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cahnUnfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.
(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )
(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )
Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-04 03:47 am (UTC):D And ah, the book also thinks that Moltke thought it was a Very Very Bad Idea for any number of reasons, but also not least that it would be awful for his daughter. Excellent. (I mean, I assume the book thinks this partially because it WOULD, incontrovertibly, have been awful for her, but still.)
Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-04 04:12 am (UTC)Frederik: but I wanted to be a Weasley, not a Lannister or a Stark!
Now I’ve read only four of the books and seen five some of six of the tv seasons before giving up, but we could play how our 18th century folk would fare in Westeros. Is FW Stannis Baratheon? Do we want to know whether Fritz makes it to the Iron Throne? Will Voltaire survive pissing off both the Sparrow and Melisande at the same time?
Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-04 04:32 pm (UTC)Ha! So he does.
Frederik: but I wanted to be a Weasley, not a Lannister or a Stark!
Awww. You know, I'm sorry you had a rough childhood and turned into an unhinged alcoholic that nobody wanted married to their daughter, and sorry, Moltke, that you had to deal with an unhinged alcoholic, and glad, Moltke's daughter, that you didn't have to deal with that, even if you did have to get married at 14, which I'm also sorry for. Therapy for everyone! (And popcorn for me as I watch all your dysfunctions from a safe distance.)
Also, reading the bio and watching Moltke do his best to stay in power reinforced my guess that the emotionally unstable monarch suspected Moltke of only being in it for the power, and that some of the drunken outbursts being apologized for were about that: either outright accusing Moltke of not caring about Frederik himself, or attacking Moltke in other ways because Frederik couldn't bring himself to say that out loud. :/
In other Moltke news, I need to improve my Danish at some point, because flipping through later parts of the book shows there is more interesting material. For example, there is a facsimile of a handwritten note from Madame de Pompadour to Moltke, thanking him for a gift and sending a gift in return.
Is FW Stannis Baratheon?
No, because I like Stannis, and I wish to continue liking Stannis, so I'm going to stay far away from any comparisons that might change that. Ssshhh. :P
18th Century Westeros
Date: 2023-08-04 06:07 pm (UTC)I know you’ve cast the Stuarts as Targaeryns, but all the inbreeding signals Habsburg, too. Otoh, I don’t want to know what any of the 18th century royals would have done with dragons, because they so would have used them in all those wars, and then there’s no more 19th century.
Anyway, personality wise, Robert Baratheon works for BPC, ironically - short peak period of being a charismatic beloved rebel leader, followed by decades of drunken self loathing indulgence and misery with mistress and wife alike.
I still want to know whether you think Fritz, as the head of one of the lesser Houses or a younger son of a big one, would have made a play for the Iron Throne? Or would he have been content to invade, conquer and keep a rich province?
Re: 18th Century Westeros
Date: 2023-08-05 12:24 am (UTC)True, but the particular type of inbreeding says Egypt to me, though, with the deliberate brother-sister incest to keep the line pure, as opposed to the repeated political marriages of cousins and uncle/niece, aunt/nephew that hit the Hapsburgs over repeated generations.
Robert Baratheon works for BPC, ironically - short peak period of being a charismatic beloved rebel leader, followed by decades of drunken self loathing indulgence and misery with mistress and wife alike.
Ha! Very true.
I still want to know whether you think Fritz, as the head of one of the lesser Houses or a younger son of a big one, would have made a play for the Iron Throne? Or would he have been content to invade, conquer and keep a rich province?
Alas for your question, it's been too long since I read the books to be able to give a meaningful answer based on the specific power politics of this world.
Re: 18th Century Westeros
Date: 2023-08-12 05:26 am (UTC)This makes sense to me! Stannis would still have gotten the line about how it was better for Katte to die than for justice to leave the world, only he would have actually meant it :P
I still want to know whether you think Fritz, as the head of one of the lesser Houses or a younger son of a big one, would have made a play for the Iron Throne? Or would he have been content to invade, conquer and keep a rich province?
Here's a question, then. In this world, if the Holy Roman Emperor position were up for grabs (presumably because the Pragmatic Sanction just utterly failed, I guess?), would Fritz have made a play for it?
Re: 18th Century Westeros
Date: 2023-08-12 11:31 am (UTC)All which leads me to conclusion King Fritz wouldn't have wanted to be HRE - in that era. He would have wanted Prussia as THE German power which he could claim to be mainly responsible for by deed, not marriage, and the HRE a puppet in his palm (and putting up with all the ceremonial bother), which the Wittelsbach guy would have been. Now, in an earlier era, where the Emperor had much more power, of course he'd have tried. And if he'd lived in Bismarck's times, I can see him doing basically exactly what Bismarck did, only as King and later Emperor, not Chancellor, unify the German states via wars into a new Empire with the Hohenzollern on top. But in the 18th century, no.
