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: Historians and their No-Homo'ing: the Stuart Version

[selenak]

To be fair, sleeping in the same bed when one participant was a prince and/or ruling monarch really for a couple of centuries was a mark of particular distinction, but James' era was at the tail end of that habit, I believe, and also: if he wanted to just to honour Carr/Somerset, than complaining he wanted him back in bed "a thousand times" does not make sense. And Buckingham's bed post jest is distinctly earthy.

BTW, Young also points out that in the case of James' three most famous favourites, there's a twenty years age gap in each case, though in the first case in the other direction, as James was only 13 when falling in love with his cousin Esme Stuart who was in his mid thirties. Whereas both Robert Carr/Somerset and George Villiers/Buckingham were a mit more than two decades younger than James. (Though both way older than 13 - they were adult men when coming to his attention.)

THESE WERE MALE HISTORIANS. WEREN'T THEY.

Amazingly enough, not exclusively so. Agnes Strickland who is a Victorian writer about all the Kings and Queens of England (we owe her, among other things, a completely fictional governess for Anne Boleyn due to her misreading two French words, but she otherwise was a very hard working lady, just with the ethics of her times), also chides Anne for her luxury loving shallowness and ruining of marital harmony by the who-raises-Henry argument, apparently a firm believer that women should be moral angels guiding men to be better, and James had some good qualities and would have been a better person if Anne had "reformed" him. I should add that Anne, like James, has found her defenders in the 20th century.

Re: Historians and their No-Homo'ing: the Stuart Version

[cahn]

if he wanted to just to honour Carr/Somerset, than complaining he wanted him back in bed "a thousand times" does not make sense.

Hee!

Re Agnes Strickland: gosh, okay, yeah, I... guess I see how this kind of thing happens. (Strickland's attitudes, I mean.) But still!