :P

But Maria Carolina certainly was one of the smartest and most energetic of MT's offsprings.)

I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about her, I've been wanting a well-written take on her for a while, beyond what Horowski provides.

ViennaJoe poses some stiff competition for most energetic, though. ;)

Re: "....her enemy was the hopelessly amoral, wisecracking, doubledealing Frederick the Great...."

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-09-12 05:39 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

All right, I can't be sure, but I *think* I know what's going on here. Courtesy of my now 45 open tabs on the subject:

[ETA: there's a TL;DR at the end, if you only care about the conclusions and not the excruciatingly detailed evidence.]

Reminder: the problem here is that various biographical dictionaries, articles, and sources to be found on the internet say that Pfeiffer was commissioner from 1747-1750, that he was charged with embezzlement in 1750, that he was found innocent, and that he then left Prussian service. Whereas Wegfraß, author of the Kiekemal volume I sent Selena, says that he was commissioner until 1756, when he was found guilty and sentenced to several years of imprisonment, then banished from Prussia.

I think our confusion can be traced back to two 1797 sources.

One is the source

felis turned up: an article on page 151 of Allgemeiner litterarischer Anzeiger oder Annalen der gesammten Litteratur für die geschwinde Bekanntmachung verschiedener Nachrichten aus dem Gebiete der Gelehrsamkeit und Kunst, by J. D. A. Höck. Höck says, and a German speaker should check me, but my interpretation is that Höck says, "Pfeiffer is well known, but so far he has no biography, which I am going to try to remedy here! Unfortunately, when I got to know him in Hanau, I couldn't get him to talk about his life. So I've cobbled together some things I got from what he said, and what he wrote, and what other people who know him better than I do have said. Here goes!

Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer was born--where? I don't know--in 1717...He became royal Prussian war councillor and between 1747 and 1750, he founded 105 villages and settlements in the Brandenburg Mark. He ascended in Prussian service to the level of a secret councillor, but was accused of embezzlement in the timber trade, and sent to Spandau. Although he was found innocent and soon let go, he left Prussian service. He traveled to [long list of places], finally ending up in Mainz, where he died a professor in 1787."

Key points:
1. Höck is admitting he's not the most reliable source.
2. He doesn't even know where Pfeiffer was born, and as we'll see later, gets the year wrong.
3. He thinks it's the timber trade Pfeiffer was accused of embezzlement in.
4. He actually says nothing about the role as commissioner ending in 1750, nor about the trial taking place in that year. My reading is that he's mentioning 1747-1750 as the most productive period--"He founded 105 settlements in just 3 years!"--not necessarily as the whole period.

Then, also in 1797, we've got page 6 of volume 11 of the Hessisches Gelehrtenlexikon, by Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder. Strieder writes, and again a German speaker should check me, "Back in 1780, when Pfeiffer was in Hanau, he sent me this essay on his life. According to him:

Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer was born in Berlin in 1718. [Became a soldier, present at Mollwitz, etc.] Entered the civil service, became a war and domain councillor...was entrusted with the direction of new settlements in the Brandenburg Mark. After leaving Prussian service, he went to various principalities..."

Key points:
1. Claims to be Pfeiffer's own words.
2. Contradicts Höck on really basic things like birth year. Also gives the place of birth, which Höck didn't know.
3. Mentions nothing about any embezzlement.
4. Mentions no dates for the service.

Further biographies that I've checked cobble together these two sources. Then, finally, in 1893, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) writes, "[Pfeiffer] was active from 1747 to 1750 Director of the Dispute Commission and New Settlements in the Brandenburg Mark...founded during this time 150 villages and settlements in the Mark, but was finally because of suspicion of embezzlement in the timber trade drawn into an investigation and brought to Spandau. Although pronounced innocent, P left Prussian service."

Key points:
1. This is the first source I can find that actually says he was *director* from 1747-1750, not that he founded X villages from 1747-1750.
2. The language is copied almost verbatim from Höck.
3. The number of villages and settlements is 150, not 105, which strikes me as the ADB author having a dyslexic moment.

Now, the ADB was *the* major source for the lives of obscure Germans (and a significant one for even less obscure Germans) until the revised version, the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), came out in the twentieth century.

Here's the revised version from the Deutsche Biographie (online version incorporating material from both the ADB and NDB): "Between 1747 and 1750 he was responsible for the founding of more than 100 peasant settlements. Because of an alleged embezzlement he was accused and briefly imprisoned, whereupon P, despite being pronounced innocent, left Prussian service."

Key points:
1. We're back to him founding X settlements between 1747 and 1750, not to him being commissioner between those dates.
2. No mention of dates for the end of the stint as commissioner or the trial and imprisonment.
3. Incorporates material from the ADB's sources but is more faithful than the ADB to those sources.

Final note: none of these sources mention him being found guilty.

TL;DR: So here's what I think happened.

