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!

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From:

cahn

(is this you,

selenak? or someone else? :D )

Ah, yes, that makes sense, thank you!

From:

cahn

Did Protestants even do last rites/last confession in 1822? As far as I know they don't today -- I mean, you might well want your pastor present for spiritual comfort if possible, but I don't think there's a specific ritual that is performed as in Catholicism. I'll ask D tonight.

From:

cahn

Hahahaha! I like her. (And, like you say, ouch for James.)

From:

cahn

Oh, that's cool! Gosh, everyone is related to everyone else :P

From:

cahn

Ah, thanks for reminding me of how it must have been for her. Being a woman in the past: DO NOT WANT.

From:

cahn

:D Asking questions in salon is the best because I get such great answers back! :D

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

Heh, yeah, it was pretty clear that Jemmy really wanted that to be true!

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.

*nods* Harriet doesn't go so far as to accuse William of applying any pressure on Jemmy, either, just that William didn't hamper them -- and yes, she very much comes across as biased and (understandably) emotional, so it is entirely believable that she is herself grasping at straws and William was just like, "okay, look, if this is what he really wants, I'm not going to get in his way."

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.

So on one hand this makes me happy (this AU is a possibility!), and on the other hand it makes me sad (was it so close?? They could all have been allies and not die??)

(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.

Ah, okay. And in tKT William does let him stay in Holland as long as he's not William's Special Guest. But I can see how it is more dramatically fulfilling to have him right there so he and William can talk!

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.)

YES. You know this means I am going for the threesome AU as my headcanon now! With maybe bonus loyalty kink! :D

Now, in this AU, once James II has a Catholic son and William and Mary decide they need to invade... I guess this is where it becomes even more important that Jemmy took the oath to William and Mary. So he can tell anyone who is trying to use him as the focus of revolution that he can't because of his oath. In this AU is he part of the Glorious Revolution and they all live happily ever after?

From:

cahn

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.

Gosh, Liselotte is the best. She must have been so much fun to be around.

Although presumably William wouldn't have had to have been in love, especially if he were still grieving for Mary (though that part I guess would depend on the date of the letter) so idk about her premise, though I do understand she had quite a bit of evidence for it :P

ETA: Though if I'd known about this before -- well, I suppose it wouldn't have changed anything. But it is certainly cementing my William/Mary/Jemmy threesome headcanon :P

Edited Date: 2024-03-08 01:13 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

:D These are such lovely quotes! (And, again, I am delighted by the threesome :) Or even foursome!)

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.

I'm so happy to get history-canon documentation of this! :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I've been assuming it's either

selenak or someone doing a very effective impersonation, based on both the content and the wording choice. No one else in salon uses "this said" nearly as often. :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That I don't know either! I understand confession is a thing? But I don't know about deathbed confession. So if they don't and didn't, then I assume being Lutheran has far more to do with thikning a quick death is a good one than it being 1822.

Wikipedia says:

In the Lutheran Churches, last rites are formally known as the Commendation of the Dying, in which the priest "opens in the name of the triune God, includes a prayer, a reading from one of the psalms, a litany of prayer for the one who is dying, [and] recites the Lord’s Prayer". The dying individual is then anointed with oil and receives the sacraments of Holy Absolution and Holy Communion.

But that's the entire section on Lutheran last rites in that article, compared to the 5 paragraphs in the Catholic section and the 6 in the Orthodox section, so I'm guessing it's not nearly as big a deal, and it's okay if you ride home at 10:30 and die at 11! (I'm still guessing that that's what the illegible handwriting says; I reserve the right to revise it later.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, the Fronde was definitely the reason any time Philippe did anything he wasn't supposed to, Louis gave him extra side-eye.

From:

selenak

Contredanses: must have been the raging new thing to boot (i.e. William isn't just ready to dance when he's usually not, but ready to dance the funky new dance), given that teen Heinrich and Sophie are still dancing them a few decades later during AW's wedding celebrations!

But yes, these are lovely quotes indeed, hence my wish to share them.

Edited Date: 2024-03-08 11:34 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Pfff, this reminds me of my Aged Parent originally refusing to believe Fritz would do a couple of things he did because he said it was ooc for Fritz until I waved excerpts from Henckel von Donnersmark's wartime diary at him, and even then he had trouble. And there's always the "glorious" example of not only a bunch of 19th but even 20th century historians declaring it would have been ooc for such a pious Christian as FW to insist on Gundling's being buried in a barrel and to organize the entire burial the way he did and to write essay after essay of how this was an anti Prussian legend surely and ooc and what not when Stratemann's diplomatic dispatches had been published in the late 19th century already (including the one where he, who is an FW friendly source and can't possibly accused of anti FW bias, describes the entire affair in detail (plus the letters from the pastors which the Gundling biographer found).

