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: Lady Grange: Her father's story

[mildred_of_midgard]

I wondered the same thing! When it was pointed out to him that the sentence was to support his wife and kids, which seemed quite reasonable, his only response was "that he would not answer 'to that point nor give any account thereof'."

"Fuck you," in other words.

He didn't make any attempt to escape, either, so...idk what was going on with that guy. The level of psycopathy is astounding.

Daniel Szechi, three of whose books on Jacobites I've enjoyed, has written a book about Lockhart of Carnwath, but I haven't read it.

Interesting! It looks like that Lockhart was the son of murdered!Lockhart, and he was eight years old when his father died. (I forgot to give the date of the murder: it was Easter Sunday, 1689.)

ETA: Oh, and the story that's told about Lady Grange threatening to shoot Lord Grange if he didn't marry her goes like this:

It was rumoured that the espousals were brought about by the Lady, who having formed a pretty correct estimate of the fickleness of the gentleman, very adroitly brought matters to a crisis, by presenting a pistol to her lover, and bidding him remember that she was a daughter of John Chiesley of Dalry.

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