cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47

We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!

Page 11 of 13 << [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] >>

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

luzula

I'm currently reading "Sex and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Century" by William Gibson and Begiato, 2017 (that's the Anglican Church).

Here's a quote I knew you guys would enjoy. : D

When Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, a mistress of James II, was admitted to the court after the [Glorious] Revolution, she was received icily by Queen Mary. She brusquely told the Queen: "Why so haughty, madam? I have not sinned more notoriously in breaking the seventh commandment with your father, than you have done in breaking the fifth against him.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That is a great quote!

From:

luzula

So quotable! : D

(Sorry, that should have been William Gibson and Joanne Begiato.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

A few notes from my recent reading that weren't worthy of their own comment:

1) The author of the biography of Philippe the Regent that I just finished doesn't think the infamous "petits soupers" were outright orgies; he thinks that was all slander. The specific claim that lackeys were kept around to satisfy the ladies in case the men got too drunk and incapable is one that can apparently be traced to an unreliable source.

2) According to the same biography, Louis XIV made an effort to prepare his successors, in the sense of involving them in the administration of the realm and giving them some training. Unfortunately, as you may recall, the French royal house fell like dominoes to a series of misfortunes within the space of just a couple years. Every time he trained someone, they died off.

Then, when it became increasingly likely it was going to be Philippe as Regent and a small child ruling, Louis was like, "No training for you, nephew!" They had had some ~conflicts~ over the years. And my guess is that an intelligent and ambitious Philippe also seemed like a more viable threat to a living Louis than any of Louis' direct descendants.

Philippe seems to have done a pretty decent job in spite of being kept far away from anything political or administrative in France during Louis' lifetime.

The training that Louis' successors got reminded me strongly of the training that August the Strong gave to his son, future August III: attending committee meetings, receiving reports, etc. August III got a bad rap as someone who supposedly did not participate in ruling at all and left everything to Brühl, but if you're willing to browse through the boring stacks of bureaucratic papers in the Saxon archives, apparently the evidence showed that he was hands-on both as crown prince and as king. (He just wasn't a micromanaging workaholic with good PR like some people we could name.)

Speaking of browsing through boring stacks of bureaucratic papers, the papers from the Keith archives gave me an example of "douceurs" meaning what it means in English: gratituity, tip, or bribe. You may recall that when reading the Leining papers, this term shows up as something that hasn't been received. My first guess was the meaning I was familiar with, that someone hadn't gotten paid, but Selena, who read the whole passage, translated it as "sweets", because it's Fritz receiving them, and presumably he's not receiving tips!

Anyway, I was interested to see that at least 18th century German did also borrow the same word with the same meaning from French as modern-day English.

3) I also got a little detail on Carl Ernst's death in 1822: it was quick, in that he was active during the day (maybe visiting friends?) and ate with a good appetite, and died of a stroke at 11 pm. The author of the letter calls it a lucky death. There are a couple words I can't read, but something along the lines of: he normally went to bed at 10 pm, but that day he had stayed up until 10:30 talking with friends, and then [rode home?] and didn't stay talking any later.

So I'm guessing he got home just in time to die and didn't die in the street or at a friend's house? Something like that. There are 9 whole words of which I can't make out much more than "ritt[?] er auf[?] dem XXXX sXXXXd mit[?] dem kXXXXX" without spending a whole lot more time on this than I'm willing to right now. The plan is to keep reading and browsing, making notes of what's worth coming back to, and come back to the interesting material with hopefully more proficient skill!

4) Oh, and thanks to the endless set of invoices and payments and account books, I can tell you that his house in Berlin was being worked on at the time of his death. The walls and door(s), I think.

Yes, this material is riveting. :P

5) In the bio of Anna Amalia recommended by Selena, I learned that in Weimar, all subjects had to ask the Duke's permission before traveling abroad. (I am compiling a list of which countries/principalities have this rule.) Carl August's younger brother Constantin, like Heinrich and AW, struggled with being a younger son who could neither control his own destiny nor live the kind of useful life he wanted. There were conflicts.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Reading the book on Kepler defending his mother from witchcraft accusations, which Selena recommended and I finally got around to picking up because my wife was listening to a podcast episode where the author was interviewed, I found Kepler's father going off to join the army and Kepler's mother tracking him down and demanding he come home. One of her arguments was that it was commonly known that there were lots of single women following the army around, and therefore lots of extramarital sex with soldiers happening.

This was an absolutely normal and widespread perception of what happened in armies with women accompanying them.

