18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 35

[cahn]

In the previous post Charles II found AITA:

Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?

Comments

collected replies from the last post

[selenak]

Tiny Terror Karl Emil:

...This is putting Tiny Terror FW throwing a chamberlain out the window into the shade!

Tiny Terror FW was a hands-on guy who didn't need no stinking weapons! What's up with all the guns, bow and arrow and knife stuff, Karl Emil? And if Fritz ever did hear about the family legend, it might indeed have induced him to see Ferdinand in that vein if my head canon is true. However, given Karl Emil died so young, I doubt it. I mean, FW himself was born years later, he never knew any of his uncles except for the Schwedt half uncles, who were more his own generation, and I doubt F1 when talking about his beloved dead brother mentioned he used to be a Tiny Terror as a kid.

Dorothea being married for twelve years without a child in her first marriage, then producing lots of kids iwth the Elector:

Huh! Do we know if her husband had fathered any other children, legitimate or illegitimate?

He did not, and if he had, history might have gone very different, for her first husband was, drumroll, Christian Ludwig, whose younger brothers included Georg Wilhelm (of Celle) and Ernst August (of Hannover, husband of Sophie).

Émilie did not cross dress (except in my Rossini opera fiction), as far as I know.

Bedfellows: In fairness, sharing a bed with someone of the same sex in the 17th century for royals really wasn't, by itself, erotically connotated. Remember, these people never slept alone. Especially when young. In addition to the valet (or maid) in the same room or just behind the door, you also had governors/ governesses or stewards sharing the beds of young royals. Sharing a bed with a lady-in-waiting - especially in a country where it's cold - does not have necessarily to signify anything beyond that lady being a trusted and favored member of the royal household. HOWEVER, in the specific case of Christina and Ebba Sparre, you have this and the emo letters and her (Ebba) being married by her family and then later, the one time where Christina comes back to Sweden, not allowed to meet her, and it definitely looks like people in insisting they were just gal pals and couldn't have been anything else are stretching things.

Christina and the hot Cardinal Azzolino:

<3 I... kind of like the idea of them being platonic life partners, although I suppose that's less likely than not.

For what it's worth: In a letter on 26 January 1676 to Azzolino Christina writes (in French) that she would never offend God or give Azzolino reason to take offense, but this "does not prevent me from loving you until death, and since piety relieves you from being my lover, then I relieve you from being my servant, for I shall live and die as your slave."

Christina's mother:

Wow, this was amazingly close to the way Juana was accused of being mad.

What I thought. So the question is, did Maria Eleonora take Juana as her role model, or did Oxtierna take Juana's father Ferdinand as his role model in how to freeze out a Queen you don't want anywhere near power, or was it sheer coincidence?

All the executing and none of the governing responsibilities, I see! Someone wants to have her throne and abdicate it too.

No kiddng. (In addition to Poland, she also at one point offered herself as a candidate for the throne of Naples.) And the execution episode really had everyone going WTF? To quote wiki:

On 15 October 1657 apartments were assigned to her at the Palace of Fontainebleau, where she committed an action that stained her memory: the execution of marchese Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi, her master of the horse and formerly leader of the French party in Rome. For two months she had suspected Monaldeschi of disloyalty; she secretly seized his correspondence, which revealed that he had betrayed her interests. Christina gave three packages of letters to Le Bel, a priest, to keep them for her in custody. Three days later, at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, she summoned Monaldeschi into the Galerie des Cerfs, discussing the matter and letters with him. He insisted that betrayal should be punished with death. She was convinced that he had pronounced his own death sentence. After an hour or so Le Bel was to receive his confession. Both Le Bel and Monaldeschi entreated for mercy, but he was stabbed by her domestics – notably Ludovico Santinelli – in his stomach and in his neck. Wearing his coat of mail, which protected him, he was chased around in an adjacent room before they finally succeeded in dealing him a fatal wound in his throat. "In the end, he died, confessing his infamy and admitting [Santinelli's] innocence, protesting that he had invented the whole fantastic story in order to ruin [him]." Father Le Bel was told to have him buried inside the church, and Christina, seemingly unfazed, paid an abbey to say a number of Masses for his soul. She "was sorry that she had been forced to undertake this execution, but claimed that justice had been carried out for his crime and betrayal.

Mazarin, who had sent her old friend Chanut, advised Christina to place the blame due to a brawl among courtiers, but she insisted that she alone was responsible for the act.

The other two women buried in the Grotte Vaticane are Matilda of Tuscany, one of the most remarkable and powerful ladies of the Middle Ages who certainly saved Pope Gregory's butt more than once in his clashes with Emperor Henry IV (she also was the one who brokered the Canossa meeting), and, wait for it... Maria Clementina Sobieska, mother of Bonnie Prince Charlie. What she did to deserve the honor is somewhat beyond me, though.

Struensee: all the talk about Christina made me type "Sweden" when I meant "Denmark" - Struensee was reforming Denmark and executed for his trouble, not Sweden.

The Chevalier Balde is also interesting, thank you! Especially her treating him as a madman as an act of mercy, in a way.

If you recall how the guy who tried to knife Louis XV was executed just four years later (drawn and quartered, with additional torture like hot iron dropping into orifices), definitely an act of mercy.

thus explaining why I'm not really into Fritz/Suhm

Well, me neither, but then again there's also an age gap of a similar size between Fritz and Voltaire. :) (In fact, I haven't looked it up, so I'm just guessing, but from what I recall Voltaire was only four years younger or thereabouts than FW and thus definitely could have been Fritz' father, in terms of age gap.) I mean, aside from the very different emotions involved, there is of course the difference that Fritz and Voltaire did not meet until Fritz was very much an adult, and Suhm knew Fritz as a teen.

Joan dying on the battle field is a fix it when compared to burning alive, but NOT FOR LOVE!

Re: collected replies from the last post

[mildred_of_midgard]

Tiny Terror FW was a hands-on guy who didn't need no stinking weapons! What's up with all the guns, bow and arrow and knife stuff, Karl Emil?

HAHAHAHA. :D

However, given Karl Emil died so young, I doubt it.

Oh, I agree. I was saying it reminds *us* of your Ferdinand headcanon. What I think is that maybe Fritz heard all the stories about how Karl Emil was the greatest, and that that influenced him to suggest it as a name. I don't think he heard anything about bows and arrows. :P

He did not

Okay, so probably sterile, which is why she was able to be more prolific in her next marriage.

for her first husband was, drumroll, Christian Ludwig, whose younger brothers included Georg Wilhelm (of Celle) and Ernst August (of Hannover, husband of Sophie).

Aaahh!

cahn, remember that Ernst August and Sophie were on a quest to consolidate all the family holdings into a single line (theirs) and impose primogeniture over the normal German tradition of splitting up inheritance among all the sons. The fact that the older brothers were not prolific in their offspring greatly aided with this endeavor (as did marrying off future G1 to his first cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle).

Émilie did not cross dress (except in my Rossini opera fiction), as far as I know.

Same, but given her alleged dueling with a sword, it's a possibility!

If so, we know she *also* liked dressing up in fancy feminine clothes, so she can join that club.

Bedfellows: In fairness, sharing a bed with someone of the same sex in the 17th century for royals really wasn't, by itself, erotically connotated.

Or even apparently in the American South for aristocratic ladies, in the 1860s or 1930s or both, judging by Gone with the Wind, where all the young ladies pile up on the beds for a midday nap, and nobody suggests it's a lesbian orgy. :P

Sharing a bed with a lady-in-waiting - especially in a country where it's cold

Which is exactly why I had female Marwitz warming Wilhelmine's bed in the non-sexy sense in one of my fics!

So the question is, did Maria Eleonora take Juana as her role model, or did Oxtierna take Juana's father Ferdinand as his role model in how to freeze out a Queen you don't want anywhere near power, or was it sheer coincidence?

I have no idea, but it's a really fascinating question! Considering what happened to Juana, I have to assume door number 2 is more likely than door number 1, but could be a coincidence too.

wait for it... Maria Clementina Sobieska, mother of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Ah, I should have remembered that! But she never invaded anywhere, so I know less about her than about her husband and older son. (I wasn't in a fandom with you to flesh out my battle maps with family dynamics. :) )

Struensee: all the talk about Christina made me type "Sweden" when I meant "Denmark" - Struensee was reforming Denmark and executed for his trouble, not Sweden.

I had Charles XII conquering Sweden instead of Saxony in one of my posts (that reminds me, I need to find that in Rheinsberg and fix it), as noted in a recent email to you and Cahn. :D

If you recall how the guy who tried to knife Louis XV was executed just four years later (drawn and quartered, with additional torture like hot iron dropping into orifices), definitely an act of mercy.

I was thinking of Damiens when you said that FW's Berlin wouldn't have been as forgiving of an assassination attempt as MT's Vienna! Not Louis XV's Paris, either!

cahn:

The prisoner was placed, around five o’clock, on a scaffold eight and a half feet square. They tied him with heavy cords held by iron rings which immobilised his arms and his thighs. They started by burning his hand in a brazier filled with burning sulphur. Then they took red-hot pincers and tore at his flesh on his arms, his thighs and his chest. They poured molten lead and pitch and boiling oil on all his wounds. These tortures dragged from him the most frightful screams.

Four vigorous horses, whipped on by four executioners’ assistants, pulled with cords on the bleeding and flaming wounds of the patient; these pullings lasted an hour. His limbs stretched but did not part. The executioners finally cut some muscles. His limbs parted one after the other. Damiens, having lost two legs and an arm, was still breathing, and did not expire until his other arm was separated from his bleeding trunk. The limbs and the trunk were thrown on a pyre ten feet from the scaffold.

Remember: "The individual being tortured is Robert-François Damiens, an evidently mentally ill man who tried to assassinate Louis XV with a pocketknife, but only gave him a scratch."

thus explaining why I'm not really into Fritz/Suhm

Well, me neither, but then again there's also an age gap of a similar size between Fritz and Voltaire... and Suhm knew Fritz as a teen.

Ha. This is another example where a dynamic is enough for me to ship people even if I'm not particularly interested in Suhm as an individual. He scratches a very specific itch for me, which involves an age gap combined with a praise kink.

And while I certainly hope nothing inappropriate happened when Fritz was a child or teen, the earliest emo letters we have between them are when Fritz is 24, so plenty old enough to consent. And FWIW, my headcanon for them is the praise-kink and hand-kissing dynamic of the early Voltaire days, without the later saltiness. Not sexy times.

I realize it's not for everyone! But this has been an iddy thing for me for so long that the moment Suhm came along, he fell into that same pre-formed slot with others of his ilk and got insta-shipped. :DDD

Joan dying on the battle field is a fix it when compared to burning alive, but NOT FOR LOVE!

I think we can all agree on that!

