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]

my parents didn't teach us Korean, because they quite sensibly decided it might interfere with our learning English.

Huh, when I started that sentence, I was expecting it to end the way Spanish ended in my family: because prejudice. Interesting that it was bilingualism!

AHAHAHAHA omg this is not relatable AT ALL. (this is highly relatable! except that fortunately my mom didn't write out stuff and also isn't my empress)

LOLOLOL, you mean you and your mother both have strong feelings on pedagogy? Who knew! (I knew. ;))

(I was going to ask how he stopped the famines, but I see that you talk a little more about this in the economic comment.)

Yeah, I don't have a ton of data, or rather I probably have a lot but Cochrane is not *that* readable, lol, so I've told you what little I know based on what I've read.

And yes, I had originally explained the famine-stopping thing here, and then I realized I had near-duplicate paragraphs in two comments, so I deleted the one here and left you all in suspense until you read my following comment. Sorry if that led to confusion, I should have left a pointer.