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: Louis XIV gossip

[cahn]

Well, I'm always in the market for readable books in English! :P :) (although my pile is kind of large now, and my reading rate slow...)

I was familiar with the story of his long and painful dying largely due to medical incompentence.

Didn't you link me to a recent movie trailer about this? Or am I totally confusing this with some other French monarch? (To be fair to myself, I can usually tell the Sun King apart from other monarchs :P I just can't remember whom the movie was about.)

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.

Certainly before salon I would not have wondered!

“One makes his fortune in my brother’s service by certain means which would make one lose favour if employed in mine”.

This is hilarious. :D

Re: Louis XIV gossip

[selenak]

Didn't you link me to a recent movie trailer about this? Or am I totally confusing this with some other French monarch?

I did, and you do not. The film, helpfully, is called "The Death of Louis XIV." It's ever so slow - covering the last three days of Louis' life in agonizing two hours plus detail - and Louis is played by a legendary French actor who was, in fact, in his last year of life while shooting - and even I had trouble sitting through it at the Munich Film Festival because of the slowness. (Also because I expected the movie to cut away to the scheming courtiers now and then which would have enlivened the scene, but no, after the first few minutes when he's still outside, we stay with Louis in his bedroom and in the antechambre of same. But the trailer captures the point it makes very well, in only a few minutes, and here it is again.

Re: Louis XIV gossip

[mildred_of_midgard]

(although my pile is kind of large now, and my reading rate slow...)

Gah! I feel you here. And now I have TWO piles! (And my reading rate is 5x slower in one than the other. :P)

Speaking of which, back to Louis XIV...