Re: collected replies from the last post

[cahn]

For what it's worth: In a letter on 26 January 1676 to Azzolino Christina writes (in French) that she would never offend God or give Azzolino reason to take offense, but this "does not prevent me from loving you until death, and since piety relieves you from being my lover, then I relieve you from being my servant, for I shall live and die as your slave."

Aww. I platonically-ship it! :D

Well, me neither, but then again there's also an age gap of a similar size between Fritz and Voltaire. :)

Heeeee, true! I feel like Fritz/Voltaire is a special case because I kiiiiind of don't take them seriously as a ship and that's actually what attracts me about it? Like, they are just so over-the-top and I think they're hilarious and cute but also not a real canon ship but also Voltaire wrote a whole fanfic epistolary novel with super gay tropes. Like. What do you even do with these guys?? Even though age gap is usually really not my thing, here I'm kind of like, wow, age gap is the least of their worries!

Joan dying on the battle field is a fix it when compared to burning alive, but NOT FOR LOVE!

PREACH IT.

Various replies

[luzula]

Okay, I will gather up some replies. Also, am reading two 18th century books right now which I will eventually come back to report on...

1) cahn: Yes, my shirt is now finished except for the ruffles. You have prompted me to make a post about it, so check out the photos here.

2) mildred_of_midgard: I'm just using the dictation on Microsoft Word, which does well enough for writing up emails and comments. But no, I don't imagine you could use it for coding!

Re: loyalty kink, that can definitely appeal to me! And I am quite fond of the comrades in arms vibe, which has love and duty aligned.

Re: military history, I enjoy this blog, which has a wide range of military history stuff along with other interesting history. for example, there was a recent series on the history of fortifications.

I guess what I’ve found interesting when reading about the military history of the '45 is trying to understand how the outcome is influenced by various factors: weaponry, logistics, money, allies, training, supply, the tactical and strategic decisions made by various people, intelligence, propaganda, prior social networks before the war, etc etc.

3) selenak: Re: Margaret/Laudomia. Yes, I think Heather Rose Jones is coming at it from a perspective of exploring what might have been! Fiction, as you say, rather than a biography where you need to have supporting evidence…

Re: Various replies

[cahn]

Excellent, I'm glad you linked to your post here because somehow I totally missed it?? (I think I've been missing a lot lately in general.)

The Road Not Taken - Frank McLynn

[luzula]

So, I have read the 18th century chapters in frank mclynn’s The Road not Taken: how Britain narrowly missed a revolution 1381-1926. The reason I read it is because McLynn is the author of what seems to be the definitive biography of BPC. I don't think I'm actually going to read that book, but I thought I could get the gist of his opinions if I read the chapter on the 45 in this other book…

Sorry again for the poor spelling etc, since I'm dictating to spare my hands.

there's nothing new for me about the actual course of the war, but I learned two new things about the economics of the period which I'm really surprised I haven't come across elsewhere. Why has no one said this before? the first is that the anti Catholic feeling in Britain had (among other things) an economic basis. The so called Abbey lands were taken from the Catholic Church, and the owners of that land were afraid that if the country became Catholic again, then these lands would be taken from them, Even in the 18th century. This was a third of britain’s land! Of course it had changed hands a lot of times since then, and now often belonged to various members of the aristocracy. the jacobites from James II onwards never intended to give that land back to the Catholic Church, but it was used as a Whig scare tactic against them.

So the second thing I learned is about the importance of britain's national debt. Apparently William of orange needed a lot of money for his wars, and the monarchs after that borrowed too. There was a whole system of financial capitalism set in place after 1688, like the Bank of England and the South sea company. The Whigs were very worried that if James II or BPC ended up on the throne, they would repudiate the national debt since it had been pledged by illegitimate monarchs (from the jacobite POV). obviously the debt holders were rich and powerful people, allied with the Whigs or Whig politicians themselves. this is the primary reason for the stock market crashes connected with jacobite attempts. And unlike the situation with the Abbey lands, James III or BPC might very well have done that. Many of James III’s advisors apparently counseled him to do so. BPC equivocated in 1745, and it's unclear what he would have done if he had won. Obviously it would have been good for state finances, but bad for (relations with) the debt holders including the Dutch. it would also have allowed James III/BPC to lower the high taxes, which was a major jacobite criticism of the whigs, and conciliate the people on which the taxes fell.

McLynn agrees with Szechi about the increasing radicalism of jacobite politics and how far it had come from the divine right of James II.

Re: The Road Not Taken - Frank McLynn

[mildred_of_midgard]

These were both very interesting, thank you! I had probably run across both facts in my reading but they didn't stick, because politics weren't my main interest.

McLynn is the author of what seems to be the definitive biography of BPC.

I definitely read this at least once, but I wasn't critically assessing different authors in those days (mostly just getting outraged if I found mistakes or "mistakes"), so I can't tell you what I thought of it, alas.

Catherine and Voltaire

[cahn]

I must admit I've stopped reading Massie for the time being, because right at this moment I'm sort of very ambivalent about reading about Russian ruthless people in power, even if they were also part of the Enlightenment. I realize that this is actually not a particularly useful reaction on my part (and in fact I feel like I have at least a tiny bit more historical context for current events because of reading Massie) but, well. I imagine my brain will figure it out eventually. (In the meantime maybe I'll start on Zweig instead, and I do have the sample chapter of Stollberg-Rilinger...)

However! Before I stopped reading, I did read the chapter about Voltaire and Catherine and that was hilarious, and I've been meaning to talk a little about that.

[Voltaire was] already a millionaire from his writing

You know, this made me realize that I actually don't know how much he made from his writing, but I was certainly under the impression from Orieux that his millions came mostly from financial shadiness dealings more than best-selling authorship.

At the age of eighty, [Voltaire] rose early on a May morning and climbed a hill with a friend to see the sunrise. At the top, overwhelmed by the magnificent panorama of red and gold, he kneeled and said, "Oh mighty God, I believe." Then, standing up, he said to his friend, "As to Monsieur the son and Madame his mother, that is another matter!"

I find this story really endearing <3

On Calas: eventually, Jean Calas was posthumously exonerated and his reputation rehabilitated.

But! But! You totally buried the lede there (if maybe not so much as with Fritz)! selenak explained so well why this was important, that before him this wasn't even something that was considered as possible, and you didn't even mention any of that!

On Mme Denis: Voltaire's relationsihp with Mme Denis was straightforward. He concealed nothing; she was his mistress; he called her "my beloved."

Ummmmm idk those Pamela letters are reeeeally written in such a way to emphasize the "niece" part of it and not so much the "mistress" part of it. I'm just saying. (There is no Emilie, which makes sense as this is all after Emilie died, but :( )

That's all in the Voltaire background. Now onto his relationship with Catherine (though Massie doesn't say anything about the Turks or about war chariots, as far as I can tell):

He addressed her as "the Semiramis of the North"

I know I've seen the "Semiramis" bit in salon before, but really? If so, I'm dying :D Fritz isn't the only one to be thrifty!

After Diderot visits Catherine, apparently Voltaire sends her a letter (dated August 9, 1774) that goes like this:

Madame:
I am positively in disgrace at your court. Your Imperial Majesty has jilted me for Diderot, or for Grimm, or for some other favorite. .. I am trying to find crimes I have committed that would justify your indifference. I see that indeed there is no passion that does not end. This thought would cause me to die of chagrin, were I not already so near to dying of old age.

I am dying, you guys. VOLTAIRE.
This letter, alas, isn't on fr.wikisource.org (it's later than what they have) but I did a bit of digging and found it here.
... oh wow, google translate is giving me this other great bit in the part that Massie glossed:

I also accuse myself of having bored you by means of a Frenchman whose name I have forgotten, who boasted of running to Petersburg to be useful to your Majesty and who was doubtless very useless.

(I assume he's talking about Diderot here?? Despite having name-checked him earlier in the letter??)

Re: Catherine and Voltaire

[selenak]

I'm sort of very ambivalent about reading about Russian ruthless people in power

I hear and understand you. If it helps: Catherine, I think, would consider the current one a very unworthy Czar, not because she'd object to him wanting Ukraine, of course, but because of the economy-wrecking and the alliances-burning. Say what you want about Catherine, but she was careful not to leave Russia without allies (and I don't mean vassals like Belarus) and set against most of the world. But yeah, best take a break from the Massie for a while (how far did you get with Peter, btw?) and switch to Zweig.

I was certainly under the impression from Orieux that his millions came mostly from financial shadiness dealings more than best-selling authorship.

That would be the right impression. (If you look up my Orieux write-up at rheinsberg, there's a subsection where Voltaire's money comes from.) Even as a bestselling author, you could never have made the kind of money, or much money at all, at a time where copyright was not really a thing, and there were illegal copy prints and sequels to any bestselling thing all over the place. Voltaire uses the "this was printed without my authorisation" excuse to keep out of prison a couple of times, true, but he really also was reprinted and copied a lot, like all popular authors. (Oh, and just think of all the handwritten Pucelle copies whenever someone got a hold of the manuscript!) So if Massie thinks Voltaire's money came from his writings, he clearly doesn't know much about a) Voltaire and b) the author business in the 18th century.

(Sidenote: otoh, where you could make some money as an author were in the theatre through plays, provided your plays were successful. Because if your plays were hits, and you were a good bargainer, you could have arranged with the theatre in question to get a cut of the cash. That still wasn't money on a Voltaire level - for example, Beaumarchais' plays were doing very well, but he got his main income through his clock making and army supplying.)

I find this story really endearing <3

:) I hadn't heard it before, but it is, and very Voltaire.

But! But! You totally buried the lede there

He did. Mentioning the Calas affair without explaining what a big deal the postumous exonoration was is a bit like summing up "Rosa Parks got thrown out of a bus that time, but eventually, she was able to sit in busses wherevery she wanted".

Madame Denis: "Voltaire concealed nothing"? Rubbish. He concealed it so well that most people didn't catch on and all the 20th century biographies of Voltaire until the 1950s have him as swearing of sex altogether when he stopped having it with Émilie. I mean, you can say he was open about it in his letters to Madame Denis (that weren't the Pamela letters which he had doctored with an eye for posterity reading them), but, for example, I didn't have the impression Fritz ever realised. (You just know that if he had, he'd have brought it up when going on a "Voltaire is the worst!" outburst at some point.) Casanova and Boswell, both of whom loved spicy gossip, don't mention anything about it in their respective write-ups of meeting Voltaire AND Madame Denis. (And Casanova even had a brief fling with her at one point because of course he did.)

As we've discussed, Voltaire presumably was very aware that while uncle/niece was okay with you were a Habsburg or a Hohenzollern and married your niece, for normal citizens (and without a marriage) it was a criminal offense, and he had enough trouble with the law as it was. I seem to recall he once did ask a friend of his discreetly about how one might one go about such a marriage, but he certainly didn't say "btw, I'm thinking about me/Marie-Louise here".

