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: Fritz of Hervey

[mildred_of_midgard]

When Fred Hervey was still a younger brother, he visited Sir William in Naples for the first time and saw the fact Vesuvious had a cloud hanging of itself not as discouragement but as the signal to make a climb right then and there. He got burned at his arm for his trouble but watched the lava in awe.

This is the boring guy? Come on, Lucy Worsley!

This caused Lord Bristol to write a warning letter pointing out that marrying for love instead of money had caused misery in three generations of Herveys and did he really want to add a fourth? What was wrong with marrying an almost princess and daughter of a Prussian King, is what Frederick the globetrotting Bishop wants to know, while simultanously putting the moves on her mother

Wow, I had forgotten all of this, probably because I had little idea who these Herveys were.

At first, the Albano peasant who takes him in is amused and flattered by the English milord, but then Frederick makes the mistake of mentioning he's an Anglican bishop. A HERETIC! Fie, thinks the Albano peasant, no English heretics under my roof, and chucks Hervey outdoors, where Frederick dies.

Woooow.

His body is brought back to be buried in Ickworth, and so they can get it through the various quaranteene and other customs rules, it's declared to be a statue.

Also wow.

In conclusion, what a family. And I must admit, I'm really curious what a child carrying the Hervey and the Hohenzollern genes would have been like...

Ha! Yeah, that would have been an interesting AU.

Re: Fritz of Hervey

[selenak]

Honestly, I suspect Lucy Worsley was confusing him - Frederick the Bishop that is - with either his son the scissors wielding Victorian, who has after all the same name and title, or with his oldest brother George, who does come across as boring in all I’ve read so far.

I hadn’t really remembered from Horowski before looking it up, either, it was more something that tugged on my mind ever since Erskine’s introduction to Augustus’ diary mentioned Frederick was the globetrotting Lord Bristol whom all the Bristol hotels in Europe are named after. Because Horowksi only refers to him as Frederick Hervey when he introduces the guy, and in all the passages afterwards as Lord Bristol, and so I didn’t connect him with his father until this reread.