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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

luzula

It was an eventful escape, but it's been 20 years since I studied it and none of my Jacobite books made it through the book cullings of my several moves since then

If you ever want to return to the topic, I greatly recommend Fight for a Throne: the Jacobite '45 Reconsidered by Christopher Duffy. I never paid that much attention to the details of BPC:s escape itself, though I remember reading some of them in The Lyon in Mourning, but I definitely do have the urge to tell

cahn about other aspects of the '45 in great detail!! My urge is resisted through the knowledge that that much typing would give me terrible aches in my hands. But

cahn, do ask if you have specific questions. : )

Cluny of MacPherson --> MacPherson of Cluny

BPC:s mistress was Clementine Walkinshaw, btw.

But I can give you a nice mirror-image of BPC:s cross-dressing escape, at least! Margaret Ogilvy, wife of the young Lord David Ogilvy of Airlie, went on campaign with her husband during the '45. She was captured after Culloden and imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, but escaped with the help of her sister by dressing as a servant and just walking out of the castle. Failing to escape by ship, she made her way down the length of England dressed as a man. Just before she reached the coast to take ship for the continent, she was stopped by a party of soldiers. She was tall and fair-haired and the soldiers suspected her of possibly being BPC. But she told the officer in charge that she was a noblewoman in debt from gambling, who was in disguise to escape her debtors. The officer asked some women to examine her and then let her go. She was reunited with David in France (he had got away by ship via Bergen) and he got a French colonelcy.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

My urge is resisted through the knowledge that that much typing would give me terrible aches in my hands. But [personal profile] cahn, do ask if you have specific questions. : )

Oh no! Both because I'm sorry you have aches in your hands and because I was hoping you would be the one to summarize for

cahn! I'm like a recovering addict that has to abstain for fear of falling off the bandwagon. ;) (Read: If I start researching the Jacobites again, I won't stop, and I want to broaden rather than deepen my 18th century history knowledge atm. And my language knowledge.)

But okay,

cahn, ask

luzula questions!

Cluny of MacPherson --> MacPherson of Cluny

Gah, typing too fast! Thank you!

Oh, hey. Speaking of escapes via crossdressing. So this memory of something I swear I saw on the History Channel twenty years ago has been bugging me for a long time. Here's how the story goes in my memory: A noble or royal man is taken prisoner and condemned to death. His wife comes to visit with her ladies in waiting. The cell door is left open during the visit. Half a dozen women pace in and out of the room repeatedly, loudly sobbing and praying. Inside the cell, the prisoner hastily changes clothes with one of the ladies in waiting. She stays behind. He leaves as part of the group of women, holding a handkerchief to his face and pretending to be overcome with grief, in order to conceal his features. The guards count that 6 (or however many) women entered the prison/castle at the beginning of the visit, and 6 women left, and no suspicions are aroused.

My memory wants this to be one of the Jameses of Scotland, but Google has no idea what I'm talking about. Do you or

selenak or

felis or recognize this episode and know who it's about?

(Speaking of Jameses of Scotland,

cahn, my referring to James VI above is a giveaway that I studied a lot of history from the Scottish perspective; he's more often referred to as James I. James VI/I if you're being pedantic. James VI if you're me. ;))

From:

luzula

Ha ha, sorry to tempt you if you're a recovering addict, then! But yeah, it is hard to stop...if you give me some time, I can type up an account for

cahn and post at some later time? My hands are okay as long as I don't type too much at once. : )

Re: the escape via cross-dressing, could this possibly be Lady Nithsdale helping her Jacobite husband to escape from the Tower after the '15 by exchanging clothes with him? I don't know about six women, but Wikipedia mentions two other Jacobite ladies and also Lady Nithsdale's maid, so there were at least four...maybe the other two ladies also had maids.

From:

cahn

Yesssss please do this!! That is, if it's not too hard on your hands -- your hands have to come first, of course! But there's no rush, we'll be here, so you can take as much time as you want! :) The problem is, you see, that I don't know enough at this point to ask questions!

From:

luzula

Well, if you just give me time, it will be no problem! : ) Should I do a lead-up with the 1688 revolution and the earlier Jacobite rebellions, too, as background?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

There's plenty of time going around! We've been talking about 18th century history here for over 2 years now.

I suggest starting with the '45, since it'll be easier on your hands and easier for

cahn to process, and then we can backfill the rest afterwards.

Cahn, you basically just need to know that James II lost the throne in 1688-1689 for being 1) too Catholic 2) not politically savvy enough. His Protestant daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Extremely-Protestant-Orange took it away from him, then his Protestant daughter Anne succeeded them, and Catholics were henceforth forever disbarred from the British throne. (That's how the Hanovers ended up on the throne, because they were descended from the Winter Queen, sister of C1, and they were Protestant.)

Of course, James II tried to get the throne back, then his son tried to get the throne back, then his son (J2's grandson) BPC tried to get the throne back. This meant a series of Jacobite rebellions, culminating in the big famous one, in 1745, the "Forty-Five" aka "the '45", which

luzula will proceed to tell you about, as [pronoun?] hands allow.

Just so it's also in salon and not just email, this is the scribbled family tree I emailed Cahn the other night, with the usual apologies for my handwriting:

Those in the know will see that I left out Henry Benedict. I think he can safely be left out of the beginner's lesson and added in later.

Cahn, you can mentally add C1's grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots to complete the theme. Losing your throne and/or head was kind of a tradition in this family.

Lehndorff: So weird!

J2: At least I escaped in time to keep my head! Unlike Dad.

Edited Date: 2021-09-18 06:04 pm (UTC)

From:

luzula

Well, I'll let you guys know when I'm ready, then! : )

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ahhh, I bet that's it! And I don't know that it was 6 exactly--after 20 years I don't remember! Just that it was large enough for him to blend into a crowd and small enough to be allowed in a single visit. 4 seems reasonable.

Thanks! Now I can stop thinking I imagined it!

From:

selenak

When I read "Margaret Ogilvy", I at once thought "but wasn't that James Barrie's mother (as in, the author of Peter Pan), who lived quite a while later? But then I realised that being a Scot, she presumably had been named after the earlier Margaret.