Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[mildred_of_midgard]

Why should Fritz and Voltaire have all the fun?

Clearly they don't! Though I would need to double-check the anonymous part; I'm going from memory, but could be being influenced by all the other anonymous pamphlets out there (not just Fritz and Voltaire's).

Great write-up. Does the biography mention the show duel D'Eon had with Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier St. George (= mixed race genius composer, violinist and master duelist, a generation younger) when the later was visiting England?

Doesn't look like it, from searching through the book.

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[selenak]

Pity, it's a highlight in the Boulogne biography I've read. (He won, unsurprisingly given their respective ages, but was very impressed with d'Eon.)

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[cahn]

All of Alexander Hamilton's pamphlet-writing (I read the bio/listened to the musical before salon) definitely reads differently to me now that I know about all the other pamphlet-writing that was going on at around that time! (I can't remember how much of that, if any, was anonymous.)