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: Philippe d'Orléans and wives

[selenak]

Part of it, perhaps, but I don't think a main reason. Incidentally, one reason that applies for both Fritz and Heinrich re: their terrible relationships with their respective wives doesn't apply here, because marrying Minette actually had not been something Philippe was forced to do. (Whereas the marriage to Liselotte was on fraternal orders.) It was his idea, though one could possibly argue for pressures of society (making Mom happy, marrying a princess just as Louis had done, and one that was far more refined and beautiful).

Several reasons I've seen named, in addition to general sexual incompability (and let's not forget, they'd married young, so while Philippe undoubtedly knew he loved men several years prior to that, he might not have realised he really did not enjoy sex with women until actually living with one):

1) Several layers of jealousy, most, but not all, focused around Louis. Because whether you see Philippe as irredeemably terrible or as with good qualities as well, the relationship with his brother was undoubtedly the most important in his life. They'd been late children of a severely dysfunctional royal marriage themselves, born shortly after another, then gone through the Fronde (the last big uprising of the nobility) together when their mother was regent and they were children, and they did not have other siblings. (Neither legitimate nor illegitimate siblings.) And whether or not Louis and Minette had an actual sexual affair or "just" an emotional one, it was intense enough to get noted not just by the court gossips but by both their mothers, resulting in maternal reprimands. This in the first year of marriage. Blaming Minette over blaming Louis for this was sure as hell something likely to happen in a less patriarchal society as theirs. And then, years later, when a Louis/Minette affair, either emotional or sexual, wasn't an issue anymore because Louis had moved on to other mistresses, Minette still was trusted by Louis in a political fashion in a way Philippe was not. Other than some military victories early on, Philippe had nothing whatsoever to do at court (other than partying and etiquette). Whereas Minette was the unofficial English ambassador, trusted by two monarchs to negotiate between them when Philippe was not.

2.) Her flirting with his pre-Chevaliere de Lorraine boyfriend, de Guiche, probably was an issue as well. (Again, we have no idea how serious this was, but your boyfriend being into your wife is not fun.

3.) Once the Chevalier was on the scene, there was the additional problem of him actively scheming against Minette (to the point of taking her confessor and ladies in waiting away and replacing them with people he controlled), and then, when Louis finally had it with the Chevalier and banished him, Philippe definitely believed Minette had used her influence and was to blame for his lover's exile.

Most of this didn't apply to his marriage with Liselotte. She sure as hell never was suspected of having an affair with Louis; while Louis liked her, Liselotte had zero political influence; no one raved about Liselotte's beauty and charm, least of all one of Philippe's boyfriends.

Lasty, precisely because his first marriage ended so terribly that half of Europe thought Philippe was a wife murderer (he most likely wasn't in the physical sense, but he definitely had made her life hell), he started the second marriage in a somewhat chastened manner.

(I did link you to my review of the Minette and Charles correspondence before, didn't it? Which covers a lot of this from the Minette pov. (And btw is why we have such details as Minette menunstrating on her wedding night which supposedly horrified Philippe. How do we know? Because it comes up when Charles' wife does the same thing on their wedding night. Charles didn't have a problem there, being presumably familiar wiht the female body in every condition before that.)