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: The Elusive Keyserlingk

[mildred_of_midgard]

- Rottembourg and Rothenburg: Mildred, you're the expert on these two

Only on one, French Rottembourg, and I've never even been able to figure out if he was ever married or not! I have sources claiming both. I'm leaning toward "probably married," but if so, I can't even tell what her name was, because I have sources claiming "Eva Sophie nee Helmstat" and "Jeanne-Madelene d'Helmstat"!

And that, as we noted, doesn't reflect one way or the other on his sexuality. I've never actually been able to get much about his personal life, just his professional life.

Also, Rottembourg was *not* part of Fritz's social circle; he left for the last time before Fritz even turned 18, and before that, when they were conspiring, they were avoiding interacting directly and were using Knyphausen (Ariane's dad) as a go-between, so that FW didn't get suspicious (which apparently worked!). Again, relying on Lavisse here, and provisionally trusting him.

So how you could go from there to "exclusively gay" in good faith, I have no idea.

Yeah, seriously. Ugh, you're going to make me buy Peyrefitte and see what he says, aren't you. :P Maybe someday when my French is faster.