Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30
Sep. 8th, 2021 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn 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
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
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 05:34 am (UTC)Of all the daughters of Maria Theresa, am I not that one whom fortune has most highly favored? Marie Antoinette, 1792 Ooooof.
-The one thing about having a print copy is that it would be easier to flip to and from the genealogy about thirteen billion times :P
-The introduction is painful to read, knowing what's coming :(
-"...these pieces are part of a larger narrative. It is the story of a family of immensely strong women..." I kind of feel the same way about this as Selena did about Mary Queen of Scots showing up as a thing in the Winter Queen book. Just admit you want to write a book about Maria Theresa and how cool she is, you don't have to tie everything to Marie Antoinette just because Americans have actually heard of her! Well, okay, maybe you do. IDK.
-Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! :D
-I was impressed by Goldstone's summation of everything leading up to the Pragmatic Sanction, it all seems awfully complicated but she made it so I could understand :) Though of course the most credit to salon for giving me all the pieces to begin with!
-"despite his physicians' best efforst, which involved shuttering all the windows in his overheated sickroom and rolling him up in 20 suffocating yards of flannel" ...I'm just gonna leave that there.
-Man, I had no idea about this pactum mutuae successionis thing. I know, at the time I could barely understand the Pragmatic Sanction thing. But it's always more complicated, isn't it :)
-Liselotte going "I have heard that the Emperor no longer lives with his wife. If this is so, she will not have a son" is hilarious
-This is what that bit reminded me of:
Elizabeth Christina: It is crazy that the nieces of the emperor get the empire.
Charles: OOOH! Y’know what, we can change that! Y’know why?
EC: Why?
Charles: ‘Cause I’m the emperor!
(Mildred, since you're not into musicals, this riffing off of Hamilton.)
-IDK if MT's schooling was "not particularly taxing"? Not particularly useful for an empress, I would believe. But like between all that music and dancing and drawing and languages, I bet it was a reasonable amount of work.
-omg, I am SO GLAD I had two years of you guys, I can actually recognize all these people like August the Strong and Prince Eugene, definitely makes the book more enjoyable
-LOLOLOL here's the MT-Fritz marriage rearing its head again! It's foooooollowing you, Selena! (Although my impression from you guys talking about it was that it was way more complicated than she made it sound...)
-Fritz's gift of salmon!
-"To sign the proffered renunciation papers meant shouldering a burden of emasculation, regret, and guilt for the rest of his life." ...Really? It just strikes me as laying it on a little thick (though I'm sure it was not at all enjoyable). Guy was going to get to be Emperor, after all...? I do like the story about Francis throwing the quill three times on the floor.
-"...but Maria Theresa knew it was there, gnawing away at his self-respect. She would spend the rest of her life trying to make it up to him." I... don't... know about this either, that seems like a very... modern pov, somehow?
-So... apparently Voltaire thinks they were poisonous mushrooms, is that the general historian opinion??
-"MT had the eighteenth-century equivalent of the regulars at Wednesday night bingo at the senior center." LOL! Maybe not 100% accurate, but it does get across the flavor of what she had to deal with.
-"'Really, the King [Fritz] is behaving like a father to the Queen and myself and we shall never be able to repay our obligations to him,' Francis gushed" -- mm, I bet he felt a bit silly about that...
-heh, Sir Thomas is awesome
-"When pressed, the French ambassador excused the delay in communicated formal recognition on the grounds that it was necessary for his government to research the proper etiquette to use in the letter." LOLOLOLOL
ETA: Forgot to mention this at the time, but "the Prussian king had a formindable army of 70,000 very tall soldiers at his disposal" made me laugh.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 07:36 am (UTC)LOL about the Hamilton riff.
-IDK if MT's schooling was "not particularly taxing"? Not particularly useful for an empress, I would believe. But like between all that music and dancing and drawing and languages, I bet it was a reasonable amount of work.