1. Pfeiffer was commissioner from 1748 to 1756.
2. Pfeiffer was found guilty and imprisoned.
3. Pfeiffer really didn't want to talk about this in the 1780s.
4. He omitted any discussion of any trial at all in his write-up.
5. Höck, who couldn't even get a write-up out of Pfeiffer, cobbled together what he could from sources of varying reliability. His unreliable sources are responsible for the claim that Pfeiffer, now famous and successful, was found innocent.
6. Höck was calling attention to the 1747-1750 period as the most productive, i.e. saying Pfeiffer really hit the ground running there.
7. Höck got the 1747 year wrong for 1748, just as he got 1717 wrong for 1718. (He may even have heard or read "when Pfeiffer was 30" and have done the math there.)
8. The ADB was sloppy about overapplying the 1747-1750 dates to include his whole stint as commissioner, just as it was sloppy about 105 vs. 150 villages and settlements.
9. The ADB has been repeatedly copied by later authors, for example by the Gutenberg Biographics that Fahlenkamp and Buwert pointed me to.
10. The NDB revised the ADB by removing some of its mistakes, but still used the same 1797 sources, so still believes in Pfeiffer's innocence. (Interestingly, no mention of the timber trade; I wonder if one of the NDB sources said it was Kiekemal, and the author decided to be agnostic about the specifics of the accusation.)
11. Nobody but us and some Wikipedia author has read Wegfraß. [ETA: Wegfraß was writing in what, 2003?, so obviously nobody writing before that could have read her specific work, but I mean both that the authors of recent articles and posts haven't read her, and also that nobody, before or after 2003, has read her sources, either because they didn't have access to the archives, or because they copied what they'd read instead of digging through the archives.]

Edited Date: 2021-09-12 09:29 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

By Jove, you've got it! All hail the Royal Detective.

A footnote on the timber trade: actually, this sounds to me as if Höck at least heard some semi-founded rumors, because remember, one of the issues brought up in 1756 was that despite the necessary wood having been provided (and presumably paid for), the house for the spinners hadn't been built and the houses for the colonists were smaller than planned.

Anyway, that accounts for the contradictions, and yet again proves the danger of writers, no matter whether they're biographers or just writers of encyclopedia entries, copying each other. Mind you, I know I'm sitting in glass houses, because I sure as hell didn't go to the Prussian Secret State Archive, either, and if I did I probably would not be able to decypher anything, whereas MS Wegfraß did both. Our salon is so lucky that, say, Schmidt-Lötzen translated and transcribed Lehndorff's diaries! And Koser did all the work with Henri de Catt's diary and memoirs! ETc.

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-13 07:22 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-14 12:31 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-09-18 04:30 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-18 06:10 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So I was going to offer some commentary and replies on my RMSE fic after reveals, but, well, book digitizing happened. It's never too late, right? :D

Okay, so, that flyer. :P The reason Heinrich starts commenting on the graphic design choices is because I was trying to give a Watsonian reason to lampshade the Doylist reason that the flyer looks less than professionally designed, which is that I suck at graphic design. :P

The original plan was to wait for

prinzsorgenfrei to come back at the end of May and ask for help! But then time kept passing with no sign of her. So I was on my own! Thankfully, it occurred to me that historical Fritz liked to not defer to experts on things, and that since this fic was about workaholism, we could foreshadow that early on by having Henry say "There's such a thing as taking a work ethic too far."

And then it had the added benefit of providing another example where Henry completely misses the point.

See, my headcanon for this fic is that Henry shares Fritz's attention to detail, but not his micromanagement or inability to delegate. So left to his own devices, he doesn't start caring how many pieces of paper are in the printer, but he's so frustrated with Fritz, that the moment Fritz says or does anything, Henry gets sucked into nitpicking every aspect he can find, just to confirm his frustration.

Related is the fact that he gets sucked into going in circles in his head ranting about Fritz, and he can't stop, and this kind of rumination is how he ends up borderline depressed. (Agreed in canon he was straight-up clinically depressed, but no one's died here, much less AW being hounded to death by Fritz.)

And what Kaphengst does is snap Henry out of the rumination and get him to think about something else. And over time, that's had a positive effect on his mood. And that's part of why he stays with Kaphengst for so long.

I also tried to give Kaphengst some emotional intelligence to compensate for his frivolity. Like, he can see why the relationship with Henry works, where Henry, Mr. Blinders and not just where Fritz is concerned, is still trying to get Kaphengst to be more ambitious and driven, because he can see K's potential. And that emotional intelligence on K's part is also one of the reasons Henry/Kaphengst works as well as it does.

cahn mentioned the manhandling, so I'll point out that it picks up this thread in "Lovers lying two and two":

Heinrich hated being short, most of the time. Except when he was being manhandled in the bedroom. For a second, he struggled, loving the feeling of being forcibly subdued. But then Mara paused, and Heinrich remembered who he was with. He was too used to Kaphengst.

My fanon (as I've said a million times, not my historical headcanon) is that the size difference plus sexual compatibility means that Kaphengst can do what Henry really *really* wants, which is pin him in place effortlessly and painlessly while Henry struggles, whereas the more gracile Mara can't. So Henry trained Mara to deliver a few light slaps (Henry's not into heavy pain) and some insults to get his blood roaring.

