Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Re: TV Take On 18th Century Imperial Marriage Counselling / Proud Destiny

[selenak]

*blinks* But even I know that Beaumarchais wrote Figaro...

To be fair, he hadn't written Figaro yet at the time he gets introduced. However, he had written Barber of Seville!

Aw, I like it! (And Feuchtwanger doesn't seem to ship it.)

One thing Feuchtwanger and Zweig, who otherwise were quite different, have in common is the not shipping of Louis/MA. To be fair, while Zweig's Louis is an indecisive dunderhead (his MA is as the subtitle of the biography famously declares a mediocre character who really rises to the occasion in the desperate last few years of her life, fatally too late, but his Louis remains a useless mediocrity throughout), Feuchtwanger's isn't, as I said, Feuchtwanger credits him with somewhat more insight that was usual at the time, including a hunch to where this all is heading, but he can't do anything about it, because forces of history. Now the tv show does the essentially same thing as the Sofia Coppola movie does with Louis and the relationship, i.e. he's essentially well meaning, truly in love with MA, but also completely in over his head in the circumstances, while she might not be in romantic love with him in the Coppola movie but feels increasingly protective about him once she's figured out he's an innocent no one looks out for, and comes to care very deeply, while in the tv series she is a bit more attracted (not least because tv!Louis is given a beauty update, as is his brother Provence - both are played by good looking, fit actors, when Provence was already obese at that point and Louis was plumb at the very least) but essentially also protective and increasingly caring.

t's the Princesse de Lamballe who is depicted as the one who truly loves her (in every sense, that's textual, not subtext, though while her brother-in-law deduces this MA herself does not)

I'm shipping this too!

She's depicted as a sweetie, but unfortunately I also often when I saw Lamballe on screen had to think of her eventual ending, which is one of the most cruel of the whole royal and noble set. She already was abroad but returned to France for MA's sake. During the September Riots, she was killed by the mob and literally torn apart (whether there was also rape before that depends on whether you believe the royalists or the revolutionaries, but the killing and mutilating of the body is attested to), with her head paraded through the streets and brought to the Concierge so MA could see it, with the mob demanding she should kiss her dead friend. (Newer historians like Antonia Fraser deny she has actually seen it, but she did hear what the people were screaming outside and mercifully fainted.) Now if the show gets the three seasons it aims for, I'm assuming some variation of this fate awaits tv!Lamballe, which is yet another way rl sucks.

When I first watched Farewell, My Queen, a movie which btw I can reccommend, it's on Amazon Prime, I didn't remember which of MA's two friends was torn apart by the mob, Lamballe or Polignac, and since a part of the plot of said film involves our heroine, MA's reader, switching identies with Polignac, I was on the edge of my seat in the big climax of the movie. As it turns out, I needn't have fretted so much - Polignac was the friend who made it to safety and prudently remained there, which, go figure - but even without that suspense, it's an excellent film and basically the only one who gets across how incredibly crowded Versailles was, seeing as it's told from the pov of the Reader who often uses the backstairs and servants' rooms to get from point A to B. Now for budget saving reasons, most tv series and movie depictions of Versailles might show us the main cast plus a few extras, but that doesn't get across why it was so difficult (and hence such a privilege) to get quarters at Versailles at all, and just how much staff was necessary to engineer the royal and aristocratic life style, but this movie does. My original movie is here.

ETA: Another thing re: the Proud Destiny main theme about the forces of progress working in strange ways with the France/US alliance, yet another aspect of this is that this whole supporting the Americans thing really contributed to the downfall of the French monarchy on every level, not just because of the ideas import but because, as Beaumarchais could tell you, all that money wasn't repaid. With France heading towards bancruptcy at an ever increasing pace, this was a big issue. Now of course France didn't just act from the goodness of their hearts - one big argument for supporting the overseas tax dodgers was of course that it would ensure Britain looses one of their most lucrative colonies and maybe France could regain some recent (from the 7 Years War) losses as well, but it's still true that this alliance benefited the emerging US mightily and France not at all (neither the French monarchy nor France as a country). At the time; Americans getting sentimental over Lafayette came in handy in WWII. (Didn't one US general say "we're here, Lafayette!" when touching French soil?)

=> Louis' instincts in the novel urging him to not do this treaty are absolutely correct from a French monarchy pov, and probably also from a French pov, UNLESS, of course, you believe, as Feuchtwanger certainly did and for that matter I do as well, that the French Revolution needed to happen, not just for France but for the rest of Europe as well.

Re: TV Take On 18th Century Imperial Marriage Counselling / Proud Destiny

[cahn]

Feuchtwanger credits him with somewhat more insight that was usual at the time, including a hunch to where this all is heading, but he can't do anything about it, because forces of history.

This is true, but I feel like his actually not being all that stupid about politics actually drove him and MA apart more in Feuchtwanger, because PD!Louis can also see what a disaster MA is being.

i.e. he's essentially well meaning, truly in love with MA, but also completely in over his head in the circumstances, while she might not be in romantic love with him in the Coppola movie but feels increasingly protective about him once she's figured out he's an innocent no one looks out for, and comes to care very deeply

I'm super on board with this! (Poor Louis.)

but unfortunately I also often when I saw Lamballe on screen had to think of her eventual ending

Oh riiiiight, I did once know this when I knew things about the French Revolution. Argh, poor Princesse de Lamballe. (This may actually be part of why I like her so much... I think when I was a teenager I had romantic thoughts (in the general sense, not the shippy sense) about her having sacrificed everything for her friend, without really, um, thinking about what that entailed.)

this whole supporting the Americans thing really contributed to the downfall of the French monarchy on every level, not just because of the ideas import but because, as Beaumarchais could tell you, all that money wasn't repaid.

Yeeeeeah, that's something that never gets directly addressed in US media but there's definitely some indirect uneasiness about it (see e.g. Rap Battle #2 in Hamilton).