No kidding. The type of history she learned might have been boring to our author, and not at all helpful for governing later, but learning it still was work. Now we know less about child!MT's work schedule than those of her own children (not just Joseph's), because it's way better documented, but it was a tight lesson plan by anyone's standard. (Other than FW's, who is a category by himself in parenting.)
LOLOLOL here's the MT-Fritz marriage rearing its head again! It's foooooollowing you, Selena! (Although my impression from you guys talking about it was that it was way more complicated than she made it sound...)
She also has it backwards. Her version if that Charles offered MT to FW as a daugther-in-law, was told "no Catholics", and then offered EC instead (that would be the "Protestant relation" she mentions). Whereas in reality, the Austrians never offered MT (and with her the Empire) to Fw or Fritz directly. They first blocked the English marriages because politics, and EC (MT's first cousin, after alll) was always their candidate to tie young Fritz close to the Habsburgs. (Because Seckendorff was good at his job, and knew FW inside out, among other reasons. And because no one had forgotten the bonkers Clement affair. Selling FW on his son converting to Catholicism was an immediate no go.) It was Fritz who came up with the "how about me/MT?" idea. Well, and also the Brits telling Eugene they wanted it in writing MT would never marry Fritz in 1728, I admit, but that, again, was politics.)
Reading "Francis" for Franz Stephan feels very weird to me.
Lorraine as a festering wound and "she'd make it up to him for the rest of his life": am very much sideeying this as it sounds like Nancy Goldstone maybe wants to explain his infidelities and MT putting up with same this way. That's what we call Küchenpsychologie in German. Mind you, this whole thing was a humiliation conga in many ways (including protocol games at the wedding where he and his brother couldn't be greeted by envoys the way MT and the rest of the Imperial family was because of their lower rank), but not only was being Emperor the prize on the horizon, but FS quickly discovered he had a talent for business which would end up making him one of the richest men in Europe. If you want to use at something that gave him a sense of self instead of regarding himself as MT's trophy husband, that would be one thing. And the biographies I've read so far gave me the idea he was the one more prone to compromsing and placating her in the marriage than the other way around. See also his letter to Leopold about how to be a good husband on the occasion of Leopold's marriage.
Poisonous mushrooms: not the impression I got from Voltaire's phrasing, just that Charles died after that particular dish, and that his death rewrote the political landscape. Remember, dying after eating wasn't that unusual - it happened to La Mettrie, and no one thought he was poisoned.
Mind you, Nancy Goldstone has a worrying tendency so far of believing Voltaire's writing to be literally true, more about this in the next comment.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 04:08 pm (UTC)Lorraine as a festering wound and "she'd make it up to him for the rest of his life": am very much sideeying this as it sounds like Nancy Goldstone maybe wants to explain his infidelities and MT putting up with same this way. That's what we call Küchenpsychologie in German
YEAH. I was really side-eyeing that one and in the subsequent chapter when she was all "so MT gave FS this title because blah blah Lorraine," because I'm like... I bet she had other reasons other than that. And yes to FS being an awesome businessman, which I did remember! I'd forgotten the letter about the good husband, but now I remember that, that was really sweet <3
Nancy Goldstone has a worrying tendency so far of believing Voltaire's writing to be literally true
...this explains A LOT! LOL.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 05:41 pm (UTC)Welcome to me reading lots of things you write, although they're getting more normal by the year. ;) I laughed when I read a little further in the G1 volume last night and saw Hatton, in her obligatory section on how she rendered names, write:
The hybrid Brunswick-Lüneburg may offend the purist, but while Braunschweig is still too 'foreign'
Me: See? See!
(This is funny because just this week, Selena and I had this funny exchange in her journal:
Me: I spend so much time reading your write-ups with German spellings that you've got *me* typing "Hannover" and "Rokoko" half the time, without even meaning to! I'll let you know if I ever catch myself doing "Braunschweig." :)
Braunschweig: Still too foreign. ;)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 03:40 pm (UTC)Ha, thank you. Would indeed not have gotten that.
