Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters, Discussion Post 31

[cahn]

And in this post:

-luzula is going to tell us about the Jacobites and the '45!

-I'm going to finish reading Nancy Goldstone's book about Maria Theresia and (some of) her children Maria Christina, Maria Carolina, and Marie Antoinette, In the Shadow of the Empress, and selenak is going to tell us all the things wrong with the last four chapters (spoiler: in the first twenty chapters there have been many, MANY things wrong)!

-mildred_of_midgard is going to tell us about Charles XII of Sweden and the Great Northern War

(seriously, how did I get so lucky to have all these people Telling Me Things, this is AWESOME)

-oh, and also there will be Yuletide signups :D

Comments

Re: Alessandro de Medici: The Defense

[mildred_of_midgard]

No time for a proper reply before work, but I have read it and that was fascinating, thank you! I'm relieved to find that the author was professional and reasonable about her subject, unlike some (many) authors out there.

Still, Alessandro's career - from son of a most-likely-black-servant to absolute ruler of Florence (for a while) would not have been possible in any later age.

Not black, but as a Russian comparanda, it's worth telling cahn about Catherine I and Elizaveta.

Catherine was the rags-to-riches story of her age. She started out as a peasant of largely unknown and dubious parentage (father a serf? who knows), became a servant, caught Peter the Great's eye, became his mistress, bore him children, married him, was crowned, and became sole ruling tsarina after his death.

Then her daughter, Elizaveta (she of the Fritz-hating during the Seven Years' War, whose death triggered the second miracle of the House of Brandenburg), was not only the daughter of a peasant servant, but she was widely believed to be born illegitimate and only later legitimized. Peter and Catherine may have married secretly before Elizaveta's birth, but since it was a secret, contemporaries considered her parentage dubious even after her parents publicly married. Peter tried to get Elizaveta considered as a prospective bride for the heir to the French throne, and Versailles was like, "...How do you say 'DO NOT WANT' in a way that won't piss off the powerful and short-tempered tsar?"

And then she became tsarina in 1741 and ruled for over twenty years. (Repetition for cahn: among other things, she's the one who had baby Ivan VI locked up for life, along with EC's brother, wife, and other kids.)

Re: Alessandro de Medici: The Defense

[cahn]

Oh, awesome! Thanks for the further context :D

(Heh, thanks for the repetition! I think part of my issue is that so many different people are named the same thing! I knew there was some Elizaveta whose death triggered the second miracle of the House of Brandenburg and locked up people related to EC, but is it this one?? I'm always unsure! Eventually I will get how things fit together; it's happening slowly...)