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cahnGonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...
But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!
Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:
Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:
But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!
Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:
Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.
Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:
Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.
The Ottonians
Date: 2022-09-29 09:48 pm (UTC)With the caveat that this is my first introduction to the subject, and I can't comment on whether what he says is sound according to the latest medieval scholarship, I'm at least impressed that the podcaster does a pretty good job of naming the primary sources and critiquing them.
And he has occasional moments of humor, like this one that I had to share:
...Conrad Short-and-Bold. Thank god for these nicknames. When half the protagonists are called Henry, Conrad, Otto, or Eberhard, nicknames are the only way to find out who is who. And they're also brilliant, with short-and-bold being one of the best.
In reference to Conrad Kurzbold.
I'm also having this weird sense of double vision every time I hear about Otto the Great's younger brother Henry rebelling constantly. It's like a might-have-been for Heinrich, if he hadn't been so fiercely and resentfully loyal. After, I think, three? rebellions, Ottonian Henry gets forgiven again and promoted to Duke of Bavaria. Bavaria is under such loose control by the king that it's basically like having your own kingdom. That's when he has enough prestige and important responsibilities to occupy him that he stops rebelling (though he does continue undermining and sometimes waging war on his nephew Ludolf, the heir apparent).
Heinrich: If only I thought I could have gotten prestige and some important responsibilities to occupy me.
Catherine: I tried to make you my satrap!
Dutch: We tried to make you stadtholder!
Poles: We tried too!
Honestly, the podcaster keeps marveling at how these kings keep forgiving their disloyal family, but I'm reminded of Gaston d'Orleans (younger brother of Louis XIII,
Oh, speaking of Matilda, she founded the Abbey of Quedlinburg to hold her husband's (Henry the Fowler) remains, she was later canonized, and she started the tradition of princess-abbesses of Quedlinburg. Of which Amalie was the second-to-last one, and apparently, one of Ulrike's daughters was the last. My studies have now bookended the Abbey of Quedlinburg.
I will pass on anything else salon-tangential that I learn!
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-09-30 10:28 am (UTC)Re: Henry the often forgiven younger brother - well, the main reason why Gaston d‘Orleans got away with all those conspiracies was that until future Louis XIV was finally born after 22 years of marriage, he was the next and only legitimate male heir of the Bourbon line. Bearing in mind that Louis XIII was only the second Bourbon king ever, not ending the dynasty prematurely is a good reason for not killing, permanently harming or punishing Gaston in a way that made him unable to take over as King. Of course, that safety net for Gaston expired the moment Anne produced future Louis XIV and Philippe the Gay, and I don‘t think it‘s a coincidence that Gaston only got entangled in one more conspiracy after that, and only peripherally (the Cinq Mars one), instead of starting them left right and center.
(Cahn, for cross connection: Gaston‘s younger daughter was the enterprising lady who got married very much against her will to Cosimo „the Bigot“ Medici, produced some kids (including last of the Medici Gian Gastone) and through years and years of resistance and outrageous behavior finally managed to achieve her goal of returning to France. Gaston‘s oldest daughter was the „Grande Mademoiselle“ who pissed off Cousin Louis by participating in the Fronde, is referenced a couple of times in Charles II related books because his mother wanted them to marry which both parties were less than kean on, and is Angelique‘s friend and patroness in the early Angelique novels.)
Did Ottonian Henry have such a safety net? I can‘t remember when Adelheid‘s kids were born, but I imagine he might have had it in the Eaditha era of Otto‘s life?
Heinrich: If only I thought I could have gotten prestige and some important responsibilities to occupy me.
Catherine: I tried to make you my satrap!
Dutch: We tried to make you stadtholder!
Poles: We tried too!
Fritz von Steuben: Heinrich for
PresidentKing of America!Fritz of Prussia: *famous historical quote about how to treat Princes of the Blood waving the banner of independence*
Oh, speaking of Matilda, she founded the Abbey of Quedlinburg to hold her husband's (Henry the Fowler) remains, she was later canonized, and she started the tradition of princess-abbesses of Quedlinburg. Of which Amalie was the second-to-last one, and apparently, one of Ulrike's daughters was the last. My studies have now bookended the Abbey of Quedlinburg.
I knew about Ulrike‘s daughter being the last (I think Lehndorff mentions it somewhere - that she‘s the new Abbess, that is -, but didn‘t know or had forgotten Matilda had founded the abbey. Go you!
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-09-30 12:51 pm (UTC)You Europeans and your unfair advantages. :P
Did Ottonian Henry have such a safety net? I can‘t remember when Adelheid‘s kids were born, but I imagine he might have had it in the Eaditha era of Otto‘s life?
He did not! I mean, it's hard to say with medieval birthdates being so uncertain, but by the time Otto inherited, there was at least one other brother who was still living when Henry started rebelling.
