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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.
Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-09 07:38 pm (UTC)1. I read German veeery slooowly,
2. Writing summaries is like pulling teeth,
3. I am easily distracted,
...I decided to write up the first third of the bio, which is as far as I've gotten, instead of waiting until I finish the whole thing, which will make the prospect of any write-up at all less likely. Will there be write-ups of the second and third parts? Who can know such things! But in the meantime, here's the pre-marriage days.
Isabella of Parma is named after her grandmother Isabella Farnese, strong-willed (second) wife of Philip V "the Frog" of Spain. Her father is Don Philipp, second son of Isabella and Philip. Their first son, Don Carlos, is the one who Isabella, among other things, unsuccessfully tried to get married to one of the Austrian Archduchesses, hoping for MT. More on him at Rheinsberg here.
Isabella's mother is Louise-Elisabeth, the favorite daughter of Louis XV. Being the favorite daughter didn't mean she didn't have to marry for policy: she was shipped off to Spain and married at age 12, and she was only 14 years and 4 months old when she gave birth to Isabella, in what was a difficult birth that she was fortunate to survive. (14-year-old bodies, possibly not ideally suited for giving birth.)
What you need to know about Louise-Elisabeth is that she:
- Did not like Spain
- Did not like Parma
- Loved France (aka Versailles)
Spain was run by strong-willed mother-in-law Isabella. Parma was a "hole in the wall." Versailles was glamorous and had her beloved family. She was homesick whenever she wasn't there and tried to spend as much time there as possible.
Endearing anecdote of Louise-Elisabeth before she had to leave home: as an 11-year-old kid sneaking out of Versailles when war broke out against England and getting caught.
"Where are you going?"
"To the army. I'm going to put myself at the head and lay England at the feet of Papa-Roi."
"How, then?"
"I'll have the lords sleep with me, and then they'll feel greatly honored, and I'll kill them, one after the other."
Alas, she ends up in Spain, married to Don Philipp in Spain. She gives birth to Isabella in December 1741, which is right as the War of the Austrian Succession is breaking out. Don Philipp goes off to war in Italy a couple years later, trying to help Spain capture Austrian Habsburg provinces there so that he and his older brother Don Carlos will have principalities to inherit. (This is Isabella's life mission and responsible for much of European politics in the 1720s.)
While Don Philipp is off in Italy, Louise-Elisabeth stays behind in Spain and sends him letters.
Then when the war ends in 1748, they have a principality called Parma. Louise-Elisabeth says "good riddance" to Spain and goes to...France.
To see her family again. Don Philipp is still in Italy. They write letters. She drags out her stay in France as long as possible.
Isabella, meanwhile, is about 7 years old, and a hyperactive kid.
One teacher, who wanted to intimidate her by making faces, she only imitated, and unsettled him with unpleasant truths, which she told him bluntly to his face. She couldn't see a pile of earth or coal without jumping over it, she chased butterflies, flooded her room, wanted to play war, write, sing, dance, construct a horse that could be set in motion by a string, nothing was too difficult for her, she would have loved to dance on the tightrope!
She writes later in life that this was received better at Versailles than at the hyper-etiquette-conscious world of the Spanish court. Considering how stifling Marie Antoinette found the etiquette of Versailles after Vienna, Spain was really something! (The daughter of Regent Philippe who was sent to Spain in the 1720s as part of the "exchange of princesses" also found Spanish etiquette stifling and was always getting in trouble.)
In France, Louise-Elisabeth is occupied by:
1) Playing the "favorite daughter" card to get money out of Dad (Louis XV) for Parma. Don Carlos had apparently ransacked all the art and luxuries from the palace and taken them to Naples when he upgraded his principality in the 1730s. Parma was, according to Louise-Elisabeth, according to the letters she was getting from her husband, in a sad state. Please send money!
2) Trying to see if she can get a better principality than Parma, which, have I mentioned, she thinks sucks.
3) Trying to broker a good marriage for her daughter.
Reluctantly, she finally goes to Parma. She and her husband see each other for the first time in 6.5 years. She gets pregnant quickly with future Duke Ferdinand of Parma, about whom more if I ever do that write-up.
