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cahnAnd, I mean, it doesn't have to be just 18th century characters, either!
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Victor Amadeus II: Abdication
Date: 2022-01-03 12:54 am (UTC)So he morganatically marries a woman who was one of his mother's ladies of honor way back, whom he had been in love with back then and whom he has reprised his old affection with. (His unwanted wife Anne d'Orleans had recently died in 1728.) He abdicates on September 3, and goes to live in the country with her.
But then he does the thing that I'm sure everyone is going to be talking about when Fritz decides to give up his claims in France in my AU, which is, "Wait, I changed my mind!" After several months trying to dictate policy from "retirement", he has a stroke. After that, he seems to undergo a personality change. He apparently spends most of his time ranting about how incompetent his son is and trying to stage a coup. Symcox:
He spoke freely and wildly to all and sundry, with none of his old circumspection or even the remotest effort at concealment: he believed the state was in venal or incompetent hands, and that he must intervene to prevent the ruin of his life’s accomplishment...The old king was now manifestly deranged, broadcasting his wild designs and talking of plots. He seems to have regressed to the time when he ruled with unquestioned authority over his ministers and cowed his son into silent obedience, but this was only in his mind and the reality was now far different. It was as if his rational faculties had crumbled away like a husk, leaving only the raw incandescent kernel of will at the centre of his mind, that unquenchable urge to dominate that had always been the mainspring of his actions.
So, his son and his ministers have him arrested and locked up. His wife, who seriously got the raw end of the deal here, was first sent to a house for reformed prostitutes, then blamed for inciting VA (because apparently there had to be a fiction for public consumption about the conspiracy that wasn't "The old king had a stroke and went senile"), then eventually allowed to return to her husband, who was apparently frothing at the mouth and periodically battering her with his fists until he finally died in 1732.
Then she was finally allowed to enter a convent, where she lived until just short of her 89th birthday. I hope they were nice to her.
Now, I do wonder how much of the "he was frothing at the mouth!" stuff was Charles Emanuel's version of how he totally had to lock up his father! for his own good! and the state's own good! I'm not entirely sure what the sources are. (Consider: Peter III, Richard III, anyone who's ever undergone a damnatio memoriae.) But as Royal Patron pointed out when I told him this story, he went from a guy who apparently made things happen to a guy who couldn't prevent himself from being locked up, so...maybe something happened. And he did apparently confess to what sounds like a stroke from before the abdication.
Symcox's last paragraph is worth sharing:
Rumours of the startling events surrounding Victor Amadeus’s abdication and abortive attempt to regain power soon spread abroad, arousing passionate curiosity: in decline and death, as in the prime of life and authority, Victor Amadeus was at the centre of public attention. The circumstances of his end offered material for endless speculation and moralizing: here, enveloped in an aura of profound mystery and intrigue, was a tragic drama of father against son, of a great man’s fall from absolute power to abject misery and impotence. By a profound irony, Victor Amadeus was destroyed by the power of the state that he had done so much to create. In a last mad gesture he tried fumblingly to overthrow the structure of authority that he himself had established, forcing the new keepers of that sovereign power, whom he had trained in his own ideal of ruthless duty, to crush him. The soldiers who guarded him like mute automata, without compassion, and Ormea, who nerved Charles Emanuel to resistance and procured the old king’s downfall, had each in their own ways learned the lesson that he had taught them. To defend the state they unhesitatingly destroyed the man who for so long had been its embodiment but who now, broken and senile, threatened its integrity. In their place he would have done exactly what they did; he died, as he had lived, by the inexorable imperative of state power. The events he set in motion by endeavouring to regain the throne would have profoundly troubled the inner harmony of the state if it had still been as it was when he first came to power in 1684; then, under the impulse of conflict within the ruling house, faction would have erupted into civil war. By 1731 his futile attempt to regain the throne and subsequent fall occasioned no more than a ripple on the surface of affairs, for the institutions he had built up and the concept of state service he had inculcated were proof against such upheavals. This perhaps is the true measure of his achievement.
Re: Victor Amadeus II: Abdication
Date: 2022-01-03 07:51 am (UTC)Also, poor morganatic wife of VA. Yes, let's hope at least the nuns were nice to her.
Re: Victor Amadeus II: Abdication
Date: 2022-01-04 12:12 am (UTC)See, I'm struggling with him resigning even with an incapacitating stroke, as opposed to just allowing a regency. Our Fritz is always going to want to come back if he feels he's capable of ruling. Unless the stroke affects his personality! In which case the amount of support he's going to get is going to depend on how visibly and in what way.
Here's what I think actually happens, assuming no frothing at the mouth personality changes:
a) Either Fritz is in a position to authorize Heinrich to be the power behind Wretched Nephew's regency, as he talked about (but never followed through on) in the 1770s. At this point, I don't think Fritz has abdicated as opposed to temporarily bowed to the necessity of letting someone else do the day-to-day ruling. And then Heinrich I think has to let him have the power back; but he's made some real changes and Fritz isn't going to like what he now has to deal with. I think Heinrich ends up being like the trope of the coder who no longer works at the company but has left a back door into the code. ;)
b) Or: Fritz is fuly incapacitated and doesn't have any say in the transfer of power. FW2 simply takes over as in real life, except as Regent, while Fritz slowly recovers his ability to want to control everything around him. Heinrich is bored and frustrated as hell with FW2 excluding him from anything meaningful at all, and teeth-grindingly supports Fritz's return to power.
