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Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40
I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
He so is! The 2005 date and the Spanheim quote made me initially optimistic, but I'm getting a super conservative vibe from this author, and not just from this. Meh.
Lol at the knight of Lorraine! Google translate, always ready to entertain.
Hang on, shouldn't he be already out of the picture if the Chevalier is around?
Wikipedia indicates he was banished in 1662 and died in 1673, and of course Eugene was only born in 1663, so they definitely didn't overlap! The author seems to be collapsing Philippe's entire life story into a single period, thus adding errors of fact to his problematic opinions.
Was he working for the Great Elector or for F1?
Both, but Eugene leaves France in 1683, and the Great Elector lived until 1688, so at the time of this quote, he was working for the Elector.
Trivia: Per Wikipedia, "In 1702, he went on his final diplomatic mission, as the first Prussian ambassador to England. He died in London in 1710 and was buried in Westminster Abbey."
Anyway, raping, castrating and killing a guy and torturing women is quite different from organizing consensual m/m orgies, so I hope that it either didn't happen this way or that young Eugene did not participate.
I sincerely hope not!
These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon
I had a very sheltered (and prudish) youth, so the gayness in The Mists of Avalon went Whooosh! right over my head at age 14. At that age, I think I didn't even know what homosexuality was. I don't think I encountered sympathetic gay characters that registered on my radar until I was about 16/17. Harry Potter fanfic on FFN was not only my introduction to homosexuality, but responsible for most of my sexual education at all! :)
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
It brings back happy memories of Cape Stallion.
The author seems to be collapsing Philippe's entire life story into a single period, thus adding errors of fact to his problematic opinions.
Indeed. Btw, skipping in and out of Voltaire's book, I see that the teenage Duc de Vermandois who gets entangled in the scandalous goings-on and is one of Louis' illegitimate sons is also the son of Louise de la Valliere, Louis' first official Maitresse en titre. Since he then dies at age 16, it's even less likely he ever hung out with Eugene, because wasn't Eugene the youngest of Olympe's kids? Also, when reporting on Louise de la Valliere's post-mistress life, where she retired into a convent as Sister Louisa the Penitent and lived there wairing a hair shirt till her death in 1710: Voltaire snarks thusly:
A king should deserve the name of tyrant were he punish a guilty woman with so much severity ; yet many a woman has punished herself thus for having loved. There are scarcely any examples of statesmen who have buried themselves in this manner ; yet the guilt of politicians seems to stand more in need of expiation than the frailty of lovers ; but those who govern souls have authority only with the powerless. It is generally known that when Sister Louisa was informed of the death of the Duke of Vermandois, her son by the King, she said: "I should lament his birth more grieveously than his death.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
It does, and Travel Jokes, and the cheap warehouse in rubbish soaps. I enjoyed your comment that you looked forward to the arrival of Chalk Remorse!
Since he then dies at age 16, it's even less likely he ever hung out with Eugene, because wasn't Eugene the youngest of Olympe's kids?
I had the same thought as you initially, but I cross-referenced the dates, and the chronology checks out. He died in 1683, the same year Eugene left France for Austria. So they would have been hanging out at orgies (and hopefully not torture sessions) at the same time.