Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30

[cahn]

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

Comments

Re: Catherine the Great: Hanbury-Williams

[mildred_of_midgard]

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

If Massie can be trusted (always questionable), that sounds plausible to me.

BTW, how was Hanbury-Williams a widower? According to German wiki, his wife survived him by many years and died in 1781.

Ooh, I didn't catch that. Hmm, yeah, seems like another mistake by the guy who thought Fritz's wife Sophia was the sister of G2.

Bad research, Massie! (Or was it Montefiore?)

Massie. Everything in my 3 Catherine posts last night is from Massie. Though Massie and Montefiore are so similar it's almost like reading the same book: not just the same facts, but the same quotes, and sometimes the same commentary on them.

Montefiore on Catherine's confession to Potemkin about her previous lovers: "surely the most extraordinary document ever written by a monarch."

Massie on the same document: "It is unique in the annals of written royal confessions; an all-powerful queen attempting to win forgiveness from a demanding new lover for previous actions in her life."

Massie's making a less broad and thus slightly more likely to be accurate (though I still have doubts), but effectively they're both saying so nearly the same thing that I swear one has read the other, or they talk to each other a lot, or something. (I did check back when I got to Massie's remark, and they both cite works by the other, but neither cites the particular volume I'm reading.)

Re: Catherine the Great: Hanbury-Williams

[selenak]

Last night I re-read my write ups on Lord Hervey and Lady Mary to check a few things and this reminded me Hanbury-Williams thought the reason why Hervey's wife never cheated on him (despite being pretty, and despite his constant cheating on her) was that she was incable of love, which Halsband (the Harvey biographer) thought was rubbish (Lady Hervey just had the misfortune of being in love with her husband), but very telling about Hanbury-Williams.

Hmm, yeah, seems like another mistake by the guy who thought Fritz's wife Sophia was the sister of G2.

:) To be fair, his specific focus and forte is Russian history, hence his most famous books being the one about Peter the Great, the one about Nicholas and Alexandra, the last Romanows, and the one about Catherine, and I imagine given the sheer wealth of material means he thought taking shortcuts with the international supporting cast is okay. But then you get such glitches.

Massie's making a less broad and thus slightly more likely to be accurate (though I still have doubts), but effectively they're both saying so nearly the same thing that I swear one has read the other, or they talk to each other a lot

It does sound like this, though yes, Montefiore's phrasing is way too general not to be disproved at once even remaining within the same century. Given that all-powerful Queens are far rarer in history than plain old gender neutral "monarchs", Massie is trickier. Hm. I take it he didn't come across the previous Czarinas (plus Regent) writing anything of the sort? Going back a few centuries or several, there are a few mighty Byzantine Empresses around (like Irene) and some West Romans, too, but we don't have those kind of personal letters for them, and certainly not from the few female pharaos, including Cleopatra. Though we do have the letter from Antony to Octavian where he writes, only slightly paraphrased: "What's it to you that I have sex with the Queen? How about your own sex life? I'd be very surprised if between the time I write this and the time it arrives in Rome, you had sex only with Livia Drusilla and not X, Y., and Z (here Antony listed several Octavian girlfriends)." (This letter is quoted by Suetonius, the old gossip, who as Hadrian's secretary did have access to the Imperial archives.)