Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

[cahn]

Unfortunately, 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) )

Comments

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[luzula]

if you don‘t adher to the rules society has given itself then it‘s chaos and anarchy, and thus he has to go through with the duel and separate from his wife
I mean, he's kind of choosing which rules are important to him, here, since duelling was illegal...but yeah, I'm sure that sort of honour-culture ate its way into your head.

Re: Beilby, it's striking that he never uses the law to justify his actions; i e says that actually Robinson is breaking the Articles of War, and he himself is keeping them. I guess he must be aware of what a paper product those particular articles are, and what is actually important when it comes to having other (upper-class) men respect you.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[mildred_of_midgard]

I guess he must be aware of what a paper product those particular articles are, and what is actually important when it comes to having other (upper-class) men respect you.

Yeah. Quite a story, thank you for sharing it with us!

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[cahn]

Re: Beilby, it's striking that he never uses the law to justify his actions; i e says that actually Robinson is breaking the Articles of War, and he himself is keeping them. I guess he must be aware of what a paper product those particular articles are, and what is actually important when it comes to having other (upper-class) men respect you.

That's a good point and I didn't realize that until you said that. All his defenses are things like "well, I actually didn't hear it." Ugh, poor guy.

Thanks for this, this was a very interesting example! Though again, poor guy.