cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

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.)

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From:

selenak

That was indeed the point where it became too much for me. I can't decide what's more extra, the idea that FW would indulge any of his sons in their chosen sex life, let alone a gay one, or that this was the reason for the "reconciliation", or that FW could have altered the succession at will (that he couldn't was a really big plot point in that father/son relationship).

But I was flabbergasted earlier than this when Stephen Fry was surprised there were Protestant princes within the HRE. I mean. How you can think about the Reformation, or the Thirty Years War, without the awareness there were German princes who were Protestants, most importantly several of the Princes Elector, is beyond me. (How does he think Luther survived into old age?) Not to mention: even if your school education totally misses out on the HRE, what religion does he think the Princes Elector of Hannover had? Them being Protestants is the sole reason why G1 became King of England in the first place, despite the 50 something people with a better claim between him and Anne. Head.Desk.

From:

felis

Yeah, it's ... a lot in just that one assumption.

I wasn't quite as annoyed with the HRE discussion because at least it wasn't presented as fact and was corrected later and Fry is kind of there to ask questions and not know things, even if this was rather out there for him to not know, not least because of the Hanover connection, as you said.

From:

selenak

And Fry had a recurring role in the Georgian season of Blackadder as well as playing in the Horrible Histories sketch dealing with the Westphalian Treaty. Not to mention his entire image is that of a Cambridge-educated intellectual. (Didn't he meet Hugh Laurie at Cambridge?).

See, him not knowing your Hohenzollern from your Wittelsbachs and being unaware which dynasty was which and ruled over which German state, I'd have had no problem with. But the "how with a Catholic Emperor could there be PROTESTANTS in the HRE?" question is really something else again.

Oh, and as for Fritz trying to dissolve his marriage: if he had wanted to after his father's death, he could have done it. Even without loosing the Braunschweig alliance, between Charlotte's and AW's marriages. It's not like EC was the aunt of Charles V.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, and as for Fritz trying to dissolve his marriage: if he had wanted to after his father's death, he could have done it.

Indeed, but I have a very faint memory of reading that he tried it/talked about it in the 1730s. But that could have been another unreliable modern "historian", or it could have been something I'm confusing with something else.

It's not like EC was the aunt of Charles V.

*snort*

From:

selenak

Oh, I could buy him talking about it in the 1730s to some friends. (Though the way I recall it is him saying it will be goodbye, Madame, as soon as FW croaks it, which his listeners understood to mean he won't live with her anymore, not that he'd divorce her.) But not when he could actually do it, from the 1740s onwards.

And let's not forget there are examples of Protestant royal divorces: his grandfather G1 did get divorced from poor SD the older. G3's sister who was married to Christian of Denmark got divorced. And of course, nephew FW2 from his first wife.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

But not when he could actually do it, from the 1740s onwards.

No, by then he didn't need to, he had all the power, and she hadn't actually done anything wrong. And that's what I took "tried to dissolve" to mean--if he'd "tried" after 1740, he presumably would have succeeded. And I feel like I remember him exploring his options in the 1730s, although I could be wrong.

From:

selenak

Though it would have to be awfully discreet exploring, given in any event he would have needed FW's permission (just as FW2 needed his, and Heinrich, too, hence no divorced Mina), and he must have known that short of EC blatantly cheating on him with the French ambassador in front of FW, no permission would have been given.

From:

felis

Oh, and I meant to answer your question - yes, Fry and HL did meet at Cambridge (also Emma Thompson of course) and HL for one never pretended that he didn't do much more comedy than studying there. :P Not sure if HL even graduated, but wiki tells me Fry did, in English Literature. No idea if his expertise in that area is better, but overall his image is kind of overrated IMO; this sure isn't the first time he's talked nonsense.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Stephen Fry is nothing but a name to me (I exist mostly outside of popular culture), but when I was explaining to my wife at lunch while I was cackling hysterically over my phone, her reaction was an unsurprised eyerolly, "Stephen Fry thinks he knows everything about everything, and this wouldn't be the first time he was Wrong on the Internet, or other media."

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Fry is kind of there to ask questions and not know things

That is a key part of salon alchemy! *waves to

cahn*

But

cahn never appeared in a skit about the Peace of Westphalia. (That I know of.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

How you can think about the Reformation, or the Thirty Years War

I mean, I can't speak for education in the UK, but I wouldn't expect an American to know what the Thirty Years' War was, and when I brought it up to my (Brazilian) wife in the last couple years, she had no idea when or what it was either.

The Reformation, though, yeah...I would expect at least some passing knowledge of that!

From:

selenak

Now I can't help imagining an English lesson of the Reformation which is all "Luther who?" and where it only started when Henry VIII wanted out of his marriage.

I wouldn't expect an American to know what the Thirty Years' War was,

Well, me neither, but like I said, Fry played in a Horrible History sketch about the Westphalian Treaty.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, well, in that case he has no excuse!

From:

selenak

Found the sketch, and it's not even from Horrible Histories, it's from "A bit of Fry and Laurie", meaning he and Hugh Laurie wrote those themselves and so one would hope did a minimum of research: here.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I can't decide what's more extra, the idea that FW would indulge any of his sons in their chosen sex life, let alone a gay one, or that this was the reason for the "reconciliation", or that FW could have altered the succession at will

Yeah, that is a LOT. Also, the ages! Look up the kids' ages on Wikipedia! It takes 1 minute!

From:

selenak

To be fair: he's in the proud tradition of the Hohenzollern RomCom about Wilhelmine and BayreuthFriedrich here. (Where all the younger sibs are in the wrong age and the wrong gender. This despite the fact they don't have any lines, and it wouldn't have cost anything for them to be the right gender and the right age.)

