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

Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[mildred_of_midgard]

1. Philippe on being forced by your royal older brother to get remarried:

Marriages are like death.The day and hour are determined; one cannot escape them. As our lord wants it, so must it happen.

Heinrich: I feel your pain.

2. Philippe actually getting remarried:

Remember when selenak said the way Philippe managed to have sex with a woman was with a lot of help from the Virgin Mary and other saints? Schultz has provided me with this passage (Google translated because I don't have time to go through it and do something more fluent):

"He made me laugh heartily, for he always wore a rosary to bed, to which were attached a large number of medals, which caused a great tinkle under the covers. Assuming, probably correctly, that he was leaving for a country unknown to him with his relics and the images of the Blessed Virgin, I got up gently one evening, pulled his arm and said, laughing: 'I will touch you there. You won't be able to turn it down.' He burst out laughing and said: 'You who have been Huguenots, you do not know the effectiveness of the images and relics of the Blessed Virgin; they guarantee liberation from any enchantment on those parts of the body that are rubbed with them.' 'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'but you're not going to convince me that to let her image wander over those parts of the body destined to remove virginity is to honor the Blessed Virgin. He couldn't help but burst out laughing himself and said, 'Please don't talk to anyone about this.'"

3. Remember how Louis uses Liselotte as an excuse to invade the Palatine and try to claim it (much to her horror)? This is after her brother dies childless. According to Schultz, his dying childless was guaranteed by this obsessive mania he had with the idea that when he consummated his marriage, he would die.

...I did not know that.

Though Wikipedia doesn't mention that and says instead, "During the wedding celebrations, Karl had to seek advice on what to do as a man on the wedding night." I suppose it's possible he got the advice, was horrified at the answer, and decided never to do it?

Idk, nothing makes me 100% trust Schultz. But I'm reporting it with the usual grain of salt.

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[selenak]

I don‘t recall anything about Liselotte‘s (full) brother, either (only about the half siblings a bit, since her fave was half-brother Carl-Lutz, and half sisters Amelie and Luise were the ones getting the „…there‘d be only ten men left for love“ reply), so I don‘t have more information than you do, but I note that unlike Liselotte, he didn‘t get the benefit of being raised by Sophie for years far away from his warring parents, which might have had something to do with his aversion to marital sex?

And ah yes, the tale of the rosary and medals. :) But hey, it seems to have worked for Philippe. After all, if one counts all the pregnancies from both Minette and Liselotte, he had successfully fruitful intercourse with them at least eleven times, and since I doubt it was only eleven given the odds that every bit of marital sex resulted in a pregnancy, probably more often than that.

(In Versailles, the way Liselotte gets Philippe to successfully have sex with her isn‘t via religious kink but roleplaying and indulging his fantasies of ravishing another soldier after battle. Methinks the producers knew that if they brought out rosaries and medals, they‘d have lost their viewership right then. *g*)

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[mildred_of_midgard]

Methinks the producers knew that if they brought out rosaries and medals, they‘d have lost their viewership right then. *g*)

*g*

I wouldn't be offended on religious grounds, but I would definitely find it orders of magnitude less sexy!

roleplaying and indulging his fantasies of ravishing another soldier after battle.

Actually kinda hot?

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[selenak]

Oh, it was definitely direct as hot. (Plus the actors on that show are ridiculously attractive.) Mind you, you had to suspend your disbelief that Liselotte the virgin would figure out on her own that the way to get Philippe, err, going was to play out a sexual fantasy of his, but as far as historical unlikelihoods in Versailles are concerned, that's actually a really minor one compared with the rest. Also one thing the show always did very well was handling Philippe's secuality. He doesn't become straight after sex with Liselotte. The Chevalier remains his primary love interest, even when they're on the outs. Any flings he has are with other men. That show!Philippe additionally developes feelings for Liselotte isn't because they've managed to succesfully have sex a few times but because she accepts him the way he is and is possibly his first true friend (as opposed to lover) on the show. (Simultanously, she and the Chevalier develop their own rivalry-to-friendship arc.) There is never any implication show!Philippe would or should be happier in a heterosexual relationship (when he's on the outs with the Chevalier he's clearly miserable), and strictly within the show universe, the Philippe-Chevalier-Liselotte triad the show ends with is possibly the most successful love relationship of the entire three seasons.

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[cahn]

Marriages are like death.The day and hour are determined; one cannot escape them. As our lord wants it, so must it happen.

Heh. That does sound awfully familiar. Though I feel way more sympathetic towards Heinrich than Philippe (I guess just because Heinrich is a more sympathetic character in general)

he always wore a rosary to bed, to which were attached a large number of medals, which caused a great tinkle under the covers.

LOLOLOLOL

'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'but you're not going to convince me that to let her image wander over those parts of the body destined to remove virginity is to honor the Blessed Virgin.

HEE, Liselotte is totally the best, y/y??

He couldn't help but burst out laughing himself and said, 'Please don't talk to anyone about this.'"

I'm a little divided here -- part of me is like "but the first thing you did was write a letter about this!" but most of me is like "YES THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS DOWN FOR US."

But also, I can see why Philippe got along much better with Liselotte. I can't imagine that conversation taking place with Minette.