Semiramis of the North - not only was Catherine called that by people other than Voltaire as well as him, Christina of Sweden had been called the same a century earlier. (Also "Minerva of the North". But definitely "Semiramis".) See also "Athens of the North", which at various times was used to compliment Christina for Stockholm, Sophie Charlotte for Berlin and Fritz for Berlin again. There are some obvious comparisons and phrases for literati to use with female monarchs encouraging the arts.

(There are also some obvious insults. See Lehndorff applying MESSALINA to several royal ladies!)

OMG, the Voltaire quotes are golden. The second one does sound like he means Diderot, though then again Catherine was trying to get as many literati and artists as she could, and I don't think Diderot was the only Frenchman of Voltaire's aquaintance to make it to St. Petersburg?

Agony Aunts (and Uncles)

[selenak]

Since FFAnon wonders about which characters in various fandoms are best (read: worst) suited for such a profession - advice columns, that is -, I can't help apply this to our lot. Especially since in some cases, we have canon on this! For what are the Marwitz letters but Fritz appointing himself as Advice Columnist to Heinrich in his first love affair? (And thus we know on one sane wants Fritz as Agony Uncle for their love life.) And we know that Voltaire's reply to Fritz anonymously asking:

"Dear Philosophe, I am in a high stress position, have experienced various setbacks - which were in no way my fault! -, the hostility towards me on a professional and personal level is almost universal, and in short, I'm seriously wondering whether I shouldn't go out Roman Style!"

would be:

"Don't do it. Your enemies of which you have deservedly a lot would rejoice and take it as proof they were right and you were wrong. Also, I'd miss you."

Moving on to Austria: Joseph would be as horrible/well suited to the job as Fritz in that they're both know-it-alls prone to sarcasm, BUT there's canon that in one particular case, he was an A plus Agony Aunt and accomplished the mission, i.e. Marie Antoinette and Louis and their sex problem. So.... keep Joseph away from advice columns except for a sideline as Marie Antoinette's agony uncle?

Wilhelmine would think she'd do a good job but regard it as beneath her dignity. In reality, she'd be way too high handed and judgey and thus as hilaribad for it as most of her family.

Mostly good at the job yet also entertaining with canon to back this up: Sophie/Sophia of Hannover. She'd write witty advice columns galore. Not necessarily correct ones (I mean, FW/SD was partly her idea), but definitely readable.

Incredibly readable but also incredibly bitchy: Lord Hervey's Dos and Don'ts for the Enterprising Gentleman. It turns out he has several socks writing extra insulting letters.

And then there's the FW Advice Column which goes something like this:

Q: Dear Father To His Men, I've lost my oldest son who yes, fucked up, but was repentant and also the law sentenced him to prison before the sentence was overruled. My wife and other kids can't stop crying, and I keep rereading his last letter. My profession means I have to work for the overrider. Should I retire? Pietus

A: Dear Pietus, pray - always a good way to cope with distress - and while you're at it, pray for your boss, too. Just imagine how distressed HE must feel? You don't want to grieve him any more, do you? Also, no quitting. And it's not your fault your son sucked.

Re: Agony Aunts (and Uncles)

[mildred_of_midgard]

(And thus we know on one sane wants Fritz as Agony Uncle for their love life.)

Oh god NOOOO loool.

FW2: Fritz is an Agony-Inducing Uncle!!

"Don't do it. Your enemies of which you have deservedly a lot would rejoice and take it as proof they were right and you were wrong. Also, I'd miss you."

Laughing out loud in real life. Never change, Fritz and Voltaire. You deserve each other (and each other's advice).

But "Philosophe" is the perfect name for his column!

Joseph would be as horrible/well suited to the job as Fritz in that they're both know-it-alls prone to sarcasm, BUT there's canon that in one particular case, he was an A plus Agony Aunt and accomplished the mission

Too true. But Fritz wishes to protest:

Fritz: I knew Cocceji was no damn good for Barbarina! And I told the Swedes they'd regret Ulrike, and what did she do but try to stage a coup on them? For that matter, did Heinrich/Marwitz last? It did not. All this proves is that people who don't take my advice live to regret it!

(He probably did have an STD, too. Fritz is an expert in STDs!)

Wilhelmine would think she'd do a good job but regard it as beneath her dignity. In reality, she'd be way too high handed and judgey and thus as hilaribad for it as most of her family.

SO TRUE. Oh, Wilhelmine.

Incredibly readable but also incredibly bitchy: Lord Hervey's Dos and Don'ts for the Enterprising Gentleman. It turns out he has several socks writing extra insulting letters.

This is all very true! I love the title of his column, too!

FW: Oh, god. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. "Pray for your boss"--I died. FW!!

These are all so great, I'm still laughing!

Émilie fandom exhibit

[selenak]

Someting a little cheering in dark times - I've been meaning to post this, it's a French Rokoko painting in one of our main Munich museums, and it shows a salonnière reading Newton, specifically, Émilie's translation:

Re: Émilie fandom exhibit

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, how nice! YOU GO, ÉMILIE! You're the best!

one of our main Munich museums

Alte Pinakothek? Or another one?

Zweig - first bit

[cahn]

Sooooo I started reading the Marie Antoinette biography. I'm not very far in yet but I had to pause and marvel at just how into his theory of sex Zweig is. I mean, I admire him for having the guts to talk about it, but, like, he really wants everything to be about Louis XVI's impotence, even all the things about his personality that... seem to have been the case before he even met MA?? I went back and looked at the notes from when Mildred read it, and Selena's note:

When the biography came out, Feuchtwanger snarked that if you believe Stefan Zweig, the French Revolution would not have happened if only teen Louis XVI had been able to ejaculate properly.

seems spot on, lol!

Anyway... I didn't think I was going to say this but OKAY, mildred, you were right, I'm glad I read Goldstone because -- and I didn't think I was going to say that I agreed with her about anything either -- on Louis XVI I think she's right, I think Louis being on the spectrum is a much better explanation for all of his issues, including at least some of the sex difficulties, than the sex difficulties being an explanation for everything. Correlation is not causation!

(Zweig does seem to gloss over many of the things Goldstone mentioned in support of the ASD hypothesis, like Louis's Really Very Boring Diary, but there are enough clues that I think I believe most of what Goldstone says -- like, Zweig does mention that Louis's only entry on the day he met MA was "Rien," corresponding to not having hunted anything that day (well, according to Goldstone), and Zweig certainly records Louis as being somewhat baffled by what he was supposed to do with MA.)

Re: Zweig - first bit

[selenak]

marvel at just how into his theory of sex Zweig is

Well, to be fair, writing about sex - and Freudianism - was still new and exciting back then, and in Austria certainly daring. I mean, everything had been explicit in the 18th century, but in the 19th century, it broadly applied that women were legless angels, as one writer once snarked, and men had "urges" which could not be discussed in polite society. Also, for Zweig specifically, one can add Freud wasn't a theory - he was literally a patient of Sigmund Freud. (His chief competitor in the biographie romancee genre, Emil Ludwig, after his death was tasteless enough to argue this proves Freud is rubbish because he wasn't able to save Zweig from suicide. Which, well. There are about a thousand things you can critisze Freud for, but being unable to keep a man who is on another continent when there's a world war and a genocide going on from which they are both refugees and are aware not all of their friends and families made it out alive is really not one of them.)

I think Louis being on the spectrum is a much better explanation for all of his issues, including at least some of the sex difficulties, than the sex difficulties being an explanation for everything. Correlation is not causation!

I think long distance diagnosis is a problem in either case (Goldstone and Zweig), but yes, the sex difficulties being a symptom rather than the cause from today's perspective sounds more plausible. This said, it's also worth pointing out that the social conditions around Louis (all the etiquette around the heir of the French throne) were enough to intimidate and inhibit any child and teenager without a solid sense of self and reliable sources of affection. I mean: good old Louis XIV, who was the creator of the system for the major part, was also the only French King able to worth with it, and he might have had a childhood involving sort of civil war on the outside, but he had two steady parental figures who showed him affection and approval (his mother, Queen Anne, and Mazarin), and a not much younger brother (and Philippe might have been a terrible husband, but he and Louis seem to have been close as kids) to share that extraordinary condition with.

Colonel John O'Sullivan's memoirs

[luzula]

I decided to check out some primary sources for the '45. There are a fair number online, but of course I decided that I wanted to read Colonel John O'Sullivan's memoirs, published in 1938 as 1745 and After, edited by Alistair and Henrietta Tayler. This was not available at any Scandinavian library, and I could only find one copy for sale, which I bought for *mumblety* dollars.

It has a very good introduction, which assumes you already know a lot about the historical period and the people involved. So it was perfect for me, as it contained new-to-me information. O'Sullivan was one of the men who accompanied BPC from France, one of the disliked Irish coterie, in the eyes of many of BPC's Scots followers. But he was an experienced military officer, who had been aide-de-camp to a French Marshal and often performed that job himself because the Marshal spent a lot of time drunk. So he was much more use than most of BPC's companions. Duffy has a lot of respect for him. O'Sullivan and Lord George Murray had a mutual hate-on for each other, so reading this book one does not get a very good impression of Lord George. I'm sure the same would be true in reverse if I were to read Lord George's memoirs, and hello I'm so get your Internet as far as yeah namely italics your bra yeah [I left this hilarious bit in, which happened when I started having a Swedish conversation in the middle of my dictation]. Anyway, one would probably have to read more primary sources in order to judge them both more clearly.

As for the actual memoirs, I enjoyed them a lot! I've never read so unpolished an 18th century text before. O'Sullivan had an erratic grasp on spelling and was certainly no stylist, so the sentences are far more similar to today's writing (and, presumably, the way people spoke back then) than the more convoluted and stylized writing of the 18th century.

Here's a sample: 'Some people were for leaving no garrison, at all, wch wou'd be the most unreasonable thing in the world, for we had several rivers to passe, & were not sure to find them foardable; if they were not, Cimberland cou'd not passe the river yt runs by Carlille either, he cou'd not passe by the bridge being under the lash of the Castle, so yt he'd be obliged to passe by Brampton wch wou'd alwaise give us two days march of 'um; so in all respects, it was better to sacrifise a party then the whole, as it is practiced on like occassions.' A very interesting passage besides, as it explains the reasoning behind the suicide mission of the garrison left behind in Carlisle.

He always writes yt for that, which I've never seen before. He familiarly writes Archy for Lochiel's brother Archibald Cameron, most often called Dr Cameron in period sources. And it's interesting how his spelling reveals pronunciation, as when he writes Reven for Ruthven, and Camel(!) for Campbell. There are also various French-isms, such as zelle for zeal.