If Fritz had a stroke...
Date: 2022-01-04 04:55 pm (UTC)Yep, those are my thoughts as well. (Unless Fritz really isn't compos mentis anymore and him ruling would be criminally irresponsible.) I could see a variation of my summary of Heinrich resuming relationships after their two years correspondence break happening, to wit:
F: Want to conspire together to get me back in the driver's seat?
H: Yes oh yes. You bastard.
(But he's going to make it a condition that he gets some actual JOB during and after.)
Re: If Fritz had a stroke...
Date: 2022-01-04 10:50 pm (UTC)*nod*
F: Want to conspire together to get me back in the driver's seat?
H: Yes oh yes. You bastard.
Oh, man, would read!
(But he's going to make it a condition that he gets some actual JOB during and after.)
And Fritz dies before he can take it away again, like he'd planned. Oooh, does that change history? Would FW2 have fired Uncle Heinrich from his existing job? Leaving him in his rural estate and not listening to him is one thing, but firing him is another...
Re: If Fritz had a stroke...
Date: 2022-01-05 11:14 am (UTC)Would FW2 have fired Uncle Heinrich from his existing job? Leaving him in his rural estate and not listening to him is one thing, but firing him is another...
I think that would depend mainly on two questions.
a) what kind of a job is it? Are we talking cabinet minister here, or ambassador to France/Russia/Sweden (all plausible jobs for Heinrich to demand and have)? Because "ambassador" is the job I think he'd be more likely to keep.
b) What lesson does FW2 draw from Fritz' Heinrich-aided return to power? Is it
1) Damn, I shouldn't have frozen out Uncle Heinrich, then he'd have been on my side, and he's clearly more competent than any of my hangers-on, or
2) Everyone around me was right about Uncle Heinrich, he is really a power hungry snake waiting to strike! Must ensure that never happens again!
Because I'll remind, as Ziebura reports, there was a lot of anti-Heinrich mood in Berlin post FW2's acension at least in the circles around him and in the reports by people like Mireabeau, he was suspected of wanting to make a power grab, and when it became clear FW2 wouldn't do more than invite him to festivities and otherwise was happy with him in Rheinsberg far away from any power, there was accordingly "yay!"
Now, the reason why I think Heinrich would have a better shot at keeping his job if that job is "ambassador" even if FW2 is inclined to option b) is that the geographical distance helps for Heinrich's competence to outweigh Fw2's and his circle's distrust/resentment. Especially for the circle. If Heinrich is in Paris/Stockholm/St. Petersburg, he isn't likely to want influence FW2 (that's THEIR job) or take the cabinet posts they want. Granted, all these a plump envoy assignments, but also fiendishly difficult, and Heinrich has proven he can negotiate with Catherine and his Swedish relations, and get Parisians to completely change their minds about him (for the better).
Of course, from 1789 onwards Paris is, err, in unique circumstances. Which reminds me, how about this: After helping Fritz back to power, Heinrich decides to go with Steuben to America! (On the rationale that if Fritz changes his mind and goes back on his promise, the (ex)colonies are reallly really far away, and he can always pretend recall letters are lost, ditto if a resentful FW2 eventually succeeds Fritz, and hey, representing Prussia there, helping with the army building, and potentially becoming constitutional King, that's all interesting work!
Re: If Fritz had a stroke...
Date: 2022-01-06 11:42 pm (UTC)This is the AU I never knew I always wanted. As soon as I read that, I thought, "I predict
Now, the reason why I think Heinrich would have a better shot at keeping his job if that job is "ambassador" even if FW2 is inclined to option b) is that the geographical distance helps for Heinrich's competence to outweigh Fw2's and his circle's distrust/resentment.
This, and all the rest, make perfect sense.
Re: If Fritz had a stroke...
Date: 2022-01-11 06:01 am (UTC)YES! I think this is the one trope that hits all of our buttons in a big way :D
Re: If Fritz had a stroke...
Date: 2022-01-05 06:14 am (UTC)H: Yes oh yes. You bastard.
...I WANT THIS :P
Re: Victor Amadeus II: Abdication
Date: 2022-01-04 12:51 am (UTC)You should know that good government requires that one should either do everything oneself, or leave it completely alone; one must be the absolute master, without regard for proprieties and personal considerations that are usually contrary to equity, justice and the good of the state...Sovereigns are born for an active life, and not for an idle or contemplative existence. They must devote a constant, serious attention to matters of government.
Sound familiar? On the other hand,
Once one has chosen good ministers known for their skill in making plans, for their ability, their loyalty and their exactitude in carrying out instructions, they must be supported and given credit...the more a minister is secure, the greater the confidence that reigns both at home and abroad, the greater the solidity of one’s projects, the greater the scope of one’s enterprises...I have found that by following this maxim I reign more sovereignly in my little state than in the days when I m ade frequent changes.
I'm not sure Fritz ever felt he needed to keep his ministers feeling secure in order to do their best work. Though I'm open to evidence that he did!