(I also think that Henry's tendency to push his lovers to achieve their potential inadvertently added to the pressures already on child prodigy Mara, which Mara coped with by increasingly heavy drinking. Whereas Kaphengst kept his chill by noping right out of the pressure and remaining a playboy. I've made him a "water off a duck's back" personality. I can't prove that's historical, but it's a guess I but rather more belief in than the BDSM aspects of their sex lives.)

About Fritz and Mike, just some miscellaneous notes.

I went back and forth on the question of Fritz getting therapy when I was plotting this. My dilemma was that I don't want it to be too depressing, and the point of a modern AU is that you *can* fix things, but on the other hand, no way for a fic exchange with the kind of time I had was I going to be able to write something that made Fritz's decision to get therapy feel real and motivated. So in the end, the only trajectory that felt satisfying to me was to have Mike and Wilhelmine lay some of the groundwork that might lead to Fritz getting therapy someday, but not have that be part of this fic at all.

Plus, I had to make the ending not feel like a cliffhanger by taking the sense of imminence away, which is why the line "I expect it'll take years for him to come around, if he ever does, but I have to try" is at the end.

I'm still laughing that Cahn and I independently came up with LOTR analogies to end our fics with! When I saw she had Denethor and Gandalf reconciling in the draft she sent me for betaing, and I had ended on Wilhelmine's "You have my sword" (modern!Wilhelmine is a geek, let's be honest), I laughed hysterically and had to decide whether to suggest a different analogy for her (she had asked for alternatives), change my own, or leave it. Since due to time pressure I couldn't manage to come up with anything better, and since she was my recipient and I couldn't overtly discuss it with her, RMSE 2021 just has the salon hive mind striking again!

A whooole lot of things got inserted into the fic because they came up in salon during the writing process.

- Mike noticing Fritz's "vivid blue eyes."

- Mike being godfather to one of the pups.

- Henry not signing the card aka not presenting the sponton.

- Mike's medical travel being motivated partly by the Voltaire explosion. We had discussed it before, of course, but we discovered the engagement was just a couple weeks after Fritz's pamphlet appeared, and Selena was so, "See? SEE!" about it that I had to include a mention in the fic, since the Voltaire explosion was already there. And since I couldn't make modern Mike get engaged, I just decided to make explicit the connection between his medical travel and the Voltaire explosion. (Cahn, remember that Fredersdorf both went to Paris and went to take the waters at Aachen while Voltaire was in Prussia. That was why I had them at the same time in my fic from the beginning; the only thing that got added later was the "Okay, this is causation, not just correlation" part. :P)

Speaking of Voltaire, I cut out a whole backstory about how that explosion went down in a modern AU, which I might either write or at least summarize here as a sort of outtake. I left the "He signed an NDA!" for Cahn, though. :DDD (I was really confused when you two first started talking about historical Voltaire signing an NDA, and then I realized that you must be using the term imprecisely, whereas in my head it has one extremely specific technical meaning. But an NDA was absolutely perfect for my corporate AU backstory. :D)

Other parallels I had fun coming up with: Mike's questionable get-rich-quick scheme investments as a counterpart to his alchemy, and his corporate espionage!

Finally,

cahn, in case you've forgotten, "Bella Dea" was the nickname of one of the most beautiful ladies at EC's court. I gave her name to a dog in this fic, sorry not sorry. :P

Finally finally, I enjoyed the mugs and card and flyer more than is reasonable. :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Reading Massie, I ran into a couple interesting remarks on this subject. One is that Catherine really wanted to be inoculated without testing on poor people first, and only reluctantly agreed not to trailblaze the way. She has a doctor named Dimsdale from England visiting:

She told him that she had feared smallpox all her life, but now she wished to be inoculated as the best way of overcoming the fears of others about the disease and about inoculation. She wanted to be inoculated as soon as possible. Dimsdale asked to first consult her court physicians, but Catherine said that this was unnecessary. Dimsdale then suggested that, as a trial measure, he should first innoculate other women of her age; again, Catherine said no. Bowed by the responsibility, Dimsdale begged her to wait a few weeks while he experimented on several local youngsters. She reluctantly agreed, on condition that he keep his preparations secret.

The other is that Massie is all, "Inoculation was a thing in England and Russia, not on the Continent. For example, Frederick the Great tried to talk Catherine out of inoculation."

Me: What?! I was always told that one of Fritz's causes was pushing for more inoculation in Europe, like a good Enlightenment monarch. Admittedly, I only know of modern biographies saying this. But if he tried to talk Catherine out of it, I have to wonder if that was specifically because she was a monarch and monarchs shouldn't risk their lives ~~in battle~~? (But her son Paul hero-worships Fritz about as much as dad (P)RussianPete did; if she dies from inoculation, what's not to like?) I'm really not following Fritz's logic here.

cahn, remember that Fritz never had to get inoculated because he had smallpox as a kid (teenager, I think?). It's in Wilhelmine's memoirs, iirc.

