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: Henri IV and Louis XIII

[cahn]

a) use a whipping boy in order to teach them responsibility without hurting them
b) whipping them, not someomeone else

which would you as a royal parent of the era have used?

I would 100% not have been self-aware enough to be like Louise of Orange. I think I probably would have felt some sort of noblesse oblige towards the whipping boy and thus whipped my own children to teach them responsibility and that they couldn't get away with whipping some other poor kid -- well, I suppose it depends on exactly what kinds of things I ended up reading (I'm sure I got some of this viewpoint from 19th C and early 20th C lit).

(How do we know about this? Because he wrote his PM, Richelieu, an angry letter about it. Richelieu at that point was long past his own feud with the Queen and actually made fair weather between them.) /

Actually, this part is kinda cool! :)

L14: Louis Quatorze.
L13: Not yet, my son, not yet.)

Hee, I can see why it's famous!