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

Re: Catherine and Voltaire

[cahn]

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".

Heh, I laughed, because it's, yeah, a good analogy. (Also, hilariously on-point for US-ian education, because of course I understood that with no problem.)

(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.)

OMG, he so would have!

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.

well it's obviously because it SHOCKED them too much to write about it, see

(And Casanova even had a brief fling with her at one point because of course he did.)

LOLOLOL okay I missed that. That's awesome.