While in Parma, she ignores her kids (par for the course) and spends most of her time writing letters to:
1) Heads of state with marriageable children.
2) Dad, asking him for money for Parma.
3) Her agent in Paris, asking him for all the luxuries that one can buy in Paris.
(You may be sensing a theme here.)
At one point, Louis sighs and says it would have been cheaper to keep her in Paris and not have to fund a second court in Parma.
Eventually, he sort of gets his wish, because Louise-Elisabeth goes back to France. Except that her husband and kids are still in Italy, and she's there basically to ask for money, in hopes face-to-face requests are even more lucrative.
Meanwhile, Isabella is growing up in Italy. She doesn't like it and writes about it in terms not unlike Algarotti's. The climate is terrible (alternating sweltering summers with frozen winters), the people are stupid, especially the "cicisbei", who are pretty but empty-headed, everyone is stupid and false, and only exist to cause her ten thousand irritations, and she always has the feeling she is surrounded by mortal enemies.
Not happy!
It's also not clear that she has any friends her own age, and as we've seen, her mother isn't around much even when she's around.
What she does have are a lot of hobbies. From Mom's agent in Paris, she orders:
four volumes of sonatas by Leclair, Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", the quartets by Telemann, the sonatas op. 6 by Locatelli, pieces for the harpsichord by Couperin, but also a wealth of operatic works, mainly by French composers.
She also went for dancing, archery, cooking, and gardening. She had a secret garden hidden away from prying eyes, and bred silkworms. She learned drawing, painting in pastels and copper engraving. We have one pastel painting by her ("Roman Charity", in which a young woman offers her breast to her dying father in a dark prison), and two landscape drawings.
And of course, she reads and writes a lot. Her library is again thanks to Mom's agent in Paris. Of course, this episode made me laugh.
She/her tutor wanted a bilingual "Telemachus" (remember, Fenelon's bestselling novel on how to be a good prince) from France, so Isabella could practice her German.
But no luck, there are no bilingual editions in Paris. A French copy and a German translation, then?
German translations in Paris? You must be kidding. :-P
As Isabella is growing up, the 1750s were full of marriage negotiations. At one point, they involve Ferdinand VI of Spain. He is the first son of Philip V "the Frog" and his *first* wife, Marie-Louise of Savoy (daughter of Machiavellian Victor Amadeus of Savoy). So he is the older half-brother of Isabella's father, Don Philipp.
His wife is believed to be on her deathbed, and he's childless, so marriage negotiations to get him an heir to the throne are of paramount importance. Who better but Don Philipp's twelve-year-old daughter, Isabella?
Fortunately (??), by the time his wife dies, Ferdinand is in the grips of such poor mental health that nobody sees a point in arranging for a remarriage. To quote a passage from Wikipedia that I think I've quoted before:
Between the date of her death in August 1758 and his own on 10 August 1759, he fell into a state of prostration in which he would not even dress, but wandered unshaven, unwashed and in a nightgown about his park. Other opinion is that Ferdinand VI suffered a rapidly progressive clinical syndrome where behavioral disorganization with apathy and impulsivity, loss of judgment, and epileptic seizures of right frontal lobe semiology were predominant. This semiology is highly suggestive of a right frontal lobe syndrome.
He died a year later. So Isabella dodged a bullet there. I mean, not that marrying Joseph, becoming clinically depressed, and dying of smallpox + childbirth at age 21 was such a stroke of luck, but now we see that it spared her marrying her acutely mentally ill uncle at the age of 12.
Instead, she ends up with Joseph. What happened was that for the entirety of the 1750s, MT was trying to decide whether to marry Joseph off to someone from Parma (Don Philipp's kids) or Naples (Don Carlos's kids).
Then the Diplomatic Revolution happens and the Seven Years' War breaks out in 1756. In 1757, the Austrians inflict Fritz's first defeat on him, at Kolin, and things are looking good! Time to solidify that French alliance. Because Louise-Elisabeth of Parma is Louis' favorite daughter, and an Isabella-Joseph marriage will help solidify the alliance. Even Fritz's humiliating defeat of the French at Rossbach a few months later doesn't put a wrench in the marriage works.