Finally, Catherine is super worried about her son Paul getting infected, keeps him away from crowds, and never lets him go anywhere, and that leads to this witty and poignant quote by twelve-year-old Paul in a letter to a friend asking if he was going to be present at a ball:

You know I am a child and cannot be supposed to be a judge whether I ought to go there or not, but I will wager that I do not go. Mr. Panin [Paul's governor] will tell me that there is a great monster called Smallpox, walking up and down the ballroom. This same monster has very good foreknowledge of my movements for he is generally to be found in precisely those places where I have the most inclination to go.

And yes, this is the same Panin who is better known as Catherine's foreign minister.

Oh, one thing I've never understood: Louis XV got smallpox in the 1720s, causing Philip V of Spain to jump out of bed and order a carriage to be prepared to take him to France if Louis died. Then Louis died of smallpox (which everyone says he caught from one of the prepubescent/barely pubescent girls he took to bed, ugh) in 1774. Do you lose your immunity over time?

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-19 06:08 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-09-22 05:35 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Some quotes on Hanbury-Williams that entertained me.

Reminder that Elizaveta is empress in 1755, the Brits are attempting to keep Russia in their pay, and the Brits are pretty not happy with Prussia:

The previous British ambassador, who had attempted to renew this treaty, had found himself at a loss at Elizabeth’s court, where diplomatic matters were often settled in a quick conversation at a ball or a masquerade. At his own request, this flustered diplomat withdrew, and a new man, considered better equipped to cope with the nuances of the post, was sought. Charles Hanbury-Williams, who never willingly missed a ball or a masquerade, was considered a good choice.

He was not long in St. Petersburg, however, before finding that he could do little better than his predecessor... However much it may have amused Elizabeth to listen to the talk of this sophisticated Englishman, the moment he attempted to speak to her of serious matters, she smiled and walked away. As a woman, she was responsive to any compliment; as empress she was deaf. Since his arrival, Sir Charles had not advanced a step.

So he tries Grand Duke Peter, but finds out that he is (P)RussianPete and trying to convince him to ally against Prussia is a lost cause. He needs a member of the royal family who will 1) do politics, 2) not lick Fritz's feet.

Victory! He hits it off with Catherine. How well? Well...

A cavalier himself in his earlier years, he might briefly have thought of following a romantic path. He quickly confronted reality, however, and recognized that, as a middle-aged widower in less than perfect health, this was no longer open to him. “A man at my age would make a poor lover,” he advised a minister in London who had suggested that approach. “Alas, my scepter governs no more.” He cast himself, instead, as an avuncular, even paternal, figure to whom Catherine could turn for personal or political advice. He left the other path open for his young secretary, Stanislaus Poniatowski.

I did not realize (or had forgotten if Selena told us?) Hanbury-Williams/Catherine was suggested as a potential pairing, but somehow I'm not surprised.

You didn't miss out on anything other than late-stage syphilis, Catherine. Poniatowski was a much better choice.

From:

selenak

How does Massie present Hanbury-Williams' reaction to the Prussia/Britain treaty of early 1756, which basically made the Russia/Britain one he'd labored for which had explicitly been meant as an anti-Prussia defense treaty redundant? Hence Elizaveta writing to G2 a year later that sure, she's still ready to come to Britain's aide. Against Prussia. Any time, old chap.

Anyway, I do wonder about how Hanbury-Williams got all these plum diplomatic assignments in general, given he managed to piss off both Fritz and MT in record time. His one big envoy achievement remains befriending Catherine in St. Petersburg and helping to faciliate the Catherine/Poniatowski romance, but due to the Diplomatic Revolution, this had zero advantages for Britain. Basically, I'm left with concluding he partied with the right people as a young man and in the right circumstances (i.e. if you're a young person needing a confidant, true for both Poniatowski and Catheirne) had a lot of personal charm which he wasn't able to muster for mature monarchs. Or many other non-Brits. (Given that unlike, say, Mitchell, or Valory, or hey, even the Austrian envoy, he didn't make any friends in Berlin or Viennese society, either.)

You didn't miss out on anything other than late-stage syphilis, Catherine. Poniatowski was a much better choice.

No kidding. BTW, how was Hanbury-Williams a widower? According to German wiki, his wife survived him by many years and died in 1781. Now they lived apart for the understandable reason that she never forgave him having infected her with Syphilis as well (and having told her nothing about having it in the first place which he did know), but they weren't divorced, she was alive, and thus he was most definitely not a widower. Bad research, Massie! (Or was it Montefiore?)

Re: Catherine the Great: Hanbury-Williams

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-14 11:38 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Catherine the Great: Hanbury-Williams

From:

selenak - Date: 2021-09-15 08:18 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Catherine when someone she loves dies: locks herself in her room and cries for days and won't eat.

Catherine when her disliked daughter-in-law dies and her son is locking himself in his room and crying and won't eat (and is refusing to believe she's dead): "Well, since it has been proven that she could not give birth to a living child, we must not think about her any more."