-IDK if MT's schooling was "not particularly taxing"? Not particularly useful for an empress, I would believe. But like between all that music and dancing and drawing and languages, I bet it was a reasonable amount of work.
Agreed, and even more, SR makes the case that she got more or less the same education a son would have gotten, that sons were not trained for administration and politics in the way that we would expect today (Idk about Charles VI and his brother Joseph, but looking around at various monarchs and their heirs, this is extremely true, and also something Selena has talked about before: the difficulty so many people in power have training their successors while they're alive), and the whole "I wasn't trained for this!" was a bid for sympathy by MT, who wanted to make it clear that she, the underdog, had prevailed despite all the odds. Which she did! But apparently her educational disadvantage compared to if she'd been a son may have been exaggerated; it isn't like FS got a whole lot more of that kind of training. Fritz got a specific kind of administrative training that was unusual, but FW was an outlier who should not be counted.
-omg, I am SO GLAD I had two years of you guys, I can actually recognize all these people like August the Strong and Prince Eugene, definitely makes the book more enjoyable
Yay! Go you!
-LOLOLOL here's the MT-Fritz marriage rearing its head again! It's foooooollowing you, Selena! (Although my impression from you guys talking about it was that it was way more complicated than she made it sound...)
Right? What Selena said, she has it backwards. I was like, IF the Austrians ever offered MT to Fritz, this is the OPPOSITE of anything I've ever heard (and we've gotten to the point where I'm considering writing a paper on the subject, so), and given the lack of citations and my 100% lack of trust in her scholarship at this point, I'm going to go with: she's wrong again. "Again again," as my wife and I like to say when something has happened for the n-th time.
-Fritz's gift of salmon!
Hee! I searched for "salmon" in my email when I got to this part, and a bunch of unread notifications came up, so I knew you guys had picked up on this. :D
-"To sign the proffered renunciation papers meant shouldering a burden of emasculation, regret, and guilt for the rest of his life." ...Really? It just strikes me as laying it on a little thick (though I'm sure it was not at all enjoyable). Guy was going to get to be Emperor, after all...? I do like the story about Francis throwing the quill three times on the floor.
-"...but Maria Theresa knew it was there, gnawing away at his self-respect. She would spend the rest of her life trying to make it up to him." I... don't... know about this either, that seems like a very... modern pov, somehow?
Yeah, what Selena said. With the caveat that I'm not the FS expert here, my impression is that trading territories wasn't the biggest deal here. It was the War of the Polish Succession, everyone was playing Musical Territories. (And had been since about 1715. That's why my intro to Victor Amadeus last night was "It's complicated.") The part where FS was marrying up and socially subordinate to his wife was the big deal, compounded times one million by the part where she had the stronger personality and he was more conflict-averse, was the humilation conga.
-So... apparently Voltaire thinks they were poisonous mushrooms, is that the general historian opinion??
What Selena said. I've seen this quote a dozen times, but I've never drawn the conclusion that he thought they were poisonous. I took it to be like Henry I dying of a surfeit of lampreys; it was a thing back then. (Post hoc ergo propter hoc in a lot of cases, I suspect. "He ate something, he died, we don't have good diagnostic tools, guess he died of what he ate.")
-"When pressed, the French ambassador excused the delay in communicated formal recognition on the grounds that it was necessary for his government to research the proper etiquette to use in the letter."
Totally a thing that happened ALL the time back then. "Sorry, X is going to be delayed by a day/a month/a year because we have to research the etiquette first." Horowski is full of examples.
ETA: Forgot to mention this at the time, but "the Prussian king had a formindable army of 70,000 very tall soldiers at his disposal" made me laugh.