So Parma it is, not Naples. Of course, the royal family in Naples was so offended that MT had to tell them that Joseph had seen a picture of Isabella and fallen so in love that he refused to have anyone else. It's unclear whether the powers that be in Naples fell for it, says Tamussino, but historians certainly did, and you'll see it in biographies.
MT will, of course, later marry Maria Carolina to butt-groper Ferdinand in Naples, where she will befriend Emma Hamilton.
Meanwhile, Louise-Elisabeth is surprisingly lukewarm about this marriage, writing to her husband that "an opera would be overkill for the festivities" and "this marriage is good fortune for us, but not an honor." Tamussino: "Not an honor? What more 'honor' did Louise-Elisabeth want than a future emperor as son-in-law?"
Louise-Elisabeth also didn't feel the need to write Isabella any advice on how to be a good wife and mother (or at least no such document is extant); apparently she was too busy hiring a tutor for Ferdinand, future duke, who wrote a 13-volume set of textbooks for him. (If I ever get around to summarizing the monograph I read on his education, you'll see how that turned out.)
Whatever was going on there, Louise-Elisabeth doesn't live to see the marriage; she dies of smallpox, still in Paris, and is buried there. It's unclear, says Tamussino, how much Isabella genuinely mourned her.
Meanwhile, the marriage planning is in the works. Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein is in charge of planning the trip.
Planning the trip is a BIG DEAL. They have to get over the Alps. In a fancy carriage. A fancy carriage that is really old and needs to be completely renovated by what are basically art historians doing restoration. And also have an entire body of men dedicated to keep it from falling into ditches. And to run ahead and figure out what gates need to be widened, or if they can't do that, what cities need to be circumnavigated because the carriage is too big, and what roofs of which buildings will be damaged as the carriage passes by and the owners need to be recompensed, and so on and so forth. It took months to get ready.
The author says that the modern reader who travels in fancy metal limousines along asphalt-paved roads and highways reads with astonishment just how difficult it was to get Isabella from Parma to Vienna.
(Liechtenstein, remember, sold Fritz the Antinous statue, and was present at the siege of Philippsburg in 1734 along with Fritz, Voltaire, Eugene, the Duke of Berwick, and apparently everyone who was anyone.)
But what I read with--well, not astonishment, but mild surprise, was that Isabella and Maria Christina corresponded while Isabella was still in Parma.
Just normal, friendly letters, like, "I can't wait to meet you" and "I'm so glad to be going to Germany, a place I love not just out of duty but out of inclination," and "Congrats on beating the Prussians, I really hope Fritz is finished off for good by the time I arrive," but knowing what's coming, I was interested to see their ongoing correspondence began so early.
And that's as far as I've gotten.
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-10 02:35 pm (UTC)Louise-Elisabeth: I bet everyone who was old enough to remember Marguerite-Louise d'Orleans must have had a distinct sense of deja vue...
German translations in Paris? You must be kidding. :-P
LOL. That's why Liselotte wrote so many of her letters in German. Better than using a code or invisible ink! Mind you, a German translation of Telemachus must have existed (just not in Paris) at the time, because I bet Leopold Mozart didn't read it in French. Hang on, I dimly recall Sophie Charlotte might have ordered a French and German version for son FW. Or something like that.
(BTW, there's a portrait of Fenelon in the Alte Pinakothek here in Munich. The Dr. Spock of his day!
Isabella dodged a bullet there. I mean, not that marrying Joseph, becoming clinically depressed, and dying of smallpox + childbirth at age 21 was such a stroke of luck, but now we see that it spared her marrying her acutely mentally ill uncle at the age of 12.
Verily. What I'd like to know is: how come the Bourbons, who have better reason than most to remember how all the uncle/niece marriages worked out for the Spanish Habsburgs, wanted to continue where the later left of?
Meanwhile, Louise-Elisabeth is surprisingly lukewarm about this marriage, writing to her husband that "an opera would be overkill for the festivities" and "this marriage is good fortune for us, but not an honor." Tamussino: "Not an honor? What more 'honor' did Louise-Elisabeth want than a future emperor as son-in-law?"
