18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 32

[cahn]

:) Still talking about Charles XII of Sweden / the Great Northern War and the Stuarts and the Jacobites, among other things!

Comments

Re: Great Northern War: Tragic minister Görtz

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hee, I'm glad you liked! Yeah, the trickster figure aspects that appeal to me in Voltaire are definitely here, and the teamwork is what clinches it for me. :DDD

a) real-life heist/con-artist/trolling-everyone (and yes, these are also the buttons that Voltaire pushes, only, like, if he and Fritz had planned together to troll the entire world they would really be my OTP)

Yes this!!

and b) comeuppance, and I am here for this :D

See, for me it's less about the comeuppance and more about I just REALLY LIKE terrible people, what can I say? See, prinzsorgenfrei's "if people can't handle you at your starting wars with your neighbours and being a dick about it, they don't deserve you at your composing sonatas with a tiny spoiled puppy on your lap" makes me laugh, because the things that made me fall instantly for Fritz back in the day were:

- Starting wars with his neighbors and being a dick about it.
- Winning (most of) his battles.
- Abandoning the French as soon as he had Silesia and leaving them to duke it out with Austria.
- SNARK.
- Writing the Anti-Machiavel right before invading his neighbors and being a dick about it. Younger me was convinced that I knew better than historians and this was totally a cunning plan to make everyone not see his reign coming. Older me is wiser and sadder, i.e. still with the love of trickster figures and still disappointed to have concluded that this wasn't actually the case. :P

In other words, it does nothing for me that this guy died because he deserved to die, what pushes my buttons is that one, he deserved to die, and two, he died as soon as his protector and collaborator was gone.

Re: Great Northern War: Tragic minister Görtz

[cahn]

Yeah, fair enough! I really like Voltaire, after all :D (Although I think part of what I like about Voltaire is that he combines being a really terrible person with being a really great person, and the paradox of those both coexisting in the same person is what I like. But really I will take ALL THE OTPs of trickster teamwork! ...is this a fandom thing? I mean, there are heist shows, which are trickster teamwork and which I love, but I can't think of any trickster-pair examples and I want this now!)

- Abandoning the French as soon as he had Silesia and leaving them to duke it out with Austria.
- SNARK.
- Writing the Anti-Machiavel right before invading his neighbors and being a dick about it.

Gotta say those are pretty awesome for me too.