18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 36

[cahn]

Starting a couple of comments earlier than usual to mention there are a couple of new salon fics! These probably both need canon knowledge.

felis ficlets on siblings!

Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:

Three Fills for the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon.

Chapter One: Protective Action / Babysitting at Rheinsberg (Frederick/Fredersdorf, William+Henry+Ferdinand)
Chapter Two: Here Be Lions (Wilhelmine)

Unsent Letters fic by me:

Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:

Just because one's king and brother is dead doesn't mean one has to stop writing to him.

Comments

Training one's successor

[mildred_of_midgard]

In our last post, selenak wrote:

Richelieu: one of the very few men of power not afraid to find and train a gifted successor to take their place, which meant that after his death, the system they'd built around them didn't collapse.

And this is very true, and we are indeed looking at you, Fritz.

But from my recent reading I can give an example of a *woman* of power doing it!

Back in 11th century Italy, Salic law was in force, meaning women could not inherit. But as we've seen in Europe during our much later period, women could totally be regents for their sons, or for their husbands if they were sick or away fighting wars.

Well, when Matilda of Tuscany was a child, her father died. Her mother took over as regent for their son Frederick.

Then Frederick died. Technically, the imperial possessions should have reverted to the Holy Roman Emperor to dispose of to one of his followers, buuuut, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope were not on great terms (this is the lead-in to the big Investiture Controversy), and Matilda's family was taking the Pope's side, so they just kind of hung on with papal support.

Meaning Matilda's mother, Beatrice, kept ruling. Now, Matilda had been married off to her stepbrother, the duke of Lorraine. But at one point, she decided to leave her husband and come home. She pushed for a divorce and wanted to enter a nunnery, but the Pope very much did not want her to. He and everyone else pushed back and urged her to reconcile with her husband; she refused.

Eventually, Beatrice gave up on Matilda ever going back to Lorraine, and she started including her daughter in all her governing activities. Beatrice knew the only way for a woman to succeed a woman, totally illegally, was if the woman was well entrenched in power when her predecessor died. And the only way Beatrice was able to stay in power was by traveling throughout her realms, being very hands-on, and making sure her subjects knew who she was and saw her as an authority figure (to be fair, this was extremely the norm for male rulers of the period--centralization was not yet a thing; peripatetic courts were).

So Beatrice and Matilda traveled, and Beatrice made sure everyone saw Matilda as an authority figure, so that when Beatrice died, the transfer of power to Matilda was, if not totally seamless, at least made possible. And Matilda kept ruling for another forty years, de facto if not de jure.

(She and her family were not extremely popular, incidentally. They faced a lot of rebellions, had to make concessions and play political games in order not to be locked out of major cities entirely, and the end of Matilda's reign, ca. 1110, is when Florence went, "Welp! We think we'd like to be a republic," and much of northern Italy started dissolving into the city states that we know and love (or love to hate?) from the Renaissance.)

By the way. The author of the bio I read, Elke Goez, speculates as to some reasons Matilda might have left her husband and refused to go back, stating that "how great her despair must have been can be seen from the fact that she took the difficult journey [over the Alps] south in winter." So, speculates Goez, maybe Matilda couldn't deal with her husband being a hunchback, or maybe her desire for a contemplative life as a nun was just that strong, or maybe she refused to be in a marriage where the woman wasn't an equal partner.

Does anyone else see a missing possible explanation there? Like that maybe her husband was awful to her? I have no evidence for this, but it seems a bit odd to omit it.

Anyway, props to Beatrice for seeing her daughter not as a threat but as the future.

Re: Training one's successor

[cahn]

OK, this is really cool!

So, speculates Goez, maybe Matilda couldn't deal with her husband being a hunchback, or maybe her desire for a contemplative life as a nun was just that strong, or maybe she refused to be in a marriage where the woman wasn't an equal partner.

Me: But... maybe Matilda's husband was crappy? As seems to have been the case for MANY MANY other husbands out there?
Mildred: Does anyone else see a possible missing explanation...?
Me: I've actually learned something from you guys! If only that it sucked to be a woman in the past :P