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

Voluntary abdication

[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.