Okay, so, it goes like this:
Henry the Fowler: *is king*
Henry the Fowler: *has a bunch of sons from different marriages*
Henry the Fowler: Listen up, nobles. I'm going to die soon, and you're going to do something that's going to be very unpopular: you're going to let my one son Otto inherit everything. I know we Carolingian types generally treat our kingdom like private property and divide it up, and that kind of inheritance pattern is how the Holy Roman Empire will someday end up with approximately one zillion principalities, but Otto is going to inherit everything after I die, you hear me?
Henry the Fowler: *dies*
Otto: *is elected king*
Thankmar: But I'm Dad's oldest son!
Otto: From his first marriage, and that was declared null and void on the grounds that he never got the dispensation he needed to marry a woman who was about to become a nun. Then he married my mother, who was from a way more prominent family. You're disinherited, bro.
Henry: I'm younger than Otto, but I was born after Dad became king. Since there are many competing rules about who inherits, and one of them is that being "born in the purple" gives you precedence over older brothers who were born before Dad became king, I say that makes me king!
Brun: Hi, I'm four. [ETA: Looking more closely, four when Henry makes the succession arrangements--probably, medieval chronology is uncertain, but this is when Otto is first called king in our sources--eleven when Henry the Fowler dies and Otto inherits.
Ludolf: I am Otto's oldest son, already born when he ascends the throne.
Otto: *successively pisses everyone off*
Thankmar: *rebels*
Thankmar: *is killed*
Henry: My turn to rebel!
At this point, there is at least one brother (Brun) and one son (Ludolf) to inherit if Otto has Henry killed. Instead, they do the whole tearfully-embracing public penance and reconciliation thing, and Henry gets a dukedom (Lotharingia--roughly Lorraine).
Then he loses the duchy, and rebels again, and tries to have older brother Otto assassinated at Quedlinburg. This also fails, but they go through the medieval penance-and-reconciliation ritual again, and a few years later, he gets the duchy of Bavaria, where he rules like a king.
Fritz von Steuben: Heinrich for President King of America!
How could I forget this one!
Fritz of Prussia: *famous historical quote about how to treat Princes of the Blood waving the banner of independence*
Yep, the same quote I was thinking of. And I've always loved your snarky comment that it sure wasn't AW or Ferdinand he was talking about. :P
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 11:33 am (UTC)Well, Ferdinand has always shown him friendship. When he wasn't being the worst of the Hohenzollern. :)
More seriously, I always thought that Fritz would have agreed with Thomas Mann who mid feuding with his brother Heinrich wrote to his publisher "I suppose you've heard about my quarrel with my brother - I mean of course my older brother; in the higher sense I have only one brother. The other one is a nice fellow one can't argue with". With the qualification that Fritz was fond enough of AW as far as it goes for most of his life, with unresolved FW related issues that only bore fruit during the big disaster. Still, there is a reason why even as early as the early 1750s, when AW and Heinrich did their rpg game about invading Saxony and war with GB, there was no question as to which one played Fritz.
Also, I found one of the Adelheid and Teophanu posts again. And here is my Magdeburg pic spam, but alas no Otto related photo.
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-08 04:22 am (UTC)Heeeee, that will never not be funny!
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-09-30 10:08 pm (UTC)And that is why Gian Gastone's name was "Gastone", which was, to say the least, not a traditional Medici name.
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 09:23 am (UTC)Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 05:04 am (UTC)Heh, so it sounds like he was very aware of his safety net...?
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 09:22 am (UTC)Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-02 02:36 pm (UTC)Henry, brother of Otto I: Is *not* the heir, gets forgiven multiple times.
Henry the Quarrelsome, son of above Henry and first cousin of Otto II: *is* the heir (okay, there's another cousin, but no sons or brothers or uncles), gets locked up pronto, stripped of his lands, and locked up again when he escapes.
He's still locked up when Otto II dies, and then he makes his bid for power against Theophanu and Adalheid that you can read about in
I'm thinking that being the next heir wasn't a safety net in the 10th century the way it was in Bourbon times, because the rules of succession weren't set in stone. When brother Henry was rebelling, there had been exactly one (1) attempt to transfer a kingdom intact to the oldest son, and that was exactly what Henry was rebelling against. His and Otto's father, Henry the Fowler, had been elected king despite the fact that he wasn't part of the previous ruling family (and had rebelled against the previous king!), and the previous king, Konrad, had a brother, Eberhard, who was still alive and well!
So the rules here are just different.
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-09-30 01:09 pm (UTC)The podcaster is talking about the decentralization of Charlemagne's empire.
For context,
Our podcaster describes this transition:
The king no longer directed the counts. Charlemagne's administrative system had worked exceedingly well whilst the empire was expanding. As long as the counts had the opportunity to plunder and extort, they were happy to move around the empire at a moment's notice. Once the empire is at peace, their motivations and their powers changed.
Imagine: the king sends a new count to replace the current incumbent. That is quite easy if the new guy comes with a letter signed by "Charles the Great, by the grace of God, Roman Emperor and King of the Franks." Imagine the new guy shows up with a letter signed by "Charles the Fat, by the skin of my teeth, still King of East Francia."
