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: Braubach on Eugene and Olympia

[selenak]

Oh, yes, you're right, that's another implication of what they looked like. I'm going with "feminine-looking in riding breeches."

I just checked, and it seems Eugene remained moustache-less throughout his life. At quick googling, this was about the youngest portrait I could find:



And okay, a few years younger still and in a different outfit, maybe the postillon wasn't lying to cover his behind with Louvois...

Erection dialogue: thanks for refreshing my memory, though in this case, it sounds like old Dessauer was the one to quiz Eugene about his erections (or lack of same), and Seckendorff just reported it/noted it down.

Though he could be asking about nocturnal emissions, that doesn't strike me as really implausible for two men to discuss.

Same here. The 18th century: where you could ask one one the most famous generals of his day about his erections and where there was a mighty fanboy argument in print about the state of Fritz' penis. Talk about too many dicks on the dancefloor....

(Okay, to be fair, and bearing Morgenstern's FW biography and Wilhelmine's unbowlderized memoirs in mind: also the century where the a King could discuss vagina smells with his buddies and a Queen could slander her future daughter-in-law by claiming she had ulcers in her posterior...)

19th century: OUR READERS MUST BE PROTECTED!

Georg Schnath in the Roaring 1920s: I'm with you, 19th century guys. THIS IS JUST TOO MUCH.

I forgot to say about Olympia Mancini, Eugene's mother, and Saint-Simon: otoh, Saint-Simon decades later became Ambassador in Spain (where he had to cope with Philippe the Regent's teenage daughter determined to piss off the entire royal family), so he might have heard some actual gossip, otoh, doesn't mean said gossip is true, and also, Saint-Simon providing an entire dialogue scene for Louis XIV to quiz the Marquis d'Effiat about the later having poisoned Minette on the Chevalier de Lorraine's orders, something for which supposedly only Louis and the Marquis were present, and which also happened decades earlier, makes me conclude Saint-Simon is not above fleshing out poison rumors for greater drama despite having no way of knowing whether they were true.

(Unless we assume the Marquis d'Effiat told Philippe the Regent who told Saint-Simon, but somehow I can't see d'Effiat going, so, about the time I poisoned your Dad's first wife - which btw don't worry, I'm not going to do to your Mom...)