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: Augustus Hervey II: Tourism and family relations

[selenak]

The obelisk and Fritz' own burial place at FW's side, which I always saw as FW2's expression of: "Let me tell you exactly how I feel about you and the way you raised me, Uncle Fritz".

Incidentally, FW 2 is another case of a child being raised in a way that's supposed to produce a super enlightened tough workoholic Monarch, and instead results in someone who instead gets into religion, seances and parties instead, plus who is easily influencable by people who show him affection and don't remind him of his uncle.

Wow, 1748. It's only been 11 years, and GG is forgotten already!

IKR? That's what struck me when I read this passage, too. Apparently no one told Augustus about the Ruspanti. What became of them anyway?

Re: Augustus Hervey II: Tourism and family relations

[mildred_of_midgard]

Fritz' own burial place at FW's side, which I always saw as FW2's expression of: "Let me tell you exactly how I feel about you and the way you raised me, Uncle Fritz".

I've never been sure. It's definitely a sign that they weren't personally close, but there's too much social reason to do the expected thing and bury the two great monarchs together that it could have just been a straightforward representation thing. But I don't know FW2 at *all*, so maybe it was a conscious awareness that FW treated Fritz badly, and Fritz treated FW2 badly, and so FW2 was going to disrespect his last wishes. (If it had been the other way around, if Fritz had asked for a standard burial and gotten something out-of-the-way, *then* I would be sure it was a conscious diss.)

Incidentally, FW 2 is another case of a child being raised in a way that's supposed to produce a super enlightened tough workoholic Monarch

Very true! It's almost like shoving principles down children's throats runs a high risk of backfiring.

Apparently no one told Augustus about the Ruspanti. What became of them anyway?

Haha, I wonder what Augustus would have said if he'd known about the Ruspanti.

And good question! I have some books by Bruschi that would probably tell us, but my Italian isn't up to the task, and after reading his Gian Gastone and Giuliano Dami books, I wasn't so enamored of him as a historian that I was in a hurry to run my algorithms on his other books. I will someday, but probably only once I can read Italian on my own. (I had to set it aside for Danish, but hopefully I'm done with Danish before the end of the year and can go back to French and Italian.)

My guess, though, is that they just disbanded when they stopped getting paid, and that there's really nothing to tell.