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

Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[selenak]

Mostly for luzula, a few Stuarts and Jacobites related quotes from Antonia Fraser's Louis XIV book.


Mary Beatrice, aka James II' second wife:

In 1673, at the age of fifteen, she found herself matched to an ageing and not particularly prepossessing prince twenty-five years her senior. James, then Duke of York, had been a dashing soldier in his youth, but somehow the Stuarts (those that kept their heads) did not improve with age. He was also a notorious roué like his brother Charles, but without the charm that enabled the Merry Monarch to carry these things off: so ugly were his mistresses that Charles once suggested they had been imposed upon him by his confessors.

Fast forward years and nine pregnancies and then a live born son later, Mary Beatrice ends up French exile before her husband does and immediately impreses everyone, for not only is she beautiful, but:

Furthermore, this Queen was cosmopolitan, speaking and writing excellent French as well as Italian and English, and enough Latin to read from the scriptures in that language. Above all, Mary Beatrice was naturally and sincerely devout. (...)n Mary Beatrice was greeted on 6 January at Versailles by Louis XIV and given all honoours. She was then escorted to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, her new home by kind permission of the King, who also endowed the household generously and provided a lavish pension. Four days later Madame de Sevigné was in ecstasy over the court's newest royal acquisition, haling her for her 'distinguished bearing and her quick wit'. (...) The refugee Queen certainly understood the manners of Versailles. When Louis XIV fondled the six-month-old Prince of Wales, the Queen remarked that hitherto she had envied her inty son's good fortune in knowing nothing of the calamities that beset him, but now 'I pity him because he is also unaware of Your Majesty's caresses and kindesses.'

Then her husband arrives. Alas, James does now wow Versailles the same way. (Antonia Fraser points out that it was also a question of age; James was fifty-five, this was his second (and final) full exile, not counting the shorter ones, and he was set in his ways. Nevertheless, James and Mary Beatrice are integrated in Versailles court life, and because Mary Beatrice never flirts with Louis, she's befriended by Madame de Maintenon. James makes an attempt to recapture his throne via Ireland, and Louis' way of wishing him success is very... Louis...

Encouraged by King Louis XIV, who provided a small force of French troops and French officers, King James left for Ireland in the spring of 1689. His plan was to recover his English throne through the bakc door of Ireland. Louis' farewell to his cousin (...): 'I hope, Monsieur, never to see you again. Nevertheless if fortune so wishes it that we meet again, you will find me the same as you have always found me.'

James gets trounced by William in Ireland, so Louis did indeed see him again. re: the question as to whether the French should have supported James (and his son, and his grandson) more than they did, Antonia Fraser makes an interesting point: Louis simultanously was busy ramsacking the Palatinate and making enemies out of (previous) admirers in the German states, and creating a European situation where eventually (almost) everyone would ally themselves against him, most importantly England and the Habsburgs as embodied by Marlborough and Eugene. If Louis back in the day had left the Palatinate well enough alone and had instead thrown all his forces behind James instead of just some minor ones, he might have spared himself this situation since instead England (ruled by James) would have been his grateful ally.

Again: this is Fraser's opinion. Yours truly has to wonder that even if James had reconquered Britain from William via Ireland and with the help of French troops - would he have been able to hold it? He'd have proven everyone's fears about his Catholicism (i.e. that he'd team up with Louis the fundamentalist and his troops) right and would not have been seen as a romantic exiled King, but as a puppet of the French 900 pounds gorilla of continental politics, and his government a foreign occupation.

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[luzula]

so ugly were his mistresses

See, this is the sort of thing I don't like in history books. It's one thing to say "at the time, Charles joked about his mistresses being ugly", but the mistresses didn't deserve getting judged by the author... (Incidentally, I was just checking something on Wikipedia, and saw that they credit the "mistresses as penance" remark to someone called Gilbert Burnet and not Charles).

Anyway, thanks for the details! Yes, I read a bit about Mary Beatrice in one of the Szechi books I previously reported on, which describes her as being a canny politician after James II died, in her efforts to get French support for James III.

Yeah, I agree about James II coming back probably being...not that great for Britain. James III might've been better, I think, because he had to make all sorts of concessions to get support and the balance of power would have shifted in favour of Parliament.

