Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

[cahn]

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

Comments

Re: Leopold II

[mildred_of_midgard]

Also, Cochrane informed me that Leopold had "notebooks full of pungent barbs [at Joseph] in a code that remained unintelligible until Adam Wandruszka broke it in the 1960s." If you told us this, I had forgotten.

And Peham now informs me that that was the "Stato della Famiglia", the "in what ways my family sucks" document that we knew about. And she also says it was written in a "shorthand" that Leopold sometimes used and that Wandruszka figured out, allowing us to gain some insight into Leopold's head.

Interesting!