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cahnMore diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
Re: The Man in the Iron Mask: Fouquet and censorship
Date: 2022-08-09 01:37 pm (UTC)To me, the more intriguing thing is that Louis waited with the workoholic powermongering until Mazarin had died. Before, you had two de facto Prime Ministers consolodating very much power in their hands, first Richelieu, then Mazarin, and only after Mazarin had died and Louis was asked who would now do Mazarin's job did he reply with "I will" and L'etat, c'est moi. Not retiring the Cardinal as soon as he could have was either tact or affection or both, but it also meant he had a few years as a teenage King where he didn't have the gigantic work load he later acquired out of his own volition.
Re: The Man in the Iron Mask: Fouquet and censorship
Date: 2022-08-10 06:37 pm (UTC)This is very true and a good point.
It's also worth adding some context for you,
Not retiring the Cardinal as soon as he could have was either tact or affection or both
Or possibly just him being a teenager. The cognitive ability to choose delayed gratification over instant gratification, along with certain other features of a mature brain, is one that, on average, doesn't finish developing until your mid-twenties. While salon probably selects for people who, like me, were workaholics as teenagers, that's not the norm. Remember that even Fritz was writing to Duhan in his 20s that he regretted all the time spent in dissolute pleasures when he could have been studying, and he was trying to make up for lost time.
Maybe teenage Louis just had more interesting things to do, and it wasn't until his 20s that his willingness to do tedious work met with the opportunity to do it--maybe in his teens, he didn't want it badly enough to oust the guy who was sparing him the time-sucking tedium. Maybe.
Re: The Man in the Iron Mask: Fouquet and censorship
Date: 2022-08-11 06:21 am (UTC)Maybe teenage Louis just had more interesting things to do, and it wasn't until his 20s that his willingness to do tedious work met with the opportunity to do it--maybe in his teens, he didn't want it badly enough to oust the guy who was sparing him the time-sucking tedium. Maybe.
Excellent point. Would make sense, especially since teenage Louis while having his own hang-ups did not suffer from a FW like figure in his life who told him that if he didn't work until and including his death bed, he was a lazybones and unworthy to take the crown. As parent figures go, the combination of Anne and Mazarin was actually a pretty good one for the period. (One of the reasons why I was stunned when Le Roi Danse decided to make Anne into Mean Mom.) (Good for Louis, that is. Philippe is arguable, depending on whether or not you believe Saint Simon - who of course wrote this decades later, knowing the end result and without ever having met Anne - in his assertion Anne deliberately raised Philippe in a way guaranteed to ensure he'd never be a rival to Louis, since she had her brother-in-law Gaston as a warning example of what a scheming King's brother could do.)
Anne and Philippe
Date: 2022-08-13 05:17 am (UTC)Re: Anne and Philippe
Date: 2022-08-13 12:41 pm (UTC)As to a first person testimony from Anne re: her second son, alas the only quotes I know are from arranging his marriage to Minette with her sister-in-law Henrietta Maria. There's no "I decidedt hat the way to prevent Philippe becoming like Gaston is to make him as effeminate as possible" quote that I know of - though with our luck, such a quote exists SOMEWHERE and is just waiting for me to deny it - but that's what she was thinking according to Saint-Simon, who never met her. (Liselotte and Philippe the Regent didn't meet her, either, since she was already dead when Philippe the Gay married a second time.)
Re: Anne and Philippe
Date: 2022-08-13 12:47 pm (UTC)And more generally: "Not conforming to social rules." In addition to being a snob, he was a stickler for etiquette in a way that stuck out at Versailles. Versailles. !!
Among his intense likes would be listed: "Being consulted on the etiquette for any given social occasion." Because 1) he knew all the rules and enjoyed being the expert, 2) nothing more satisfying than seeing an event go the way it's supposed to!
though with our luck, such a quote exists SOMEWHERE and is just waiting for me to deny it
AHAHAHA. It's true, we've all been burned in salon. :D
Re: Anne and Philippe
Date: 2022-08-16 04:48 am (UTC)though with our luck, such a quote exists SOMEWHERE and is just waiting for me to deny it
I mean. Part of me is like "yes, please, deny it!" because this seems to be a good way of getting more delicious gossip :D
But... from what I know about Philippe, really, this seems like the sort of thing where no matter what Anne did Philippe was going to turn out SRSLY GAY, so it seems like Occam's razor to postulate she didn't do much :P
Re: Anne and Philippe
Date: 2022-08-16 10:45 am (UTC)Lol, I had the exact same thought! "Quick, someone deny it!"
But... from what I know about Philippe, really, this seems like the sort of thing where no matter what Anne did Philippe was going to turn out SRSLY GAY, so it seems like Occam's razor to postulate she didn't do much :
I was also thinking this, namely that no matter what Anne did, if Philippe hadn't already been inclined that way...I don't think he would have been so enthusiastic about swimming upstream against societal expectations.