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: Nancy Goldstone has nothing on this one...

[mildred_of_midgard]

The lack of siblings, alas, I‘m used to. Usually when I talk to people I‘m lucky if they know about Wilhelmine, let alone any of the others, and to be fair: at the start of salon, I only knew Heinrich existed, had been gifted and gay and not getting along with Fritz, and that was it, and I would have had trouble naming any of the other non-Wilhelmine ones by name

You were WAY ahead of me, all I knew was he had a brother who fathered FW2! That's it! No Heinrich, no Wilhelmine, nothing.

I did, however, come in knowing quite a bit about the details of his marriage. ;)

ETA: Meant to say, but also, you and I were not presenting publicly on the subject: we would have done more research first!

Am similarlily unsurprised at the Partition of Poland - even the Stanislaus Poniatowski biographer whose book I read as part of my story research two Yuletides

And the otherwise good book you recced about Joseph's travels, Der Kaiser Reist Inkognito, makes this mistake too, as I recall. Fritz worked very hard to make sure everyone would make this mistake! It was all a cunning plan!