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.
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!"
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cahn
Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth - Quote time
Date: 2024-03-07 07:57 pm (UTC)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.
Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth - Quote time
Date: 2024-03-08 11:40 am (UTC)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!"