A combination of French hostility towards a centuries long enemy (which was returned, see also the Prince de Ligne, Eugene memoirs ghost writer, venting his grudge via said RPF) and French nobility snobbery? But seriously, it's worth remembering that while on the one hand, the imperial family (and a future Emperor) certainly outranked everyone else on the continent and besides the Habsburgs were in the empire ruling business since way more centuries than the Bourbons were in the business of ruling France, this did not stop French royals and nobles looking down on their noses on Joseph's sister Marie Antoinette, either. And I'm reminded of Sophie the Electress of Hannover visiting Versailles, not getting offered an arm chair by the Queen and commenting that she had been given one by the Empress herself, so really...
Liechtenstein, remember, sold Fritz the Antinous statue, and was present at the siege of Philippsburg in 1734 along with Fritz, Voltaire, Eugene, the Duke of Berwick, and apparently everyone who was anyone.
Cousins George II and FW in a rare moment of perfect unity: We weren't! Everything would have been different if we had been! We deserved to be! We complained of not being there to our respective courtiers!
FS: I wasn't there, either. I had just returned from my grand tour, I think, which had been way more fun. )
I read with--well, not astonishment, but mild surprise, was that Isabella and Maria Christina corresponded while Isabella was still in Parma.
Does our author mention who started it? I did know they had written before they met, but not who initialized it and why.
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-12 04:42 pm (UTC)Lol! Very true. Fortunately for everyone, Louise-Elisabeth was a bit more conventional and less hardcore about her efforts to return to France.
LOL. That's why Liselotte wrote so many of her letters in German. Better than using a code or invisible ink!
Well, personally, *I* think her Baroque German is better than a code! (Looking through old posts recently, I saw Felis proactively translating a passage because wow.)
Mind you, a German translation of Telemachus must have existed (just not in Paris) at the time, because I bet Leopold Mozart didn't read it in French. Hang on, I dimly recall Sophie Charlotte might have ordered a French and German version for son FW. Or something like that.
Hmm, I'm not seeing it in Beuy's SC bio (which talks extensively about the book, but doesn't specify a bilingual version that I can see), but then I don't have the FW bios you've read.
There was a German translation, though! Per Wikipedia:
A German translation was published in 1733 under the title Die seltsamen Begebenheiten des Telemach and was very popular in German court circles at the time.[11][12] It inspired Wilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth to design her English landscape garden, the Sanspareil.
The work is best known in Russia for a verse translation by Vasily Trediakovsky published in 1766 and entitled Tilemakhida, or the Wandering of Telemachus, Son of Odysseus (Тилемахида, или Странствование Тилемаха, сына Одиссеева). The translation is noted for its archaic diction and its use of hexameters. The work was ridiculed by Catherine the Great but defended by Alexander Radishchev and others.
Télémaque was translated into Ottoman Turkish in 1859 by Yusuf Kamil Pasha (1806-1876), a statesman who would later become grand vezir (prime minister) of the Ottoman Empire. It is considered the first translation of a European novel into Turkish.
Wilhelmine's Sanspareil garden has its whole own Wikipedia page,
What I'd like to know is: how come the Bourbons, who have better reason than most to remember how all the uncle/niece marriages worked out for the Spanish Habsburgs, wanted to continue where the later left of?
I was wondering the same thing! It's too soon for them to be going, "Well, Ferdinand has the only functional marriage of the Hohenzollern brothers..." :P
A combination of French hostility towards a centuries long enemy (which was returned, see also the Prince de Ligne, Eugene memoirs ghost writer, venting his grudge via said RPF) and French nobility snobbery?
Haha, Tamussino the Austrian is outraged. ;)
Cousins George II and FW in a rare moment of perfect unity: We weren't! Everything would have been different if we had been! We deserved to be! We complained of not being there to our respective courtiers!
Lol forever! FW did show up at Philippsburg, though, right? I think toward the end of the siege?
Does our author mention who started it? I did know they had written before they met, but not who initialized it and why.
MC started it. Looking through old posts, you did tell us back in October 2019 that they had corresponded before they met, but I had forgotten.
Unfortunately, we don't have MC's letters, only Isabella's, but it looks like MC probably wrote a "Welcome to the family, looking forward to meeting you" letter, and Isabella replied...but what was interesting to me was that they kept up the correspondence and exchanged *several* letters before meeting.