O'Sullivan always writes positively/admiringly about BPC, which can partly be explained by the fact that his narrative was commissioned by James III, but also I do think he was sincerely fond of him. Here's a section that throws light on other narratives: BPC is sometimes depicted as having had, at Culloden, a delusional belief in the strength of his own army and that his Highlanders would always win against the English etc. But here is O'Sullivan's take on it: 'Not the least concern appear'd on his face, he has yt talent superiorly, in the greatest concern or denger, its then he appears most chearful & harty, wch is very essential for a Prince or a General, yt incourages very much the army, for every body examins them on those occasions. [Examples of him saying things like Go on my Lads, the day will be ours & we'll want for nothing after.] This & the like discource heartened very much our men, tho' the Prince in the bottom had no great hopes.' Regardless of whether it did or didn't encourage the men, this seems a much likelier scenario than BPC not realizing what their chances were. He obviously had his flaws, but he wasn't that stupid.

If one wants to ship BPC with anyone, O'Sullivan isn't a bad choice, actually! There's a lot of loyalty and hurt/comfort potential in the pairing. (As for BPC:s actual lover during the '45--I just want to tell Clementina Walkinshaw to run…) There's a bit of an age gap, though: BPC is 25 and O'Sullivan 45.

Anyway, I give you O'Sullivan's parting from BPC, when they're on the run after Culloden (he writes of himself in the third person):

'The Prince calls Sullivan a side & tels him, yt he's afeared yt he cou'd never follow him in the mountains, & besides, as he has not highland Cloaths, yt that may discover the Prince, but 'sr,' says Sullivan, I have followed yu until now, & it is not in the most critical & dangerouse moment, yt Il quit yu, what wou'd the world think of it? Never mind what the world thinks, no body knows better than I do, the services yu have rendred me, & no body can suspect your fidellity & attachemt after the proofs yu have given me of them. [BPC explains his plans and gives instructions.] So God be wth you.'

'Sullivan cant containe, he burst out a crying to quit the Prince & to see the danger & misery he was exposed to; the Prince embrasses him, & holds him in his arms for a quarter of an hour, Sullivan talking to him as much as his tears & his sobs cou'd permit him, praying him for God sake, if he had the misfortune to fall in the enemis hands never to own what he was.'

There are other contemporary accounts saying things like 'The Prince's parting from Sullivan was like tearing the heart from the body.' Also a charming hurt/comfort passage where Sullivan is sick and BPC 'has no thought but for Sullivan', 'remains continually by him', and then later shoots a bird and makes him chicken soup from scratch. Awww.

Well, I am hardly likely to start writing fic about them, but obviously I could not pass this slash fodder by without mentioning it.

Re: Colonel John O'Sullivan's memoirs

[selenak]

The memoirs sound captivating indeed. The third person writing is interesting, given that Lord Hervey does that, too, in his memoirs, which when I read them I assumed to be a personal choice, but maybe it was a custom among the English speaking/writing mid 18th century memoirists? (By contrast, the German-French - i.e. by Germans, written in French - memoirs from the same era or slightly earlier I knew are written in the first person.)

O'Sullivan and Lord George Murray had a mutual hate-on for each other, so reading this book one does not get a very good impression of Lord George.

Without knowing anything about their beyond what you've told us, this sounds familiar from memoirs, diaries and letters reading. (I'm thinking Lehndorff and each and every single one of one of Heinrich's boyfriends. Some of whom were indeed all he accused them of being, but not all, and he did have an obvious bias.)

Spelling: I sympathize, from reading stuff like King Friedrich Wilhelm's last will or letters for Mildred, all written in badly spelled and grammatically uncertain Rokoko German. The advantage for me of those contemporaries writing in French is that their letters and other documents usually are to be found in a modern German translation. Otoh, I noticed that for English written 18th century books like the earlier mentioned Hervey memoirs, Lady Mary's letters, or Boswell's diaries, the spelling seems to be pretty much modern standard, leaving historic pecularities like 'Tis aside. Now this could be because the modern editors of Hervey, Boswell and Lady Mary updated their original spellings, but then there are the Andrew Mitchell papers, which were edited and published just a century later by a mid-Victorian and also use pretty much the spelling and grammer still used today. Conclusion: English standardized earlier than German.

As for BPC:s actual lover during the '45--I just want to tell Clementina Walkinshaw to run…

Having listened to The Stuarts recently, I do, too. But he and O'Sullivan definitely sound slash worthy.

A little more on Zweig

[cahn]

I took a break for Hugo reading, so it's going kind of glacially, but maybe will pick up :)

A couple of things:

-boy, I feel like Zweig seems very invested in his narrative that all of MT's kids were just ne'er-do-wells. This seems sort of especially telling when it comes to Joseph -- I mean, he has a lot of critiques of Joseph that I can't argue with (he takes pains to mention that Joseph likes Fritz, lol) but he'll also go off and say things like "Joseph, a man of fickle and restless disposition," and I'm like... well... (That he is "a reformer in a hurry," which he says right afterwards, I suppose I can't argue with :) )

-and then there are things like "Louis [XVI] was not virile enough to love; his heart was too cold." I guess I did say that I wanted more opinionated biographers like Orieux! And, like, I don't even disagree with his actual point, which is that sexual passion was probably lacking in their marriage even after the big issues got fixed, but what a way to phrase it!

-Mildred, I'm really impressed you read this in German! It's very readable and compelling, but the reading level at least of the English translation is rather higher than Orieux -- Zweig uses much longer sentences and much more complex sentences than Orieux ever did. (Said another way, I could see trying to read Orieux in French if I had a lot more time, but I wouldn't even attempt Zweig in French at this point.) As you had thought, I'm coming around to the idea that it might be Orieux being French and Zweig being German, although I also think there is a certain kind of flowery writing that depends on long complex sentences, and a certain kind of writing that is attractive through its simplicity, and different authors do different types.

Re: A little more on Zweig

[selenak]

I feel like Zweig seems very invested in his narrative that all of MT's kids were just ne'er-do-wells.

consider the time of writing here. Zweig was part of a generation that was raised and went to school in the fading Austrian Empire, where nationalism and uncriticial Habsburg worship contributed majorly to WWI (just as uncritical Hohenzollern worship and nationalism did in Germany). Zweig was also one of the very few anti-war literati from the get go in WWI, and a life long pacifist as the result of the WWI horrors. Just like a century plus of Fritz worship plus 20th century history led to a much more critical evaluation in the 20th, there was a corresponding backlash in Austria. Not to mention that Zweig's generation was the first to have unlimited access to the state archives (as opposed to previous times, when historians like Arneth did but not everyone else who wanted it). So when you're raised on a super rosy picture of the Habsburgs, have seen that kind of uncritical glorification lead to hell and then get exposed to the family papers....

Language: Zweig writes beautiful German, that's why I'm very glad Mildred read it in the original. Yes, longer sentences, but believe me, they just flow of the tongue if you read them. How much that's reproducable in English, I don't know, not having read the English translation.

Louis XIV gossip

[mildred_of_midgard]

Since my current German reading is a bio of Louis XIV, some gossip to pass on.

1. Louis is playing dice at a party. He makes a throw. A debate ensues as to whether it's a legal throw. Louis calls over the Comte de Gramont, who arranged the feast, to judge.

Gramont: Sire, you're the one who's wrong.
Louis: But how can you say that when I haven't even told you what the question is yet?
Gramont: Don't you see that if there were even the slightest doubt, everyone would have given in by now?

I applaud his reasoning! And his truth-telling-to-power, even on something as minor as this.

2. Continuing with the theme of "you couldn't pay me to live in the past," Louis had an operation to remove several of his decayed teeth. Part of his jaw and his gum/palate ended up being removed too. He ended up with a tunnel between his mouth and nose that shouldn't have been there.

This had the effect that when he swallowed wine, it was prone to coming out his nose. And when he ate food, particles would get stuck in this inaccessible tunnel, where it would rot, causing him to have truly bad breath.

And this is the medical care of the Sun King!

3. Remember when McKay told us that Liselotte was the only one who ever "accused" Eugene of Savoy of being gay, and only after she was mad at him for defeating France? Schultz cites the Brandenburg envoy, Ezechiel Spanheim, writing back home about Eugene before Eugene even left France:

It is certain that there is no bigger sodomite in France than him, and that is a bad beginning for a young prince, to begin his life with the worst dissolutions.

Wikipedia tells me that when envoy in Paris, he maintained close contact with the daughter of the Palatinate Elector, Liselotte von der Pfalz, married Duchess of Orléans, whom he knew well from Heidelberg and who introduced him to her brother-in-law Louis XIV . Maybe she was his source!

(Schultz's source is of course a 2005 modern biographer who I see is also a novelist, but hey, a quote from an envoy is at least somewhat likely to be genuine.)

Also in this paragraph: [Eugene] let himself be lured into the famous homosexual circle "Cabanes du temple", which Monsieur [gay Philippe] had formed around himself and to which the nobles Commercy, Vaudemont, and Conti belonged.

Unfortunately, I can't find anything for "cabanes du temple" or variations when googling, and there is no source for this claim. (Though given all the ibids in this section, it's probably the same 2005 bio.) selenak?

4. Lots of trouble with fountains. Lots and lots of trouble with fountains. Attempts to divert entire rivers to Versailles. Still no luck. The fountains only go off at scheduled times to impress important visitors, sometimes not even then. The water does what no courtier would dare to: fail to be at Louis's disposal at all times.

Fritz: I feel your pain.

Re: Louis XIV gossip

[selenak]

Should you be in the market for readable Louis XIV books written in English, I can reccommend Antonia Fraser's "Love and Louis XIV". I'm not sure I always buy her arguments - for example, "Athenais would never because she was a faithful Catholic!" re: Madame de Montespan's having been a client of poisoner La Voisin's, or "no way Anne of Austria (cahn, Louis' mother) would have had a decades long affair with Mazarin, she was a faithful Catholic!" - but she writes very entertainingly, and does make it clear statements like these are her opinions, i.e. she doesn't do the thing like Nancy Goldstone stating Axel von Fersen could have been the bio dad of MA's last two children and therafter treating this as proven fact.


And this is the medical care of the Sun King!

Yikes. Not entirely surprised, though, since I was familiar with the story of his long and painful dying largely due to medical incompentence. (Though his age and state didn't help.)

Remember when McKay told us that Liselotte was the only one who ever "accused" Eugene of Savoy of being gay, and only after she was mad at him for defeating France? Schultz cites the Brandenburg envoy, Ezechiel Spanheim, writing back home about Eugene before Eugene even left France

Ha. Yet again we see the result of biographers copying each other instead of doing primary sources research with the "the only one who ever said this was Liselotte!" statement. Reminds me of "only Voltaire ever accused Fritz of gayness!" from writers as late as Charlotte Panglatz, all the "she cried but she took" quotes, de Ligne's Eugene RPF getting quoted in Eugene's English wiki entry as a genuine memoirs quote, etc., etc. Oh, and "FW would never!" re: burying Gundling in a wine barrel also being an argument in some current day publications when the publication of Disney!Envoy Stratemann's letters in the late 19th century, including a report on Gundling's funeral, had already proven this wrong, and then in the 20th century there was the added testimony of the pastors once their letters were discovered. And you can understand the mechanism: if you, the writer, find several biographies stating something - in this case "only Liselotte...", you take it as fact and don't wonder whether they've copied from each other.