(The book is good, btw, very readable even to my slow-German-reading self. And it does exist in English if anyone wants to read it that way.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Grenouille meaning frog, of course. ;)

There exists a five-volume biography of Philip V written in the nineteenth-century by Alfred Baudrillart called Philippe V Et La Cour De France, which is based on the gold mine that is envoy reports. It's been on my radar for a while, because it gets cited extensively by all twentieth-century writers on this subject.

I have no intention of reading the whole thing, but I've been waiting until my French was a bit better, to do some dipping in. Well, we've finally gotten to the point where I can start, at least.

It then, belatedly, occurred to me that if Kamen's Philip V biography I did read (one volume, in English) relies so heavily on this biography, and this biography is based on envoy reports, this biography would obviously be where Kamen got the frog story from. Sure enough, that entire page in Kamen is just a close paraphrase of Baudrillart.

Sadly, Baudrillart provides no further details, but he does provide a citation to the unpublished envoy report, so if I ever get around to ordering materials from the French archives, I know where to find this one!

Also in this section I learned that Philip V was beating his wife and everyone around him, and that Isabella was complaining to the French envoy about the scratches and bruises on her body.

Normally, there would be a clear villain in this story: the absolute monarch hitting his wife and others at his mercy. However, immediately preceding this paragraph is the story that I told you that relates how a mentally ill man is trying to escape from his room so he can abdicate, and his wife keeps roping everyone into locking him back in the room and depriving him of writing materials so she can remain in power. In the subsequent passage, we find that, as I reported back in the day, Philip is also mentally ill enough that he is biting *himself*.

I admit, I would be hitting my captors too.

Something that Baudrillart reports that I didn't remember from Kamen is that word got out to the general populace, and a lot of people thought it would be a great idea if the mentally ill king were allowed to retire. Only the queen and courtiers who benefited from this arrangement thought it was imperative that Philip remain king.

This situation SUCKS.

On a completely unrelated note, something I learned from a different volume of this biography forces me to revise something I've said in the past.

Back in the very earliest days of salon, when

selenak was summarizing the War of the Austrian Succession, she wrote:

Philip of Spain (another one!): So I'm a French Bourbon, not a Habsburg, but the Habsburgs used to rule Spain until me. (I'm the first Bourbon on the throne.) Therefore, I should totally rule Austria and the Holy Roman Empire now. At least I'm not A WOMAN.

A year ago, we had a lot (loooot) more knowledge of the 18th century, and I questioned whether Philip was after the Holy Roman Empire. As far as I knew, he was exclusively fighting for territory in Italy, based on the claims of his wife (Isabella Farnese) to Parma and Piacenza, plus the territory Spain had lost during the War of the Spanish Succession, like Gibraltar and Menorca.

Having read the very start of the War of the Austrian Succession as recounted by Baudrillart, I can now share his account, which goes like this:

Philip V: No alternating Protestants and Catholics for Holy Roman Emperor!

[Mildred: Has he heard rumors about Fritz as a candidate?]

Philip V: Personally, I think the Wittelsbach candidate is a good idea.

Isabella of Parma: My oldest son, Don Carlos, is married to the daughter of August III. So I think August III is an A+ candidate!

Philip V: While we're here, let's not forget that I have claims to Habsburg hereditary territories!

The rest of Europe: ...

The rest of Europe: *tries to keep a straight face*

Philip V: Fine! But my wife has claims in Italy. If we can't have Habsburg territory, we want Italian principalities as compensation. Those aren't covered by the Pragmatic Sanction. We will fight a whole war for them!

And so I was right that the war was fought over Italy, but none of my sources reported this initial diplomatic angling for Habsburg territory (sadly, Baudrillart doesn't specify what territory or what the basis for the claim is). Checking my copy of Anderson's War of the Austrian Succession, he indeed skips over this step in saying that immediately after the news of the death of Charles VI reached Madrid, Philip and Isabella started pressing for Italian territory.

Foreign policy: always revealing new layers of complexity!

From:

cahn

Heeee! This is hilarious. (Even though I am a Queen Mary partisan :D )

From:

cahn

Every time he trained someone, they died off.

Whoops. Well... I guess it's good that Philippe did a decent job despite not having been trained at all!

MT: Tell me about it.

The author of the letter calls it a lucky death.

