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: Colonel John O'Sullivan's memoirs

[luzula]

What I remember from long-ago reading was that the biographers and historical fiction authors I remember took LGM's side--I walked away with a fairly negative impression of O'Sullivan. Have you encountered that skew in your more recent reading?

I've seen that around, definitely. Frank McLynn writes without justifying the statement that O'Sullivan was "untalented", for example. And there's definitely a vein of writing which sees LGM as a great genius and if the Prince had just done as he said, everything would have worked out (I plan to come back to that in a future comment!). I haven't read widely enough to say more generally whether the balance has shifted, but Duffy has a lot of respect for O'Sullivan's abilities, especially when it comes to logistics and organization. He has a mixed view of LGM, with both good and bad qualities. I know you think Duffy sometimes doesn't quote sources etc, but I have to say that Fight for a Throne is much better at that, and at justifying judgements, than many other books I've read. I guess it helps that Duffy is specifically a military historian, and many other authors aren't, which is why he goes deeper into the military aspects than other authors, who may just repeat some judgement on some person's military abilities without being able to justify it.

Ooh, thanks for explaining the "yt" thing!