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: The Damiens assassination attempt

[mildred_of_midgard]

What selenak said about losing your entire family to illness, plus Schultz makes the case that Louis was devastated to learn that he was not universally beloved. He seems to have been prone to "melancholy," which I think is understandable if everyone you loved sequentially died or you were taken away from them over and over again in your childhood. Even Horowski says that those childhood experiences emotionally messed with Louis. Which again, I believe.

Mind you, I'm trying to think of an example where the mistress was allowed to remain at the deathed (once it's clear the sickness is actually lethal), not just among the Catholic but also the Protestant royalty of the era, and failing.

I only have a brief summary, not the full story, so this may not be an example, but from my Schultz reading last night (bio of Henri IV), Henri's father, King Antoine of Navarre, may have been allowed to keep his mistress with him as he was dying:

Badly wounded, he was brought by ship to Paris, with Louise de La Béraudière [his mistress] constantly at his side. But death overtook him four weeks later in Andelys...Jeanne d'Albret [his wife], who was not unaware of her husband's wounding, did not go to him--she certainly also feared a confrontation with his mistress.

Now, maybe in those four weeks she was sent away for the extreme unction too, but this at least seems like a possible 16th century candidate.