So it was just easier to leave the old count in place and, when he died, replace him with some at least semi-competent and halfway loyal member of his family. The third time this happens, the new count really cannot remember which of the estates he controls were originally his granddad's private property and which were part of the crown estate. So it's better to put it all into one pot. Just easier to administrate.
If the king sends a letter and says, "Give me back my farm or tolls or court fees," the count again looks at the signature, and it still says, "Charles the Fat, by the skin of my teeth, still King of East Francia."
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 05:06 am (UTC)Okay, I actually laughed out loud at this :D
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 09:23 am (UTC)Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 12:54 pm (UTC)Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 04:21 pm (UTC)Per Wikipedia,
The nickname "Charles the Fat" (Latin Carolus Crassus) is not contemporary. It was first used by the Annalista Saxo (the anonymous "Saxon Annalist") in the twelfth century. There is no contemporary reference to Charles's physical size, but the nickname has stuck and is the common name in most modern European languages (French Charles le Gros, German Karl der Dicke, Italian Carlo il Grosso).
So it's not something the podcaster is making up (but he is definitely deploying it strategically for humorous purposes).
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-08 04:33 am (UTC)Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-10 11:41 am (UTC)Me: Everyone knows Aachen = Aix-la-Chapelle! But Silvester II is some terribly obscure figure no one (except Selena) has ever heard of.
Cahn: Wrong and wrong!
:D
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-13 05:09 am (UTC)Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-01 05:03 am (UTC)Aww! Although my tropes being what they are, I love Heinrich because he was so loyal. And resentful. <3
Poles: We tried too!
Hee!
My studies have now bookended the Abbey of Quedlinburg.
Okay, that's pretty awesome!
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-02 02:28 pm (UTC)So, Gerbert of Aurillac is, according to Wikipedia (which is easier to copy-paste than to find the equivalent passage in the podcast and transcribe it):
...a French-born scholar and teacher who served as the bishop of Rome and ruled the Papal States from 999 to his death. He endorsed and promoted study of Arab and Greco-Roman arithmetic, mathematics and astronomy, reintroducing to Europe the abacus and armillary sphere, which had been lost to Latin Europe since the end of the Greco-Roman era. He is said to be the first in Europe to introduce the decimal numeral system using the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. He is credited with the invention of the first mechanical clock in 996.
...Gerbert of Aurillac was a humanist long before the Renaissance. He read Virgil, Cicero and Boethius; he studied Latin translations of Porphyry and Aristotle. He had a very accurate classification of the different disciplines of philosophy....
Gerbert was said to be one of the most noted scientists of his time. Gerbert wrote a series of works dealing with matters of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), which he taught using the basis of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). In Rheims, he constructed a hydraulic-powered organ with brass pipes that excelled all previously known instruments, where the air had to be pumped manually...Gerbert may have been the author of a description of the astrolabe that was edited by Hermannus Contractus some 50 years later.
Pretty impressive guy!
So I was listening to the podcast yesterday, and imagine my hysterical laughter when I learned that Otto III, reaching his majority,
invites Gerbert to become his teacher and political advisor to, in his words, 'help him overcome his Saxon rusticity and acquire Greek sophistication.'
Voltaire: Political advisor?!
Fritz: Dream on.
But seriously. I was not expecting that so many German kings openly admitted to needing famous French scholars to help them overcome their Saxon/Brandenburgian rusticity. :'D
I was hoping for a major falling out with much popcorn-munching, but Wikipedia isn't giving me any indication of one, just Gerbert becoming pope Silvester II with Otto's help. (I'm currently in the middle of Otto III's reign.)
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-03 06:10 am (UTC)Hey, we're all descendants of Charlemagne. :)
Given that Otto III's mother was Teophanu, i.e. a Byzantine princess whose court and country of origin might have been lethal but also way more cultured and sophisticated then anything the Ottonians had to offer until that point, I can think of another thing he might have had in common with Fritz that made him seek out French scholarly aide...
(ETA: Not that SD had anything like Teophanu's political savvy. Her insistance on the English marriage project seems to have been fuelled by prestige thinking rather than political alliance strategizing.)
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-08 04:43 am (UTC)...Gerbert of Aurillac / Pope Sylvester II rings a bell; wait! Judith Tarr wrote a book about this guy! Ars Magica. I remember almost nothing about this book -- oh, wait, I think it might have had a "gotcha" ending based on the end of Gerbert's life, maybe? -- but I remember otherwise liking it. I don't have my childhood copy anymore, but it looks like the library has it... maybe I ought to reread it :) (I mean, I am pretty sure that, as with her other books, it's history in Magic!AU, but her background is in history and my sense was that she tended to be pretty good about the history, with the usual novelist liberties.)
Re: The Ottonians
Date: 2022-10-10 11:38 am (UTC)