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 III: Sex and Antiquities

[luzula]

And then there's that time back in Portugal Augustus gets kidnapped by a henchman who turns out not to be a robber but the servant of a lady later to be revealed the Duchess of Castval, who wants to have her way with Augustus.
IIRC, there's a plotline like that in the mid-18th century novel The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu which I read a while ago. While in Spain, the protagonist is abducted by a woman who wants to have her way with 'him'. But in the book, the protagonist is actually a crossdressing woman, and they never end up in bed together.

And now that I think about it, that book coincidentally seems to have been written by an Erskine...

Re: Augustus Hervey III: Sex and Antiquities

[selenak]

LOL. Well, I'd be equally ready to believe Augustus read it in a novel and stole the episode for his diary and that he did live through it and then either told someone else or someone else reading his stuff got inspired...

Re: Augustus Hervey III: Sex and Antiquities

[mildred_of_midgard]

Looks like the book was published in 1743 So maybe he got the idea from the book! Or maybe there were just a lot of horny duchesses on the peninsula in those days... :P

ETA: Oh, rereading, Luzula didn't say anything about a duchess. Well, a lot of horny women with the social power to get away with abduction!

(I'm guessing a little creative license in the diary, myself. But you never know!)