![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI'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
Date: 2023-01-21 02:37 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2023-01-21 02:41 pm (UTC)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.