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cahnIn 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?
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?
Re: Henri IV and Louis XIII
Date: 2022-04-28 07:37 am (UTC)(Reminder to your memory: Now, current dominating historical opinion isn't anymore that Catherine planned and masterminded the St. Bartholomew's massacre ahead of time but that she probably was sincere in arranging for the marriage of young Henri with her youngest daughter Margot to bring the Protestant and Catholic factions together. Also as a way to counteract the influence of the leading Protestant, Condé (Henri was a generation younger and outranking Condé as the King of Navarre, but both were Bourbons, i.e. the family which was next if Catherine's sons should all die without heirs), and to outmaneuvre the Guises, who were the leaders of the ultra-Catholic faction (and via their niece Mary Queen of Scots already owned one of the thrones of Europe with an eye on the English throne). But once Condé explicitly threatened her in the argument as to whether nor not to support the Netherlanders against Philip of Spain, Catherine signalled to the Duc de Guise who had a blood feud against Condé that she was okay with him murdering Condé. When that assassination was bungled by the assassin, with all the Protestants in the city for the Henri/Margot wedding, and a surviving Condé fuming, Catherine probably decided that it wasn't enough to kill Condé (this time not leaving it to the Guises) but that all the other heads of the Protestant faction had to go (minus Henri) so there could not be a retaliatory strike re: Condé. But it didn't happen this way, because religious hatred on the Catholic side was already at a boiling point - the whole idea of the marriage was hugely unpopular -, when people saw Protestants were killed they joined in, and instead of a surgical strike, a massacre evolved, which lasted for days. And later of course most people believed that was what Catherine had intended all along.
As I said, even if you don't believe that - Henri, unlike current day historians, didn't regard this as a historical event weighing evidence pro and against and with access to lots of source material, he was right there, his friends died along with so many others, and his own life was at stake because once the massacre was rolling and it was clear no one could stop it, he was basically given a "convert or die" option. So he would have had all the reason in the world to loathe Catherine and curse her memory, and nothing to gain by speaking well, even understanding of her, years after her death. But he did, and he also was the one to order that her earthly remains be transferred to the royal crypt in St. Denis next to her husband's and children's. (Catherine had died at Blois, not Paris, and at the time of her death France was split in a three ways war between her son Henri III, the Guises (now openly against the throne) and future Henri IV and the Protestants; one of Catherine's last political acts had been a journey to future Henri IV to negotiate an alliance between him and her son.) There's also the coincidence (or not) that Henri IV issued the Edict of Nantes, which gave Protestants equal civil rights (until his grandson Louis XIV revoked it), on Catherine's birthday once he ruled. Anyway: he did not hate Catherine, and it does look as if he respected her.
Re: Henri IV and Louis XIII
Date: 2022-05-05 04:42 am (UTC)if it was in an operaonce you remind me? :) ) That is really interesting that he didn't hate her and did respect her. Though I guess, as you say, at least he wasn't married to her :PP