Of course envoys are biased, we've often found them so. But historians and biographers can be equally biased and tempted to declare "this doesn't fit with my image of person X, therefore the contemporary source who says they absolutely did this must have made it up!"

From:

selenak

YES. You know this means I am going for the threesome AU as my headcanon now! With maybe bonus loyalty kink! :D

Naturally!

Now, in this AU, once James II has a Catholic son and William and Mary decide they need to invade... I guess this is where it becomes even more important that Jemmy took the oath to William and Mary. So he can tell anyone who is trying to use him as the focus of revolution that he can't because of his oath. In this AU is he part of the Glorious Revolution and they all live happily ever after?

I don't see why not? Incidentally, I see the University doesn't just have papers re: the 1745, but also of William's successful invasion of England and the Glorious Revolution, and not just anyone's, but those of the older of William's two bffs, Jan Willem Bentinck who ends up as William Bentinck, first Earl of Portland, here. (Btw, if his family name sounds vaguely familiar, I think it was one of his sons who was the disliked husband of the Countess Bentinck who shows up in Lehndorff's diaries (she of the "Mission: Seduce Heinrich!" fame) and was fangirled by teenage Sophie for riding astride like am and being generally cool.

Anyway, the Nottingham University doesn't just have the papers re: the Glorious Revolution, but also a timeline, listing of events leading up to this and most important players etc., in case you feel ever inclined to write a bit of a longer AU where Jemmy lives and gets to assist Mary in breaking the fifth commandment by deposing her Dad.

BTW: both Mary and Anne were seen as basically Goneril and Regan by the Jacobites for this, but as "The King's Touch" has Mary say to Jemmy, if it had been up to her father, she and Anne would never have existed. Given how he treated their mother. (Reminder, he first got her pregnant and married her, then because the Restoration happened belatedly tried to weasel out of it by the really low method of making his mates claim they, too, had had sex with Anne Hyde and could totally be the Dad and that's why the marriage wasn't valid until Charles put his foot down and made James stick to his promises and stop trying to ruin his wife's reputation. The baby in question was a boy who died in infancy, btw, Mary and Anne didn't arrive until later, and as Morgan has Mary point out, never would have at all if James had had his way. Not to mention that a slutshamed (based on lies; I don't think many people believed James' buddies on that one) and divorced Anne Hyde would probably have spent the rest of her life shut up in a country mansion somewhere.

From:

selenak

Oh, there are any number of non-gay explanations why a middle aged widower who even in his younger years didn't have the reputation of getting it on all the time (with either sex) and without any biological children would a) have no mistress and b) show interest and fondness in in a young man like Albermarle. (Bear in mind this is supposedly also when he's nice to young FW and considers adopting him briefly, and no one insinuated anything untowards there.) Liselotte's view on these matters is inevitably influenced by having spent decades with the never mistress-less Louis XIV as a brother-in-law and Philippe the Gay as a husband. (Not to mention that her own father Karl Ludwig also had a mistress and infamously lived with her and his wife both because his wife refused to move out after he tried in vain to do a Henry VIII and grant himself a divorce. And even when Liselotte lived with Aunt Sophie in Hannover, she'd probably been aware that Sophie's husband Ernst had a mistress and illegitimate kids as well. )

From:

selenak

The tv series Mary and George (about Buckingham's rise to power) is streaming (alas not where I can see it) and gets good reviews, which confirm my suspicion it partly covers the same territory as my story about the two Frances' does:

George and the king’s longtime favourite, young Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, are soon sworn enemies but Somerset is on the skids and knows it.

and:

There is a plot to marry the feeble-minded John (a lovely, heartbreaking turn by Tom Victor) to the daughter of Sir Edward Coke (Adrian Rawlins), who is quite keen on the idea, and of Lady Hatton (Nicola Walker), who is having none of it. “I would rather strangle her dead,” she tells Mary in front of the assembled dinner party when the proposal is mooted. Game recognises game.