From:

cahn

hahahaha well as the resident ignorant American, I mean, I'm going to stick up for my fellow Fry-as-the-resident-ignorant-person and say I know where he is coming from! Like, I'd be the last person not to know about the Reformation and Martin Luther, but before salon I had sort of this understanding that there was this Thing called the Holy Roman Empire, which was Catholic (it's in the name! Holy Roman!), and then this Thing called the Reformation, with Martin Luther -- but I didn't know anything about Princes Elector or how these two things interacted! Also didn't know anything about the Thirty Years War.

I mean obviously if I'd ever thought about it for a little bit I guess I'd have had to realize that it wasn't like the Reformation overthrew all the existing political establishments. But you have to realize that the way it's presented to an American Lutheran is sort of "...and here is where Martin Luther Nailed His Theses! and changed the world! and Spoke Truth to the Holy Roman Empire!" and so on, without really a whole lot of context.

But if the actual expert people are not correcting this, as

felis says, that's another thing entirely.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

before salon I had sort of this understanding that there was this Thing called the Holy Roman Empire, which was Catholic (it's in the name! Holy Roman!)

You know, if I squint, I could see how you could think there was a Reformation in Germany but also no Protestant princes: there were Catholics in England but no Catholic monarchs. I could see seeing Protestantism as a tolerated minority in Germany ~~if I hadn't made a skit about the Peace of Westphalia~~.

I myself knew this before salon, but only because I made a special point of researching the 18th century for my novel in high school, which no one else I knew did. I am reminded that when I was in Munich for a conference in grad school, I was doing a tour of Nymphenburg Palace with some English professors, and we were reading plaques and signs, and I was trying to explain what an elector was to two professors who'd never heard of electors.

Me: The electors got to vote on the Holy Roman Emp...er...or... *voice trails off*
Prof: On his council?
Me: No...on who got to be emperor...except I thought it was hereditary in the Habsburg family...so I guess I don't remember this as well as I thought I did. But I could have sworn there were a handful of princes in the empire who got to vote on the next emperor, and that they were called electors. Darnit, I used to know this!

I'm pretty sure one prof was either British or American, but I know the other was Bulgarian, because she was my advisor. Now, maybe behind the Iron Curtain they were too busy covering Marxist takes on history to go over what an elector was, but she'd clearly never heard of them and I was doing my level best to be expert in the group, i.e., the only one of us who'd ever heard of electors. Pretty sure nobody could have commented on their religious affiliations, and I would probably have done the same thing of dredging up a correct thing from memory but with a lot of hesitation and second guessing and "never mind"s.

From:

cahn

You know, if I squint, I could see how you could think there was a Reformation in Germany but also no Protestant princes: there were Catholics in England but no Catholic monarchs. I could see seeing Protestantism as a tolerated minority in Germany if I hadn't made a skit about the Peace of Westphalia.

Oh hahaha noooo. If anything, what was in my pre-2019 head was that Germany must have basically seceded from the Holy Roman Empire, so, like, sure, I guess there could be Protestant princes! Just they wouldn't have been affiliated with the Holy Roman Empire in any way, because those were the wicked Catholics and of course you couldn't have anything to do with them! Definitely I wouldn't have thought they were electors, if I'd known what an elector was.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, just to be clear, I meant "you" = "one", not "you" = "Cahn". I could see how someone could have that picture in their heads! I could also see how you, Cahn, could get Germany seceding from the Holy Roman Empire! (Although I could not have, not even if I'd learned nothing outside of school, we covered the German unification in too much depth for that.)

Just they wouldn't have been affiliated with the Holy Roman Empire in any way, because those were the wicked Catholics and of course you couldn't have anything to do with them!

Hahha, that's funny and also makes sense!

(I also want to point out that the only teacher I had who officially taught me any European history insisted that James VI/I was Catholic and could not be swayed by endless arguments from yours truly! So that's an entire classful of American students who walked away believing that. Fortunately (?) I'm sure they all forgot who he even was once the exam was over.)

From:

cahn

You covered the German unification in school?? In anything resembling depth??

To be fair, I skipped world history in middle school when I skipped a grade, and then I never took European history in high school, so it's possible they covered it and I just didn't know.

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-23 06:52 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-15 08:35 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-15 09:02 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Good grief. Did that teacher argue on the basis of his mother being Mary Queen of Scots? General later Stuart tendency towards Rome? Not even that?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yep! Mary Queen of Scots was Catholic, and she raised her son (!!) Catholic. She may have said something about all the Stuarts, I don't remember, but it's ringing a faint bell. Definitely Mary, though.

[ETA: This may be a false memory, but when you said "later Stuart tendency", a memory of her saying, "All the Stuarts were Catholic, Mildred," popped into my head, along with a memory of my jaw dropping and me thinking to myself, "Okay, I'm not qualified to adduce evidence about the later ones off the top of my head, but I am definitely going to die on this hill of James VI/I!" I 100% remember the Mary argument, though.]

My teacher actually taught us that twice, in that I argued with her the first time unsuccessfully, and a couple days later she called him Catholic again, whereupon I threw up my hand and went, "No, Mrs. R--! We went over this! He was Protestant!" But she WOULD NOT back down, even when I pointed out things like Mary's baby being taken away from her and the King James translation and so forth.

This kind of thing is why I have a hard time blaming individual Americans for not knowing history. It's a systemic problem.

Edited Date: 2022-12-15 09:05 am (UTC)

Re: Nancy Goldstone has nothing on this one...

From:

selenak - Date: 2022-12-15 01:41 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Nancy Goldstone has nothing on this one...

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-15 02:27 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

By the way, if anyone cares, said advisor of mine had an interview published in a major journal last month, where she talks, among other things, about growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria in the 1940s-1970s, and the difficulties of emigrating. There's a whole lot of English historical linguistics, but you can skim that part.