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: Maria Theresia the TV Series: The End

[mildred_of_midgard]

playing MT's fictional friend Countess Fritz

I have to admit, this is weirding me out. Did they pick this name intentionally? Of all the possible names...!

I can only conclude the King of Prussia was a co-author of this script. After all, he never forgave me for outwitting him diplomatically and kept bitching about me and my in his opinion undeserved reputation as a political mastermind. Making me an incompetent swindler who can't even deliver a marriage sounds like his kind of slander.

LOL!

FS: *interprets "having the talk* differently: Joseph, theory will only get you so far. I'll take you to a brothel so you can practice a bit before your bride arrives.
Joseph: *looks vaguely ill*
Leopold: I want to join and practice marital duties, too!
FS: Aren't you a bit young for that! But okay, come along.

ROFL! The characterization here is amaaaazing.

Isabella: *is disappointed, any chance she might like him dies* *endures clumsy first time sex on Joseph#s part*

:-(

MT: ?!?

FS (when they're alone): Look, I think the affair is a disaster, too, but you want to be a grandmother, don't you? Anything that helps Isabella getting in the mood...

Wow.

Joseph: I wanted to be with someone who knows how I feel. *sits down next to Mimi. They silently take each other's hands and cry*

Selena: You know, I wish that had happened. Would have been so much better for their relationship.

Awwww, yeah.

Joseph: Well, I had a great role model.

MT: *is touched* Joseph...

Joseph: The greatest monarch in Europe, who pursues reforms without anything holding him back, who has his nobility in line, and doesn't kowtow to the church.

LOL OMG!! Uh, yeah, ViennaJoe, your mother's right on this one. Fritz made his nobility the cornerstone of his approach to ruling. Like, he was specifically hamstrung in some of his reform efforts (like abolishing feudalism in the places where it still lingered) because he built his entire military around the concepts of "nobles serve" and "officers must be noble" and "officers lead from the front lines" and "I decimated my nobility in the Seven Years' War enforcing all that leading from the front line."

And I'm in agreement with Beales, FW had more success in fundamental reforms than Joseph because he worked *with* his nobility, not against, and Fritz was conservative enough not to mess with that.

But yeah, you just keep telling yourself that. :P

FS: *amused* Still, I have to say Joseph is a courageous man.Joseph: Oh, doesn't she? You're kidding yourself. Mom and I argue a lot, and I'm not saying I always get her, but I get how she loves, and she minds, and you're just making excuses.

FS: *collapses, dies in Joseph's arms*

Joseph: *guilt trip*

Oh noes!! </3

Leopold: But that was money you were owed, you idiot!

Joseph: I'm not going to make the state pay ME. We need to live for the state.

Wooow.

Also, all this is reminding me that I need to order a hard copy of Peham's bio so I can read it for myself.

the "I had a great role model" exchange is truly hilarious.

You communicated the hilarity to us very effectively!

Swieten: There's only one man sitting on the thrones of Europe along with me right now, and it's a woman: Maria Theresia.

MT: *snorts*

Catherine the Great: *does not exist*

Joseph: *sits in his office with the Fritz portrait in the very next scene*

Selena: I can see why you changed the quote, script, but I don't think you've thought through the implications...

Uh, wow, yeah. Catherine I can understand not existing, but ViennaJoe is *right* there, people!

Btw, when did historical Fritz write/say that? I assume it was during the 1740s?

In conclusion, thank you for this! We are so spoiled in having you. <333

Re: Maria Theresia the TV Series: The End

[selenak]

I have to admit, this is weirding me out. Did they pick this name intentionally? Of all the possible names...!

She's at best an amalgan character anyway. For example, the favored former lady in waiting who together with her husband (most definitely not Kaunitz!) hosted Leopold's wedding in Innsbruck was Sophie Baronness Schack von Schackenburg, married Enzenberg. (Monika Czernin, the author of the Joseph biography "Der Kaiser reist incognito", published a collection of MT's letters to her over thirty years.) Otoh, the lady-in-waiting the fictional Elisa Fritz is based on at the start of the show is someone else altogether, whom FS was suspected to have had a fling with. It's in any case regrettable how they wrote her in the fifth part, because until then, she was an interesting original creation. She started out as a society queen flirting with FS, and then young MT had the original idea to go to her and say, look, you can be my friend, or you can have sex with flirt with my husband and hurt me, but not both, and I will say that I am loyal to my friends, come what may. Countess Elisa f. considered this, knew as a woman of the world that any affair with FS was bound to be over soon and would not get her much in the long run, and therefore decided to become MT's friend and advisor in how to win over/manage the nobility instead. She remained MT's loyal friend through all the series until the fifth part where she lets fictionalized Kaunitz talk her into the shady paper money scheme and then into an intrigue to make trouble between MT and FS so that both of them are recalled from Innsbruck with just a token protest, and then after FS' heart attack disappears from the show.

As to why they called her Elisa von Fritz, God knows. It's not even a likely sounding name.

FS (when they're alone): Look, I think the affair is a disaster, too, but you want to be a grandmother, don't you? Anything that helps Isabella getting in the mood...

Wow.

If you want to be generous, you can see series!FS is clearly a believer into the "multiple orgasms make a woman more fertile" theory which was actually a thing for centuries. But I suspect it's just that the series writers, having introduced him as the most tolerant and open minded person of the ensemble, not just when it's his own sex life at stake, don't want to make him look like a hypocrite to modern viewers.

Btw, when did historical Fritz write/say that? I assume it was during the 1740s?

As far as I recall, though with our luck, it may be one of those apocryphal sayings attributed to him later in various biographies.