At any rate, congrats on Schultz and you re: finding Ezechiel Spanheim, proving again that envoy reports are where it's at! Following your wiki link, I see Spanheim was a study buddy of Liselotte's father.

Maybe she was his source!

Could be, or the reverse, since he would have been able to go to all-male outings she did not. I note he was present at James II' coronation in London and later had a longer stint there when F1 was King of Prussia, i.e. in the William & Mary era, as well, which reminds me that Liselotte includes some gossip about William in her letters, too. However, even if she was his primary or only source on young Eugene, she hardly has a motive for making up stuff about the sexual inclinations of a young minor product of the French nobility whom Louis refuses to give a job to and who isn't her husband's fave, either. This is long before Eugene defeats anyone on the battlefield, and if Spanheim mentions it in his report from Versailles, he's not writing with the benefit of hindsight. Speaking of Louis not giving Eugene a job, your question about the "cabanes du temple" made me google myself, and I came up with a very article about the Chevalier du Lorraine, which includes among other things this quote from memoirist Primi Visconti:

Primi Visconti relates a good example, if genuine, of how gender and sexuality could have figured in the decisions made regarding court placement and offices. Châtillon’s elder brother was a member of the royal bodyguard, and used his proximity to plead before the king how unfair he thought it was that his career (as the elder son) had not been advanced in the service of the king, while that of his younger brother had in the service of Monsieur. The king replied, “One makes his fortune in my brother’s service by certain means which would make one lose favour if employed in mine”.

=> Maybe Louis' job refusal wasn't just because of lingering bad feeling re: Eugene's mother.

Lots of trouble with fountains. Lots and lots of trouble with fountains. (...)
Fritz: I feel your pain.

Hannover cousins, thinking of the spectacular fountains at Herrenhausen: We don't.
Wilhelmine, thinking about the functioning fountain at the Eremitage: *stays tactfully silent*

Pompadour gossip

[mildred_of_midgard]

Out with Louis XIV, in with Madame de Pompadour! I.e. I have started a new biography, though I'm only a few pages in because of SLEEEEEP. (WHY is it not a thing, I ask you.)

Anyway, even the first ten pages have yielded up two gems already.

1. Louis XV and Pompadour have a, not exactly meet-cute, because they've technically met already, but a hookup-cute.

There's a masked ball to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin to the Spanish Infanta (daughter of Philip "the Frog" V and Isabella Farnese).

Louis comes dressed as a TREE. I kid you not. He and seven other courtiers are dressed as yew trees, thus forcing me to second-guess my German vocabulary. ("I could have sworn that meant 'yew'...*google*...yep, it means yew. Huh.")

One of the ladies, trying to guess which tree is the king, goes into all out reverence mode to one of the trees, only to find out that it wasn't the king. Which meant she committed a faux-pas, which is a catastrophe that she will never forgive.

Versailles.

But meanwhile, a different tree is talking to Madame de Pompadour, and that tree really is the king. His latest maitresse en titre has recently died, and he's on the market. He and Pompadour agree to hook up later secretly at her place. He's already conveniently arranged for her husband to be out of town, so no worries there. Rank hath its privileges.

So after the masked ball, Louis changes into I'm-totally-a-normal-person, nothing-to-see-here clothes, and heads with a courtier and some clothes out onto the streets where everyone is partying.

But it's extremely crowded and also a long way to walk for an incognito monarch, so Louis tells the courtier, who's got the purse, to take out a Louis d'or and offer it to the next carriage driver who comes along.

But the courtier, who's probably thinking, "This is why you don't let the monarch carry the purse, they will blow their cover, good lord," goes, "No, if you go waving around a gold louis d'or in public, everyone will know you're the king." And he takes out a single ecu, which I imagine is like not asking the convenience store cashier to break your $100 for a pack of chewing gum.

:P

Fritz: I feel your incognito pain.

Re: Pompadour gossip

[selenak]

If we‘re talking of faux-pas with masked royalty (or lack of same), well, at least it wasn‘t as fateful to history as Henry VIII/Anne of Cleves. Where in recent decades both Tudor fiction and Tudor biographies have concluded that since other than Henry, who only insisted on Anne of Cleves‘ lack of beauty when he wanted to get rid of her, no one found her objectionable, the true problem was more what happened when she arrived on English shores - Henry wanted to play out a romantic masque the way he had done as a young man with his first wife, so he didn‘t await her arrival but wanted to surprise her en route. Only Anne of Cleves, as a foreigner, unlike everyone else really did not recognize the King, so when a middle-aged fat guy showed up unceremoniously bursting into her room and trying to kiss her, she made no secret of her disgust and pushed him back. And suddenly Henry was confronted with something which had not happened to him, ever: getting an honest reaction of how a woman not knowing who he was would respond to him. He didn‘t like it one bit. No wonder he felt unable to have sex with her thereafter.

(Additionally, there was the problem that until this fourth marriage, Henry, unlike most princes of his era or most eras, had known all three of his previous wives for years before marrying them, he had had the opportunity to fall in love with them, and he had chosen each of the three, and yes, that includes the first marriage with Katherine of Aragon. (Her marriage with his brother had been arranged. Young Henry, otoh, very much wanted to marry her.) The Anne of Cleves marriage was his first experience with marriage to a stranger which was the standard for most royalty.)

LOL about incognito kings and their inability to maintain their cover when it comes to Louis XV and Fritz, though.

Lehndorff: Heinrich maintained his cover when pretending to be my cousin from the countryside at his 30th birthday, though! That was the time we spent together which ended in my apartment with the phosphor inscription on my wallpaper. We were ever so discreet!

Re: Yew Tree costume, I bet a rokoko yew tree was nothing like anything District 12 would have worn at the Hunger Games, though….

Reading rec question

[mildred_of_midgard]

So I need to hold off on the 18th century for a while, since as you can see, Pompadour predictably made me both google things like "How are these Châtelets related?" and also find a lot I wanted to share, neither of which is improving my German reading speed. :P

So, selenak, are you able to rec or anti-rec Sabine Appel as an author? She's got a bio of Catherine de Medici that I'm eyeing, to go with my Schultz bio of Henri IV. If you can't say either way, I'll give her a try and report back. If she's to be avoided, then not to worry, I have plenty of other reading material!

Re: Reading rec question

[selenak]

Sabine Appel: sorry, no, I haven't read anything of hers yet.

Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[selenak]

Mostly for luzula, a few Stuarts and Jacobites related quotes from Antonia Fraser's Louis XIV book.


Mary Beatrice, aka James II' second wife:

In 1673, at the age of fifteen, she found herself matched to an ageing and not particularly prepossessing prince twenty-five years her senior. James, then Duke of York, had been a dashing soldier in his youth, but somehow the Stuarts (those that kept their heads) did not improve with age. He was also a notorious roué like his brother Charles, but without the charm that enabled the Merry Monarch to carry these things off: so ugly were his mistresses that Charles once suggested they had been imposed upon him by his confessors.

Fast forward years and nine pregnancies and then a live born son later, Mary Beatrice ends up French exile before her husband does and immediately impreses everyone, for not only is she beautiful, but:

Furthermore, this Queen was cosmopolitan, speaking and writing excellent French as well as Italian and English, and enough Latin to read from the scriptures in that language. Above all, Mary Beatrice was naturally and sincerely devout. (...)n Mary Beatrice was greeted on 6 January at Versailles by Louis XIV and given all honoours. She was then escorted to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, her new home by kind permission of the King, who also endowed the household generously and provided a lavish pension. Four days later Madame de Sevigné was in ecstasy over the court's newest royal acquisition, haling her for her 'distinguished bearing and her quick wit'. (...) The refugee Queen certainly understood the manners of Versailles. When Louis XIV fondled the six-month-old Prince of Wales, the Queen remarked that hitherto she had envied her inty son's good fortune in knowing nothing of the calamities that beset him, but now 'I pity him because he is also unaware of Your Majesty's caresses and kindesses.'

Then her husband arrives. Alas, James does now wow Versailles the same way. (Antonia Fraser points out that it was also a question of age; James was fifty-five, this was his second (and final) full exile, not counting the shorter ones, and he was set in his ways. Nevertheless, James and Mary Beatrice are integrated in Versailles court life, and because Mary Beatrice never flirts with Louis, she's befriended by Madame de Maintenon. James makes an attempt to recapture his throne via Ireland, and Louis' way of wishing him success is very... Louis...

Encouraged by King Louis XIV, who provided a small force of French troops and French officers, King James left for Ireland in the spring of 1689. His plan was to recover his English throne through the bakc door of Ireland. Louis' farewell to his cousin (...): 'I hope, Monsieur, never to see you again. Nevertheless if fortune so wishes it that we meet again, you will find me the same as you have always found me.'

James gets trounced by William in Ireland, so Louis did indeed see him again. re: the question as to whether the French should have supported James (and his son, and his grandson) more than they did, Antonia Fraser makes an interesting point: Louis simultanously was busy ramsacking the Palatinate and making enemies out of (previous) admirers in the German states, and creating a European situation where eventually (almost) everyone would ally themselves against him, most importantly England and the Habsburgs as embodied by Marlborough and Eugene. If Louis back in the day had left the Palatinate well enough alone and had instead thrown all his forces behind James instead of just some minor ones, he might have spared himself this situation since instead England (ruled by James) would have been his grateful ally.

Again: this is Fraser's opinion. Yours truly has to wonder that even if James had reconquered Britain from William via Ireland and with the help of French troops - would he have been able to hold it? He'd have proven everyone's fears about his Catholicism (i.e. that he'd team up with Louis the fundamentalist and his troops) right and would not have been seen as a romantic exiled King, but as a puppet of the French 900 pounds gorilla of continental politics, and his government a foreign occupation.

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[luzula]

so ugly were his mistresses

See, this is the sort of thing I don't like in history books. It's one thing to say "at the time, Charles joked about his mistresses being ugly", but the mistresses didn't deserve getting judged by the author... (Incidentally, I was just checking something on Wikipedia, and saw that they credit the "mistresses as penance" remark to someone called Gilbert Burnet and not Charles).

Anyway, thanks for the details! Yes, I read a bit about Mary Beatrice in one of the Szechi books I previously reported on, which describes her as being a canny politician after James II died, in her efforts to get French support for James III.

Yeah, I agree about James II coming back probably being...not that great for Britain. James III might've been better, I think, because he had to make all sorts of concessions to get support and the balance of power would have shifted in favour of Parliament.

