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: 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….

Re: Pompadour gossip

[cahn]

Oh! Having read about Henry VIII as an impressionable child with poor access to modern historical takes, I only knew the "Henry didn't think she was pretty enough" take. Which isn't particularly flattering towards Henry, I suppose (although young!me also did not realize that Anne wasn't particularly not pretty, so I guess Henry won that round, although I had always felt rather pleased that she, well, got away) but this:

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.

is fantastic. LOLOLOLOL oh Henry SERVES YOU RIGHT!

(Also I think the Voltaire icon for this is great, I can just imagine what he would have had to say about it)

Re: Pompadour gossip

[mildred_of_midgard]

Henry VIII: That story was always one that stuck with me, not because of anything it said about Henry or Anne, but because it was what made young, just-starting-to-study-history, me realize that in the pre-photograph and -television days, a celebrity, even a monarch, had a chance of actually going incognito!

And that made me realize that portraits, including coins, were all most people would ever see of their monarch, and so it actually mattered what you put on them. And that meant you had a chance to spin your depiction various ways. To create an image, literally.

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

ViennaJoe: Everyone knew who I was, that was the point. I enjoyed Catherine having her Hanoverian gardener roleplay an innkeeper for me, though, for the authentic German inn experience even in Russia!

That was the time we spent together which ended in my apartment with the phosphor inscription on my wallpaper. We were ever so discreet!

Inscribing your love on your wallpaper is very discreet, Lehndorff. Good job. *pats head*