James VI and I is played by Tony Curran, whom I remember as a good Vincent van Gogh on Doctor Who, and who in in this interview insistes there's tenderness as well as lust: Sexual allure, he says, particularly for George and Mary, is about power, “but then there’s a friendship and ultimately a love, and vulnerability. There are letters from King James to George, and he would [write] ‘my sweet child and wife’.”

Selena: this last part freaked

cahn out.

From:

cahn

Well, I haven't actively gone back to reading that yet, lol, though I know I should. Whereas I'm actively reading one of

selenak's Christmas presents right now, and am a little more passively reading one of yours (it is great to read during trips, which I haven't had one of for a while, but I should be having a couple coming up).

From:

cahn

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!

Ohhhh. That... makes a certain amount of twisted sense.

From:

cahn

Okay, I forgot to ask Dave until tonight (because of everything else going on) but he said immediately, "It's not a sacrament like it in Catholicism." He says he thinks there's a prayer and such, but it's not a holy sacrament, which is consistent with what you found, and also consistent with it not being a big deal to Lutherans and a big deal to Catholics.

From:

cahn

Haha, I am imagining William doing the funky new dance of the time because Jemmy was into it and it is such a great picture!

From:

cahn

Excellent! :D

Ugh, yeah, The King's Touch definitely did sell me on Mary being not a Goneril but someone who wanted to love her dad but had a lot of reasons to believe he wasn't a good king or a good dad...

From:

cahn

(Bear in mind this is supposedly also when he's nice to young FW and considers adopting him briefly, and no one insinuated anything untowards there.)

Gossipers: Hey, remember when he was nice to FW and considered adopting him? What if...
Gossipers: EW! I want that mental picture OUT of my head! Nope! Not gonna imagine THAT!

Liselotte's view on these matters is inevitably influenced by having spent decades with the never mistress-less Louis XIV as a brother-in-law and Philippe the Gay as a husband.

Hee, yep, she did have a lot of evidence! :) And I didn't know (or forgot) about the others... yeah.

Edited (tags!) Date: 2024-03-14 04:49 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

Hee! Well, it is so much of a soap opera!!

I mean. Yes to tenderness, but also creepy as all heck :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It's also sometimes because he's dead, and dead people can't talk. (They can sometimes mutter a bit when alone with their wives, but definitely no talking to ministers.)

...This guy needed lots of help, and lots less power.

Btw, I notice a typo in what you replied to: in "unlike in the reign of Philip's equally mentally ill so later in the century," that should read "mentally ill son."

From:

selenak

„History of the Germans“ currently tells how the first Habsburg got on the throne. Last week included the precious detail that one of his most important helpers, basically the „Vote Rudolf! Habsburg Fuck Yeah!“ guy, was none other than Friedrich von (Hohen)Zollern, Burggraf von Nürnberg. (You might recall this - Burggraf von Nürnberg - is still one of Fritz‘ titles in the document where he gives Zernikow to Fredersdorf.) This week details how Rudolf von Habsburg got rid of his most dangerous opponent, Ottokar of Bohemia, and won Austria, Styria and Carinthia (all owned by Ottokar) while he was at it in a magnificent bastard manner which would win Mildred‘s approval, methinks. Not knowing anything about Rudolf before other than he was the first Habsburg on the throne and the first Emperor after the Interregnum, I was impressed myself.

For Cahn, recapitulation of the sensational bits in these episodes and the circumstances: after the death of the other Friedrich II, Stupor Mundi, in 1250, there was no more Emperor for the next twenty years or so. There was a succession of Kings of the Romans, though (i.e. de facto Kings of the Germans, that just wasn‘t the title used), some voted in with papal backing to get rid of the last Hohenstaufen, and most of whom never even showed up in German territories. (Like Alfonso of Aragon, Richard of Cornwall, or Charles of Anjou‘s son.) Meanwhile, the German nobility had a go in dog eats dog manner at the Hohenstaufen territories within Germany. Just how anarchic this period was in comparison to earlier ones is debated, not least because of course the Habsburgs later had a vested interest in presenting it as bad as possible to make their own arrival on the scene look as good as possible. Anyway, because after two decades simultanously the Crusader states in Palestine and Syria were busy being reconquered by the Muslims, Pope Gregory X told the German princes to get their act together and vote a King of the Romans into office who could then be made Emperor and lead a new Crusade. Said guy was under no circumstances to be related to the Hohenstaufen (that‘s you, Alfonso) or to have territory in Italy (that‘s you, Charles of Anjou). Oh, and he should have military experience, given he was supposed to lead a Crusade to win the Holy Land back. Meanwhile, the German Dukes, having helped themselves to as much territory and privileges as possible, did not want a guy among their ranks with money and soldiers enough to actually boss them around and, shock horror, tell them what to do. Their idea for Emperor was someone who maybe could be an arbiter for internoble disputes, but no more. Which is why the fabulously wealthy Ottokar, King of Bohemia, who after the Babenberg family (until then Dukes of Austria) had died out, had married the sister of the last Babenberg and gotten his paws on Austria, Styria and Carinthia this way, despite her being 30 years older than him, had then ditched the lady in favour of a younger model without, of course, giving her dowry back, did not make it to the top. Despite aggressive campaigning and believing himself made for the job. He even had a golden armour.