[selenak]

Trivia observation, brought to you by my repeated visits of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (I can do there for free now): so, remember Harold Acton in Last of the Medici contemplating the portraits of the last Medici in the preface and blaming the Bourbon genetic influence for their decline ("the Bourbon had intruded")? Browsing through the Antonia Fraser take on Louis XIV again reminded me that she, otoh, has the Medici genetic contribution to Louis XIV, his brother Philippe and their cousin Charles II (all grandsons of Maria de' Medici) being responsible for their dark coloring (black eyes & hair and olive skin)?

...well, maybe they did get the mediterranian coloring from Grandma, but the Alte Pinakothek harbors all of Rubens small scale oil paintings of the Maria de' Medici cycle (the large scale final executions of are in the Louvre), and these paintings consistently depict Maria de' Medici as a blonde. The paintings showing her as a child, too. And Rubens knew her in person. Sure, she probably wore a wig in public more often than not as did everyone, but I would trust Peter Paul Rubens to know whether a woman is a blonde or not.

(Yes, that doesn't mean she can't have transmitted some genetic material prone to produce dark hair and black eyes, which the earlier Medici certainly displayed.)

Medici coloring

[mildred_of_midgard]

In a hurry, but have this gem from today's German reading (Schultz bio of Richelieu):

Im Louvre ging es wie in einem orientalischen Harem zu, denn Heinrich IV quartierte dort Gemahlin und Geliebte Tür an Tür ein--aus reiner Bequemlichkeit, um schnell von dem einen Bett in dasandere wechseln zu können. So kamen beide Frauen zeitgleich nieder, Maria von Medici mit dem Dauphin am 27. September 1601, Henriette d'Entragues ebenfalls mit einem Sohn am 4. November. Wie l'Estoile berichtet, hielt es der Vert galant in seiner eigenwilligen Galanterie für taktvoll, nicht nur seiner Geliebten zu sagen, daß ihr Sohn «viel schöner sei als der seiner Frau, den er als den Medici ähnlich bezeichnete, schwarz und fett wie jene» , sondern auch seine Gemahlin davon nicht ohne Kenntnis zu lassen, was zur Folge hatte, daß «die Königin sehr weinte»

St. Peter's burials

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ha, neat find!

My own trivia share is this: remember when we recently learned that the only three women buried in St. Peter's Basilica are Christina of Sweden, Matilda of Tuscany, and Clementina Sobieska, mother of Bonnie Prince Charlie?

Well, here I am reading along in my book on the investiture controversy (cahn, this is circa 1100), and according to the author, Heinrich IV's mother, the Empress Agnes, who tried to help reconcile Heinrich and Pope Gregory VII, was buried in St. Peter's.

Wikipedia, both English and German, agrees. German wiki even gives a source: Kaiserin Agnes (1043–1077). Quellenkritische Studien (Empress Agnes (1043-1077). Source Critical Studies.)

So I google this topic, and I find a few sources, like this one, claiming that there actually 6 documented women buried in St. Peter's: the three we know of, St. Petronella, Charlotte of Cyprus, and Agnesina Colonna Caetani.

None of whom is the Empress Agnes! So what gives? My first guess is that Agnes, being 11th century, was of course buried in the old St. Peter's, which was torn down to make the new one in the Renaissance, and many of the bodies didn't survive, or were moved elsewhere. (English wiki says she "is" buried there, but that's too much weight to put on a verb tense in a wiki article.) So maybe "only three women" or "only six women" means "only X women whose burials you can visit today in the new St. Peter's Basilica." But! German wiki also says that Urban VIII had Matilda of Tuscany brought to Rome in 1630, where she was the first woman buried in St. Peter's.

Now, again, maybe that's the first woman buried in the new St. Peter's. But symbolically, surely the honor of being buried in the same place was just as great before the building was torn down and rebuilt? It feels odd to disregard everything before that: how many other women were buried in the old St. Peter's who are being ignored?

selenak, can you think of something I'm missing here?

P.S. I do want to respond to your Pompadour comment, but...we'll see how German practice goes today.

[ETA: This was meant to be a reply to the Alte Pinakothek discovery, but since I switched topics anyway, I'll leave it as a top-level comment.]

Re: St. Peter's burials

[selenak]

No, I don't know anything more than you do. I see German wiki says nothing about her current state, it says "she was buried in the Petronella rotund of St. Peter's", which could indeed mean the body's remains didn't survive into the new St. Peter's.

BTw, reminder to cahn: Petronella was the most likely fictional daughter of St. Peter the apostle himself. Since Petronella's existence is entirely due to apocryphal legends, no one knows whose bones those were.

Howeve,r thinking about this further, I have a theory. It's a counter reformation PR coup on Pope Urban's part when he moves Matilda's earthly remains to Rome to claim she is the first. Consider: by this time, Agnes is obscure, not many people still remember who she was, and also: her husband deposed three popes and replaced them with his candidates. Her son duked famously duked it out with Pope Gregory throughout his life, and while he died excommunicated, Gegory died far from Rome and on the run. Her grandson also had a Pope on the run and forced a Roman coronation. Now, Agnes herself may have tried to reconcile her son with the Pope, and took holy orders in her later years, but she did not side with the Pope as clear cut as Matilda, who was utterly consistent in this, far more successful against the Emperor than most, and who hosted the high point (from a clerical pov) of the Heinrich IV/Gregory feuding, Heinrich having to humiliate himself at Canossa. (What most people forget is that he had Gregory on the run after that episode, which didn't settle anything.

And now we're in the 17th century where there's a brutal decades long religious war raging across the continent, which, however, has already bred stange allegiances (Cardinal Richelieu/Protestant Sweden), and if you, as Pope, want to remind people in power of anything, it's that SIDING WITH THE CHURCH IS RIGHT AND WOE IF YOU DON'T, whereas if you do side with the Church you get to lie near Peter himself and be honored through the centuries, which you do when honoring Matilda. "Second woman to be buried at St. Peter's", let alone "number X", just doesn't have the same ring as "first".

At least that's my theory!

Help with French names?

[luzula]

Hey, I need to construct names for two fictional French aristocrats, for a story. They are currently the Comtesse X and the Vicomte Y, but obviously this will not do. Can any of you help? I have a vague idea that I can construct them like Vicomte de [placename], so can I just look on French map and choose a spot and it will sound plausible?

Re: Help with French names?

[selenak]

As far as I know, you can, though bear in mind as with English nobility, a name consists of two names.

English Example:

George Gordon, Lord Byron.

French Examples:

Armand de Gramon, Comte de Guiche

Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse

In terms of fictional characters, it's worth pointing out that for example Athos, the Musketeer in Dumas' novels, is the Comte de la Fère, while his adopted son Raoul later is the Vicomte de Bragelonne, so if you have a Vicomte whose father is still alive, they might have different titles.

In general, I'd go by picking a popular French surname and combine it with a place name as the title, so, for example:

X Garnier, Vicomte de Peillon.

And for the first name, if needed, I'd pick something combined with "-Marie", because that's a very period French Catholic thing "Jean-Marie" being the easiest example, and immediately gives your character a historic flair.

The guy who was too tall for FW

[luzula]

I am currently reading some Swedish 18th century history, namely Linneaus’ travels in Lapland 1732, and came across a biographical footnote I felt sure that you guys would appreciate:

Daniel Cajanus (1703-1749): "The tall Finn", 2,47 m. Joined the Prussian king FW:s unit of tall soldiers. But since he was too tall even for that company, he left them, after FW had had his portrait painted. Then he traveled around the continent and let people look at him for money. Died in Haarlem, where he found sanctuary among the Mennonites.

Re: The guy who was too tall for FW

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wow! I didn't think there was such a thing. Source?

Backlog Reading - Wilhelmine and Fredersdorf

[felis]

I finally read Wilhelmine's Memoirs start to finish! From what Mildred and Cahn had been saying, I expected the second half to be a bit of a slog, but I have to say that I thought it was fine. Probably because I did know a lot of the people and background by now, but I was prepared for way more endless court intrigues and got through it pretty easily.

My main take-away, though: I thought I knew SD was bad, but man, she was worse. Now I really understand why during the Wusterhausen argument, everyone voted for the parent they had to spend the most time with. Poor kids. On the other hand, those instances of Sonsine bodily blocking FW from getting at Wilhelmine and hitting her? Damn.

After that one, I also read Fahlenkamp and as far as Fritz/Fredersdorf letters go, yay! I'd mostly read Fritz ones before*, so I was particularly happy to get to all the Fredersdorf ones. But the rest of the book? Not impressed with the writing (a lot of superficial stuff, bad grammar) and now I'm not surprised anymore that Fahlenkamp used wiki as a source. Have to say, I prefer the chronological Richter approach with actually helpful footnotes to Fahlenkamp's thematic one.

* These kept being very endearing indeed, spelling and all, and it really struck me a) how patiently he repeated the same things over and over again, and b) how often he resorted to outright begging when it came to Fredersdorf's penchant for medical charlatans. And on the other hand, Fredersdorf's gave me an inkling for why he was so impatient and resorted to them, because I got the impression that he was genuinely upset that he couldn't be with Fritz and get his work done and was at times somewhat worried that he might lose Fritz' esteem. (Still shipping them, is what I'm saying.)

Re: Backlog Reading - Wilhelmine and Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

I expected the second half to be a bit of a slog, but I have to say that I thought it was fine.

Oh, wow. You have more stamina than I do! Once she's not in Berlin, it's all people I don't know or care about, other than her husband and I suppose female Marwitz. You did read it in German, right? The English editions I've been able to find are all heavily abridged in the second volume, partly for smelling salts reasons and partly for, as far as I can tell, TL;DR no1curr reasons.

bad grammar

Oh, dear. I wonder if I'll be able to spot it when I get there, or if I'll just learn bad German. :D

Which reminds me, is Schultz using "notwendig" and "notwenig" interchangeably a thing, or a repeated typo his editor didn't catch? I'm only familiar with the former, and Google always asks me "Did you mean notwendig?" (Me: "I think so, but as a non-German-speaker, I can't be sure"), but maybe it's a valid variant?

Have to say, I prefer the chronological Richter approach with actually helpful footnotes to Fahlenkamp's thematic one.

Oh, interesting! I have both high on my to-read list once I can start reading German purely for content rather than language practice, and I remember selenak saying Fahlenkamp's edition was much to be preferred to Richter's. Perhaps mostly or entirely because of their different attitudes toward no-homoing the relationship? Oh, and Richter fanboying Fritz like it's a life-or-death competition with Peter III and outright saying no one cares about Fredersdorf.

Anyway, I still plan to read both, but I will keep an eye out for questionable grammar! [I mean other than Fritz's.:P]

how patiently he repeated the same things over and over again,

Awww.

how often he resorted to outright begging when it came to Fredersdorf's penchant for medical charlatans.

Awww.

he was genuinely upset that he couldn't be with Fritz and get his work done

AWWWW!

was at times somewhat worried that he might lose Fritz' esteem

OH NO. </3

(Still shipping them, is what I'm saying.)

In a word: YES!

