mildred_of_midgard: (0)
mildred_of_midgard ([personal profile] mildred_of_midgard) wrote in [personal profile] cahn 2023-02-20 06:35 pm (UTC)

Re: Danish kings and their favorites: Frederik V and Moltke

Though I don't think the Elector had a "no sex talk, no masturbating!" clause, and FW definitely did. Given you say both of of Frederik's parents were extremely pious, I wouldn't be surprised if they did, too.

When he was 7, probably. By the time he was 14/15, my impression is they had much bigger problems, like "keep him out of brothels" and "no smuggling women in."

By the way, since we were speculating, based on my early reading, that Moltke might have been smuggling women in, with or without royal permission, as a form of damage control to keep scandals down, I have since encountered the claim that he was asked by the king and queen to investigate a claim that one of the chamberlains/whatever who reported to him was smuggling women in to Prince Frederirk. Apparently Moltke found that he had been asked to, but had refused--but the guy got dismissed anyway just to be on the safe side. (Oh, huh, I wonder if this story got conflated with Moltke for the story that Moltke was dismissed for "too great familiarity.")

I immediately started wondering how that really went down. Was there a coverup and lower-ranked guy did smuggle women in? Did lower-ranked guy take the fall for Moltke? Was the official story actually true?

Anyway, all this is why I would *love* to see those instructions. Moltke will give us exactly zero scandals when he talks about the chronology of his role in Frederik's life. He won't even talk about an apparent honorable marriage proposal!

Incidentally, it did occur to me that Moltke is basically what people in 1740 expected Keyserlingk to become: the much loved former governor and current favourite who clearly will dominate court life and the King politically.

Yes, good point! I had been thinking of your explanation of this being why Fritz pushed Peter away, but Keyserlingk is in some ways a better analogy.

Given Danckelmann for the first part of F1's reign did just that and given there are others "former teacher/governor/page = first minister" combinations available

Cardinal Fleury and Louis XV, anyone?

I hope Moltke sent Catherine a really nice welcome to the throne letter, is what I'm saying...

I'm looking forward to finding out! (We would know already by now if these books were in English, but while my German now allows me to find things out independently of asking you, it's still not effortless.)

The other country in Europe I would like to get a better grasp of what was going on with in the 18th century is Sweden. The Age of Liberty book turned out to be a good book but a bad first book, as it talks about forms of government and presupposes you know the historical events and figures. I would like to read it properly after getting a better sense of the history. Right now what I have is some knowledge of events that have come up in passing in relation to other countries, but I have not yet read a book dedicated to 18th century Swedish history (post Karl XII, anyway).

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