Meanwhile, Friedrich of (Hohen)Zollern: So, here‘s my idea: let‘s go not for a Duke, but a Count. Without a Dukedom of his own, he‘ll never be able to compete with you guys, or boss you around. Also, he‘s a seasoned and successful campaigner, so good military credentials. AND he‘s 55, so no spring chicken, and if we‘ve made a mistake, well, he won‘t be around that long, clearly. Vote Habsburg! Vote Rudolf!“

Enter Count Rudolf von Habsburg. Whom later Habsburg propaganda painted as a poor and modest man to make his rise even more impressive. He was neither. While not controlling Ottokar‘s kind of means, he was an ambitous and clever go getter who had used his family‘s fecundity, as DIrk puts it, to gather wealth and territory. (Yes, tu felix Austria nube was a thing before they ever had Austria.) He had a lot of sisters, daughters, and cousins whom he married into a lot of dying out noble families, so every time someone died out, here was Rudolf with a marriage certificate. Also, he was a passionate chess player and able to outhink while a lot of the opposition. And what he couldn’t marry into, he wasn’t shy to acquire by good old fighting and stabbing. So he actually did have money and soldiers when showing up as a candidate for the throne. He knew, of course, that being voted King of the Romans would be of no use if Ottokar would just fight against him and squash him, so he had to get there first. And also, he needed to stabilize the country/countries in a way that didn‘t make the powerful nobles who had voted for him believing he was a tool switch to Team Ottokar. So on the one hand he invented the office of Landvogt, putting members of the nobility in charge of enforcing the law (including the "no feuding and burning each other's farmers' estates!" one) in various regions, thereby tying them in, on the other hand, he revived a ceremony which hadn't been done since Federico Secondo, to wit, where the nobility paid homage to a newly elected King and renewed their oaths of fealty (and got assured they still held their fiefdom). In Nuremberg, home of his buddy Friedrich von Zollern. Ottokar refused to come, as Rudolf knew he would, thereby pissing off a lot of other Dukes who felt this was an insult to them and their voting power. This gave Rudolf a reason to get his soldiers marching, and while ultimately it turned out to be a close thing, he did win, and decided to keep Austria, Styria and Carinthia while he was at it as personal fiefdoms for his family. (Ever since till the end of WWI: Habsburg/Austria OTP.) Bohemia he let Ottokar's son keep, but made sure said son married his, Rudolf's daughter. You know. Just in case.

Now, and this isn't in the podcast, Franz Grillparzer, one of the most famous German (and Austrian) playwrights of the 19th century, wrote a play about this, which I looked up the wiki entry of since I had never gotten around to reading it yet. And lo, hilarity was had, because: it was the 1820s, post Napoleonic Wars, when Metternich had ensured hardcore censorship laws in all German speaking states, and this play initially was forbidden, until a (female) member of the Habsburg clan got a hold of it, read it, and intervened because she thought it was a beautifully patriotic play, and where was the problem?

The problem ahd been this: in the play, which is Ottokar-focused, you have this self aggrandizing guy aiming for the imperial crown who sends his older wife away and marries a young one, and said young wife then turns out to be a conniving cheater and bitch whereas the older one had truly loved him, and then this self aggrandizing guy goes down courtesy of an alliance of princes. Evidently the Austrian censor thought this was an ever so subtle allusion to Napoleon, Josephine and none other than Habsburg princess Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife, who by now was happy (if not married to) with her man of choice, Count Neipperg, and thus an insult to the Habsburg family who preferred to forget and downplay that one of theirs had been married to a Bonaparte, let alone to THE Bonaparte. Which is a really far stretch on the censor's part but tells you something about the climate created by Metternich in the post Napoleonic Wars world.