Remind you of anything? Like Fritz, Mister "Wilhelmine is dead? All Europe must grieve with me!" "Émilie is dead? Voltaire's grief is so over the top he's bound to be protesting too much!"?

cahn: this is the daughter-in-law, Natalya, who dies gruesomely in childbed after 5 (?) days of agony. Neither she nor the child survive.

The autopsy found that she had a deformity, iirc a bone growth that blocked her birth canal enough to prevent a child from passing through, that meant she would never be able to give birth. In Russia, where monarchs conveniently died of "hemorrhoids" 9 days after being overthrown, this autopsy was widely disbelieved and Catherine was suspected of offing her unfavorite daughter-in-law so she could replace her with a better one.

I don't actually buy that, but the coldness *is* noticeable. This is the same Natalya who dies, btw, when Heinrich is visiting for the second time, and he and Catherine are all, "Wow, sorry she's dead, can we interest you in a bride with close ties to Prussia?"

"We have the same coldness" could apply to Fritz, Heinrich, and Catherine.

On a lighter note, when Vienna Joe was visiting, he liked to travel simply and stay in inns, so Catherine had a palace annex converted into an "inn" for his visit, and her German gardener had to play the innskeeper so he could speak to Joseph and give him the "authentic" German inn experience.

You do you, I guess. :P

Finally, this description of a Russian military officer (Peter Panin, younger brother of the foreign minister) that Catherine dislikes struck me as unintentionally hilarious:

He had often declared that Russia should be ruled by a man; his preference was Grand Duke Paul. Catherine also worried about his reputation as a military martinet and about his unconventional personal behavior: he sometimes appeared in his headquarters wearing a gray satin nightgown and a large French nightcap with pink ribbons.

It's one thing to know that masculinity was encoded differently in the 18th century, it's another thing to read *that* sentence. Good lord.

Edited Date: 2021-09-14 12:28 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

From:

selenak

Mes Amies, the evidence post is up.

a) Do we need to post evidence for Frederician RPF? Just in case? If so, can

cahn do it? I'm off to Southern Tyrolia tomorrow morning, though I will try to get the 16th Century Habsburg RPF comment there before that.

b) On that note,

cahn, can you brush up the old Frederician RPF advertising post for the time when the post at which to try and win others to one's are fandom goes up?

Yours in haste and suitcase packing,

self

From:

cahn

Yuuuuuletide!

a) I... really don't think we need to post evidence for Frederician RPF as a whole; it's been in the tagset for two years running and the mod just brought up a comment about the Frederician tag set two years ago so they definitely have it in mind, lol. If there are particular characters that we think we should post evidence for because it's not clear they are sufficiently related to Fritz, let's discuss and I can certainly do that.

b) Yes I will for sure, that's gone up too now -- tonight if not before. :)

Re: Yuletide Redux

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Re: Yuletide Redux

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-09-20 04:57 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Yuletide Redux

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-20 11:51 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Yuletide Redux

From:

selenak - Date: 2021-09-21 04:58 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Pamela, Voltaire's doctored letters to Madame Denis, is now--finally--in the library! I scripted pulling all the letters from https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Correspondance_de_Voltaire/ down and Google translating them for Cahn's RWFE fic. I had *very* little time for this endeavor, so as I recall, there were some issues with the output. Each poem missing its first line is one; there may be others.

But hey, at least it's there now.

From:

selenak

Cool! I don’t have more time than taking quick peeks this week and the next, but already I was amused at encountering the passage about F1 (when Voltaire is beta-reading the Histoire de la Maison de Brandenburg) again, Google translate insisting on making Wilhelmilne masculine (Fritz: In her soul, she was! Wilhelmine: No thanks!) a lot of the time, the “Kings are like coquettes, they like to make people jealous, and Frederick is an enormous coquette” quip, and this one, which was new to me:

“My dear child, I will confide my pain to you. I don't want to babysit any more. You know Jeanne , that brave Maid of Orleans , who amused us so much, and whom I sang in a taste other than that of Chapelain. This Maid , made to be locked up under a hundred keys, was stolen from me. This great hulking from Tinois did not resist the prayers and presents of Prince Henri, who was dying to have Jeanne and Agnes in his possession. He transcribed the poem, he delivered my seraglio to Prince Henry for a few ducats. I chased Tinois; I sent him back to his country.I went to complain to Prince Henri; he swore to me that she would never get out of his hands. It is, in truth, only a prince's oath, but he is an honest man. Finally, he is amiable, he seduced me; I am weak, I left Jeanne to him ; but if something bad happens, if a second copy is made, where can I hide? my beard becomes very gray, the poem of the Maid swears with my age and the Century of Louis XIV .”

Cahn, Agnes is Agnes Sorel, who was the most famous mistress of the Dauphin, later King, whom Jeanne d’Arc crowned. Am ever so amused l’autre moi-meme wanted the Pucelle as well and succeeded where Fritz did not by bribing the right people to copy it and buttering up Voltaire afterwards. “He seduced me” indeed.