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[selenak]

I'm a little divided here -- part of me is like "but the first thing you did was write a letter about this!" but most of me is like "YES THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS DOWN FOR US."

I know what you mean. It should also be said that Liselotte probably expected Sophie and her other correspondents to do with her letters what she did with theirs (and Monsieur's after his death) after a while - burn them for discretion's sake. (Also against spies.) (This is why we don't have any of the answering Sophie letters to Liselotte, alas.) Thankfully, her German relations evidently decided all the juicy gossip had to be preserved for posterity instead of being treated discreetly.

But also, I can see why Philippe got along much better with Liselotte. I can't imagine that conversation taking place with Minette.

You would be right, not least since there's actual canon on this, i.e. we know that far from laughing together, Philippe's wedding night with Minette featured him being angry that she had her monthly bleedings. (How do we know? Because so did Catherine of Braganza in her wedding night with Minette's brother Charles, who wrote to his sister: "(A)and though I am not as furious as Monsieur was but I am content to let those pass over before I go to bed to my wife, yet I hope I shall entertain her at least better the first night than he did you.")

The irony is of course that Minette and Philippe actually had known each other for years before marrying - she grew up at the French court, after all!, sharing an identical cultural background - whereas Liselotte and Philippe were complete strangers from vastly different worlds.

Here's something else to amuse you. So, relations between Liselotte and her royal brother-in-law, hitherto good, go haywire when he invades her homeland and can't understand why she's not cheering him on. Plus however many of her letters his censors read and translated with their unflattering descriptions of his mistress and himself. And his religious fervor has increased. Louis decides to give Liselotte a reproof by making his confessor talk to her confessor (nominal Catholic, remember)and list a variety of failings she needs to improve. Says Fraser:

Her language was vulgar: she had for exmaple told the Dauphin that even if she saw him bollock-naked from the soles of his feet up, she would not be tempted by him (nor anyone else). She had allowed her ladies to indulge in gallantries, and had merely laughed with the wayward Marie-Anne de Conti about her own behaviour instead of reprimanding her. Liselotte was privately furious. She was not 'a chambermaid', she told her aunt Sophia, to be treated like this, unlike the King's precious Maintenon 'who was born to it'. She was not the Princesse de Conti's governess, eitiher, to stop her having lovers if she wanted them. Her frank language - and with her talk of crapping and pissing it was frank - she blamed on the King: he had said a hundred time sthat in the family one could say anything. And as for her ladies' gallantries, 'such conduct was not without precedent' and in fact 'quite usual at any court'. Liselotte certainly had a point there.)

For Louis, with his past love life, to complain that his sister-in-law (who never had sex with anyone but his brother and that had ceased years earlier) wasn't moral enough because she didn't prevent her ladies-in-waiting from having affairs is certainly rich, and you can see why Liselotte thought this was Madame de Maintenon talking through him. (Whether or not she was. It's just as possible Louis didn't want to say "you're supposed to cheer me on, you're French now, not be bitter about this, and also, how dare you say my piety consists of not having sex with young women anymore?!?)

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[luzula]

She had allowed her ladies to indulge in gallantries

I love this phrasing! I mean, most often you would read phrasing like that applied to men, so I'm glad women get to use it as well.

It really seems like the word "gallant/galant" as applied to love affairs or sleeping around (with various other connotations as well) is a very 18th century thing, in a lot of languages! English, French, German and Swedish have it, though I don't know enough about German and French to know if it's a specifically 18th century thing there? It definitely is in Swedish. Some use of Google translate shows that the word exists in Spanish, Romanian and Russian too, though obviously I don't know its cultural history there.

ETA: I just asked my Spanish flatmate, and it's the same there...

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[selenak]

"Galante Abenteuer" is a 17th and 18th century kind of thing in German, too, yes, as is "Galanterie". Re: application towards women, I seem to recall it used specifically for Liselotte's contemporary Ninon de Lenclos, whom it fitted very well, and that was the first time I saw it used as a child, too!

Re: Philippe and Liselotte gossip

[cahn]

Thankfully, her German relations evidently decided all the juicy gossip had to be preserved for posterity instead of being treated discreetly.

Hee, yes. And, I mean, I suppose Philippe hardly cares now, and we definitely do :)

Philippe's wedding night with Minette featured him being angry that she had her monthly bleedings.

Oh right! Ugh, Philippe. No one's fault that started out on the wrong foot, but... (And of course, very much Philippe's fault that he was angry about something she couldn't at all help and also super natural, though that quote Mildred mentioned before about having to marry makes me a very small bit more sympathetic. Argh, human beings.) And presumably either Liselotte's marriage didn't start off on that particular wrong foot, or if it did Philippe, being older and having gone through it once already, was a little more blase about it, or else Liselotte made a vulgar joke about it which went over well :P :)

she had for exmaple told the Dauphin that even if she saw him bollock-naked from the soles of his feet up, she would not be tempted by him (nor anyone else).

Aw, I am charmed by this :P (And, like, isn't the sentiment a good one? :) )

She had allowed her ladies to indulge in gallantries

Oh noooooo! Anything but that!

It's just as possible Louis didn't want to say "you're supposed to cheer me on, you're French now, not be bitter about this, and also, how dare you say my piety consists of not having sex with young women anymore?!?

Heh! this seems extremely plausible.