Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

Comments

Re: Your Mission: Composing a Manifesto

[mildred_of_midgard]

By the way, I was looking up dog quotes in MacDonogh, and here's what our no-homo biographer has to say about the Fredersdorf letters:

Evidence of a much more timid interest in his pages comes from his surviving letters to Fredersdorf, in which there is talk of a certain Carel (C. F. von Pirch). it records slights: ‘Carel has been extremely impolite’; and presents: a leveret and a hussar’s coat for his fifteenth birthday; but it would be hard to see such obsessive doting as a manifestation of the rapacious and tyrannical sexuality described by Voltaire or the pamphleteer.

The contrast with yes-homo Blanning is striking.

Re: Your Mission: Composing a Manifesto

[selenak]

Indeed. For what it's worth, one of the 2012 Fritz centennary articles quotes the Carel passage as well, this one as proof of Fritz' gayness. I must admit I really hope he didn't get too handsy with a 15 years old entirely dependent on the all powerful King, but what I find weird is that both Blanning and MacDonogh quote or paraphrase/slant the Carel stuff instead of "I thought you loved me, and now you don't take your medicine!" and "I want to see you at the window" etc, which might not be erotic but definitely speaks of love, not benevolent-King-to-loyal-servant affection. (Richter: IT WAS THE LOVE OF A FATHER FOR A SON.)

Re: Your Mission: Composing a Manifesto

[mildred_of_midgard]

I suspect it's related to something you said recently:

Incidentally, this quote from Primi Visconti - that I was twenty five years old already and had a beard. He replied that Frenchmen of taste neither were bothered by the age nor the beard - tells you something about Visconti (a straight man) expecting gay men to be only interested in teenage boys and young beardless men in their early 20s, while the Marquis de La Valliere evidently finds men of all ages attractive.

Not that Blanning is unwilling to let Fritz have relationships with men his own age, like Algarotti, but I suspect the pederastic narrative is in the back of his, and other people's, minds.

I must admit I really hope he didn't get too handsy with a 15 years old entirely dependent on the all powerful King

Same!