Today's Redactle

[cahn]

Will be back soon, but just popping in to say that sineala posted on DW tonight about a game called Redactle, the idea of which is that it takes a Wikipedia article, strips all the words from it except prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and prepositions, and then each guess you make fills in words in the article (if they're present) -- the object is to guess the title of the article. (Sineala's writeup is rather more detailed.)

Anyway, I thought I'd give it a try, and I laughed when I figured out today's. (No, it's not Frederick the Great.) It's up until 11am CDT (so, a little less than 12 hours from now) which would give you guys time to do it, if you are curious. It took me rather longer than I imagine it would take you guys (partially because I did a couple of stupid things), and it only took me about ten minutes :) (More once the puzzle isn't up any more.)

Re: Today's Redactle

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hee! I don't do puzzles, but my wife does Wordle, so I'll let her know about this.

Besides, I already have a daily puzzle, it's called, "Figure out how Sabine Appel's clauses fit together." :PPP

Fun Gossip: Elizabeth Gunning

[luzula]

Came across this and thought I'd share: Elizabeth Gunning and her sister Maria were daughters of impoverished Irish gentry. They managed to get to London and went to balls etc in order to catch rich/titled husbands, which they did on account of their beauty and wit.

Duke of Hamilton: *proposes to Elizabeth the very same night he meets her*
They get married in 1752, but he dies in 1758.
Elizabeth: Well, I guess I need to find a new Duke now…
Duke of Bridgwater: *proposes*
Elizabeth: *accepts*
Duke of Bridgwater: But you can't hang out with your sister, with her scandalous behavior!
Elizabeth: What? I only have one sister, but I can totally get another Duke! *breaks off engagement*
Future Duke of Argyll: *proposes, with no such conditions*
Elizabeth: Yeah, I guess you’ll do! *accepts*

Her sister was married to an Earl, but she sadly died of lead and mercury poisoning from her beauty regimen.

(I only have a dubious source for why Elizabeth broke off her engagement with the Duke of Bridgwater: a historian(?) said it on a British Museum podcast which was actually mostly about the landscape gardener Capability Brown. According to Wikipedia, it isn't known why she broke it off. But it was too good not to share!)

Re: Fun Gossip: Elizabeth Gunning

[selenak]

Now that's a woman after my own heart. *googles* Who was friends with Peg Woffington and Thomas Sheridan in her youth as well, I see! (Yay theatre history!) Wiki's entry for the deservedly dumped Duke of Bridgewater also says it was because of his demand re: her sister, but has a "citation needed" footnote on this.

I see the eventual Duke of Argyll served with Cumberland at Culloden. (It's a small 18th century world!) And the wiki entry for the killed-by-makeup sister has this bit: Maria, who was notoriously tactless, was reported to have made a notable gaffe by telling the elderly George II that the spectacle she would most like to see was a royal funeral. Fortunately, the king was highly amused.

And here the Whig memoirists claim the Hannover cousins had no sense of humor.

The same entry also has this on Maria vs her husband's mistress, famous courtesan Kitty Fisher:



In the park Lady Coventry asked Kitty Fisher for "the name of the dressmaker who had made her dress."
Kitty Fisher answered she ..."had better ask Lord Coventry as he had given her the dress as a gift."
The altercation continued with Lady Coventry calling her an impertinent woman.
Kitty replied that she ... "would have to accept this insult because Maria was socially superior since marrying Lord Coventry, but she was going to marry a Lord herself just to be able to answer back."

Giustiniana Wynne, visiting London at the time.

Kitty Fisher's entry tells me she did land a lord eventually, but died only four months after, either from lead poisoning as well, or from the consumption. Elizabeth seems to have had a rare happy ending by comparison with these two!

Maria Theresia the TV Series: The End

[selenak]

Renember the Czech/Austrian tv series about MT, the first two parts (young MT up to the end of Silesia 1) I thought were fun though with some pretty ahistorical stuff, and then it turned out one of the ahistorical elements (a proposed MT/Fritz match) actually had a historical foundation, though not in the way it happens in the show? And then parts 3 and 4 (Silesia 2 and the early 1750s) were less fun and upped the ahistorical ante with an MT/FS marital crisis pushing her into an extramarital one night stand that made her rethink her attitudes? Well, now there's been a fifth and final part, that starts mid 7 Years War, not that you'd know it for a while, and ends with MT's death, but there is an eight years time jump from the aftermath of FS' death to MT falling ill and dying as an epilogue. In each of the three installments (i.e. young MT two parter, middle MT two parter, old MT one parter) you have a different actress playing MT, but the FS actor remains the same, and the makeup does a reasonably good job aging him up to his 50s. Also staying the same: the actress playing MT's fictional friend Countess Fritz, about whom in a moment, who doesn't age at all, which is weird in contrast.

Anyway, the last part features Joseph as a new main character, and on the level this show is, does a reasonably good job with him. (The actor does a reasonably good job, too.) The Mimi/Isabella affair is (explicitly) there, though because of the time jump between FS' death and MT's death, we jump over the death of Joseph's daughter, too. The character most bewilderingly drawn is Kaunitz. Because in the earlier installments, the show gave MT other Trusty Lieutenants in her cabinet, Kaunitz early in this one doesn't show up to deliver the Diplomatic Revolution, he shows up (early in the not mentioned for eons 7 Years War) Not Delivering the MA/Louis marriage that MT wanted him to deliver because Louis XV refuses to marry his grandson to an undereducated princess like her, with the result that MT then orders MA to be raised exclusively French so she fits Versailles criteria. MA also gets send away to France before FS dies (cahn, remember, he died in 1765) when Louis XV does agree. This is presumably because the show, being focused on the MT/FS pairing, didn't want to devote much time to the era after his death but is historical nonsense, date wise. Back to Kaunitz: having thus been unimpressive, he next joins an evil scheme with paper money which he manages to lure his mistress, Countess Fritz into. This backfires when FS the financially wise is onto Kaunitz, and gets both Kaunitz and Countess Fritz banished. To Innsbruck. Where they scheme to separate MT and FS in order to get themselves recalled, and have lined up FS' illegtimate kids for that purpose on the occasion of Leopold's wedding in Innsbruck, but the scheme turns out to be futile since that's where FS collapses and dies. (In the show, he doesn't collapse after an evening in the theatre but already when exiting the carriage and going a few steps, but he does die in Joseph's arms.)

Historical Kaunitz: I can only conclude the King of Prussia was a co-author of this script. After all, he never forgave me for outwitting him diplomatically and kept bitching about me and my in his opinion undeserved reputation as a political mastermind. Making me an incompetent swindler who can't even deliver a marriage sounds like his kind of slander.

What I mean with: the show did a reasonably good job with Joseph:

Joseph: I want to be a working Emperor! Unlike you, Dad. Yay reforms!
FS: One can work in the financial sector, too.
MT: Reforms need to be used sparingly.
Joseph: But I want to live a useful life NOW!
MT: I have a useful marriage lined up for you.
Joseph: I don't think I'll be a good husband. I don't want to be married, I want to work.
MT: Let me put it this way: the dynasty needs to continue. No more crisis like in my father's day. So you either marry, or you join a monastary and let your brother Leopold be Emperor-in-waiting.
Joseph: *glares and falls silent*

Joseph: *is ultra nervous before his first marriage* (which he was)
MT: Franz, you need to explain marital duties to our eldest before his bride arrives her. Go have the talk!
FS: *interprets "having the talk* differently: Joseph, theory will only get you so far. I'll take you to a brothel so you can practice a bit before your bride arrives.
Joseph: *looks vaguely ill*
Leopold: I want to join and practice marital duties, too!
FS: Aren't you a bit young for that! But okay, come along.

(Sidenote: since Leopold was born 1747. Joseph married Isabella in 1760. So Leopold would have been 13, but since the show pointedly does not mention any dates, I dare say he's meant to be 15 or thereabouts.)

Brothel: *lines up ladies*
Leopold: *pounces* I'm taking this one. *runs upstairs with a girl*
Joseph: *looks still ill*
FS: *selects lady für Joseph, who moves him upstairs*
Joseph: *feels more embarassed by the minute, goes downstairs again without sex, sees FS making out with several of the other girls, does not forget this and will bring it up years later*

Isabella arrives, Joseph is smitten on sight, Isabella is not. Wedding night:

Isabella: *looks miserable, waiting for him*
Joseph: *ultra nervous, smitten, but noting she's miserable and afraid* We don't have do it tonight, don't worry. But I can't leave the bedroom with everyone waiting outside. I'll sleep on the couch.
Isabella: *perks up a bit* That's nice of you, but you'll be cold on the couch. You may sleep next to me.
Joseph: *thus has a chance making his wife like him*
Joseph: *once lying next to Isabella, gazing at her adoringly* ...Or we could do it now, get it behind us, you know?
Isabella: *is disappointed, any chance she might like him dies* *endures clumsy first time sex on Joseph#s part*

Isabella falls in love with Mimi who is characterised as cheerful and forward, and seduces her after having persuaded Isabella to pose for her in a painting au naturel. The two have a passionate affair while Joseph does not have a clue. Mimi is presented as already engaged to Albert, but basically a lesbian who just thinks Albert is the least dreadful option among the available princes; no mention of this as a love match.

Minion who is not Kaunitz: *intercepts letter from Isabella to Mimi, the text of which is actually one of the historical (unbowlderised) ones, presents it to MT*

MT: catches Isabella and Mimi in the act: Okay, this won't do. Mimi, your marriage to Albert is sped up, and then I'm sending you two elsewhere, and Isabella, not a word of this to Joseph. It would break his heart.

FS: However, until Mimi marries, you may stay together.

MT: ?!?

FS (when they're alone): Look, I think the affair is a disaster, too, but you want to be a grandmother, don't you? Anything that helps Isabella getting in the mood...

Isabella: *is depressed, gets pregnant, is even more depressed*
Mimi: Cheer up, once you've had the kid, you only need to meet it for the holidays and otherwise the servants will take care of it.
Isabella: *notices that Mimi isn't depressed, is even more depressed*
MT: Dr. Swieten, you will attend my daughter-in-law.
Swieten: But a new bout of smallpox is raging! I need to work at my smallpox hospital!
MT: Not until you've helped Isabella safely deliver her baby, you don't.
Isabella: *gives birth to MT Junior*
Joseph: *like his father back in the day, is not disappointed about girl babies, adores*
Isabella: *wanders somehow to Dr. Swieten's smallpox hospital in her nightgown and infects herself deliberately with smallpox so she may die*

(Sidenote: I can understand the script skipping Isabella's second pregnancy, but the idea that either Swieten's smallpox hospital being in the Hofburg or that Isabella post birth would just wander underattended through Vienna till she gets there is too much ebven for this show.)