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[selenak]

Re: Judgmentalism in history books - I hear you. Historians taking Henry VIII. at his word for Anne of Cleves' lack of physical attractiveness as mentioned above is another case in point.

Incidentally, I was just checking something on Wikipedia, and saw that they credit the "mistresses as penance" remark to someone called Gilbert Burnet and not Charles

Wouldn't surprise me. By now, we've often encountered the phenomenon where a snappy one liner gets attributed to the most famous person around around and sticks with them regardless of whether or not they or someone else have said it - Mildred's favourite supposed Fritz quote ("She cried but she took..." about MT and Poland) being a case in point, which actually came from a minor nobleman and wasn't attributed to Frederick the Great until the later 19th century, but once it was, it got quoted as a saying of his by virtually all biographers forever more.

(Incidentally, now that you mention it, Jude Morgan uses the quote in his novel about Charles and Monmouth as well but does NOT attribute it to Charles himself, so evidently he's on wiki's side in this.)

Meanwhile, how would the Old Pretender's chances to become James III have been in the following scenario: William III. goes through with the idea he contemplated for a short while according to one of our Prussian sources, namely, adopting kid!Friedrich Wilhelm the future Soldier King. (The Hohenzollerns and the House of Orange were related, and William had already toyed with the idea of adopting FW's uncle years earlier.) Young FW would have fulfilled the blood line criteria laid down by Parliament as well as the Hannover cousins - he, too, is a grandson of Sophia of Hannover and thus a great grandson of Elizabeth Stuart. And he's so Protestant, you don't get to be more Protestant a royal than FW. So instead of a German dynasty with Hannover as their continental other realm, Britain gets a German dynasty with Prussia as their other realm.

However, Britain's aristocrats and parliament and everyone then realise once FW is grown up and takes over (either from William or Anne) that they got a micromanaging workoholic with a fearsome temper who expects his aristocracy to contribute at least a son each to the army and WORK WORK WORK to get out of their debts, recruits tall men of all classes no matter whether they want to be recruited or not, closes up lots of palaces to save money and changes the royal life style to austerely bourgois. Oh, and he's not impressed by all the high church Anglocatholicism and lectures the Archbishop of Canterbury on the bible. Yes, he is good with agricultural reforms and founding hospitals and schools etc., but I could see a few years being ruled by FW causing British Parliament cry "help!" and decide they want a J3 after all.

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[luzula]

Hee, what a way to merge the Fritzian and the Jacobite fandoms! *g* That is an intriguing AU.

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[cahn]

Historians taking Henry VIII. at his word for Anne of Cleves' lack of physical attractiveness as mentioned above is another case in point.

Yes! When I read luzula's comment I was just thinking, since you brought it up earlier, that I went decades thinking Anne of Cleves was ugly! (And, ugh, history books, I mean, even if she was, why should I have cared?)

(parents are here, online time limited -- will return next week!)

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[cahn]

And he's so Protestant, you don't get to be more Protestant a royal than FW.

Okay, this got a laugh out of me. I'm also totally amused by the idea of this FW AU where everyone's like "...would James really be so bad?" :)

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[cahn]

Alas, James does not wow Versailles the same way. (Antonia Fraser points out that it was also a question of age; James was fifty-five, this was his second (and final) full exile, not counting the shorter ones, and he was set in his ways.

Ha. I can't help thinking it was also due to personality :PP That's neat about Mary Beatrice -- I got no sense of her at all from Jude Morgan.

'I hope, Monsieur, never to see you again. Nevertheless if fortune so wishes it that we meet again, you will find me the same as you have always found me.'

Louis! That is indeed... very him.

Re: Stuart Cousins at Versailles: The Sequel

[selenak]

Mary Beatrice: Well, Morgan's pov character hardly interacts with her at all, and this is a first person written fictional "memoir", so he can't provide an impression of what she is like, since at that point his relationship with her husband has become mutual open loathing. (Incidentally, the author of the non-fictional Monmouth biography I've read after the novel thinks he and James actually got along well early on and didn't become hostile until latern - hence, for example, James being on good terms with his cousins - but at the point of James' second marriage, they definitely had arrived there, so in this case, fiction definitely matches what we know of the facts.)

I can't help thinking it was also due to personality

Probably. As Antonia Fraser said, James didn't improve with age.