Speaking of MT, I remember Selena telling us that a quick death for FS wasn't considered good, in the sense that if it were too fast, he wouldn't be able to have his last confession. Though I'm sure that everyone was rather less uptight about such things by 1822. Anyway... it sounds like it wasn't painfully drawn-out, which is good, there are too many of those :P

From:

cahn

Oh, cool! Which book is this again? Not that I can read this for some time, I'm still reading my Christmas presents!

From:

cahn

a mentally ill man is trying to escape from his room so he can abdicate, and his wife keeps roping everyone into locking him back in the room and depriving him of writing materials so she can remain in power. In the subsequent passage, we find that, as I reported back in the day, Philip is also mentally ill enough that he is biting *himself*.

Eek. This all sounds pretty awful.

Philip V: While we're here, let's not forget that I have claims to Habsburg hereditary territories!

The rest of Europe: ...

The rest of Europe: *tries to keep a straight face*

LOL!

From:

cahn

Okay, I have a question! I wrote a story in

candyheartsex about William and Mary and James of Monmouth (Jemmy) having a threesome.

selenak mentioned in her letter, Now, there is of course the fact - which Jemmy manages to ignore most of the time - that if and when he makes a play for the crown, then William and Mary are bound to be his rivals as the legal Protestant heirs - and you can but don't have to include this.

Well, I didn't include it at all (I didn't think I could have written it without a lot more time and research, and probably not even then), but writing it made me wonder: what happens in the AU where they really are a romantic threesome, or at least one where William and Mary's affection for Jemmy outweighs their bowing to political expediency and kicking him out of the Hague on Charles' death -- what happens if they don't? I know William thought in the book that Holland would be crushed, but is there any way that they could move together against James? And what happens then if/when Jemmy makes a play for the crown?

Relatedly, canonically Harriet accuses William of not hindering Jemmy in any way when Jemmy plots rebellion because William sees that Jemmy is a rival -- do you think this was the case?

From: (Anonymous)

Also, Carl Ernst, being a Prussian nobleman, was a Protestant. This said, Catholicism in the 19th century went backwards, not forwards, because of the double shock of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and doubled down on the conservatism, and then there was the Bismarck vs the Pope battle in the early Empire, etc. Reform Popes by and large only showed up and made a difference in the 20th century.

From:

selenak

It is a great quote, and I see this lady was famous for her wit in general, commenting on the mystery of why James hooked up with her: . "It cannot be my beauty for he must see I have none. And it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I have any." LOL, and also ouch for James. Her wiki entry also says her mother went insane and then her father kicked her out of the house in favour of his common-law wife. (In case we're wondering why she hooked up with James.

From:

selenak

And my guess is that an intelligent and ambitious Philippe also seemed like a more viable threat to a living Louis than any of Louis' direct descendants.

That, and I don't think Louis ever got over the Fronde he experienced as a child, with the awareness his uncle Gaston was the chief Frondeur and always had been. Whether or not he really nixed brother Philippe's military career once it became clear Philippe actually had some talent as a soldier, or whether as his contemporaries suspected he was secretly pleased Philippe was so flamboyant and gay because that made him a less likely candidate to be seen as a rival King: that distrust and awareness of the Fronde went deep. And he actually liked his brother. His nephew, otoh...

From:

selenak

I admit, I would be hitting my captors too.

Something that Baudrillart reports that I didn't remember from Kamen is that word got out to the general populace, and a lot of people thought it would be a great idea if the mentally ill king were allowed to retire. Only the queen and courtiers who benefited from this arrangement thought it was imperative that Philip remain king.

This situation SUCKS.

That's true. Mind you, I can understand why Isabella didn't want to be a retired King's wife again, either. She was younger and in her prime, political activity was the one compensation for seeing after a mentally unstable man she had, and giving this up in favour of her offspring with nothing to look forward to but decades (due to her age) of a life of first nursing and caring Philippe and after his death prayer, well...

It was awful for everyone.

Philip V: No alternating Protestants and Catholics for Holy Roman Emperor!

[Mildred: Has he heard rumors about Fritz as a candidate?]

He may have, or he was suspicious re: the durability of August III's conversion? But after August the Strong had become Catholic, there was really no question who the leading Protestant German noble house was, so more likely, he heard rumors about Fritz.

From:

selenak

In the novel? I'd say it's ambiguous - possible, but then this novel is one of the few which I think carries off the problem of conveying to the readers the narrator isn't always right in their assumptions (for example: I think it's crystal clear even before he says so that Charles II wasn't married to Jemmy's mother Lucy, and that Jemmy is grasping at straws and kididng himself because he wants it desperately to be true that his parents were married), and Harriet is the narrator of the epilogue and clearly biased, poor woman. Again, it's possible, because William is described as clever and the kind of long term thinker Jemmy is not, but otoh I also think we're meant to believe his affection for Jemmy is genuine. (Which wouldn't exclude a human sacrifice in the game of thrones, of course.)