Re: Pamela

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cahn - Date: 2021-09-22 05:38 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pamela

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Re: Pamela

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Re: Pamela

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mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-26 11:49 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So remember a couple months ago when we were discussing what happens if a monarch abdicates and changes his mind? Because Philip V did this in 1724, and there were those who believed it wasn't legally possible to do this? (His son died after only 7 months and the rest were minors, so he sort of felt obligated, and his conscience bothered him about it all his life.)

And Selena the wise and learned covered precedents from several locales and periods:

I'm trying to think about precedent. Certainly the wars of the roses offered two living crowned Kings at the same time - Henry VI and Edward IV., from the time of Edward's coronation to years later Henry VI's death in the Tower - , but neither of them ever abdicated. Their removal from power (Henry through his illlness and then through war, Edward through Warwick turning on him and changing teams to Lancaster) hadn't been voluntary, and so there wasn't, I think, a discussion as to whether they could legitimately return to power. (Not least because if you were Team Lancaster or Team York, the other guy was a pretender anyway.)

It gets more complicated when you go further back and branch out. Now, in the HRE...

I can't think of another European monarch who did voluntarily (i.e. not forced by war and his winning enemies*) abdicate and then resumed power. Branching out some more, there was an Emperor of the Middle Ming Dynasty...

Anyway: Monarch who abdicates and then wants the top job back = major theoretical headache, to be sure.

Reading a Kindle sample, I ran across an example in our period of a monarch who *tried* it! Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy and King of Sardinia (a lot of territory changed hands during his lifetime, Cahn, it's complicated) abdicated voluntarily in September 1730 (See? extremely our period!), and tried to come back. According to Wikipedia:

Victor Amadeus took the decision to abdicate in September 1730. The previous month the lonely king had lost most of his family, including his favourite and eldest son the Prince of Piedmont, and sought the security of a previous mistress Anna Canalis di Cumiana. The couple were married in a private ceremony on 12 August 1730 in the Royal Chapel in Turin having obtained permission from Pope Clement XII. Still attractive in her forties, Victor Amadeus had long been in love with her and as a wedding gift, created her the Marchioness of Spigno. The couple made their marriage public on 3 September 1730 much to the dismay of the court. A month later, Victor Amadeus announced his wish to abdicate the throne and did so in a ceremony at the Castle of Rivoli on the day of his marriage. His son succeeded him as Charles Emmanuel III.

Taking the style of King Victor Amadeus, he and Anna moved into the château de Chambéry outside the capital. The couple took a small retinue of servants and Victor Amadeus was kept informed of matters of state. He insisted on having a Louis XIV-style wig with him at all times as his only luxury.

Under the influence of Anna, in 1731 having suffered a stroke, Victor Amadeus decided he wanted to resume his tenure on the throne and informed his son of his decision. Arrested by his son, he was transported to the Castle of Moncalieri and Anna was taken to a house for reformed prostitutes at the Castle of Ceva but was later allowed to return to the Castle of Rivoli where her husband was moved. She was returned to him on 12 April. The stroke seemed to have affected Victor Amadeus in a way which caused him to later turn violent towards his wife, blaming her for his misfortunes.

King Victor Amadeus died in September 1732 and was buried in the Convent of San Giuseppe di Carignano. His son decided not to bury him in the Basilica of Superga which Victor Amadeus had built and where he asked to be buried, as his son did not want to remind the public of the scandal which his abdication had caused. Anna was moved to the Convent of the Visitation in Pinerolo where she died aged 88.

The source for all this is Symcox, Geoffrey (1983). Victor Amadeus II: absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730.

Victor Amadeus II is a guy we've seen before, the one of whom it was quipped that he was guaranteed to come out of any war on the opposite side from which he'd started on, unless by chance he changed sides an even number of times.

So in our period, if, say, AU!Fritz formally abdicates in the event of his capture and then gets rescued, there's precedent for locking him up. :P Fortunately for him (unfortunately for Heinrich), historical Fritz, as far as we were able to determine, was very careful to say nothing about abdication. (Also, locking up your war hero king isn't going to fly as well as locking up your 65-yo dad who retired voluntarily and then had a stroke and changed his mind.)

But in terms of precedent, I thought it was cool to run across a case of someone who tried this. As we branch out, we've found more precedent for other things, like royal spouses sleeping in the same bed, and royal husbands not taking mistresses but being faithful to their wives. We need to learn more about the Italian principalities! Victor Amadeus II has been on my list for a while now, *before* I found out about the abdication.

Speaking of Italian principalities, that reminds me. Selena, I've been meaning to ask you. What with reading bios of Joseph, Marie Antoinette, Maria Theresia, and soon to be 2 other daughters, I'm overdue for a bio of Leopold, Mister "Constitutional monarchy is the way to go, let me see a draft of what the Americans came up with," and "My older brother is a bit of an idiot with the absolutist ramming of reforms down everyone's throats." Can you rec anything? (It'll be ages before I get around to reading it, so no rush, but if you keep your eye out, it's a gap I want to fill.)