They're still corresponding as she continues her slow and formal progress from Italy to Vienna, stopping to be feted in most every significant city she comes to. I (and Tamussino) found this letter charming:
Madam, my dear sister,
All my letters today begin with an apology. It's really my fault that I neglected to answer your letter of the 10th. A thousand reasons could be given to justify me, but they are all of little value. I could say that the journey, the fatigue, the lack of time, the care I need for my health (you recommended it to me yourself!) have prevented me. As for fatigue, the day trips aren't long enough for me to be so exhausted that I can't write. And although I do refer to said care [sc. for her health] no one dies if one writes a letter, just as little does one die if one sleeps a quarter of an hour less - if necessary, one sleeps in the carriage. So you see that I give up all justification and count only on your friendship to forgive my laziness. Finally, I hope that you are convinced of my feelings for you and the joy that yours bring me!
Tamussino: "From Marie Christine's letters (unfortunately not preserved) such a heartfelt tone must have spoken to Isabella that she immediately gained confidence and corresponded with her future sister-in-law like an old friend."
Joseph's letters during this period, though, wow. He keeps writing to an old friend about how nervous he is about getting married. The first letter:
My dear Salm,
It was with great pleasure that I read your letter... The description you give me of the Princess is too favorable for me not to hope to be happy... I think that I have owed this great grace of God have deserved to the perfect equanimity which I have always shown toward the choice of a wife their majesties have made for me... Well, whether I like it or not, I am destined for the Infanta, whom I marry and, as far as I am concerned, I will certainly do my utmost to win her esteem and trust. As for love, you know it's against my nature to play the lover. Gradually prepare her for the fact that she will not find in me a dapper youth telling her a hundred lovely little nothings, but a man who is determined, from the first moment, to give her whatever consideration and attention she desires. I believe this is my duty and I will fulfill it, come what may. However, a means--perhaps the only means--to win my heart would be if she would be so kind as to place her trust in me and occasionally seek my advice, which I will always give her honestly and to the best of my knowledge... So there you have it, a rather silly speech by a lover who is to be married in three weeks . But my fame, the service of the Empress, and the welfare of the people could cause me to go into battle straight from the altar if I were allowed to. Even before the altar, I would take the princess by the head and, con gusto conforto, join the army... I have never felt the thrills of love that might turn my head, but it has happened to many people who are wiser than I.
Getting more excited:
Of all the reports and tales I have heard about the Infanta, nothing has given me so much joy as your announcement that she loves sincerity and wants a husband who will also be her friend...My heart, hitherto stony and insensitive to the charms of love, allows itself to be drawn into its nets...My heart is a little excited, although I don't admit it today. In 14 days we'll see each other in Laxenburg, where I'll be quite embarrassed and cut a silly figure, against my nature willing to play the lovable and maybe after a while the lover. For you, who know me, there will be something to laugh about there...For me, please thank the Infanta for the opera she sent me and say something nice and gallant to her, for I am too plain in my nature to think up such things.
Getting more nervous:
As the moment draws near, the more worked up I am, I confess, not for joy but for fear of not being happy. I feel very young and barely capable of directing myself - how am I supposed to direct a wife? I've never known the charms of love, God knows how I'll fare.
Man. :/ Poor everyone.
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-13 05:31 am (UTC)I did and looked up some more pictures, and it looks very nice! :)
So you see that I give up all justification and count only on your friendship to forgive my laziness.
Aww, that's super cute.
Gradually prepare her for the fact that she will not find in me a dapper youth telling her a hundred lovely little nothings, but a man who is determined, from the first moment, to give her whatever consideration and attention she desires. I believe this is my duty and I will fulfill it, come what may. However, a means--perhaps the only means--to win my heart would be if she would be so kind as to place her trust in me and occasionally seek my advice, which I will always give her honestly and to the best of my knowledge...
Aww, Joseph <33 :(
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-14 04:31 pm (UTC)It is. We used to go there when I was a kid, and it was fun to play in this rock garden.
Joseph the Fritz fan and virgin convinced he's made for the manly military life and getting more and more nervous at the prospect of marriage but also resolved to be attentive and wishing for honesty in their marriage: poor kids. Poor, poor kids.
