Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 41

[cahn]

Now, thanks to interesting podcasts, including characters from German history as a whole and also Byzantine history! (More on this later.)

Comments

Re: Bourbon Brothers

[selenak]

Now undoubtedly she's idealizing the Palatinate and Hannover method of child raising from a distance, plus as we see with FW and Fritz, what a parent imagines they'd have enjoyed as a child can be the opposite of what their child likes/doesn't like. But all the same, one thing Sophie and Ernst August can't be accused of is indulging their sons in the kind of frat boy life the younger generation in Versailles lived in. (Not least because all this stuff is expensive. If you are a German principality who has just extended themselves to become an Electorate, you really can't afford your sons gambling fortunes away when they're not drinking themselves unconscious and/or terrorizing the populace.) And they had no problem laying down the law, so if PHilippe II had grown up with Aunt Sophie the way Liselotte herself had done, he might have returned to France a more disciplined man with a solid work ethic. But there's no way not just Monsieur but Louis XIV would have permitted a Prince of the Blood to be raised in a Protestant (!) German principality which Louis was at war with some of the time.

Re: Bourbon Brothers

[cahn]

*nods* It's possible! One never knows how much something like this is nurture... :)