Oh, and the Kindle sample is a bio of George I, by Ragnhild Hatton, author of the Charles XII bio I really want, only it's $50 and not on Kindle. I can't rec or anti-rec the G1 book yet, still reading Jeremy Black's intro. (I've liked some of his other work and he seems to be one of the big name modern scholars on British history of the 1710s and 1720s, so if he respected it enough to write the intro, I'm interested.) But will let you know if I can rec it!

ETA: Oh, Black does say one of Hatton's strengths is being solid on the Hanoverian/Continental side of events, and correcting oft-repeated mistakes like thinking G1's half sister was his mistress. That sounds promising.

Edited Date: 2021-09-24 01:29 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

Here we go!

From:

cahn

From:

cahn - Date: 2021-10-05 04:49 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Completely unrelated to what I've been describing to my partner as the Book of Wrongness in my rants, the Kindle sample of the George I book has something I've been looking for for a while now: more detail on Katte's Aunt Melusine, mistress to G1. Not a lot is known about her, apparently. But I got more than is in Wikipedia.

First, I discovered in the detailed "how I rendered their names" section (the one that says "Braunschweig" is too foreign :P) that not only did Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenberg go by her second name, so did her daughter Petronella Melusine. (I admit, I was very confused by Goldstone calling the older Melusine "Ermengarde", and not just because of the Ehrengard/Ermengarde!)

So the woman who had a fling with Katte whom we've been calling Petronella actually went by Melusine too, just to make it that much harder for writers of fiction. :P [ETA: This is why I was going to follow everyone else's lead in fix-it fic and call her Petronella, but now I'm going to have a harder time doing that. Hypothetically. In the AU where I actually finish it. :P]

The three daughters were not only never recognized by G1, Hatton is very unsure whether they even ever knew who their parents were. They were, remember, passed off as the daughters of Melusine's sisters' and she was passed off as their aunt. Which is why Hervey is able to think that one of them is the mistress rather than the illegitimate kin of G1, G2, and Fritz of Wales.

Hatton says there's some evidence the daughters knew they were the children of G1 and Melusine, but some counterevidence (but that could just be them observing the proprieties).

That was news to me! I thought since Wikipedia lists them as the children of G1 and Melusine that it was common knowledge to contemporaries, but apparently this was a deduction by "recent" (book published in 1978) century scholars based on documentary evidence, like Melusine's will.

As to why the will doesn't say they're her nieces (but also doesn't say they're her daughters, again, this is a deduction), Hatton speculates:

We know that the duchess of Kendal (the title by which Melusine was known in England after 1719) was a regular churchgoer, at least in her later years, and the phraseology of the religious preamble to the will is less stereotyped than those usually encountered. It would seem, therefore, that the solemnity of the occasion made it impossible for her to perpetuate the lie which had been forced upon her by circumstances.

As to why G1 never acknowledged them, she gives these speculative reasons:

1. When he was a young man, he fathered an illegitimate child. His parents, Ernst August and Sophia, came down on him hard and said he could have mistresses, but no scandals. They had an electorate to win! So after this, no more acknowledged illegitimate children.

2. The first two were born before the divorce, which meant there would have been a scandal.

3. After the divorce (this is G1 placing SD's mother SD of Celle under house arrest,

cahn, and the disappearance of her lover), the divorce itself was a big scandal that endangered the quest to get recognition for the electoral status of Hanover, so no acknowledging any children that would have raked up the divorce scandal again.

Character portraits of Melusine and her daughters, for those who might want to write fic:

[Melusine] was pliant and patient, a welcome relief to George from his wife's petulant and stormy personality. She tried to please and to soothe, she shared his interest in music and the theatre, she studied him and his moods, and learnt to manage him. That she was useful to George after 1714 is clear from the way she took the initiative in making friends with English ladies known to have influence with their husbands in high positions, and in the manner in which he permitted her to become a kind of sounding-board for ministers in matters where they were reluctant to approach him directly. Her devotion to George was never doubted by his family, or by hers.

It is implied in the letters of George's mother and youngest brother and in those of Melusine's eldest brother; it is made explicit in the section which George's Prussian granddaughter, Wilhelmine, devoted in her memoirs to the lady she was brought up to accept as her grandfather's morganatic wife.54 Wilhelmine's characterization of Melusine as a person ‘without either vices or virtues’ must of necessity be second-hand, derived from her mother – George's daughter – who often visited Hanover and was friendly with Melusine (using her at times, like the British ministers, to figure out the best way to broach a subject with the king-elector), and from the many courtiers, men and women, who travelled between Hanover and Berlin on various missions. It is in any case curiously incomplete.