Joseph: *mourns violently, as in, bashes head against her coffin*
MT: *tries to comfort Joseph, is bad at it*
Joseph: *storms off to Mimi*
Mimi: *sits in her atelier with the nude painting of Isabella*
Joseph: *takes that in*
Explosion: *does not happen*
Joseph: I wanted to be with someone who knows how I feel. *sits down next to Mimi. They silently take each other's hands and cry*

Selena: You know, I wish that had happened. Would have been so much better for their relationship.

Joseph: Mom, I'm off to travel!

(A bit ahead of schedule, since FS is still alive, but fine. As I said, the show really plays loose with dates in order to not let FS die till almost the end.)

Joseph: *back from travel* Okay, here are all the backwards sucky things happening in our Empire. The nobility sucks! The church sucks! We need to abolish serfdom NOW!

MT: Look, son, we can't do without the nobility. It's not that I'm against all your ideas. Some are actually, much as I hate to admit it for ideological reasons, good. I mean that. You'll be a great monarch if you only manage to get the balance...

Joseph: Well, I had a great role model.

MT: *is touched* Joseph...

Joseph: The greatest monarch in Europe, who pursues reforms without anything holding him back, who has his nobility in line, and doesn't kowtow to the church.

*cut to MT and FS later*

FS: Seriously? He threw Friedrich at you?

MT: *fuming* "Has the nobility in line, as if. That guy doesn't get more concessions from his nobility than I get of mine!

FS: *amused* Still, I have to say Joseph is a courageous man. Ah well. Maybe a second marriage will calm him down, keep him busy and continue the dynasty.

MT: Excellent idea!

Joseph: I DO NOT WANT TO MARRY AGAIN.

MT: It's your duty to! The girl in question, Josepha, is the daughter of the Bavarian Duke, and Friedrich is all set to snatch her for his nephew. I don't have to spell out to you why a Bavaria/Prussia team-up would be very bad for us, do I?

Joseph's second marriage: *takes place*

Joseph in his second wedding night: Sorry. I'm not going to have sex with you, ever.
Josepha: But why did you marry me?
Joseph: Because of politics and my parents. All I can offer you is politice distance. Goodbye!

*a few months later, MT finds out there is no marital sex*

MT: Franz, you need to talk to the boy.

FS: *tries so*

Joseph: *explodes in a cold, controlled way* Actually, no. I literally can't have sex with her because I have syphilis. Ask Swieten.

Swieten: He does.

Joseph: And I have syphilis because I went to the brothel like you taught me to, so thanks for that, Dad. I go there, and I hate myself, but I know what I am, and I don't pretend otherwise. But you, you pretend at marital love while making out with prostitutes, I can't tell you how much you disgust me!

FS: *stunned*

Josepha: *dies of smallpox, with MT at her deathbed, guilty apologizing for the marriage*

(That's pretty historical - not the point blank apology, but that MT, who hadn't liked Josepha nearly as much as Isabella, took care of her during her sickness out of guilt for the entire disastrous situation*.)

MT: We do need some good news. Leopold, it's your turn to get married now! But not in Vienna, where there's still smallpox, in Innsbruck, where I'll also see my dear banished friend Countess Fritz again.

Swieten to FS: You shouldn't travel at all, you're sick.

FS: *keeps this a secret from MT and everyone else*

FS, Leopold, Joseph: *in a carriage to Innsbruck*

Leopold: Thanks for Tuscany as a wedding present, Dad, that's super nice of you.

Joseph: I think it's a bad idea, Tuscany should remain with the Empire.

Leopold: As if! *hops out of the carriage first*

FS: Look, Joseph, about what you said. I do love your mother. I've never stopped loving her. But it's hard for a man to live next to someone like your mother. So now and then, I just need space. Can you understand that? It's not like these frivolities are taking anything away from her. She doesn't mind.

Joseph: Oh, doesn't she? You're kidding yourself. Mom and I argue a lot, and I'm not saying I always get her, but I get how she loves, and she minds, and you're just making excuses.

FS: *collapses, dies in Joseph's arms*

Joseph: *guilt trip*

Reading of FS testament*

Testament reader: Basically, FS bought up all the debts of the Austrian state which evil scheming Kaunitz caused due to the paper money. 7 Years War debts, what 7 years war debts?

Joseph: *throws the debt notes into the fire*

Leopold: But that was money you were owed, you idiot!

Joseph: I'm not going to make the state pay ME. We need to live for the state.

Testament reader: Also, FS set up his other millions in a family fund so that the Habsburgs can live of them for the next two hundred years.

Leopold: Haha. I get money, you do not.

Joseph: You're off to Tuscany. That's not a request. I'm the Emperor.

Selena: That's not quite how the arguments about FS' money went, but okay, close enough for this show.

*eight years later* (ETA: in reality, there were 15 years between FS' death and MT's)
MT chats with Mimi:

Mimi: So, no kids for Albert and me, but we'll found a nifty museum called the Albertina.
MT: *collapses*

MT: *spends the rest of her screentime slowly dying, in a chair not in the bed, which is true*

Joseph: *notified of original collapse in his office, where a portrait of Fritz hangs - btw the only Fritz as King portrait supposedly painted in his life time and based on a sitting:



Joseph to servant: *put a bed for me in Mom's antechamber, I'm staying with her*

Joseph: *does so*

(MT's other kids, Marianne, Elisabeth, Mimi, son in law Albert, who also spend much of her dying days with her, are absent, but okay in the interest of dramatic focus, and Joseph was the one with her ALL the time during those days.)

MT and Joseph: *have a conversation where he basically signals he now understands she and FS truly loved each other and that FS wanted the best for the Empire and she signals she's proud of Joseph*

MT: *makes funeral arrangement for herself in voiceover while we see it play out on screen*

Show: *credits MT with inventing the Habsburg ceremonial at the Capppuchin crypt, the three times knocking, which she did not*

Saga: ends.

In conclusion: Not a must, and there are some truly bewildering choices - all things Kaunitz, and Ophelia!Isabella wandering into the small pox hospital - even for the pop corn entertainment level it aims at. Not to mention that the script deigns to mention the 7 Years War only when it ends. Also, the actress playing old MT is often too stiff, so the difference between MT post FS' death doesn't come across like the script wants it to. But some parts of it work, it does get across some of the push-pull dynamic between Joseh and MT, Joseph's capacity for self sabotage, and the "I had a great role model" exchange is truly hilarious.

Oh, and there's also this, when MT the widow is talking to Swieten after her collapse.

Swieten: You know what King Friedrich of Prussia has said about you, your majesty?

Selena: I can think of many things, but I have no idea which one these scriptwriters might have picked. "The Habsburgs have only produced one man in two centuries, and it's a woman" would not be something Swieten would mention to her, surely? And that was one of the nicer things.

Swieten: There's only one man sitting on the thrones of Europe along with me right now, and it's a woman: Maria Theresia.

MT: *snorts*

Catherine the Great: *does not exist*

Joseph: *sits in his office with the Fritz portrait in the very next scene*

Selena: I can see why you changed the quote, script, but I don't think you've thought through the implications...

Re: Maria Theresia the TV Series: The End

[mildred_of_midgard]

You continue to post awesome things on Monday mornings! You may not get a proper comment until Friday or this weekend, thanks to work, but I did read it immediately and laughed a lot, thank you!

[selenak]

Mes amies, it's Rare Male Slash Exchange nomination time again. I would only participate if one or both of you do, because I don't have that many other rare male slash pairings to offer or request, and also, I still want to write that Fritz/his sugar daddies (or at least one of them) tale which no one but Mildred would ever be a suitable recipient for. And speaking of envoy action or at least flirtation, on the requesting side there's still the crack fic where Andrew Mitchell's canonical task of having to listen and comment on Fritz' poetry mid 7 Years War is spiced up when he discovers he can offer some beta reading services re: the Algarotti orgasm poem....

However, if you two are too exhaused this year - for which I have all the sympathy in the world - I would understand, just tell me before I sign up.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oooh. As always, I'm tempted, but I think I'm going to have to pass again, as my brain is 100% in German-studying mode when not at work, which is why I haven't been participating much in salon, writing fic, or working on my Peter Keith and Fredersdorf essays.

I am still tempted by those sugar daddies, though, so maybe Yuletide or next year's RMSE, depending on how German-studying goes.

which no one but Mildred would ever be a suitable recipient for

It's funny 'cause it's true! :D :D

This is not a summary of the Thirty Years' War

[mildred_of_midgard]

I just wanted to say, about halfway through the book, that I'm following the developments better than I would have even eighteen months ago; partly for expected reasons--having read at least *some* relevant 17th century books, like the Winter Queen and all those Schultz bios--but partly for a very unexpected reason: It turns out that if you understand the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Quadruple Alliance, and the Great Northern War, you can keep track of the complex Thirty Years' War almost with ease, because the geopolitical considerations are extremely similar.

Yes, some things have changed, like France is at its peak in 1700 and not so much in 1618, but it still wants the same things: prevent Habsburg encirclement, control the area around Piedmont/Savoy as the key to Italy, "Fuck you, England," (but with complications in both periods), and the like! Sweden: still invading Poland for much the same reasons. Spain: still trying to control Italy. The Dutch: still trying not to get run over by a major Catholic power. Austria: still worried about two-front wars with the Turks and Europe. Everyone else: still trying to get the Turks to go to war, still funding Hungarian uprisings to distract Austria.

Alliances along religious lines: still a thing but still secondary to economic and territorial self-interest for most parties, with cross-confessional alliances the norm. Alliance stability: still not a thing, because hardly anyone is fighting for a cause they believe in, but instead for a combination of their own interests and a balance of power. Control of the Baltic: still key to a surprisingly large number of the players. Sieges at Stralsund: still a thing! Finding enough fodder for your horses and food for your men, and trying to balance not sucking friendly territory dry and committing war crimes with not being able to keep your army solvent: still the SINGLE HARDEST problem.

I approve. This makes my life easier. *g*

ETA: And, of course, who can forget the wrangling over Jülich and Berg, which began just before the Thirty Years' War and was possibly more important than tall guys to FW? Münkler goes into detail on *why* everyone cares so much, which cleared up a lot of things for me and which I may elaborate on this weekend.

Re: This is not a summary of the Thirty Years' War

[selenak]

Finding enough fodder for your horses and food for your men, and trying to balance not sucking friendly territory dry and committing war crimes with not being able to keep your army solvent: still the SINGLE HARDEST problem.

No kidding. In all wars, of course, but since this was was waged mostly across German speaking territory, that‘s, more than any of the other factors, why three decades onwards so little of the population was left, and partly why the various German speaking realms had to catch up with France and England in terms of sociological, artistic and scientific development.

Anyway, I‘m glad the Thirty Years War is now comprehensible to you, and await further comments with great anticipation. Also, Cahn, Schiller wrote a trilogy of plays that‘s really a duology and a short one act prequel about one of the main actors in this war, Wallenstein, which has all the good stuff (torn loyalties, angst, slashy relationships) but alas was not made into an opera, or several operas, by Verdi.