It's also wrong. The tallest soldiers were in the Potsdam Giants, who were *not* allowed to fight, and, per Wikipedia, which today I've decided is 100% to be trusted if the alternative is Goldstone, there were 3,200 of them in 1740. The rest of the army had height requirements, but not "very tall". The taller the better, of course, but the cutoff was like 5'5", 5'6", depending on your regiment. (Selena, that's like 165-168 cm.) She's conflating his famous army with his famous giant collection.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 04:30 pm (UTC)Yeah, that was my impression from the last two years of you guys too. I mean, I'm totally happy to believe that FS's mom was Not Happy about the whole deal! I certainly wouldn't be either if it were my territory and son and so on! I'm... rather less willing to believe it's some sort of lifelong emasculation thing.
I've seen this quote a dozen times, but I've never drawn the conclusion that he thought they were poisonous.
Huh, okay. When I went to look it up, Wiki said something about death cap mushrooms, wouldn't be the first time or the last Wiki is wrong. Obviously I should have actually looked up what Voltaire said in the Memoirs instead of trusting Wiki *facepalm*
It's also wrong.
Oh, well, I knew that. (Because the Potsdam Giants are hands-down the most hilarious thing about FW to me. Do I remember political details, no. Do I remember FW's giant collection and the way all of Europe made fun of him for it? Yes.) I figured it was a combo of Goldstone conflating the Potsdam Giants, and the height requirement, and that she'd elucidate in coming pages -- oh, yeah, huh, she does the same conflation in the next chapter, doesn't she. Which is weird, because she then quotes Wilhelmine talking about the Potsdam Giants as a "regiment," which is pretty clearly not an army!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 04:44 pm (UTC)I mean, today is my day of 100% trusting Wikipedia, so it could be. I was going from memory here.
ETA: To clarify, Voltaire said nothing about poison or death caps. Voltaire said, "died...of an indigestion, occasioned by eating champignons, which brought on an apoplexy," and the famous quote part is "and this plate of champignons changed the destiny of Europe." If historians have since decided, based on non-Voltairean evidence, that they were likely death caps or other poisonous mushrooms, then that could very well be. But it's not what Voltaire says. (I've now double checked the French too.)
Which is weird, because she then quotes Wilhelmine talking about the Potsdam Giants as a "regiment," which is pretty clearly not an army!
Right? A regiment is not an army!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 05:33 pm (UTC)Exactly! Nobody was happy about losing their territory, even if they got something in exchange. But the lifelong emascuation thing is a bit much, if you get to BE EMPEROR in exchange.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 07:43 pm (UTC)This whole thing reminds me of how both The Crown and Victoria (about guess whom) have their respective Prince Consorts go through gigantic crisis of masculinity as the result of having married queens, with, as far as I'm aware of, little historical basis. It's more like a lot of current day folk think this is how a man socialized in Olde Times ought to have reacted. Now maybe FS inwardly was seething in masculine angst and just had a good poker face, it's possible, we don't know. But one thing his contemporaries found so baffling about him and MT as a couple was that he gave every indication of being fine with her as the boss.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 07:45 pm (UTC)Mildred is waiting for this, Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha.
:D
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 08:44 am (UTC)HA. Nightmare!
(This also reminded me that the issue came up in his correspondence with AW (1748), and I'm afraid that AW was just as baffled and biased: "there's nothing sadder for a man than being the servant of his wife. I'd prefer the most modest private life to all the crowns in the world, if such were the conditions attached to them. [...] I do not envy the Emperor his position".)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 07:19 pm (UTC)Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-26 05:01 am (UTC)Now while I don't doubt FS, growing up in the era, must have had times where the whole gender reverse status was troubling him both early and later in life - a saint, he was not -, by and large it looks to me as if the men of Europe were busy angsting on his behalf while he was enjoying his life and his unusual marriage.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Intro, Ch 1-2, half of Ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 05:45 pm (UTC)Oh, well, I knew that. (Because the Potsdam Giants are hands-down the most hilarious thing about FW to me. Do I remember political details, no. Do I remember FW's giant collection and the way all of Europe made fun of him for it? Yes.)