Melusine's kind disposition is not in doubt. The Gräfin zu Schaumburg-Lippe, who knew her well both in Hanover and in England, praised her concern ‘to do all the good she can’, but Melusine was not as meek and mild as both descriptions might seem to imply. She was intelligent and well-educated, though clearly not as clever as either George's mother or sister. Her French spelling was near perfect, far better than that of George's daughter-in-law, Caroline, and she wrote well also in English. She knew how to sum up people and amused George by cleverly cut paper figures of ministers and others at court which she sometimes exaggerated to the point of caricature. She was, or became with experience, shrewd, and her letters are not without their pointed remarks when she deemed this necessary. In 1720 she let Aislabie know, if politely, that she felt he had mismanaged her South Sea Company stock; and in 1730 she asked Robert Walpole, somewhat tartly, to transfer to her, since she ‘had need of it’, the whole of the sum which had been left in trust with him on her behalf by the late king.

The daughters:

Three daughters were born of their union, [Anna] Louise in 1692, [Petronella] Melusine, who like her mother always used her second baptismal name, in 1693, and [Margarethe] Gertrud, known in the family as Trudchen or Trutjen, in 1701 – beautiful enough to earn the soubriquet die scköne Gertrud among Hanoverian courtiers in England. The eldest daughter was also reckoned a great beauty; as for the middle girl, our sources tell us that she was good-looking and that she was spirited enough to speak her mind to George on issues, even political ones, where she disagreed with him. That they formed part of George's close family circle even before all three came to England with Melusine is clear from the letters which George's youngest brother, Ernst August, wrote to a friend between 1703 and 1726. From 1707 onwards he makes a number of references to them: Louise goes to the opera with Melusine; young Melusine becomes a Hoffräulein with the dowager electress; Trutjen at the age of six reads the newspaper to George at Pyrmont with the gravity of an adult, at twelve she – always George's favourite – is permitted to join his hunting-party at Göhrde, she is a real tomboy, hoping to be a soldier when she grows up.

And that's what I've got from the Kindle sample. I'll probably get the book at some point, but I've got a few others to get through first.

Oh, it does have a completely different, more George-exonerating and SD-blaming take on how that went down than is usual (even according to to the author, who says that everyone, starting with contemporaries, blamed George). Now, according to me, you shouldn't be able to lock up your wife for adultery, and especially if you're committing it yourself, omg. But there are some actual differences of fact that, if true, are interesting, and I will share them when I have time.

Oh, totally unrelated, did we discuss the claim that the story that William III considered adopting FW was totally an unfounded legend? I feel like I ran across this in a book that I can no longer remember which one it was, and I didn't bring it up, but maybe I read it here and that's where I'm remembering it from?

Edited Date: 2021-09-26 11:19 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

re: Petronella: I can se why Michael Roes still picked this name to call her buy, though. It does make a novelist's life easier not to call two important characters by the same first name in an era where so many royals insist on having the same first name anyway. I mean, we're calling Mina Mina for just that reason, given the plethora of Wilhelmines in that century.

They had an electorate to win! So after this, no more acknowledged illegitimate children.

There's also the part where his future wife, SD the older, daughter of Ernst August's brother Georg Wilhelm who'd given Sophie a written promise not to marry, started out as an illegitimate child, only to be legitimized and become her father's heir later. So his parents would have been very touchy on the whole issue.

Thank you for all these quotes! Really interesting, since most other sources I've read don't include anything about what the daughters were like, and Wilhelmine's memoirs just a few terse remarks like the one quoted, which, as has been pointed out, were second hand from SD the younger.

Oh, it does have a completely different, more George-exonerating and SD-blaming take on how that went down than is usual (even according to to the author, who says that everyone, starting with contemporaries, blamed George)

Not Georg von Schnath in his introduction to Sophie's correspondance with the Hohenzollern. :) Remember, he thought that while G1 was a cold fish to both wife and legitimate offspring (he does make that legitimate qualification, so must have been aware relations were way better with Melusine's daughters), SD was to blame for her reckless adultery and undutifully wanting to run away with the guy. However, anyone else I've read definitely sees SD of Celle as the Princess Diana of popular feeling of her day: marrying into a family of cold royals who all look down on her, with a husband who has his mistress from day 1 and does not love her at all, with the added indignity that when it all goes down in flames, they kill the lover, imprison her and keep her dowry.

ETA: Oh, and William III: otoh, the contemporary source I've seen claiming he had this intention was Morgenstern, who wasn't around to witness it and only could know about it from hearsay. Otoh, I once thought Morgenstern was wrong about young FW wanting to marry Caroline and being hurt of "losing" her for that reason, and then it turns out that FW did want to marry Caroline and we have it in writing through the Sophie and F1 letters which Morgenstern couldn't have known about. So presumably FW at the tobacco parliament of the later 1730s might indeed have grumbled about both Caroline and how he had wanted to become William's heir and William wanted to do it, too, for a while, just as Morgenstern claimed he did.

Edited Date: 2021-09-29 04:27 pm (UTC)

Re: Aunt Melusine, Cousin Petronella

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2021-09-29 05:28 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I just want to let everyone know that raven_aorla, author of the "Fritz as mob boss" modern AU, has just written me another fic! This one porn. :DDD

It has a) a foursome between Fritz, Katte, Peter Keith, and Algarotti, b) numerous other pairings, including a threesome between Voltaire, Emilie, and Algarotti, and c) Selena's broccoli test idea!