In real life? Well, I haven't yet read a biography of William (or Mary), but in the Monmouth biography by Anna Keay she casts the blame somewhere else - on Ferguson and Argyll for pressuring Jemmy into joining an uprising against James NOW (with himself as the figurehead, argueing that he disappointed his followers already once when not continuing his rebellion against dead, and now they're ready to shed their blood for Protestant England and he can't claim filial love as an excuse), going as far as feeding him false information, including the sensational claim that James poisoned brother Charles.

(Now I'm not fond of James II, but yeah, no. Otoh, Jemmy and James loathed each other and from Jemmy's pov, it did look suspicious - there's that last secret meeting with Charles where Charles signals he'll call him back, and then, oops, Charles - who was healthy all his life - dies, and even converts to Catholicism on his deathbed, with seemingly no one but James and the priest as witnesses, sceptical Charles. Biographer Anna Keay points out the relationship with Charles was the most important and central one in Jemmy's entire life, he was reeling from the shock (especially coming so relatively soon after the reconciliation in their last meeting and the prospect of being able to return home), and blaming James was probably all too tempting. And once he believed James had gone that far, well.

But. Bear in mind this is all before James the never III is born to James II and Mary of Modena. At this point, the very Protestant William and Mary are the unquestioned heirs to James, next in line to the throne to the three Kingdoms, not even the most Catholic of Catholics in Ireland would dispute it. Meaning you have Protestant heirs with a perfectly legitimate claim, whose legitimate birth is unquestioned on both sides. Meaning William had no reason to go for a rebellion now. He only had one once James II had a Catholic son, which wasn't the case yet, since he and Mary were 100% secure to inherit once James bit the dust. So there was no chance William and Mary would agree to lead an anti-James uprising at this point, which is why some of the Whigs went for Jemmy in the first place. (That, and good old fashioned Xenophobia, because of William being Dutch and thus in the event of his reign bound to bring his own, Dutch people into juicy positions, as opposed to owing them everything.)

Now, did William have reason to fear Jemmy as competition so much that he needed to set him up? Not according to Anna Keay, who also points out that Jemmy's asylum in the Hague originally did depend on the understanding he wouldn't make a play for the throne. And he always did have the drawback of not being legitimate, and of not enough people believing that his parents were married after all, and again, of William and Mary being the perfectly legitimate Protestant alternative for even the most determined NO POPERY minded Englishman.

What confused a lot of contemporaries, according to Keay, was how warmly William (never the most demonstrative of men, not even when young) and Mary interacted with Jemmy, and they were looking for motives beyond "annoying James", and a Machiavellian strategy would provide one. In any case, for an AU where they remain allies and Jemmy doesn't die, the impression I had from the biography it just needed two factors to change - Jemmy does not listen to the pressure from Ferguson & Co., and also, William continues to not kick him out somewhat longer. (In rl, Jemmy wasn't in the Hague when Charles died, he was in Brussels, i.e. the Spanish Netherlands, where he got kicked out at once following the demand by James II, but he then returned to Holland and William did let him stay there for a while.

The stadtholder went through the motions of congratulating his father-in-law on his accession, but when Monmouth returned from Brussels and James II asked that he be explelled, William did almost nothing. He had witnessed first-hand Monmouth's determination not to be drawn into rebellion - earlier, during the last years of Charles' life - and was not minded to give his friend up. As the dissidents assembled in Rotterdam in early April the English ambassador confronted William again abouto Monmouth. William murmred that he would expel him but, in Skelton's words, 'gave me little encouragement or hope it would ever be done' The frustration in London grew wiht the days that passed. The Earl of Rochester wrote to William claiming that they were not seeking to drive Monmouth from country to country, but surely he could see that they would not have him 'hovering just over against England'. Yet still William prevaricated, knowing nothing of Monmouth's change of hearts, and even a direct and stern letter from James II a few weeks later did not result in any definitive action.

I.e. the way Anna Keay tells it, if Jemmy doesn't listen to any pressure from England and, say, makes a public oath of loyalty that he respects the succession rights OF WILLIAM AND MARY (this wouldn't exclude a later joint action against James II altogether, but otoh right now is not treacherous even for a James II follower, since William and Mary are his legal heirs), chances are William and Mary would keep him against James II's objection and gamble on James II not going to war over his nephew. (The moment James II has a Catholic sons, all conditions change, of course.)

