cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 35

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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?

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Another "Do you know this author?" question for our Germans: Volker Reinhardt. Mostly a Renaissance scholar, but he just published a bio of our Voltaire in January.

From:

selenak

Heard the name, have not yet any of his books, due to a silly personal pet peeve: his book about Alexander VI. aka Rodrigo Borgia is titled "The Creepy Pope" (Der unheimliche Papst), and his book about the Borgias "Die unheimliche Familie" - the creepy family. Now you can say a great many things about the Borgias in general and Rodrigo in particular, always with the caveat of "neither better or worse than other Renaissance families, got the bad press due to being outsiders from Spain having a go at the pie that was supposed to be Italian-served only". "Corrupt Pope", "Renaissance Pope", "Simonist Pope", "Nepotism Champ", fine. But unheimlich, he was not. So I was put off his oeuvre so far and haven#t read it yet.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I saw that! And I thought, "Selena's not going to like that." *g*

Well, I'll give him a try. I care more about readability at this point than about saying correct things. I just don't want Stollberg-Rilinger, or, as I discovered last night, Bernd Schneidmüller. Either of whom I could handle in English, but not yet German.

Hopefully he at least knows how Lucrezia's husbands died...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Mind you, I'm now having a laugh thinking of the Addams family, and how the song lyrics could be turned into a Borgia family song... :D

From:

selenak

That was done years ago!

https://youtu.be/s1ADwv2A1wg

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Lol!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Also, if we're talking aggravating titles, I have one for you: "Anna Maria Francesca: una principessa boema...una fiorentina mancata" (Anna Maria Francesca: a Bohemian princess...a failed Florentine).

Now, I really wanted to give the author the benefit of the doubt and hope that in Italian "mancata" can mean something more neutral, like, "Almost became a Florentine but not quite," without all the value judgment, and that this was just a marketing gimmick akin to appending "The Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots" to your title to convince English-speaking readers to buy your book about this Winter Queen they've never heard of.

But then I read some of Bruschi's books (I have yet to read the AMF one, because I got a bit fed up with him), and he's the Florentine (!) who thinks it's well known that Italians are the best-looking people in the world, and within Italy, the Tuscans are especially good-looking, and within Tuscany, the Florentines are the pinnacle of human beauty. All this to support an argument that good-looking men in Florence must have been a dime a dozen, so if all his contemporaries felt called upon to praise Giuliano Dami's beauty, we know he must have been smoking hot stuff.

(I was going to review Bruschi's books for you guys, but you know...it just would have been firstly a rant about his terrible opinions, and secondly a rant about how he seems to be confusing the genres of history and historical fiction, so, consider it said.)

Anyway! My view of Anna Maria Francesca is that she was a SUCCESS at avoiding having to live in Florence with Gian Gastone! You try marrying him, Alberto Bruschi. :P

ETA: Only you wouldn't, because you're a freaking homophobe. *grumbles*

Edited Date: 2022-04-24 04:06 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Count me as cheering Anna Maria Francesca for staying the hell away from Florence and a situation like her mother-in-law's where she'd have been in the social power of her husband, too.

From:

cahn

good-looking men in Florence must have been a dime a dozen, so if all his contemporaries felt called upon to praise Giuliano Dami's beauty, we know he must have been smoking hot stuff.

...wow. Thanks for reading it and reporting back? Because this is hilarious to me, but I imagine it was rather less hilarious to actually read.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, it was hilarious! I kept wanting to liveblog it at you guys! This and the 18th century tabloid, complete with Harold Acton/Norman Douglas intros.

But after I finished reading, I realized that it would just be a rant about how this is all terrible history and the amount I actually learned was minimal (though we did get documentary counterevidence to GG as pedophile!), so I would be better off actually trying to learn stuff.

That said, if I go back to these books when I have more time, you may hear from me on the subject of "These people should have stuck to historical fiction."