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-14 06:00 pm (UTC)I feel like that must have been common. I guess if you had that kind of self-awareness, it at least beat the alternative? Ugh, though.
Poor, poor kids.
(Joseph was 19, btw,
Ah, there we go, found it:
As opposed to Charlotte, who hears the same "get pregnant" admonishment but proves she really, as Fritz writes to Wilhelmine in 1733, is allowed to get away with everything, because she writes back, yeah, no, Dad, I'm 18 and feel I need a parent myself, I want a few more years before making you a Grandfather.
Sadly, I checked, and her first child was born already in 1735, when she was 20.
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-14 06:19 pm (UTC)Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-18 04:24 am (UTC)Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-11 01:30 pm (UTC)Ha ha, wow. Like the Book of Judith!
Awww, I'm glad Isabella had all those hobbies, she sounds like a nerdy child.
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-13 05:26 am (UTC)and also maybe now someone will write me Isabella of Parma ficand she was only 14 years and 4 months old when she gave birth to Isabella, in what was a difficult birth that she was fortunate to survive. (14-year-old bodies, possibly not ideally suited for giving birth.)
ARRRRGH
"I'll have the lords sleep with me, and then they'll feel greatly honored, and I'll kill them, one after the other."
Haha, okay, that is definitely endearing! Though maybe not to the lords...
Considering how stifling Marie Antoinette found the etiquette of Versailles after Vienna, Spain was really something!
Oof! Thanks for making that connection for me. Wow.
He is the first son of Philip V "the Frog" and his *first* wife, Marie-Louise of Savoy
Seriously, never stop putting "the Frog" in, because a) I still need the reference, but b) even if I didn't it always makes me laugh
I mean, not that marrying Joseph, becoming clinically depressed, and dying of smallpox + childbirth at age 21 was such a stroke of luck, but now we see that it spared her marrying her acutely mentally ill uncle at the age of 12.
:( Gosh. It basically just... really really sucks to be a woman in the past. (Part 3245 or so.)
she was too busy hiring a tutor for Ferdinand, future duke, who wrote a 13-volume set of textbooks for him. (If I ever get around to summarizing the monograph I read on his education, you'll see how that turned out.)
I am waiting with bated breath :PP
They have to get over the Alps. In a fancy carriage. A fancy carriage that is really old and needs to be completely renovated by what are basically art historians doing restoration.
This always weirds me out when people have to do things in old creaky fancy carriages. Why couldn't they, idk, go in a non-fancy non-large traveling device? Is it an etiquette thing again?
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-13 05:11 pm (UTC)b) Same!
I am waiting with bated breath :PP
On the one hand, don't hold your breath, as I've been meaning to do this since, like, February, but on the other hand, someone expressing interest definitely helps!
This always weirds me out when people have to do things in old creaky fancy carriages. Why couldn't they, idk, go in a non-fancy non-large traveling device? Is it an etiquette thing again?
More or less! It's a ceremonial thing. This isn't some private citizen just trying to get to her destination with a minimum of fuss; this is the future Empress going to marry her husband. The trip is a long way through the territory of her future subjects, and so every time she stops at a place with a sizable population, the locals have to line up to see her go by and basically throw a ticker tape parade in which speeches are made and cannon salutes fired off the walls of fortresses in her honor and feasts held and plays put on at the theater and so on ad nauseam: it's an imperial bridal progression. If the future empress shows up in a non-fancy non-large traveling device for all this, the population is going to go, "...This is who we have to obey?"
There were countries that managed to get away with less ceremonial, like Sweden, Prussia, and Savoy, but 1) they had a completely different milieu and earned respect/overawed the population in a completely different way, 2) even they had more ceremonial than you might think. Fritz delegated a lot of his ceremonial responsibilities to EC, who had to do a lot of this kind of thing on the very small budget he gave her.
And apparently Amalie got a sizable budget for her similar trip to be installed at Quedlinburg, where she was hosted and feted at every major stop along the way.
This is the kind of thing the population of Berlin was expecting when Fritz returned after winning the Seven Years' War, and you may remember he disappointed them by sneaking in through a back way at night. ;)
Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days
Date: 2022-10-18 04:25 am (UTC)I hope Amalie enjoyed it!
But lol, I am with Fritz.