From:

selenak

some of this I quoted to you before, but it's worth repeating and also is guaranteed non-fiction prove the three of them really were close enough to raise eyebrows:

(When Charles II is still alive):

William and Mary's treatment of the duke was mor ethan a piece of cold political positioning. Mary had grown up with Monmouth and had lived alongside him from her birth to her wedding day. Both Charles II and the Duke of York recognised that since William and Monmouth had fought together in 1678 they had become 'so good friends and agree so well together'. The 'fondness' Mary and William showed for Monmouth in 1684, and the 'caressesÄ he received that were 'the common discourse of all sorts of people' in The Hague, were the hproduct of personal as well as political dynamics. With Monmouth as guest the atmosphere in the Orange court started to grow noticiably brighter. Onlookers were surprised to see Mary - who never walked out - taking daily constitutionals in the mall with her cousin, while they were frankly amazed when William - who used his asthma as an excuse to avoid dancing - was to be found learning contredanses with Monmouth and Mary most evenings. When the English ambassador in The Hague reported that Monmouth was being treated by William and Mary 'as one of the family', it was not just a calibration of the formal honours allowed to him, but also an expression of the closeness between them all. (...)

It was a mark of the real warmth of Monmouth's treatment by his cousins that, though his wife was one of the princess's oldest friends, William and Mary received Harriet Wentworth publicly as his companion.

(BTW, Mary doing this makes me wonder whether the objection to Lady Dorchester was less the mistress status and more Lady Dorchester in particular?)

After Monmouth's final secret meeting with Charles II but before Charles' death:

The weather had turned cold and Mary persuaded William to let Monmouth take her skating on the frozen canals. There the duke gave a steadying arm to his normally cosseted cousin as she slipped and slid about in a short skating dress, causing prim onlookers to tut-tut with disapproval. There was general amazement that William was allowing his wife to consort so publically with this famous gallant - Monmoiuth was even being allowed to form a couple with Mary in after-dinner-dancing. But Monmouth's affection was purely fraternal and William did not flinch, such was the intimacy between the trio.

And of course there's the fact that after Monmouth's execution by her father, Mary still renembered him fondly:

Princess Mary of Orange, for her part, commissioned the physician James Welwood to pen a history of recent events. Welwood, who had come to know Monmouth during his last years, wrote about him at length. He was careful to stress he had read an dpartly transcribed Monmouth's diary and pocket boo, and that, 'there is nothing deliver'd concerning this Unfortunate Gentleman, but what I have unquestionable Grounds for'. His words were an epitaph for Mary, of the cousin and friend she remembered:

'Monmouith seem'd to be born for a better Fate; for the first part of his life was all Sunshine, through the rest was clouded. He was Brave, Generous, Affable, and extremely Handsome: Constant in his Friendships, just to his Word, and an utter enemy to all sorts of Cruelty. He was easy in his Nature, and fond of popular Applause which led him insensibly into all his Misfortunes; but whereever might be the hidden DEsigns of some working Heads he embark'd with, his own were noble, and chiefly aim'd at the Good of his Country.'

From:

luzula

That, and good old fashioned Xenophobia, because of William being Dutch and thus in the event of his reign bound to bring his own, Dutch people into juicy positions, as opposed to owing them everything.
That's not xenophobia, though, is it? It's just not wanting to lose power to William's established allies. Xenophobia would be more like "well, he's Dutch, so he's bound to be [insert undesirable character trait]."

Re: the threesome, the "Sex and the Church" book I'm currently reading said there were accusations against William for sleeping with men, but the book is more interested in how the accusations fit into a pattern than whether they were true. Do you know if they were true? (The book is talking among other things about how religious (and political) deviancy is tied up with sexual deviancy in the public mind, i e Anglicans often accused Dissenters, or Catholic Jacobites, of having orgies or whatnot.)

From:

selenak

there were accusations against William for sleeping with men, but the book is more interested in how the accusations fit into a pattern than whether they were true. Do you know if they were true?