Hahaha, you are *awesome*. I am delighted every time I see you knowing stuff you learned in salon. :D
I figured it was a combo of Goldstone conflating the Potsdam Giants, and the height requirement, and that she'd elucidate in coming pages
I figured, at this point in the book, that she was wrong and would go on being wrong, and lo.
Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen
Date: 2021-09-26 10:30 pm (UTC)Speaking of Marie Antoinette, one thing I had marked to bring up was Goldstone's claim that the third and fourth of MA's children, including the one later called Louis XVII, were fathered by Axel von Fersen. Wikipedia says this was a rumor that went around at the time, but isn't supported by the evidence, which is that they were conceived right around the time MA and Louis XVI were spending more time together. I am unqualified to judge between the two claims.
Selena, do you know anything more about this?
Re: Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen
Date: 2021-09-29 04:36 pm (UTC)Now, you've read Zweig's biography far more recently than I did, but as I recall he argues with the pro MA biographers insisting the relationship was completely platonic and defiantly declares he hopes they did it in the last few encounters when they had the chance to. But at no point does he deduce anything about the children's paternity from there.
Now, unless someone in recent years cross checked the remains of her daughter with genetic testing against a member of Fersen's family, I can't see how Fersen's paternity could be proven with this kind of temporal distance! Did anyone? I suppose it's possible, given that this is how it was established for good that descendants of Sally Hemings' children were indeed blood related to Thomas Jefferson. Fersen didn't have (official) children and thus no leving descendants, so it would have to be descendants of people related to him, and he did have sisters. (As Richard III's remains from the Leicester Car Park were matched with a descendant of one of his sisters for shared genes.) But that's the only possibility I see, and if that was done, I missed the headlines completely.
Re: Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen
Date: 2021-09-29 05:24 pm (UTC)Reviewed (not in great depth, but makes it clear the book it didn't mention DNA, and might not be the most rigorous thing ever--of course, neither are most of the comments on this page) here.
Goldstone's footnote (is not very persuasive):
Fersen called both this daughter and Louis-Charles "the children," and saw them privately when he stayed with Marie Antoinette..
Oh, and "almost certainly the father of this child" in another note. Mmhmm.
Well, Farr's book is $12 on Kindle, so I might put it on my list. But not high. :P
But at no point does he deduce anything about the children's paternity from there.
He actually says she had done her duty and borne two male heirs before ceasing to sleep with Louis and starting to sleep with Fersen! Which would leave open the possibility that the fourth child, a girl, was Fersen's, but Zweig also says that Joseph wrote in a letter that his sister wanted to withdraw from Louis after the birth of the fourth child. And that this correlates with the beginning of the intimate relationship with Fersen.
So Zweig attributes the paternity to Louis.
Re: Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen
Date: 2021-09-30 07:50 am (UTC)Trying to think of 18th century examples for children born into a marriage where we know for sure the husband wasn't the bio dad, the one immediately coming to mind is William Lamb, later in his old age Queen Victoria's first PM as Lord Melbourne, whose mother, Lady Melbourne, one of the leading Georgian hostesses, had famously declared you owed your husband precisely one legitimate male heir, and then you were free to do as you pleased. (William started out as a younger son.) There, we have the family letters, with everyone, including her husband, aware of William's paternity.
But the Lambs didn't have a realm to inherit. Even with Catherine and son Paul, probably the most prominent 18th century example of a royal woman to give birth to children of dubious paternity, historians still add an "almost certainly" disclaimer for Paul and don't want to swear for either Peter or Saltykow with 100% assurance. (As opposed to her subsequent short lived children by her lovers.) Mind you, I think the qualification mostly is due to Paul successfully styling himself as much after Peter as humanely possible, thereby successfully confusing everyone who was ready to swear to his bastardy when he was born.
Re: Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen
Date: 2021-10-01 04:30 pm (UTC)Émilie comes to mind: do we know for sure about her last baby? (As with Lady Melbourne and hypothetically MA, this was only after she'd delivered 1-2 male heirs.)
Re: Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen
Date: 2021-10-02 04:02 am (UTC)