Re: Holy Roman Empire
Date: 2023-08-12 01:15 pm (UTC)I agree with you. If MacDonogh can be trusted:
Frederick had never had much time for the Holy Roman Empire. It was an ‘ancient folly’, its envoys dogs barking at the moon, its bishops drunks, he told Voltaire. He was content to allow it to continue, but took no notice of those, like the Alte Dessauer and Podewils, who thought he should make a bid to have himself elected emperor. There was also an attempt to have Prussia made permanent head of the imperial armed forces, which Frederick pushed away with contempt.
but that power came from Joseph having inherited all the Austrian-ruled lands via MT
Ha, yes, when I started reading your sentence, I was like, "But--but!!" :)
This is what Beales has to say about the nuances of Joseph as HRE vs. Joseph as co-regent of the hereditary lands during the Bavarian succession, in his essay "Love and the Empire: Maria Theresa and her co-regents", published in the collection of essays Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe that I've mentioned before:
Secondly, with regard to the question of the Bavarian succession, it has seldom been grasped--though Freiherr von Aretin has stressed it--that two claims and policies competed with each other in Vienna: one on behalf of the emperor and the Empire, the other on behalf of the Monarchy and the dynasty. The imperial claim was that most of the Bavarian lands would revert to imperial control when Elector Max Joseph, the last of his line, died; they should therefore be seized and occupied pending their reassignment. There was talk of the emperor gaining revenue as a result. Kaunitz pointed out that this would work to the disadvantage of the Monarchy, but Joseph succeeded in committing the officials of the Monarchy as well as those of the Empire to this policy from 1772 until 1777. On the other side was Kaunitz's policy, clearly set out as far back as 1764, to make dynastic claims on Bavaria for the Habsburgs, regardless of imperial rights and constitution. When the chancellor in 1777 proposed as a variant to negotiate with the elector of Bavaria's nearest heir, the Elector Palatine, in order to gain territory for the Monarchy by treaty, Joseph accepted this policy and dropped his imperial claims. At the end of 1777 Max Joseph died. Much of Joseph's embarrassment, difficulties and unpopularity in the crisis and war that followed arose from the fact that, though emperor, he was pursuing a policy of aggrandisement on behalf of the Monarchy, as co-regent and commander of his mother's armies.
But the fact that Joseph has money and an army is in his capacity as Austrian Habsburg. A big part of the reason the role of emperor settled down into the de facto hereditary possession of the Habsburgs is that being emperor came with so little power and so few resources that in order to either hold your own against competitors or be any use at all once you got the position, you had to have sizable territory and revenues of your own. Over the centuries, it got to the point where no one could compete with the Habsburgs in that regard.
We'll pour one out for the Fuggers here, who experienced both their rise and their fall thanks to funding this Habsburg endeavor.
Re: Holy Roman Empire
Date: 2023-08-13 10:05 pm (UTC)OK, so, the HRE isn't a good proxy for the Iron Throne -- is there something else that would be? One of your non-18th-C possibilites, maybe?
Re: Holy Roman Empire
Date: 2023-08-14 10:51 am (UTC)And of course many an era of the Byzantine Empire works as well, once a number of top families were established. Could see Fritz as member of the Phokas or the Komnenos clan deciding that ruling a province just isn't enough. Provided with he comes with an FW equivalent as a father who provides a full treasury as well as parental abuse, and as we've said before - Fritz without FW is not recognizably Fritz.
Re: Holy Roman Empire
Date: 2023-08-14 11:47 am (UTC)Yes! Yes, he would do that!
Re: Holy Roman Empire
Date: 2023-08-14 12:05 pm (UTC)Re: Holy Roman Empire
Date: 2023-08-14 12:55 pm (UTC)Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-12 05:23 am (UTC)Heh, yeah, you were a little too traumatized for that. (I suppose we should all be grateful that Harry didn't become an abusive alcoholic, given his childhood trauma. Though I know there are quite a few fics with that premise...)
Will Voltaire survive pissing off both the Sparrow and Melisande at the same time?
Yes! I don't know exactly how, and I imagine it may involve him and Émilie racing away from magical vengeance, but all Voltaires in all universes manage to survive everyone else in the universe being upset by them, and die in bed at a healthy old age!
Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-14 11:13 am (UTC)Voltaire: ...Yes?
Incidentally, one of the problems with Westeros/18th Century crossovers is of course that Martin created a pseudo medieval-on-the-verge-of-Renaissance world, and Voltaire and Émilie are the products of an age where the power of the intellectual pen has a working printing press or thousands at its disposal. Naturally there were scientists and satirists in the Middle Ages as well, but a much, much smaller number of potential readers vs far greater control of the narrative by victorious authorities. Well, depending on the era. (Which is why no pro Henry IV of Canossa fame chronicle survives, whereas both Barbarossa and grandson Friedrich II a century later had chroniclers favouring them in addition to those who were spreading the papal version of them being the evilest.) A Minnesänger like Walther von der Vogelweide (closest thing to Voltaire along with Francois Villon I can think of while remaining in the Middle Ages) could write biting satires on the most powerful Pope ever (Innocent III), yes, but he needed a scenario of Pope vs King vs King to survive this that allowed him to seek patronage from those on the outs with the Pope. While Voltaire was of course happy to have Fritz and then Catherine's favour, but he didn't need it to survive - there's a difference.
Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-17 05:26 am (UTC)Voltaire: ...Yes?
LOLOLOLOL! I literally laughed out loud here.
...yes, I can see how the printing press helps a lot here :P
Re: Replies to the last post
Date: 2023-08-04 04:35 pm (UTC)(Speaking of true but incomplete reasons, and re our conversation about deceiving your servants, I noted that yesterday that the reasons I gave one of my team members for why I will be attending a particular meeting are technically true, but only about 10% of my real motivation to be in that meeting. It happens!)