Well, we don't have a love letter by William to a boyfriend, but we do have contemporary gossip. Here's Liselotte (who btw liked William - for a hot minute as a girl, she was a potential bride, she did meet him, she wouldn't have been averse, and after decades of being married to Philippe d'Orleans, she certainly had a functioning gaydar. Otoh, she had heard about William and boyfriends via third parties, not observed it herself. Here's what she wrote:

It's rumored here that King William has the dropsy and is deathly ill; but I won't believe it until I've learned it from better sources. It would be a pity if such a smart King would have only so little to live anymore. But what he's been accused of is all too true. All the young Englishmen who arrived with the Ambassador Mylord Portland saw that affairs in Paris are conducted just like at home at their court, and then they weren't shy anymore about tellung us what's going on. He's supposed to have been in love with Albermarle as with a lady and to have kissed his hands in front of everyone. But the biggest sign that this King loves young men is that he's not interested in women. For believe me, my dear Amaliese! Men are like that, they have to be in love. King Charles was only into women. Mind you, there are a lot of people here who love both (men and women); you can find many of them, and more than of those who love only one or the other. King Charles wasn't in love with Madame Mazarin but with Madame de Portsmouth and with a Comedienne. Men believe that women couldn't exist without being in love because they themselves can't. (...)

Albermarle was born Arnold van Keppel and and one of William's bffs (the other being Willem Bentinck, the later Earl of Portland) since his youth, starting out as William's page, more about him here. It's entirely possible they were simply friends and those gossipping young Englishmen Liselotte talked to were simply jealous of Albermarle. But it's just as possible he did have a romantic thing with Albermarle, Portland or both. All we can say with certainty is that there was contemporary gossip.

Edited Date: 2024-03-06 01:50 pm (UTC)

From:

luzula

*reads Wikipedia*

She does sound like a cool person! And it makes me think better of James II's taste that he fell for her. Oh hey, and I also see that she was the great-grandmother of Charles Darwin...

From:

luzula

Huh, thanks. I guess it's hard to tell what the truth was!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You're still reading Christmas presents from previous Christmases! *cough* Massie.

It's Ulinka Rublack's The Astronomer and the Witch, available on Kindle.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Speaking of MT, I remember Selena telling us that a quick death for FS wasn't considered good, in the sense that if it were too fast, he wouldn't be able to have his last confession.

I thought of that too, and my first thought was the same as Selena's, that Carl Ernst being Lutheran probably made a difference. Though I admit I don't know specifically how Lutherans in 1822 felt about dying unconfessed, it does at least make sense as a possible reason.

We do know that when Peter had *his* long, drawn-out death of several weeks between strokes, he used the time to perform religious duties...but I don't know how important that was to him, or if he would much rather have ridden home at 10:30 and died at 11. (And whether Carl Ernst himself, having been old enough to remember his father having that drawn out death, might have been relieved to have been spared six weeks of partial paralysis and difficulty speaking!)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Mind you, I can understand why Isabella didn't want to be a retired King's wife again, either.

Oh, definitely! And as I recounted last time, there were good political reasons for his ministers not wanting him to do that again:

1. He already did that, and it ended badly. (His son died after just 7 months, putting him back on the throne.) Incidentally, that's one reason Philip the Frog so badly wants off the throne: he formally renounced it, and he thinks he's violating his oath and offending God by remaining king. And it's why he refuses to speak to his ministers except through his wife: if he doesn't act like a king, at least he's not violating his oath nearly as badly!

2. When he was retired, he was backseat driving from his country palace like crazy, telling his son what to do. Nobody wants two masters again.

3. Since his oldest son died, his next oldest son is a minor, so there would have to be a regency. Isabella, the normal candidate, would have to follow her husband into retirement. Philip doesn't have any brothers. His closest male-line relative is the king of France. And we know how it goes when there's discussion of uniting France and Spain: war!

Even if we manage to avoid a Europe-wide war, nobody wants the plotting and counterplotting within Spain over who gets to be regent.

4. Since (unlike in the reign of Philip's equally mentally ill so later in the century), there is a queen to act as point of contact, and she's willing and able to do the job, there's some continuity in leadership if we keep Philip locked in his room and Isabella acting as spokesperson for his opinions about politics.

And that's how it ended up awful for everyone. :/

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Funnily enough, I betaed this for

cahn, and I copy-pasted her this paragraph from the bio of William III that I own (but have not read aside from occasional dipping into):

D'Avaux's account that Prince William went so far as to encourage a flirtation between Mary and Monmouth is so out of Mary's character – not to mention the Prince's – that we may discount it (p.225); similarly his account, which is often cited, of Mary’s ice skating with Monmouth, skating on alternative legs with her skirts drawn up (p.241). He did not always resist the temptation to present William and Mary in an unfavourable light to his masters in France.

Not my century, can't comment on plausibility one way or the other, just putting this out there.